Recording
The song's basic track was recorded on 13 February 1967, with overdubs added on 14 February and 20 April, during the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band sessions. It was recorded using two 4-track tape machines, allowing seven tracks for the complex arrangement of the song (and one for a pulse to synchronize the two machines), a method not common at the time in recording at Abbey Road. However, problems arose to getting both 4-track machines to begin playback at exactly the same time, causing difficulties mixing in stereo. Therefore only a "fake stereo" (Duophonic) mix was created from the mono mix to appear on the original stereo release of Yellow Submarine, and the song was one of only eight mono tracks released in the 2009 remastered Stereo Box Set (the only mono track released on the 2009 release of Yellow Submarine), instead of the unfavoured "fake stereo" mix. This complex arrangement involves an unconventional musical form and unusual instrumentation, including distorted trumpet played by Paul McCartney, Harrison's reverbed organ, and a glockenspiel played by John Lennon.
Read more about this topic: Only A Northern Song
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)