"Revolver"

The Beatles started out as a traditional English rock band and were the typical teenage heartthrob group. With the creation of their seventh album, “Revolver”, the style and focus of the music and lyrics shifted. The Beatles were a four-piece band consisting of members Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Richard Starkey (Ringo). They started out very mainstream prior to revolver where George Martian started experimenting with effects and different techniques.

            The Beatles started experimenting with drugs such as LSD while in the process of making “Revolver.” LSD was a key factor in some of their songs abstract lyrics and concepts such as the lyrics in “She Said She Said.” Lennon at some point stated that parts of the lyrics for that song were directly taken from his conversation with Peter Fonda while on an LSD trip.

             In the making of “Revolver” many different techniques and unusual equipment were used, essentially making the actual studio an instrument in many of the songs. Effects such as large hardware tape loops were used for backing melodies. At points, the tape loop machine had tape loops so big that they even ran out of the studio for some of the effects. Creative pieces of the studio such as bass amps were even used as microphones to track sounds for certain songs creating a unique never before heard sound. During the lead-in to the album there is a verbal count down to make the listener aware of the studio environment as a piece of the musical content.

            New and creative innovations were used in the production of the “Revolver” album. One of the two techniques I will mention particularly stood out to me because of its creativity in what was used to make it happen. A bass guitar cabinet was used as a microphone to record the bass for one song, giving the bass a low-end motorcycle sound. Many different vocal processing also was used in the creation of the tracks.  The second innovative technique used was the use of automatic double tracking (ADT). Double tracking consists of two linked automatic tape recorders, which create and automatically doubled vocal track.

            “Revolver” had a very interesting impression on me. I was at times confused by the abstractness of the lyrics, but enjoyed all the funky effects. The over all sound of the album is second to none of it’s time. I was impressed with some of the sounds the Beatles were able to create musically provided their time period and equipment. I’m not personally a big fan of rock, but I now have a curious interest in it because of “Revolver.”

Sources for "Revolver" post on (10/1/11):

Wikipedia over-view of "Revolver"

Beatles Names