STUDIO PIONEERS
Find out how The Beatles and George Martin turned the primitive recording studio into their creative playground…
Discover the techniques behind The Beatles’ sound
“Painting a picture in sound” is how Beatles producer George Martin described his production philosophy, as showcased so spectacularly on the Sgt Pepper album that marks its 50th anniversary this summer. It was a perfect metaphor for how an encyclopaedia of studio techniques complement so many Fab Four songs – right down to their lyrical themes. A classic example is the circus setting of Being For The Benefit
Of Mr Kite, where loops of swirling steam organs and daring stereo panning help the listener to “smell the sawdust”, just as John Lennon had demanded. The dreamy feel of I’m Only Sleeping, the transcendental ‘Tibetan’ vocals of Tomorrow Never Knows, the crying
guitar of While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and the undersea ambience of Octopus’s Garden are a few of the many other Beatles gems that owe their atmospherics to an array of studio wizardry and offbeat innovation.
Here at , we’re used to dealing with virtual studio technology that has a legacy, but we often neglect discussing the legacy itself. For this feature, we’ve enlisted Dominic Pedler, author of
The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles, to clue you in on the stories behind the Fab Four’s [or should that be Fab Five’s?] experiments with early studio technology. Then, throughout our tutorials, we’ll step in to show you how to get these classic sounds and effects in your DAW, covering artificial double-tracking, varispeed, tape reversing, looping, splicing, flanging and foley – just some of the tricks and devices involved in realising the creative vision of John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
It’s often forgotten just how far the band and their studio team travelled on their journey of discovery. The very first disc featuring Lennon, McCartney and Harrison was done in one take, with no overdubs, mixing, balancing or EQ – the live renditions were fed directly to a 10" shellac acetate, via the stylus on a portable disc cutter running at 78 RPM.
While there was plenty of production ingenuity in The Beatles’ early outings at Abbey Road Studios, the learning curve steepened dramatically from 1966, when the Revolver sessions married ever more ambitious songwriting with increasing technical sophistication. As the band reinvented itself in the studio, so George Martin morphed from “organiser to realiser”, as he put it – a role that embraced musical arranger, orchestrator and full-time collaborator. As the ‘fifth Beatle’, he dramatically pushed the envelope, with the help of inspired engineers including Norman Smith, Geoff Emerick, Ken Townsend, Ken Scott and Chris Thomas.
With help from everyone involved, this relentless studio creativity went hand in hand with developments in studio technology, and the two redefined the production process for generations to come. Indeed, a history of The Beatles in the studio is the perfect history of studio technology, and those who don’t know their history risk repeating it in an endless tape loop. So let’s take a look at their most significant innovations, and how they made it all happen.