5 Production Secrets of The Beatles

[Parni_Valjak]

5 Production Secrets of The Beatles

By Ian Vargo on 9/8/2014

 

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.

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.”

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.

Редактирано Септември 10, 2014 от Parni_Valjak

[НиколайGK]

Още малко за Бийтълс, по-точно за любимата ми тяхна песен Tomorrow never knows:

 

 

 

Lennon first played the song to Brian Epstein, George Martin and the other Beatles at Epstein's house at 24 Chapel Street, Belgravia.^[20][21]

The 19-year-old Geoff Emerick was promoted to replace Norman Smith as engineer on the first session for the Revolver album. This started at 8 pm on 6 April 1966, in Studio Three at Abbey Road.^[8] Lennon told producer Martin that he wanted to sound like a hundred chanting Tibetan monks, which left Martin the difficult task of trying to find the effect by using the basic equipment they had. Lennon's suggestion was that he be suspended from a rope and, after being given a good push, he would sing as he spun around the microphone. This idea was rejected by Martin, but when asked by Lennon about it, he would only reply with, "We're looking into it."^[22] Emerick finally came up with the idea of wiring Lennon's vocal through a Leslie rotating speaker, thus obtaining the desired effect without the need of a rope.^[8][23] Emerick made a connector to break into the electronic circuitry of the cabinet and then re-recorded the vocal as it came out of the revolving speaker.^[24][22]

As Lennon hated doing a second take to double his vocals, Ken Townsend, the studio's technical manager, developed an alternative form of double-tracking called automatic double tracking (ADT) system, taking the signal from the sync head of one tape machine and delaying it slightly through a second tape machine.^[25] The two tape machines used were not driven by mains electricity, but from a separate generator which put out a particular frequency, the same for both, thereby keeping them locked together.^[25] By altering the speed and frequencies, he could create various effects, which the Beatles used throughout the recording of Revolver.^[26] Lennon's vocal is double-tracked on the first three verses of the song: the effect of the Leslie cabinet can be heard after the (backwards) guitar solo.^[27]

The track included the highly compressed drums that the Beatles currently favoured, with reverse cymbals, reverse guitar, processed vocals, looped tape effects, a sitar and a tambura drone.^[23] McCartney supplied a bag of ¼-inch audio tape loops he had made at home after listening toStockhausen's Gesang der Jünglinge. By disabling the erase head of a tape recorder and then spooling a continuous loop of tape through the machine while recording, the tape would constantly overdub itself, creating a saturation effect, a technique also used in musique concrète. The tape could also be induced to go faster and slower. McCartney encouraged the other Beatles to use the same effects and create their own loops.^[17] After experimentation on their own, the various Beatles supplied a total of "30 or so" tape loops to Martin, who selected 16 for use on the song.^[28] Each loop was about six seconds long.^[28]

The tape loops were played on BTR3 tape machines located in various studios of the Abbey Road building^[29] and controlled by EMI technicians in Studio Two at Abbey Road on 7 April.^[30][23] Each machine was monitored by one technician, who had to hold a pencil within each loop to maintain tension.^[28] The four Beatles controlled the faders of the mixing console while Martin varied the stereo panning and Emerick watched the meters.^[31][32] Eight of the tapes were used at one time, changed halfway through the song.^[31] The tapes were made (like most of the other loops) by superimposition and acceleration.^[33][34] According to Martin, the finished mix of the tape loops could not be repeated because of the complex and random way in which they were laid over the music.^[35]

Five tape loops are audible in finished version of the song. Isolating the loops reveals that they contained:

 

• A "laughing" voice, played at double-speed (the "seagull" sound)
• An orchestral chord of B flat major (from a Sibelius symphony) (0:19)
• A fast electric guitar phrase in C major, reversed and played at double-speed (0:22)
• Another guitar phrase with heavy tape echo, with a B flat chord provided either by guitar, organ or possibly a Mellotron Mk II (0:38)
• A sitar-like descending scalar phrase played on an electric guitar, reversed and played at double-speed (0:56)

The Beatles further experimented with tape loops in "Carnival of Light", an as-yet-unreleased piece recorded during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions, and in "Revolution 9", released on The Beatles.^[36]

The opening chord fades in gradually on the stereo version while the mono version features a more sudden fade-in. The mono and stereo versions also have the tape-loop track faded in at slightly different times and different volumes (in general, the loops are louder on the mono mix). On the stereo version a little feedback comes in after the guitar solo, exactly halfway through the song, but is edited out of the mono mix.

Lennon was later quoted as saying that "I should have tried to get my original idea, the monks singing. I realise now that's what I wanted."^[37] Take one of the recording was released on the Anthology 2 album.^[37]  

Редактирано Септември 10, 2014 от НиколайGK