Revolver

Before becoming known as one of the top recording bands ever, The Beatles struggled to get started. After being turned down time and time again, their luck finally caught up when they met with George Martin. George Martin was known for making unusual recording acts successful, and after hearing the Beatles first live set, he immediately got to work re-working their sound and image. Following Martin’s “eagerness to shun convention”¹ , the Beatles re-arranged their songs to become more radio-friendly, and soon they had a couple of hits on their hands. The fame really started to hit home after their first American television appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Following that success, they had a string of number one albums, mostly recorded at Abbey Road, but it wasn’t until Rubber Soul that they “began to think of albums as art on their own, as complete entities,”² says Martin.

April of 1966 brought about Revolvers very first day of recording. They didn’t know it yet, but Revolver was about to become of the most celebrated albums ever. With the new invention, ADT (automatic double tracking), the Beatles were practically free to do whatever they pleased and “Martin was now allowed to easily create two sound images instead of one.”³ This technique was applied to almost every track on Revolver. Another major influence on the band around this time was Lennon’s LSD use. Lyrically and texturally, many of Lennon’s ideas were credited to acid, and this in turn inspired the ‘sonically mysterious tone’ of “Tomorrow Never Knows”. The shape shifting was further added to by loops each band member would create at home, containing little bits and pieces of audio to enhance the song even further.

last.fm

It was during these sessions that engineer, Geoff Emerick, really created the sound of Revolver, by replacing standard drum mic placement with a series of compressors and valve-limiters, processing an extremely close mic signal of the bass drum. “Tomorrow Never Knows” itself contained groundbreaking techniques, with the use of reverse guitars, and looped tape effects. Lennon and McCartney’s fascination with tape loops that I mentioned earlier was prevalent in this songs backing track.

Not only have I always considered the Beatles to be one of my favourite bands growing up, but also one of the best. In terms of lyricism and melodies, they have always stood out to me as one of the catchiest and most genre-defining group in the rock world. Classics such as “Yellow Submarine”, “Eleanor Rigby” and “Tomorrow Never Knows” were defining moments for me when realizing that music is something I wanted to get into. As an industry professional, The Beatles revolutionary use of tape loops, instrumentation, compression and sound effects, are certainly fundamental to many techniques we use today. It’s not to say that without this album we wouldn’t have these techniques, I’m sure they would have come around sooner or later; what is really important to gather from this album is the way in which they utilized these techniques. It is through their avant-garde musical style, we have a work of art that many will be studying for years to come.

Please see the references page for all quotations used in the above post.