Recording practices of the Beatles
Some of the effects they employed were sampling, artificial double tracking (ADT) and the elaborate use of multitrack recording machines.
[7] 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.
"[10] 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.
[11] Paul McCartney would create more sophisticated bass lines by overdubbing in counterpoint to Beatles tracks that were previously completed.
[15] 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".
McCartney recalled playing it to the other Beatles and Starr saying it did not make sense to have drums on the track and Lennon and Harrison saying there was no point having extra guitars.
[19] As the Beatles' musical work developed, particularly in the studio, classical instruments were increasingly added to tracks.
"[20] Geoff Emerick documented the change in attitude to pop, as opposed to classical music during the Beatles career.
[23] 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).
[24] However, Emerick also saw a change in attitude at the end of the recording when everyone present (including the orchestra) broke into spontaneous applause.
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.
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,[32] although Joe Meek, an independent producer from London, is known to have done it earlier (early 1960s)[33][page needed] 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.
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.
[35] 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
