The Beatles - Revolver entry

       
Prior to the recording of Revolver, The Beatles image was a group of heartthrobs. They only sung girl songs about relationships. They were very clean and basic. You could easily categorize them into being a good group consisting of two guitars, a bass, drums, and a vocal. All of this changed with 
the release of Revolver. The Beatles undoubtedly expanded their material among many other things.

        The music and lyrical content of revolver were, ironically, influences by many non-musical interests. A large interest that influenced the entire group was drug usage. The group members used a lot of different drugs, but a major drug they used was LSD. That influences them a lot. John Lennon was actually influenced by a book based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

       The Beatles were innovators in the fact that they actually used the studio as an instrument while creating the Revolver album. Bands didn’t usually record music in the studio that they couldn’t perform live in a verbatim manner. Some of the effects they used involved vocal doubling, compression, and many unorthodox or spur of the moment ideas. They changed the sound of everything from instruments to vocals in ways that can only be done in the studio. They weren’t able to recreate these live, but they recorded them anyways, which made for a great studio album that actually used the studio as it’s own instrument.

        Two innovations used on Revolver were compression and ADT. The Beatles used compression on the drums, vocals, and guitars to create a more “in your face” sound. This was actually one of the ways that they used the studio as an instrument. Another technique was ADT. ADT is known as either automatic double-tracking or artificial double-tracking. It is used to make a vocal sound like it was recorded twice without actually recording it twice. It is accomplished by using analog tape and copying a vocal to another track. The copied vocal is then delayed to emulate the sound of a vocal being dubbed.  The Beatles also used this technique on various instruments throughout the record.

        As a listener, when I hear Revolver, I gain an appreciation for great music. I hear the music and I recognize the creativity and am taken away with The Beatles. I understand how deep some of the lyrics go and it really makes me thing. As a professional, I am dumbfounded by the creativity of The Beatles. They were able to think of new ideas and innovations in recording technology. As an engineer, I know how hard this is. It’s extremely difficult to look at all the tools that you’re given and use them in a new way that no one has successfully done before. It gives me the chills. Recording owes a lot to the Beatles.