Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Sgt Pepper Deconstructed

Thanks to Don for passing this on after seeing my While My Guitar Gently Weeps post. The below video shows each of the four tracks that make up the song Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Each of the four original master tracks is isolated and shown in a different color in the video.

Yes, Sgt Pepper was recorded on a four track tape machine. The whole album...

Below is how they took four tracks and via bouncing some of them to another tape machine were able to record nine tracks of audio.

Recorder (A)

Trk 1.. Drums + Guitars
Trk 2.. Bass
Trk 3.. Lead + Harmony Vocals
Trk 4.. Additional Harmony Vocals

*******
Recorder (B) -- The "BOUNCE" tape. This is what we're hearing in the video:

Trk 1 [GREEN ].. From A, Tracks 1+2 (drums, guitars, and bass)
Trk 2 [ BLUE ].. Horns and punched-in lead guitar
Trk 3 [ RED ].. From A, Tracks 3+4 (all vocals)
Trk 4 [YELLOW].. Sound effects

1 comment:

Dr. John said...

That is just WAY too cool! Goes to show you that the way you make music is with talent and good song writing (the basics!). No amount of techno garbage and Protools will save you if you don't have the skills.
Amazing what they did and how unclean it sounds when you break it down, though I am sure it would sound TOO clean if you took out all the slides on the guitar strings, background mumbling, etc. Gives me an even deeper appreciaton for what they did.