By the mid-60s,
the advancing technology of multitrack recording and mixing boards
was beginning to influence popular music,
perhaps more so than the electro-mechanical instruments of the time.
Of course, musicians were using mellotrons, clavivox, ondes Martenot
and electronic organs in their works,
but the scope was finite.
However, with the advent of recording technology,
limitless possibilities emerged.
You could play tracks backwards, speed up, slow down,
utilise pre-recorded sounds, create loops, synthesise sounds,
and employ so many other groundbreaking techniques.
The fruitful 60s decade resulted in pop genre
trespassing into the avant-garde western classical scene,
thereby extending its own horizons.
The leading figures of this revolution were the Beatles.
With assistance from producer George Martin,
they sought to turn the recording studio into an important tool for creating music.
In this video essay, I intend to discuss
how the Beatles owe some of their acclaimed tracks
to contemporaneous avant-garde and electronic composers;
the prime focus is on the albums Revolver (1966) and Sgt. Pepper (1967).
Although the Beatles were among the first pop groups
to use tape loops, tape reversal, variable-speed playback and musical collage in their works,
they certainly were not the very first people to experiment with electronics.
Decades before Beatles’ ingenious Revolver (1966),
avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse (1883–1965),
John Cage (1912-1992),
Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) and others
were already creating pioneering works in the field of electronic music.
It all began in 1948 when Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995)
and his associates at the Studio d’Essai of the French radio system
created musique concrète
which involves manipulation of raw sounds
to establish musicality through everyday mundane noise.
There is an interesting parallel in Fine Art
wherein collage technique artists started to introduce the ‘real-world’ into their paintings.
Picasso, for example, during his Cubist period
pasted bits of newspaper onto his canvases.
The aim was not to depict or represent newsprint
but to introduce reality into art.
Symphonie pour un homme seul (Symphony for One Man Alone) (1950)
by Schaeffer and Pierre Henry (1927-2017)
is one of the first pieces that carries out modifications to recorded sounds
through augmentation-diminution, playing backwards,
varying pitch and intensity and so on.
Composer Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) too showed interest in creating an electro-acoustic work,
collaborating with Henry on Timbres-durées (1952)
which utilises sounds from daily life,
especially water flowing from a tap.
French-American composer Edgard Varèse’s Poème Électronique (1957)
is another significant piece that entails layering of various sounds—
sirens, machines, human cries and explosions—via magnetic tape.
During the same period, in the 50s,
John Cage was busy developing chance music.
Music of Changes (1951) for instance,
made use of ‘I Ching’, a Chinese classic text,
to make compositional decisions.
Cage also inserted the idea of randomness to some of his electronic outputs.
Fontana Mix (1958) is a prime example—
a piece of work that explores indeterminacy
using a score and four multi-channel audio tapes.
German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen produced several remarkable works
that were key in the evolution of electronic music.
Among the first electronic pieces created from basic waveforms—
Studie I and II (1952-53)—
utilise edited and reversed sine waves.
Gesang der Junglinge (1956) is another notable work
that again makes use of filtered and manipulated sine waves
fused with noise produced with a noise generator,
in counterpoint to sounds of a boy singing.
Stockhausen’s magnum opus, however,
is Kontakte (1960) which is regarded as one of the first works
to combine electronics and live performance.
The composer here employs a four–channel tape recording
to complement live percussion and piano.
Moreover, Kontakte also explores spatialization (directional sound)
—a four–channel tape with four loudspeakers
combined with his strategic placement of live performers
allowed Stockhausen to intricately design his sound world.
American composer Steve Reich’s magnetic tape compositions
It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966)
are also notable tape works
that became a landmark in minimalist and process music.
In these works, Reich seeks to explore the concept of phase shifting,
which involves simultaneously playing the same tape loop on different machines.
Gradually, as the voices go out of sync,
rhythmic interactions begin to surface.
These seminal works, directly or indirectly,
paved the way for groups such as The Beach Boys and The Beatles
to experiment upon in the field of popular music.
The former’s Pet Sounds and the latter’s Revolver
came out in the same year in 1966,
aimed at extending the boundaries.
While Pet Sounds made noise for its unique instrumentation,
especially in the percussion department
with the usage of cans, water bottles, and juice jugs
which was previously unheard in the rock-music arena,
Revolver was regarded for its experimentation and technological advances.
After gaining substantial fame worldwide with their pop classics,
the Beatles wanted to do something different.
They had performed extensively around the globe
and now decided to put touring on hold for some time
to sincerely experiment in a studio and try out ideas
without the constant worry of having to reproduce the tracks for stage performances.
Since the Beatles were at the peak of their popularity in 1966,
it was a huge gamble to spend the next four years solely as recording artists.
However, with gifted producer George Martin by their side,
they did manage to strike gold.
The first thing you notice about Revolver
is that the very familiar instrumentation of the Beatles—
guitar, bass and drums—
was now being invaded by a range of new instruments and influences.
Eleanor Rigby was the first track that did not have any of the Beatles playing on;
the song features a string octet arranged by George Martin.
Moreover, the lyrical content takes a departure from the Beatles’ conventional love songs,
telling the story of a lonely woman and her eventual death.
Pre-recorded sounds—
waves, bubbles, people talking, bells and machinery—
compliment guitars, brass and drums in Yellow Submarine
while Love You To incorporates Indian classical instruments
such as tabla, sitar, and tanpura as a drone.
I’m Only Sleeping is one of the defining tracks of the album,
featuring reversed guitar sounds.
The idea to employ this was conceived
when a studio engineer accidentally flipped a tape,
leaving the band members astonished and amazed at the effects.
A part for the guitar was then composed and played twice,
forwards and backwards,
with fuzz effects on one of the tracks which resulted in a swirling effect.
John Lennon wanted a paper-thin voice for the song
which Martin achieved by employing a circuitous process of speeding the track up and down.
The most revolutionary track in Revolver however is
Tomorrow Never Knows.
Music historian Thom Holmes recognises it
as "the song that ushered in a new era in the use of electronic music
in rock and pop music’’ (Holmes, 2008: p.430).
The track is also regarded as one of the first examples of psychedelic rock,
with the lyrics enlightening the listeners to
“Turn off the mind;
Relax and float downstream.”
With its dizzying electronic effects—
artificial double-tracking on vocals and reversed instruments
combined with other innovations,
the music aims to mirror the reverberations of a hallucination
by aurally recreating what tripping feels like.
The story goes that Lennon wanted his voice to sound
as if he is crooning from a hilltop
to which Martin responded by running the vocals
through a rotating Leslie speaker.
This produced a quirky, oscillating sound,
similar to the Doppler effect,
which one can hear after the first interlude.
The track also features reversed, sped-up and distorted recordings of Paul McCartney’s laughter,
made to sound like seagulls,
and him running his fingers along the brim of a wineglass,
sitar and mellotron samples (strings and brass)
and a B-flat major chord from Jean Sibelius’ seventh symphony.
With the help of a varispeed tape recorder,
Martin was able to create variable textures in the song
by constantly varying the pitch and speed of the tracks.
Revolver managed to create a paradigm shift
not only in the Beatles’ discography
but in the way recording studios were perceived
by artists all over the world.
It was no longer a room to just mimic
what you did in a live performance
in order to distribute it to a wider audience
or to keep it for posterity,
but essentially a laboratory for innovation.
Even the album cover was something different from what they were used to having,
serving as a precursor to St. Pepper’s iconic poster.
Instead of just the Fab Four posing,
the cover has multiple copies of the band’s faces,
conveying that this record is to be deemed as experimental.
The Beatles’ next studio album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
released in mid-1967
promised to be even grander.
In the cover artwork,
the Beatles are positioned in front of a sea of people,
prominent figures from history and pop culture,
those that the Beatles admired or were influenced by in some way,
again explicitly conveying that the songs in the LP
are eclectic and rich.
To bring to life the layered complexity of the songs,
each track involved meticulously planning;
it took the Beatles nearly 400 hours in the studio
during a 129-day period to realise
one of their most ambitious projects (Hein, 2009).
For Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite,
Martin was asked to construct a ‘fairground’ production
wherein one could smell the sawdust
since the lyrics are inspired by an 1843 circus poster.
To create a carnival atmosphere,
he gathered several recordings of old steam organs on tape.
However, to simulate the atmosphere,
the sounds had to be chaotic.
Hence, in an act reminiscent of Cage’s methods,
he chopped up the tapes,
threw them in the air onto the floor
and spliced them together in random order
to make for a more authentic listening experience.
These sounds were then layered onto sounds of harmonium and harmonicas,
and finally fused with the song’s main organ melody
to create a whimsical aural kaleidoscope.
A Day in the Life is notable for the two dissonant orchestral crescendi
that serve as bridges between Lennon and McCartney’s parts.
To create those sections,
an orchestra was brought in
and all the players were asked to do glissandi
on their instruments until they reach the highest volume.
Martin was asked to create a basic score that outlined parts for the players,
while still having a scope for improvisation.
This sort of tightly controlled aleatory
makes an appearance for the first time in a Beatles song
and arguably is one of the first instances
of something so avant-garde in a pop song.
The Beatles’ next The Beatles (1968),
also known as 'The White Album’,
contains Revolution 9,
a sound collage created by John Lennon,
that is clearly the most offbeat of the 30 songs.
In the track, Lennon utilized several overdubbed vocals and speech,
some of which were reversed.
The loop Number 9 that unifies the track
is a sample that was chopped from an audio engineer's testing tape.
Moreover, several short bits of classical music—
the final chord from Sibelius’ Symphony No. 7,
and the reversed finale of Schumann's Symphonic Studies—
are sprinkled here and there (Everett, 1999: p.175).
Most of these sounds are unrecognisable
since they are heavily distorted.
However, the track also features many distinguishable sound effects—
car horns, laughter, gunfire, a cooing baby,
glass and crowd noise among others.
The Beatles’ significant innovation
lies in the integration of recording technology
into strong compositional ideas.
The aforementioned albums—
Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and The White Album—
present the band in its most adventurous and experimental state.
Be it the use of variable speed tape recorders
to correct pitch in Strawberry Fields Forever
and to change the texture of voice in I’m Only Sleeping,
or the decision to keep songs Good Morning, Good Morning and Revolution 9 a little strident
since the tracks had to be bounced multiple times
to accommodate all the sounds they imagined,
the Beatles never made peace with technological restrictions.
Taking a cue from the avant-garde composers of the time,
they managed to create rich tracks
without sticking to any one particular formula or genre.
Paul McCartney became interested in the avant-garde scene around 1966,
particularly with the music of Cage and Stockhausen,
seeking out concerts featuring their works.
He applied some of the ideas in his own work for the band,
evident in the chaotic orchestration of A Day in the Life,
which is inspired by Cage’s notions of randomness.
John Lennon also began to experiment
after his partner Japanese composer and conceptual artist Yoko Ono (b. 1933)
introduced him to Cage around the late 1960s.
The musical collage of Revolution 9
hints at the musique concrète works of Varèse and Stockhausen,
both of whom were cited as inspirations by Lennon.
There are documented encounters between Italian composer
Luciano Berio (1925-2003) and McCartney as well,
who bonded over a mutual admiration
for Stockhausen’s pioneering works, Gesang der Jünglinge in particular.
The experimental use of tape loops in Tomorrow Never Knows
was largely triggered by McCartney’s love for Gesang.
The original raw sound sources are heavily distorted in the track
(laughter made to sound like seagulls and alterations of sitar/mellotron samples),
originating from Pierre Schaeffer’s principles of musique concrète,
wherein he demands the sounds to be unrecognisable.
Conversely, the use of real-world sounds
is also noteworthy in many Beatles’ tracks—
animal sounds in Good Morning, Good Morning,
fire engine bell in Penny Lane,
sounds evoking the sea, a party, and the submarine in action in Yellow Submarine,
alarm clock in A Day in the Life.
These sounds are used as evocative symbols
as opposed to Schaeffer's idea of employing unrecognisable sounds
freed from their associations in the real world.
Only a Northern Song (1969)
is another unconventional Beatles’ track
that was conceived during Sgt. Pepper sessions but failed to make it to the album.
It features an eccentric set of instruments—
timpani, trumpets, glockenspiel and chimes—
fused with a Hammond organ.
Moreover, the song incorporates
a montage of assorted sounds including spoken voices
and distorted bits of the aforementioned instruments.
However, the highlight is the presence of
two similar rhythmic tracks in the song,
which results in a phasing effect.
It is possible that the band was familiar
with the music of Steve Reich and other minimalist composers of the time.
The Beatles managed to design spaces in the majority of their works
despite initially using just a four-track equipment
and later, stereo.
In Yellow Submarine, for instance,
all non-instrumental sounds (speech bits, machine sounds, and other effects)
occupy different spaces,
while in Tomorrow Never Knows
tom-toms seem to be appearing from a different point from the rest of the drum kit.
This would have been achieved in the mixing process
which explains the longer durations they began to spend in the studio post recording,
from the onset of Revolver.
The Beatles’ explorations in spatialization
is a nod to the efforts of Stockhausen,
whose idea to capitalise on an acoustic space in Kontakte
can be marked as a precursor
to the experiments of recording artists
with spatial projections of sound,
which eventually led to an innovation everyone is familiar with—
surround sound.
Stockhausen was one of the most groundbreaking
and influential artists of the 20th-century
whose indelible works continue to inspire generations of composers.
It comes as no surprise then
that Stockhausen is one of the faces
that graces the cover of one of the Beatles’ finest- Sgt. Pepper.
The Beatles are to be credited
for introducing avant-garde music to a lot of mainstream audiences
particularly through works such as Revolution 9,
which on a side note spurred
several John Lennon-Yoko Ono independent/experimental works.
With Revolver and Sgt. Pepper,
the Beatles’ brought a change of aesthetic to a recorded album,
a fundamental change in how songs were perceived to be.
The tracks were no longer an extension of a live performance,
but acousmatic compositions that were not meant to be reproduced,
stemming from the compositional tradition of musique concrète.
Several critics bashed these albums at the time,
agitated by the fact that the songs could not be performed on stage,
only to realise years later that with technology,
this is how music was destined to be consumed in the longer run.
Although the Beatles dissolved in the early 70s,
their music still stands the test of time.
They launched the revolution of psychedelic rock,
something which would become a huge movement
in the years to come with groups like
Black Sabbath,
Jefferson Airplane,
The Velvet Underground,
Grateful Dead,
The Byrds,
The Doors
and Pink Floyd.
The Beatles certainly opened up the world of pop and rock
to all possible sounds
by blending analog synthesis and avant-garde techniques
with quality songwriting.
They were able to achieve a fine balance
by being receptive to avant-garde’s ‘weirdness’
and embracing new technology,
which is the precise reason why pop music of that time
still sounds fresh even now.