Geoff Emerick, the sound engineer who worked on Sgt. Pepper, was instructed to work within the ethos that pervaded the album – the pushing of boundaries at every level, from the song writing to the artwork to the very idea of the band having alter-egos.

The recording and mixing of the album was no exception. Emerick’s brief was to make everything sound different to what had gone before, to capture sounds in new ways to reflect how the Beatles were conceiving their music. With this in mind, he set about deliberately breaking the rules of sound recording as dictated by the establishment at record label EMI.

The old school of sound engineers frowned upon the experimental methods he began to use. (You should keep in mind these were days when engineers had to wear a suit and tie and the technical staff had to wear white lab coats!)

New techniques

This spirit of adventure resulted in Emerick using new techniques of microphone placement. For example, after being told by a typically inarticulate Lennon to make the horn section on Good Morning Good Morning “sound different”, he decided to put the microphones right down into the bell of the horns instead of the traditional method of placing a microphone a few feet away from the sound source. This method created the harsh, rasping sound that can be heard on the record. Whilst somewhat unnatural, he had certainly achieved a different sound.

In a similar way he altered the standard method of recording a drum kit. He removed the front skin of the bass drum and put a mic inside the drum itself rather than in front of it. This gave each hit of the drum more attack and less boominess. He also moved microphones closer to each separate part of the kit, where traditionally they were placed further away to pick up an open, ambient-sounding representation of the whole drum kit.

The end sound was also heavily processed to limit the dynamic range of the microphone signals. The result is tight and focused, with plenty of punch that seems to perfectly suit the simple but hard-hitting style of Ringo Starr.

The method of close micing the drums used on Sgt. Pepper, although unorthodox at the time, has become the standard technique used throughout the industry ever since. The pursuit of this style culminated in the ultra unrealistic, huge-sounding drums of the mid-1980s which sounded more like the faultless precision of a drum machine than a live drum kit. Think of Phil Collins’ drum sound or any number of stadium rock bands from this era.

Interestingly, in recent years the trend has reversed with engineers and producers looking for a more natural live sound. The gritty drum sound of Sgt. Pepper can be considered influential in this way too – the way all elements of the drum kit appear to work as one as they pump and breathe together.
 

Mixing tracks

In today’s studios, with the luxury of 48 track recorders or more, it is possible to record the signal from each microphone separately and then layer additional instruments onto yet more separate tracks. Then, at the mixing stage, each track can be fine-tuned in volume and tone to sit perfectly alongside the others.

It was not this way for the Beatles in 1967. With the tape machines at Abbey Road only allowing four different tracks of audio to be worked with at the final mixing stage, the Beatles would record a backing track and overlay the other elements of the song later on. Listening to the stereo version of Sgt. Pepper you can clearly hear the original backing track (perhaps consisting of drums, bass, guitar and piano) in one ear whilst the vocals and lead guitar can be heard in the other ear.

This method of overdubbing tracks developed into another unconventional practice that was used on the majority of the record. Once the backing track was recorded and other instruments had been overlaid, Paul McCartney would stay on at the end of all-night sessions with the engineers to record his bass parts.

This is strange, in that bass and drum parts were (and still are today) usually recorded at the same time to use as a solid foundation for the song. McCartney would work from the existing parts of the song and develop his distinctively melodic bass lines until they became almost a lead feature rather than a part of the rhythm section.

John Lennon, too, provoked the development of new recording techniques. It had been known for some years that recording the lead vocal twice and layering the resulting tracks, considerably thickened the sound of the singer’s voice. Lennon, who found recording sessions tedious, asked the engineers to find a solution to this time-consuming method.

Their answer was to pass the original vocal take through another tape machine which would play back with a slight delay in relation to the original. The reproduction was also manually shifted in pitch by a very small amount. The result mimicked the differences in timing and pitch produced by two different takes of a vocal line being played back at the same time.

This can be heard particularly in Good Morning Good Morning and throughout the album. This simple trick called Automatic Double Tracking or ADT is now produced using digital technology, and has become the standard on pop records of today.

Sound effects

Another technique that Sgt. Pepper popularised was the use of tape loops to add sound effects to the music. The EMI sound archives were frequently plundered during the recording sessions in search of sonic inspiration to take the songs to another level.

From the crowd noises that open the LP and bridge the gap between the last two songs, to the whirling fairground organs and clanking bells in the middle section of Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, Sgt. Pepper is full of found sounds that are manipulated, mangled and merged together to enhance the psychedelic feel of the album.

Despite their determination to make Sgt. Pepper radical sounding, it is doubtful that the Beatles or those they worked with would have realised just what kind of impact the album would have on pop music. Many techniques used on the record have given rise to the sounds we consider mainstream today and the majority of music we hear on the radio now is based around sampled and looped sounds. With this in mind it is clear to see how far the influence of Sgt. Pepper has reached.