The Beatles presented their last composition “Now and Theen” to the audience. Since November 2, the track, on the creation of which Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr worked, is available for listening to musical streaming services. Interest in this composition increased due to the unique process of its creation, in which machine learning technologies were involved.
The history of the creation of the track originates in the mid-90s, when the members of the group Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr first tried to finalize the Demo of “Now and Theen” by John Lennon. However, due to technical restrictions of that time, work on the composition was suspended.
Paul McCartney in an interview with The Verge shared that on the demo-record, John’s voice was poorly audible because of a loud piano, and in those days they did not have the technology to separate his voice from the music. Every time they wanted to hear it, the piano overshadowed the whole picture.
The decisive moment came in 2021 with the release of Peter Jackson’s documentary, “Return,” dedicated to The Beatles. The film team developed a technology that allowed them to take almost any musical fragment, even ancient demos, and “divide all different components into separate tracks based on machine learning.” This discovery inspired McCartney and Starr to complete the work on “Now and Theen.”
“Now we could make it together and create a real record out of it,” said McCartney. He recorded the bass part, Starr added drums, and producer Giles Martin came up with an arrangement of strings “as his father Giles did in the good old days.” The result was the release of “Now and Theen” on streaming services.
The composition of “Now and Then” is already available on YouTube, Apple Music, and