Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Background
The Beatles are a British
rock band, which are described as the most successful musical act of the 20th
Century. According to the Rolling Stones Website, they would consider The Beatles 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' to be No. 1 of the Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The band formed in 1959, the band consisted of guitarist and lead
vocalist, John Lennon, guitarist and vocalist Paul McCartney, guitarist and
vocalist George Harrison, and drummer Peter Best. Later on in 1962, Ringo Star
going the band as a former drummer for another band, so they’re for replaced
Peter Best in The Beatles. The group were named several times before they stuck
with calling themselves ‘The Beatles’, they called themselves band names such
as; The Silver Beetles, Jonny and the Moondogs and The Beatals. Sgt. Pepper Lonely Heart Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, sound songwriting, cover, art and studio technology by the greatest rock and roll group of all time. The album was issued in Britain on June 1ts 1967, and a day later in America, Sgt. Pepper is also rock's ultimate declaration of change, no other pop recording of that era, or since, has had such an immediate, titanic impact.
Album Artwork
The album cover to Sgt. Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band was designed by Pop Artist Peter Blake. Peter Black is known to be one of the best Pop Artists in Britain, during the late 1950's. He is most well-known for actually designing The Beatles Sgt. Pepper album cover. Peter Blake also designed album cover for other people, such as; Oasis' greatest album 'Stop The Clocks'. In the album cover each member of The Beatles has been illustrated with heavy moustaches, this was done to reflect the hippie style trend that was around at the time. Each member of The Beatle were also drew wearing Military style clothing, where the inspiration was taken from the vogue in Britain for military fashion.About the Album
The album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released 1st June 1967. The album was recording 24th November 1966 - 21st April 1967 in a studio in London called EMI Studios and Regent Sound Studio. All the song on this album where written and composed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, apart from 'Within You Without You' that was written by George Harrison. This album consists of 13 songs, being;
1) Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
1) Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2) With a Little Help From My Friends
3) Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds
4) Get Better
5) Fix a Hole
6) She's Leaving Home
7) Being From The Benefit of Mr. Kite
8) Within You Without You
9) When I'm Sixty-Four
10) Lovely Rita
11) Good Morning
12) Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise)
13) A Day in The Life
According to Allan F. Moore, stated that Sgt. Pepper was composed mainly of rock and pop music. They went on to saying that they believed that The Beatles took stylistic features from genres, such as rock & roll, vaudeville (a theatrical genre that was popular in the United States, typically used for variety entertainment which is made up of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on common bill. However, Michael Hannan and Nephtail Wagner both thought that the album consisted on many genres. Hannan stated that he believed that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band "Features a Broad variety and musical and theatrical genres".
The album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band remained on the Billboard 200 charts in the US for 175 weeks in 1987. When the album was released, it went to No. 1 in the following Charts; Australian Kent Music Report, Canadian RPM Top LPs, Norwegian Albums Charts, Swedish Kvällstoppen Chart, UK Album Charts, US Billboard Top LPs and West Germany Media Control Albums Chart. By 31st December 1967 in the United States, the album sold 2,360,423 coppies and sold 3,372,581 by the end of the decade.
Roles Within The Album
Each member of The Beatles were know for having their own separate roles within the band, for example;
- John Lennon - Lead Vocals/Rhythm and Acoustic Guitar.
- Paul McCartney - Harmony/Backing Vocals, Bass.
- George Harrison - Harmony/Backing Vocals, Lead Guitarist.
- Ringo Star - Drummer
(Left to Right) Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon, (Top) and Ringo Star. |
However, in the album the role of lead vocals changed (Between John Lennon, Ringo Star, Paul McCartney and George Harrison). The lead vocals alternated through all the songs they had on their album, such as;
- John Lennon - Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, She's Leaving Home, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, Good Morning Good Morning, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise), A Day in the Life.
- George Harrison - Within You Without You, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise),
- Paul McCartney - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Getting Better, Fixing a Hole, She's Leaving Home, When I'm Sixty-Four, Lovely Rita, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (reprise), The Day in the Life.
- Ringo Star - With a Little Help From My Friends
Recording Techniques
The Beatles Recording Techniques evolved during the 1960's and influenced the way all music was recorded. Sgt. Pepper was recorded using four-track equipment. Although eight-track tape recorders were available in the US, the first units were not operational in commercial studios in London until late 1967. A key feature of Sgt. Pepper is Martin and Emerick's liberal use of signal processing to shape the sound of the recording, which included the application of dynamic range compression, reverberation and signal limiting.A known technique that The Beatles (Ringo Star) came up with was using tea towels and any other items that could create a drum muffling effect. It is know that as early as 1962, Ringo Star used John’s Harmonica to dampen his snare drum. Throughout the years, it was known to be quite common to use items, such as tea towels to dampen the sound of drums. They used this technique as it allowed to drummer to have more control over the volume of the drumming. By using the towel technique, this gave Ringo a much tighter, more focused sound. This mean that The Beatles' sound engineer was able to apply heavy compression to his drum recording.
Guitar feedback is one of the many recording techniques that The Beatles used. The technique can be heard in recordings as a high pitched electric noise, many people are well know for using this technique, such as Robert Ashley in the early 1960's. The Beatles used this technique in their song called 'I'm Feel Fine', which was released in October 1964. This technique can be heard at the beginning of the song where a feedback note is played on a bass guitar plays an A note, which was picked up by John Lennon's semiacoustic guitar.
In Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, The Beatles used a recording technique called 'Diret Input' or DI. Direct Input was first used by The Beatles in 1967 for recording Paul McCartney's bass part for this song. Direct Input is where you connect a jack lead into a electronic interment, such as a guitar, ad then the other end of the jack lead is then plugged into the DI Box. The DI Box has the ability to turn a high impedance mono signal into a low impedance stereo signal, this allows the recording to be panned and balanced.
The Beatles also used Sampling in some of there songs, they first used sampling in 'Yellow Submarine'. The 'brass solo' sample in this song was taken from a Sousa march by George Martin and Geoff Emerick. The Beatles used the sample in exactly the same way as George Martin and Geoff Emerick by keeping the sample the same as the original, by keeping the key the same.
In Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite, The Beatles used a technique where they randomly spliced tape loops together. When writing this song, John Lennon took all of the lyrical content from a 19th Century circus poster owned by himself. This was because he wanted the song to have carnival atmosphere vibes. During the middle-eight of this song, The Beatles sound engineer, Geoff Emerick took tape recordings of fairground organs and calliope music, cut and trimmed the recording to how they desired, and added this to the song. The resulting effect was described as unique, as this recording technique allowed this song fit in with the psychedelic feel the album gave off.
Another production technique The Beatles used was called varispeeding. This technique known for being used in the song 'Lucy in The Sky with Diamonds'. This technique basically takes and original recording and changes it by reducing the speed of the original. In this song, they took John Lennon's vocals, and reduced the speed from 50 cycles per second to 45. As a result of doing this, it then makes the piece sound a lot higher in pitch and also makes the recording sound thinner when played back at normal speed.
In Being For The Benefit of Mr. Kite, The Beatles used a technique where they randomly spliced tape loops together. When writing this song, John Lennon took all of the lyrical content from a 19th Century circus poster owned by himself. This was because he wanted the song to have carnival atmosphere vibes. During the middle-eight of this song, The Beatles sound engineer, Geoff Emerick took tape recordings of fairground organs and calliope music, cut and trimmed the recording to how they desired, and added this to the song. The resulting effect was described as unique, as this recording technique allowed this song fit in with the psychedelic feel the album gave off.
Production Characteristics
Sgt. Peppers is the eighth studio album The Beatles have released. The album was recorded on a four-track machiene. At the time, eight track recording machienes we're only available in the United States, and as they were recording in London, England, a four-track recorder was the only machiene they could use. However, in September 1969, The Beatles released their 11th studio album 'Abbey Road', which was The Beatles final album, they recorded all their songs on the eight-track recorder as at this point the eight-track recorder were introduced in England.
Some of the production techniques The Beatles used are things such as; pitch control and double tracking. Double tracking is a system that uses tape recorders to create simultaneous doubling of a sound (duplicating a track a therefor layering them on top of one and other). They used this production technique to double up the lead vocals in order to enhance the overall sound, this gave the affect that there were two people singing at the same time, when in fact the same track was taken (of the same person singing) and the track was duplication and then layered on top of each other. Towsend came up with this idea during a session in 1966.
A key feature of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the use of signal processing to shape the sound of the recording. They apply things such as a dynamic range
compression, reverberating and signal limiting to the recording. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was recorded
on a four tracks, as apposed to using an eight track recorder that was only available in the United States. The eight track recording machienes were not available in the UK until late 1967. By using the four track recorder, this meant that they had to use a technique called reduction mixing. This is where one of the four from one recorder are mixed and bounced down onto a master four track machiene. The machienes that The Beatles used at The EMI Studio were well suited when using this technique, this is because the high quality of the recordings helped minimise the increasing amount of noise that was produced by the techniques process.
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