Widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential bands in the history of popular music, there is plenty of available literature on the techniques and equipment used to record The Fab Four, including my personal favorite Recording The Beatles by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan.
Here are some examples of creative production techniques used by the group and the talented crew of engineers that helped create a catalog of albums that have sold well over two billion copies:
1. Recording at half-speed on In My Life”
On this song from 1965 Album Rubber Soul, all but the instrumental bridge section had been completed. John Lennon asked Producer George Martin to come up with something baroque sounding.”¹
Martin's Bach-inspired Piano solo was written at a tempo that Martin himself couldn't play. The engineers brilliantly recorded the part with the tape running at half-speed, so when it was played back at normal speed, the solo was an octave higher and twice as fast. Additionally, the timbre was altered, with the attack of the notes played on the piano becoming more prominent.
There are numerous other examples of the engineers using this technique on Beatles recordings, including extensive use on Strawberry Fields Forever.”
Using the varispeed” mode in Pro Tools' elastic audio can perhaps yield similar results.
2. Reverse tape effect on the guitar solo of I'm Only Sleeping”
On this John Lennon tune from Revolver (1966) George Harrison spent a reported five hours meticulously constructing a guitar part by having the engineers run the tape backwards as he composed a solo that would ultimately, when reversed, fit the dreamlike mood.”²
The part was double-tracked, once with fuzz, and once without. Conveniently, you can hear the entire master reversed, revealing what the original guitar recording sounds like at Beatles Bible
Essentially every modern DAW has a reverse audio capability, but actually taking the time to write out the performance before the effect is applied will definitely result in something unique.
3. Randomly splicing tape loops together on Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!”
For this song, which derived virtually all of its lyrical content from a 19th century circus poster owned by John Lennon, a carnival atmosphere” was desired for the production.
In the middle-eight, we have perhaps one of the most creative techniques used on The Beatles recordings, with engineer Geoff Emerick (as instructed by George Martin) taking tape recordings of fairground organs and calliope music, chopping the tape with scissors, throwing the pieces up into the air, and reassembling at random.⁴
The resulting effect is quite unique, and fits in perfectly with the rest of the psychedelic Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
This type of effect (if desired) is not only much easier to do in a modern DAW, it is certainly cheaper than mangling sought-after analog tape.
4. Use of Tea Towels and other drum muffling techniques on multiple recordings
As early as 1962, Ringo can be seen using John's Harmonica to dampen his snare drum.
Throughout the years, it was quite common to use tea towels to muffle the sound of his drums. A collection of pictures and information on Ringo's kits and evolution can be seen at Ringo's Beatle Kits This became a sonic staple for the band.
Using tea towels or other muffling devices can allow for more control over the volume, attack and decay of individual drums. Especially considering it was common for the engineers to apply extreme compression on Ringo's kit with a Fairchild limiter, dampening the drums allowed for a tighter, more focused sound.
I highly suggest having Moongel dampening on hand, but don't be afraid to use something more aggressive. Native Instruments' Abbey Road 60's Drums even come with tea towel articulations, making it one of my go-to virtual instruments for vintage sounding drums.
Bonus: Practicing singing on Oh! Darling”
Performing a song until the performance sounds the way the artist wants it to — what a concept!
During the Abbey Road sessions Paul McCartney would come in early to the studio that this classic album shares a name with, arriving before the other band members, singing this retro-sounding song once per day attempting to capture the raw, strained quality that the production needed. Engineer Alan Parsons recalls:
Paul came in several days running to do the lead vocal on Oh! Darling. He'd come in, sing it and say, ‘No, that's not it, I'll try it again tomorrow.' He only tried it once per day, I suppose he wanted to capture a certain rawness which could only be done once before the voice changed. I remember him saying, ‘Five years ago I could have done this in a flash,' referring, I suppose, to the days of Long Tall Sally and Kansas City”⁴
There is not yet a plugin that can achieve this effect. This is just one of the countless examples of McCartney's complete (and sometimes obsessive) dedication to capturing a musical moment exactly as he envisioned it.
Conclusion
I've always quite enjoyed researching the production secrets of my absolute favorite band. Fortunately, there's a wealth of knowledge available on recordings, in books, and on various Internet sources.
Additionally, much credit to Waves, Softube, and Native Instruments whose lines of Abbey Road-inspired plugins and VSTs help preserve the sounds of this crucial time in recorded music for current engineers.
Showing posts with label beatles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beatles. Show all posts
Tuesday, 27 June 2017
Saturday, 24 September 2016
The Beatles And Multitrack Recording
© /RMAX
Although multitrack recorders were developed as early as the 1940s they were not widely adopted across the recording industry for some time after that. In fact, by the time the Beatles started their professional recording career in 1962, two-track recording was still the industry norm. By the early 1960s EMI's Abbey Road studio was equipped with four-track machines, but four-track recording was regarded as unnecessary for pop recordings and the Beatles themselves did not use the method until 1964 (Ryan and Kehew 2006, 351). Despite this slow start however the 1960s became a time of rapid change in recording, with significant shifts in the technology used in recording studios, and the Beatles were at the forefront of these developments.
Technological innovation is often driven by the artistic desires of artists as well as by the vision of engineers, and the quest for new sounds by musicians and producers has often led to sophisticated technological developments. The relationship between the Beatles and their production team was such that advancement in the way in which records were made was constantly being sought. New techniques and sonic effects emerged through their recording sessions, such as Artificial Double Tracking (or ADT) for vocals which was invented by Abbey Road's studio manager Ken Townshend.
Often it was the Beatles' artistic demands that led technological innovation. For instance, the recording of 'Strawberry Fields' took the form of two takes with distinctive arrangements. In the first take the band were accompanied by Paul McCartney's new Mellotron, a keyboard which generates sound by playing back pre-recorded tapes of instrumental samples. The second take included a brass and string arrangement written by producer George Martin. John Lennon suggested that the final record would work best with a splice between the first and second takes for each half of the song. Unfortunately, the two takes were in different keys, so the studio team had to improvise a way of joining the two by slowing the second take to the correct pitch and gradually decreasing the speed of the first before the edit point at one minute into the song (Cunningham, 1996: 148).
The work that Martin and his team carried out with the Beatles became highly influential on the ways in which records were made, and the band's immense popularity meant their innovative use of studio technology became heard all over the world and set new benchmarks in record production. In fact the example of the Beatles illustrates how the recording studio became an important compositional tool within popular music. No longer was it the case that bands merely provided studio performances of already written and arranged compositions. Rather, the studio itself was being used to create the essential fabric of the music. As the world famous record producer Brian Eno said in 1979:
"you're working directly with sound, and there's no transmission loss between you and the sound - you handle it. The composer is in the identical position to the painter - he's working directly with a material, working directly onto a substance, and he always retains the options to chop and change." (Eno in Cox and Warner, 2004: 129)
Although multitrack recorders were developed as early as the 1940s they were not widely adopted across the recording industry for some time after that. In fact, by the time the Beatles started their professional recording career in 1962, two-track recording was still the industry norm. By the early 1960s EMI's Abbey Road studio was equipped with four-track machines, but four-track recording was regarded as unnecessary for pop recordings and the Beatles themselves did not use the method until 1964 (Ryan and Kehew 2006, 351). Despite this slow start however the 1960s became a time of rapid change in recording, with significant shifts in the technology used in recording studios, and the Beatles were at the forefront of these developments.
Technological innovation is often driven by the artistic desires of artists as well as by the vision of engineers, and the quest for new sounds by musicians and producers has often led to sophisticated technological developments. The relationship between the Beatles and their production team was such that advancement in the way in which records were made was constantly being sought. New techniques and sonic effects emerged through their recording sessions, such as Artificial Double Tracking (or ADT) for vocals which was invented by Abbey Road's studio manager Ken Townshend.
Often it was the Beatles' artistic demands that led technological innovation. For instance, the recording of 'Strawberry Fields' took the form of two takes with distinctive arrangements. In the first take the band were accompanied by Paul McCartney's new Mellotron, a keyboard which generates sound by playing back pre-recorded tapes of instrumental samples. The second take included a brass and string arrangement written by producer George Martin. John Lennon suggested that the final record would work best with a splice between the first and second takes for each half of the song. Unfortunately, the two takes were in different keys, so the studio team had to improvise a way of joining the two by slowing the second take to the correct pitch and gradually decreasing the speed of the first before the edit point at one minute into the song (Cunningham, 1996: 148).
The work that Martin and his team carried out with the Beatles became highly influential on the ways in which records were made, and the band's immense popularity meant their innovative use of studio technology became heard all over the world and set new benchmarks in record production. In fact the example of the Beatles illustrates how the recording studio became an important compositional tool within popular music. No longer was it the case that bands merely provided studio performances of already written and arranged compositions. Rather, the studio itself was being used to create the essential fabric of the music. As the world famous record producer Brian Eno said in 1979:
"you're working directly with sound, and there's no transmission loss between you and the sound - you handle it. The composer is in the identical position to the painter - he's working directly with a material, working directly onto a substance, and he always retains the options to chop and change." (Eno in Cox and Warner, 2004: 129)
Friday, 23 September 2016
The Beatles Recording Technology
In the early part of the 1960s, EMI 's Abbey Road Studios was equipped with EMI-made British Tape Recorders (BTR) which were developed in 1948, essentially as copies of German wartime recorders. The BTR was a twin-track, valve (Vacuum tube) based machine. When recording on the twin-track machine there was very little opportunity for overdubbing; the recording was essentially that of a live music performance.
The first two Beatles albums, Please Please Me and With The Beatles , were recorded on the BTR two track machines; with the introduction of four-track machines in 1963 (the first 4-track Beatles recording was " I Want to Hold Your Hand ") there came a change in the way recordings were made—tracks could be built up layer by layer, encouraging experimentation in the multitrack recording process.
In 1968 eight-track recorders became available, but Abbey Road was somewhat slow in adopting the new technology and a number of Beatles tracks (including " Hey Jude ") were recorded in other studios in London to get access to the new eight-track recorders.
The Beatles' final album Abbey Road , was the only one to be recorded using a transistorised mixing console , the EMI TG12345 , rather than the earlier REDD valve consoles. Let It Be was recorded largely at the Beatles' own Apple Studios, using borrowed REDD valve consoles from EMI after the designer Magic Alex (Alex Mardas) failed to come up with a suitable desk for the studio. Engineer Geoff Emerick has said that the transistorised console played a large part in shaping overall sound of Abbey Road , lacking the aggressive edge of the valve consoles.
The Beatles' attitude edit
The success of the Beatles meant that EMI gave them carte blanche access to the Abbey Road studios—they were not charged for studio time 8 and could spend as long as they wanted working on music. Starting around 1965 with the Rubber Soul sessions, the Beatles increasingly used the studio as an instrument in itself, spending long hours experimenting and writing. The Beatles demanded a lot from the studio; Lennon allegedly wanted to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded the bass on any Beatles records.
This prompted EMI engineer Geoff Emerick to try new techniques for " Paperback Writer ". He explains that the song "was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement.. To get the loud bass sound Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone We positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current."
Combined with this was the conscious desire to be different. McCartney said, "Each time we just want to do something different. After Please Please Me we decided we must do something different for the next song... Why should we ever want to go back? That would be soft." The desire to "do something different" pushed EMI's recording technology through overloading the mixing desk as early as 1964 in tracks such as " Eight Days a Week " even at this relatively early date, the track begins with a gradual fade-in, a device which had rarely been employed in rock music. Paul McCartney would create interesting bass lines by overdubbing in counterpoint to Beatles tracks that were previously completed.
Also overdubbed vocals were used for new artistic purposes on " Julia " with John Lennon overlapping the end of one vocal phrase with the beginning of his next. On " I Want to Hold Your Hand " (1963) the Beatles innovated using organ sounding guitars which was achieved by extreme compression on Lennon's rhythm guitar.
Engineers and other Abbey Road staff have reported that the Beatles would try to take advantage of accidental occurrences in the recording process; " I Feel Fine " and " It's All Too Much "'s feedback and " Long, Long, Long "'s resonating glass bottle (towards the end of the track) are examples of this. In other instances the group deliberately toyed with situations and techniques which would foster chance effects, such as the live (and thereby unpredictable) mixing of a UK radio broadcast into the fade of " I Am the Walrus " or the chaotic assemblage of " Tomorrow Never Knows ".
The Beatles' song " You Like Me Too Much " has one of the earliest examples of this technique: clarification needed the Beatles recorded the electric piano through a Hammond B-3's rotating Leslie speaker , a 122 or 122RV, a trick they would come back to over and over again. (At the end of the intro, the switching off of the Leslie is audible.) citation needed Also on " Tomorrow Never Knows " the vocal was sent through a Leslie speaker. Although it's not the first recorded vocal use of a Leslie speaker, the technique would later be used by the Grateful Dead , Cream , The Moody Blues and others.
All of the Beatles had Brenell tape recorders at home, which allowed them to record out of the studio. Some of their home experiments were used at Abbey Road and ended up on finished masters; in particular on "Tomorrow Never Knows".
Audio feedback was used by composers such as Robert Ashley in the early 60s. Ashley's The Wolfman, which uses feedback extensively, was composed early in 1964, though not heard publicly until the autumn of that year. In the same year as Ashley's feedback experiments, The Beatles song "I Feel Fine", recorded on 18 October, starts with a feedback note produced by plucking the A-note on McCartney's bass guitar , which was picked up on Lennon's semi-acoustic guitar It was distinguished from its predecessors by a more complex guitar sound, particularly in its introduction, a sustained plucked electric note that after a few seconds swelled in volume and buzzed like an electric razor. This was the very first use of feedback on a rock record. Speaking in one his last interviews — with the BBC's Andy Peebles — Lennon said this was the first intentional use of feedback on a music record.
In The Beatles Anthology series, George Harrison said that the feedback started accidentally when a guitar was placed on an amplifier but that Lennon had worked out how to achieve the effect live on stage. In The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn states that all the takes of the song included the feedback.
The Beatles continued to use feedback on later songs. " It's All Too Much ", for instance, begins with sustained guitar feedback.
Although strings were commonly used on pop recordings, George Martin's suggestion that a string quartet be used for the recording of " Yesterday " marked a major departure for the Beatles. McCartney recalled playing it to the other Beatles and Ringo saying it did not make sense to have drums on the track and John and George saying there was no point having extra guitars. George Martin suggested a solo acoustic guitar and a string quartet.
As the Beatles musical work developed, particularly in the studio, classical instruments were increasingly added to tracks. Lennon recalled the two way education; the Beatles and Martin learning from each other - George Martin asking if they'd heard an oboe and the Beatles saying, "No, which one's that one?"
Geoff Emerick, documented the change in attitude to pop, as opposed to classical music during the Beatles career. In EMI at the start of the 1960s, balance engineers were either "classical" or "pop". Similarly, Paul McCartney recalled a large "Pop/Classical" switch on the mixing console. Emerick also noted a tension between the classical and pop people - even eating separately in the canteen. The tension was also increased as it was the money from pop sales that paid for the classical sessions.
Emerick was the engineer on "A Day in the Life", which used a 40 piece orchestra and recalled "dismay" amongst the classical musicians when they were told to improvise between the lowest and highest notes of their instruments (whilst wearing rubber noses). However, Emerick also saw a change in attitude at the end of the recording when everyone present (including the orchestra) broke into spontaneous applause. Emerick recalled the evening as the "passing of the torch" between the old attitudes to pop music and the new.
Artificial double tracking edit
Artificial double tracking (ADT) was invented by Ken Townsend in 1966, during the recording of Revolver. With the advent of four-track recordings, it became possible to double track vocals whereby the performer sings along with his or her own previously recorded vocal. Phil McDonald, a member of the studio staff, recalled that Lennon did not really like singing a song twice - it was obviously important to sing exactly the same words with the same phrasing - and after a particularly trying evening of double tracking vocals, Townsend "had an idea" while driving home one evening hearing the sound of the car in front. ADT works by taking the original recording of a vocal part and duplicating it onto a second tape machine which has a variable speed control. The manipulation of the speed of the second machine during playback introduces a delay between the original vocal and the second recording of it, giving the effect of double tracking without having to sing the part twice.
The effect had been created "accidentally" earlier, when recording "Yesterday": loudspeakers were used to cue the string quartet and some of McCartney's voice was recorded onto the string track, which can be heard on the final recording.
It has been claimed that George Martin 's pseudoscientific explanation of ADT ("We take the original image and we split it through a double-bifurcated sploshing flange") given to Lennon originated the phrase flanging in recording, as Lennon would refer to ADT as "Ken's flanger", although other sources claim the term originated from pressing a finger on the tape recorder's tape supply reel (the flange) to make small adjustments to the phase of the copy relative to the original.
ADT greatly influenced recording—virtually all the tracks on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had the treatment and it is still widely used for instruments and voices. Nowadays, the effect is more often known as automatic double tracking
ADT can be heard on the lead guitar on " Here, There and Everywhere " and the vocals on " Eleanor Rigby " for example. The technique was used later by bands like the Grateful Dead and Iron Butterfly , amongst others.
Close miking of acoustic instruments edit
During the recording of " Eleanor Rigby " on 28 April 1966, McCartney said he wanted to avoid " Mancini " strings. To fulfil this brief, Geoff Emerick close-miked the strings—the microphones were almost touching the strings. George Martin had to instruct the players not to back away from the microphones.
Microphones began to be placed closer to the instruments in order to produce a fuller sound. Ringo's drums had a large sweater stuffed in the bass drum to 'deaden' the sound while the bass drum microphone was positioned very close which resulted in the drum being more prominent in the mix. " Eleanor Rigby " features just Paul and a double string quartet that has the instruments miked so close to the string that 'the musicians were in horror'. In " Got to Get You into My Life ", the brass were miked in the bells of their instruments then put through a Fairchild limiter.
According to Emerick, in 1966, this was considered a radically new way of recording strings; nowadays it is common practice.
The Beatles first used samples of other music on " Yellow Submarine ", the samples being added on 1 June 1966. The brass band solo was constructed from a Sousa march by George Martin and Geoff Emerick , the original solo was in the same key and was transferred to tape, cut into small segments and re-arranged to form a brief solo which was added to the song.
A similar technique was used for " Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite " on 20 February 1967. To try to create the atmosphere of a circus , Martin first proposed the use of a calliope (a steam-driven organ). Such was the power of the Beatles within EMI that phone calls were made to see if a calliope could be hired and brought into the studio. However, only automatic calliopes, controlled by punched cards, were available, so other techniques had to be used. Martin came up with taking taped samples from several steam organ pieces, cutting them into short lengths, "throwing them in the air" and splicing them together. It took two trials; in the first attempt, the pieces coincidentally came back in more or less original order.
More obvious, and therefore more influential samples were used on " I Am the Walrus "—a live BBC Third Programme broadcast of King Lear was mixed into the track on 29 September 1967. McCartney has also described a lost opportunity of live sampling: the EMI studio was set up in such a way that the echo track from the echo chamber could be picked up in any of the control rooms. Paul Jones was recording in a studio whilst "I Am the Walrus" was being mixed and the Beatles were tempted to "nick" (steal) some of Jones's singing to put into the mix.
Direct input was first used by the Beatles on 1 February 1967 to record McCartney's bass on " Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ". With direct input the guitar pick-up is connected to the recording console via an impedance matching DI box. Ken Townsend claimed this as the first use anywhere in the world, although Joe Meek , an independent producer from London, is known to have done it earlier (early 1960s) and in America, Motown's engineers had been using Direct Input since the early 1960s for guitars and bass guitars, primarily due to restrictions of space in their small 'Snakepit' recording studio. citation needed
Synchronising tape machines edit
One way of increasing the number of tracks available for recording is to synchronise tape machines together. Nowadays when? SMPTE timecode is used to synchronise tape machines.
Modern SMPTE controlled recorders provide a mechanism so that the second machine will automatically position the tape correctly and start and stop simultaneously with the master machine.
On 10 February 1967 during the recording of " A Day in the Life ", Ken Townsend synchronised two machines so that extra tracks were available for recording the orchestra. The technique that Townsend used was to record a 50 Hz tone on the one remaining track on one machine and used that tone to control the speed of a second machine. Townsend thereby effectively used pilottone , a technique that was common in 16mm news gathering whereby a 50/60 Hz tone was sent from the movie camera to a tape recorder during filming in order to achieve lip-synch sound recording. With the simple tone used for "A Day in the Life", the start position was marked with a wax pencil on the two machines and the tape operator had to align the tapes by eye and attempt to press play and record simultaneously for each take.
Although the technique was reasonably successful, Townsend recalled that when they tried to use the tape on a different machine, the synchronisation was sometimes lost. George Martin claimed this as the first time tape machines had been synchronised, although SMPTE sychronisation for video/audio synchronisation was developed around 1967.
As the Beatles pioneered according to whom? the use of musique concrète in pop music (i.e. the sped-up tape loops in "Tomorrow Never Knows"), backward recordings came as a natural exponent of this experimentation. "Rain", the first rock song featuring a backwards vocal (Lennon singing the first verse of the song), came about when Lennon (claiming the influence of marijuana) accidentally loaded a reel-to-reel tape of the song on his machine backwards and essentially liked what he heard so much he quickly had the reversed overdub.
A quick follow-up was the reversed guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping", which features a dual guitar solo by George Harrison played backwards. Harrison worked out a forward guitar part, learned to play the part in reverse, and recorded it backwards. Likewise, a backing track of reversed drums and cymbals made its way into the verses of "Strawberry Fields Forever". The Beatles' well-known use of reversed tapes led to rumours of backwards messages, including many that fueled the Paul is Dead urban myth. However, only "Rain" and " Free as a Bird " include intentional reversed lead vocal in Beatles songs.
The stereo version of George Harrison's " Blue Jay Way " (1967, Magical Mystery Tour ) also includes backwards vocals, which is actually a backwards copy of the entire mix, including all instruments, which is faded up at the end of each phrase.
In an homage to the Beatles' experimentation with reversed tracks (and those rumoured), the "reunion" track "Free as a Bird" featured a backward message that sounds like "Made by John Lennon." This is only a coincidence, and the phrase that was reversed to achieve this was "Turned out nice again" (a catchphrase of George Formby ; George Harrison was a great Formby fan ). The Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil show LOVE included the song "Gnik Nus," which was the vocal track to "Sun King" played in reverse, which was accidentally created when Giles Martin (George Martin's son) flipped the cymbal from "Sun King" for an effect used on the "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" mashup and discovered he'd also flipped the vocal track. Also, the mashup track "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" uses reversed cymbals, as well as reversing one of the tamboura riffs from "Within You Without You."
^
^ a b Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 54
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p146.
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 277
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 100
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessionsp. 74
^ Davies - 'The Beatles' p300.
^ All Music Guide Song Review "Eight Days a Week" by Richie Unterberger
^ Page 347 The Foundations of Rock. From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". Walter Everett.
^ Page 346 The Foundations of Rock. From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". Walter Everett
^ page 51 The Foundations of Rock: From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Walter Everett
^ Hertsgaard - A Day in the Life p103.
^ a b page 342 The Foundations of Rock: From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Walter Everett
^ a b Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p72.
^ "I Feel Fine" All Music Guide Song Review by Richie Unterberger
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p50.
^ The Beatles - Anthology p175
^ The Beatles - Anthology p197
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p11.
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 57
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 157
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 159
^ a b Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p70.
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 70
^ The Evolution of Beatles' Recording Technology by Cari Morin (1998)
^ Emerick - Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles p122-123
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p8.
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p95.
^ Repsch, John - The Legendary Joe Meek
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p96.
^ Emerick - Here, There and Everywhere. p 154
The first two Beatles albums, Please Please Me and With The Beatles , were recorded on the BTR two track machines; with the introduction of four-track machines in 1963 (the first 4-track Beatles recording was " I Want to Hold Your Hand ") there came a change in the way recordings were made—tracks could be built up layer by layer, encouraging experimentation in the multitrack recording process.
In 1968 eight-track recorders became available, but Abbey Road was somewhat slow in adopting the new technology and a number of Beatles tracks (including " Hey Jude ") were recorded in other studios in London to get access to the new eight-track recorders.
The Beatles' final album Abbey Road , was the only one to be recorded using a transistorised mixing console , the EMI TG12345 , rather than the earlier REDD valve consoles. Let It Be was recorded largely at the Beatles' own Apple Studios, using borrowed REDD valve consoles from EMI after the designer Magic Alex (Alex Mardas) failed to come up with a suitable desk for the studio. Engineer Geoff Emerick has said that the transistorised console played a large part in shaping overall sound of Abbey Road , lacking the aggressive edge of the valve consoles.
The Beatles' attitude edit
The success of the Beatles meant that EMI gave them carte blanche access to the Abbey Road studios—they were not charged for studio time 8 and could spend as long as they wanted working on music. Starting around 1965 with the Rubber Soul sessions, the Beatles increasingly used the studio as an instrument in itself, spending long hours experimenting and writing. The Beatles demanded a lot from the studio; Lennon allegedly wanted to know why the bass on a certain Wilson Pickett record far exceeded the bass on any Beatles records.
This prompted EMI engineer Geoff Emerick to try new techniques for " Paperback Writer ". He explains that the song "was the first time the bass sound had been heard in all its excitement.. To get the loud bass sound Paul played a different bass, a Rickenbacker. Then we boosted it further by using a loudspeaker as a microphone We positioned it directly in front of the bass speaker and the moving diaphragm of the second speaker made the electric current."
Combined with this was the conscious desire to be different. McCartney said, "Each time we just want to do something different. After Please Please Me we decided we must do something different for the next song... Why should we ever want to go back? That would be soft." The desire to "do something different" pushed EMI's recording technology through overloading the mixing desk as early as 1964 in tracks such as " Eight Days a Week " even at this relatively early date, the track begins with a gradual fade-in, a device which had rarely been employed in rock music. Paul McCartney would create interesting bass lines by overdubbing in counterpoint to Beatles tracks that were previously completed.
Also overdubbed vocals were used for new artistic purposes on " Julia " with John Lennon overlapping the end of one vocal phrase with the beginning of his next. On " I Want to Hold Your Hand " (1963) the Beatles innovated using organ sounding guitars which was achieved by extreme compression on Lennon's rhythm guitar.
Engineers and other Abbey Road staff have reported that the Beatles would try to take advantage of accidental occurrences in the recording process; " I Feel Fine " and " It's All Too Much "'s feedback and " Long, Long, Long "'s resonating glass bottle (towards the end of the track) are examples of this. In other instances the group deliberately toyed with situations and techniques which would foster chance effects, such as the live (and thereby unpredictable) mixing of a UK radio broadcast into the fade of " I Am the Walrus " or the chaotic assemblage of " Tomorrow Never Knows ".
The Beatles' song " You Like Me Too Much " has one of the earliest examples of this technique: clarification needed the Beatles recorded the electric piano through a Hammond B-3's rotating Leslie speaker , a 122 or 122RV, a trick they would come back to over and over again. (At the end of the intro, the switching off of the Leslie is audible.) citation needed Also on " Tomorrow Never Knows " the vocal was sent through a Leslie speaker. Although it's not the first recorded vocal use of a Leslie speaker, the technique would later be used by the Grateful Dead , Cream , The Moody Blues and others.
All of the Beatles had Brenell tape recorders at home, which allowed them to record out of the studio. Some of their home experiments were used at Abbey Road and ended up on finished masters; in particular on "Tomorrow Never Knows".
Audio feedback was used by composers such as Robert Ashley in the early 60s. Ashley's The Wolfman, which uses feedback extensively, was composed early in 1964, though not heard publicly until the autumn of that year. In the same year as Ashley's feedback experiments, The Beatles song "I Feel Fine", recorded on 18 October, starts with a feedback note produced by plucking the A-note on McCartney's bass guitar , which was picked up on Lennon's semi-acoustic guitar It was distinguished from its predecessors by a more complex guitar sound, particularly in its introduction, a sustained plucked electric note that after a few seconds swelled in volume and buzzed like an electric razor. This was the very first use of feedback on a rock record. Speaking in one his last interviews — with the BBC's Andy Peebles — Lennon said this was the first intentional use of feedback on a music record.
In The Beatles Anthology series, George Harrison said that the feedback started accidentally when a guitar was placed on an amplifier but that Lennon had worked out how to achieve the effect live on stage. In The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn states that all the takes of the song included the feedback.
The Beatles continued to use feedback on later songs. " It's All Too Much ", for instance, begins with sustained guitar feedback.
Although strings were commonly used on pop recordings, George Martin's suggestion that a string quartet be used for the recording of " Yesterday " marked a major departure for the Beatles. McCartney recalled playing it to the other Beatles and Ringo saying it did not make sense to have drums on the track and John and George saying there was no point having extra guitars. George Martin suggested a solo acoustic guitar and a string quartet.
As the Beatles musical work developed, particularly in the studio, classical instruments were increasingly added to tracks. Lennon recalled the two way education; the Beatles and Martin learning from each other - George Martin asking if they'd heard an oboe and the Beatles saying, "No, which one's that one?"
Geoff Emerick, documented the change in attitude to pop, as opposed to classical music during the Beatles career. In EMI at the start of the 1960s, balance engineers were either "classical" or "pop". Similarly, Paul McCartney recalled a large "Pop/Classical" switch on the mixing console. Emerick also noted a tension between the classical and pop people - even eating separately in the canteen. The tension was also increased as it was the money from pop sales that paid for the classical sessions.
Emerick was the engineer on "A Day in the Life", which used a 40 piece orchestra and recalled "dismay" amongst the classical musicians when they were told to improvise between the lowest and highest notes of their instruments (whilst wearing rubber noses). However, Emerick also saw a change in attitude at the end of the recording when everyone present (including the orchestra) broke into spontaneous applause. Emerick recalled the evening as the "passing of the torch" between the old attitudes to pop music and the new.
Artificial double tracking edit
Artificial double tracking (ADT) was invented by Ken Townsend in 1966, during the recording of Revolver. With the advent of four-track recordings, it became possible to double track vocals whereby the performer sings along with his or her own previously recorded vocal. Phil McDonald, a member of the studio staff, recalled that Lennon did not really like singing a song twice - it was obviously important to sing exactly the same words with the same phrasing - and after a particularly trying evening of double tracking vocals, Townsend "had an idea" while driving home one evening hearing the sound of the car in front. ADT works by taking the original recording of a vocal part and duplicating it onto a second tape machine which has a variable speed control. The manipulation of the speed of the second machine during playback introduces a delay between the original vocal and the second recording of it, giving the effect of double tracking without having to sing the part twice.
The effect had been created "accidentally" earlier, when recording "Yesterday": loudspeakers were used to cue the string quartet and some of McCartney's voice was recorded onto the string track, which can be heard on the final recording.
It has been claimed that George Martin 's pseudoscientific explanation of ADT ("We take the original image and we split it through a double-bifurcated sploshing flange") given to Lennon originated the phrase flanging in recording, as Lennon would refer to ADT as "Ken's flanger", although other sources claim the term originated from pressing a finger on the tape recorder's tape supply reel (the flange) to make small adjustments to the phase of the copy relative to the original.
ADT greatly influenced recording—virtually all the tracks on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had the treatment and it is still widely used for instruments and voices. Nowadays, the effect is more often known as automatic double tracking
ADT can be heard on the lead guitar on " Here, There and Everywhere " and the vocals on " Eleanor Rigby " for example. The technique was used later by bands like the Grateful Dead and Iron Butterfly , amongst others.
Close miking of acoustic instruments edit
During the recording of " Eleanor Rigby " on 28 April 1966, McCartney said he wanted to avoid " Mancini " strings. To fulfil this brief, Geoff Emerick close-miked the strings—the microphones were almost touching the strings. George Martin had to instruct the players not to back away from the microphones.
Microphones began to be placed closer to the instruments in order to produce a fuller sound. Ringo's drums had a large sweater stuffed in the bass drum to 'deaden' the sound while the bass drum microphone was positioned very close which resulted in the drum being more prominent in the mix. " Eleanor Rigby " features just Paul and a double string quartet that has the instruments miked so close to the string that 'the musicians were in horror'. In " Got to Get You into My Life ", the brass were miked in the bells of their instruments then put through a Fairchild limiter.
According to Emerick, in 1966, this was considered a radically new way of recording strings; nowadays it is common practice.
The Beatles first used samples of other music on " Yellow Submarine ", the samples being added on 1 June 1966. The brass band solo was constructed from a Sousa march by George Martin and Geoff Emerick , the original solo was in the same key and was transferred to tape, cut into small segments and re-arranged to form a brief solo which was added to the song.
A similar technique was used for " Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite " on 20 February 1967. To try to create the atmosphere of a circus , Martin first proposed the use of a calliope (a steam-driven organ). Such was the power of the Beatles within EMI that phone calls were made to see if a calliope could be hired and brought into the studio. However, only automatic calliopes, controlled by punched cards, were available, so other techniques had to be used. Martin came up with taking taped samples from several steam organ pieces, cutting them into short lengths, "throwing them in the air" and splicing them together. It took two trials; in the first attempt, the pieces coincidentally came back in more or less original order.
More obvious, and therefore more influential samples were used on " I Am the Walrus "—a live BBC Third Programme broadcast of King Lear was mixed into the track on 29 September 1967. McCartney has also described a lost opportunity of live sampling: the EMI studio was set up in such a way that the echo track from the echo chamber could be picked up in any of the control rooms. Paul Jones was recording in a studio whilst "I Am the Walrus" was being mixed and the Beatles were tempted to "nick" (steal) some of Jones's singing to put into the mix.
Direct input was first used by the Beatles on 1 February 1967 to record McCartney's bass on " Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band ". With direct input the guitar pick-up is connected to the recording console via an impedance matching DI box. Ken Townsend claimed this as the first use anywhere in the world, although Joe Meek , an independent producer from London, is known to have done it earlier (early 1960s) and in America, Motown's engineers had been using Direct Input since the early 1960s for guitars and bass guitars, primarily due to restrictions of space in their small 'Snakepit' recording studio. citation needed
Synchronising tape machines edit
One way of increasing the number of tracks available for recording is to synchronise tape machines together. Nowadays when? SMPTE timecode is used to synchronise tape machines.
Modern SMPTE controlled recorders provide a mechanism so that the second machine will automatically position the tape correctly and start and stop simultaneously with the master machine.
On 10 February 1967 during the recording of " A Day in the Life ", Ken Townsend synchronised two machines so that extra tracks were available for recording the orchestra. The technique that Townsend used was to record a 50 Hz tone on the one remaining track on one machine and used that tone to control the speed of a second machine. Townsend thereby effectively used pilottone , a technique that was common in 16mm news gathering whereby a 50/60 Hz tone was sent from the movie camera to a tape recorder during filming in order to achieve lip-synch sound recording. With the simple tone used for "A Day in the Life", the start position was marked with a wax pencil on the two machines and the tape operator had to align the tapes by eye and attempt to press play and record simultaneously for each take.
Although the technique was reasonably successful, Townsend recalled that when they tried to use the tape on a different machine, the synchronisation was sometimes lost. George Martin claimed this as the first time tape machines had been synchronised, although SMPTE sychronisation for video/audio synchronisation was developed around 1967.
As the Beatles pioneered according to whom? the use of musique concrète in pop music (i.e. the sped-up tape loops in "Tomorrow Never Knows"), backward recordings came as a natural exponent of this experimentation. "Rain", the first rock song featuring a backwards vocal (Lennon singing the first verse of the song), came about when Lennon (claiming the influence of marijuana) accidentally loaded a reel-to-reel tape of the song on his machine backwards and essentially liked what he heard so much he quickly had the reversed overdub.
A quick follow-up was the reversed guitar on "I'm Only Sleeping", which features a dual guitar solo by George Harrison played backwards. Harrison worked out a forward guitar part, learned to play the part in reverse, and recorded it backwards. Likewise, a backing track of reversed drums and cymbals made its way into the verses of "Strawberry Fields Forever". The Beatles' well-known use of reversed tapes led to rumours of backwards messages, including many that fueled the Paul is Dead urban myth. However, only "Rain" and " Free as a Bird " include intentional reversed lead vocal in Beatles songs.
The stereo version of George Harrison's " Blue Jay Way " (1967, Magical Mystery Tour ) also includes backwards vocals, which is actually a backwards copy of the entire mix, including all instruments, which is faded up at the end of each phrase.
In an homage to the Beatles' experimentation with reversed tracks (and those rumoured), the "reunion" track "Free as a Bird" featured a backward message that sounds like "Made by John Lennon." This is only a coincidence, and the phrase that was reversed to achieve this was "Turned out nice again" (a catchphrase of George Formby ; George Harrison was a great Formby fan ). The Beatles-inspired Cirque du Soleil show LOVE included the song "Gnik Nus," which was the vocal track to "Sun King" played in reverse, which was accidentally created when Giles Martin (George Martin's son) flipped the cymbal from "Sun King" for an effect used on the "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" mashup and discovered he'd also flipped the vocal track. Also, the mashup track "Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows" uses reversed cymbals, as well as reversing one of the tamboura riffs from "Within You Without You."
^
^ a b Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 54
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p146.
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 277
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 100
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessionsp. 74
^ Davies - 'The Beatles' p300.
^ All Music Guide Song Review "Eight Days a Week" by Richie Unterberger
^ Page 347 The Foundations of Rock. From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". Walter Everett.
^ Page 346 The Foundations of Rock. From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes". Walter Everett
^ page 51 The Foundations of Rock: From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Walter Everett
^ Hertsgaard - A Day in the Life p103.
^ a b page 342 The Foundations of Rock: From "Blue Suede Shoes" to "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" by Walter Everett
^ a b Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p72.
^ "I Feel Fine" All Music Guide Song Review by Richie Unterberger
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p50.
^ The Beatles - Anthology p175
^ The Beatles - Anthology p197
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p11.
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 57
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 157
^ Emerick - Here, There, and Everywhere. p. 159
^ a b Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p70.
^ Lewisohn - The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions p. 70
^ The Evolution of Beatles' Recording Technology by Cari Morin (1998)
^ Emerick - Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles p122-123
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p8.
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p95.
^ Repsch, John - The Legendary Joe Meek
^ Lewisohn - Complete Beatles Recording Sessions. p96.
^ Emerick - Here, There and Everywhere. p 154
Friday, 9 September 2016
Guide To The Recording Equipment And Instruments Featured On The Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts
In many ways, 1966 had been a watershed for the Beatles. They had broken from the two-albums-per-year formula that had brought their record company, EMI, so much money, but which had occasionally depleted the group's well of creativity.
Revolver was the only full-length record they'd released that year, and it had been an artistically satisfying album, made at a more leisurely pace and with greater creative latitude.
Revolver was also the first time they'd worked with engineer Geoff Emerick, whose gift for creating sounds had helped them see new possibilities—and opportunities—in the recording process. Importantly, too, it was the last album for which they would tour, putting an end to the relentless performance schedule that had occupied much of their time between albums.
As 1966 came to a conclusion, the Beatles were officially a studio group, and with Sgt. Pepper's they would indulge their new-found freedom in ways that made other artists begin to think of the recording studio as a creative tool in and of itself.
Emerick would play an essential role in this, as he had on Revolver. But ironically, the 21-year-old audio engineer had not a single new idea when the sessions began. Martin and the Beatles had agreed that they wouldn't repeat techniques used in the past: no vocals through Leslie rotary cabinets, no Tomorrow Never Knows”-style tape loops and no backward vocals or guitars.
But unfortunately, I had used everything at my disposal on Revolver,” Emerick says. On Pepper, it was like starting over from scratch, getting down to the individual tonalities of the instruments and changing them. They didn't want a guitar to sound like a guitar anymore. They didn't want anything to sound like what it was.”
Emerick's situation was complicated by the fact that nothing had changed at Abbey Road in the few months since Revolver had been completed: there were no new effects or innovations for him to exploit. For that matter, apart from the Mellotron keyboard used on Strawberry Fields Forever” (the first song to be tackled at the sessions), the Beatles' gear had hardly changed from what they previously used.
On Sgt. Pepper's, as on Revolver, Lennon and Harrison played their Epiphone Casinos, Sonic Blue Fender Strats and Gibson J-160E acoustic guitars; Harrison also played his Gibson SG. McCartney's Rickenbacker 4001S was his main bass, and he used his Casino and Fender Esquire for rhythm and lead work.
As for amplification, the Beatles had at their disposal in 1967 a Fender Showman and a Bassman head with a 2x12 cabinet, a Selmer Thunderbird Twin 50 MkII, a Vox Conqueror and the Vox UL730, 7120 and 4120 bass amp used on Revolver.
And yet, despite the basic similarities in studio gear and equipment, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's sound distinctly different. Whereas Revolver sounds like a rock and roll album, with its crunchy guitars and warm, fizzy ambience, Sgt. Pepper's is decidedly refined, lacking the low-midrange tones that gave Revolver much of its propulsive power.
Emerick puts the difference down to the choice of studio. Revolver was done in Number Three studio, which is a smaller room. It was a dirtier-sounding studio acoustically.”
Sgt. Pepper's was recorded in Abbey Road's fabled Studio Two, a large room well suited to handling the volume and frequencies produced by pop and rock bands. Number Two is a brighter studio, and you can get cleaner tones,” he says.
In addition, Emerick began refining the recording techniques he had initiated on Revolver, finding new applications for them or applying subtle twists on familiar methods. The only way to approach Sgt. Pepper's was to use some of those techniques and sounds from Revolver in a more controlled way,” he says. It wasn't as brash—more fine tuned.”
He also took advantage of an external equalization device built by Abbey Road's engineering department: the RS127 Presence Box.” We didn't have much in the way of EQ controls on the console,” he says. In the high-frequency range, you could adjust 5k, and that was it.” Built both in rack and stand-alone versions, the RS127 gave engineers control over three high frequencies—2.7kHz, 3.5kHz and 10kHz—with up to 10dB of boost or cut.
It had been used on Beatles tracks long before Emerick began engineering the group's sessions, but never in the way that he employed it. Often I'd put those in series, and I'd have like 30dBs of 2.7 on the vocals, to really screw them up,” he says. 'Cause the Beatles didn't want voices to even sound like voices. It wasn't a question of a little bit of treble; we just went overboard."
That's what it was about, especially for the guitars. I mean, with the tube equipment and those guitars, that 2.7k was just magic. Plus the Fairchild 660 limiter added so much presence to the guitar, it was unbelievable. It made it sound like a different guitar than it was.”
Much of Emerick's time was spent working on guitar tones. Because we were still mixing to mono in those days, I had to work out the details with the two guitars. It's easy to get definition in stereo, when you're putting one guitar left and one right,” he says. But when they're coming from one sound source, to actually make each one have its own spot and be able to hear every note of each guitar takes a long time.”
For that matter, the EQ controls on the Beatles' Vox amps of the period were as limited as the controls on Abbey Road's mixing consoles. So it would sometimes take an hour and a half to two hours to get that sound worked out. I would spend a lot of time moving the mics”—specifically Neumann U47 large-condense tube microphones—a short distance from the amps just to hear the slight difference in sound and get it absolutely right.”
Emerick's magic was especially evident on McCartney's bass tracks. In the months prior to making Sgt. Pepper's, McCartney had fallen under the spell of the Beach Boys' 1966 release, Pet Sounds. He was particularly enamored of Brian Wilson's melodic bass work, which is especially prominent on the album. The thing that really made me sit up and take notice was the bass lines,” McCartney says. That, I think, was probably the big influence that set me thinking when we recorded Pepper.”
On previous albums, McCartney always laid down his bass parts with the rest of the group, but on Sgt. Pepper's, Emerick gave him his own track, onto which he would record his bass parts, usually at the end of the long session day, when the others had left. We'd pull his amp out into the middle of the studio,” Emerick says. We'd put the mic about six feet away. We used to use the AKG C12 on the figure-of-eight omnidirectional setting to grab a bit of studio ambience.”
Devoting one of four available tape tracks to bass would have been an impossible luxury had Emerick and Martin not decided to bounce” tracks from one four-track machine to another. When the tracks of one tape were filled, they would be mixed and recorded—premixed” is the word typically used—onto one or two tracks of another four-track tape running on a second machine. New recordings would be added to this second tape, and if the recording required it, the process would be repeated yet again.
Since no one knew at any stage what additional instruments would be added to a song, Emerick had to use his best judgment when creating the premixes. I did it as if I was mixing the final record,” he says. Once we'd done the premix and transferred it to a new tape, that was it; there was no going back and no way to change the mix on that track. So everything we added from that point on had to complement it. The benefit to that is that we immediately knew whether an overdub fit or not, because if it didn't work with the premix, then it wasn't going on.”
Though numerous important psychedelic albums were released prior to it—including the Yardbirds' Roger the Engineer, Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Who's A Quick One—Sgt. Pepper's defined the genre and became the soundtrack to the Summer of Love.
Everywhere you went that summer,” Emerick recalls, you would hear it being played. It was a great time of experimentation. There were no time limits, and as far as cost—the Beatles' attitude was, ‘Sod the cost! We're making a masterpiece.' Every day was groundbreaking.”
Revolver was the only full-length record they'd released that year, and it had been an artistically satisfying album, made at a more leisurely pace and with greater creative latitude.
Revolver was also the first time they'd worked with engineer Geoff Emerick, whose gift for creating sounds had helped them see new possibilities—and opportunities—in the recording process. Importantly, too, it was the last album for which they would tour, putting an end to the relentless performance schedule that had occupied much of their time between albums.
As 1966 came to a conclusion, the Beatles were officially a studio group, and with Sgt. Pepper's they would indulge their new-found freedom in ways that made other artists begin to think of the recording studio as a creative tool in and of itself.
Emerick would play an essential role in this, as he had on Revolver. But ironically, the 21-year-old audio engineer had not a single new idea when the sessions began. Martin and the Beatles had agreed that they wouldn't repeat techniques used in the past: no vocals through Leslie rotary cabinets, no Tomorrow Never Knows”-style tape loops and no backward vocals or guitars.
But unfortunately, I had used everything at my disposal on Revolver,” Emerick says. On Pepper, it was like starting over from scratch, getting down to the individual tonalities of the instruments and changing them. They didn't want a guitar to sound like a guitar anymore. They didn't want anything to sound like what it was.”
Emerick's situation was complicated by the fact that nothing had changed at Abbey Road in the few months since Revolver had been completed: there were no new effects or innovations for him to exploit. For that matter, apart from the Mellotron keyboard used on Strawberry Fields Forever” (the first song to be tackled at the sessions), the Beatles' gear had hardly changed from what they previously used.
On Sgt. Pepper's, as on Revolver, Lennon and Harrison played their Epiphone Casinos, Sonic Blue Fender Strats and Gibson J-160E acoustic guitars; Harrison also played his Gibson SG. McCartney's Rickenbacker 4001S was his main bass, and he used his Casino and Fender Esquire for rhythm and lead work.
As for amplification, the Beatles had at their disposal in 1967 a Fender Showman and a Bassman head with a 2x12 cabinet, a Selmer Thunderbird Twin 50 MkII, a Vox Conqueror and the Vox UL730, 7120 and 4120 bass amp used on Revolver.
And yet, despite the basic similarities in studio gear and equipment, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's sound distinctly different. Whereas Revolver sounds like a rock and roll album, with its crunchy guitars and warm, fizzy ambience, Sgt. Pepper's is decidedly refined, lacking the low-midrange tones that gave Revolver much of its propulsive power.
Emerick puts the difference down to the choice of studio. Revolver was done in Number Three studio, which is a smaller room. It was a dirtier-sounding studio acoustically.”
Sgt. Pepper's was recorded in Abbey Road's fabled Studio Two, a large room well suited to handling the volume and frequencies produced by pop and rock bands. Number Two is a brighter studio, and you can get cleaner tones,” he says.
In addition, Emerick began refining the recording techniques he had initiated on Revolver, finding new applications for them or applying subtle twists on familiar methods. The only way to approach Sgt. Pepper's was to use some of those techniques and sounds from Revolver in a more controlled way,” he says. It wasn't as brash—more fine tuned.”
He also took advantage of an external equalization device built by Abbey Road's engineering department: the RS127 Presence Box.” We didn't have much in the way of EQ controls on the console,” he says. In the high-frequency range, you could adjust 5k, and that was it.” Built both in rack and stand-alone versions, the RS127 gave engineers control over three high frequencies—2.7kHz, 3.5kHz and 10kHz—with up to 10dB of boost or cut.
It had been used on Beatles tracks long before Emerick began engineering the group's sessions, but never in the way that he employed it. Often I'd put those in series, and I'd have like 30dBs of 2.7 on the vocals, to really screw them up,” he says. 'Cause the Beatles didn't want voices to even sound like voices. It wasn't a question of a little bit of treble; we just went overboard."
That's what it was about, especially for the guitars. I mean, with the tube equipment and those guitars, that 2.7k was just magic. Plus the Fairchild 660 limiter added so much presence to the guitar, it was unbelievable. It made it sound like a different guitar than it was.”
Much of Emerick's time was spent working on guitar tones. Because we were still mixing to mono in those days, I had to work out the details with the two guitars. It's easy to get definition in stereo, when you're putting one guitar left and one right,” he says. But when they're coming from one sound source, to actually make each one have its own spot and be able to hear every note of each guitar takes a long time.”
For that matter, the EQ controls on the Beatles' Vox amps of the period were as limited as the controls on Abbey Road's mixing consoles. So it would sometimes take an hour and a half to two hours to get that sound worked out. I would spend a lot of time moving the mics”—specifically Neumann U47 large-condense tube microphones—a short distance from the amps just to hear the slight difference in sound and get it absolutely right.”
Emerick's magic was especially evident on McCartney's bass tracks. In the months prior to making Sgt. Pepper's, McCartney had fallen under the spell of the Beach Boys' 1966 release, Pet Sounds. He was particularly enamored of Brian Wilson's melodic bass work, which is especially prominent on the album. The thing that really made me sit up and take notice was the bass lines,” McCartney says. That, I think, was probably the big influence that set me thinking when we recorded Pepper.”
On previous albums, McCartney always laid down his bass parts with the rest of the group, but on Sgt. Pepper's, Emerick gave him his own track, onto which he would record his bass parts, usually at the end of the long session day, when the others had left. We'd pull his amp out into the middle of the studio,” Emerick says. We'd put the mic about six feet away. We used to use the AKG C12 on the figure-of-eight omnidirectional setting to grab a bit of studio ambience.”
Devoting one of four available tape tracks to bass would have been an impossible luxury had Emerick and Martin not decided to bounce” tracks from one four-track machine to another. When the tracks of one tape were filled, they would be mixed and recorded—premixed” is the word typically used—onto one or two tracks of another four-track tape running on a second machine. New recordings would be added to this second tape, and if the recording required it, the process would be repeated yet again.
Since no one knew at any stage what additional instruments would be added to a song, Emerick had to use his best judgment when creating the premixes. I did it as if I was mixing the final record,” he says. Once we'd done the premix and transferred it to a new tape, that was it; there was no going back and no way to change the mix on that track. So everything we added from that point on had to complement it. The benefit to that is that we immediately knew whether an overdub fit or not, because if it didn't work with the premix, then it wasn't going on.”
Though numerous important psychedelic albums were released prior to it—including the Yardbirds' Roger the Engineer, Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Who's A Quick One—Sgt. Pepper's defined the genre and became the soundtrack to the Summer of Love.
Everywhere you went that summer,” Emerick recalls, you would hear it being played. It was a great time of experimentation. There were no time limits, and as far as cost—the Beatles' attitude was, ‘Sod the cost! We're making a masterpiece.' Every day was groundbreaking.”
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