Episode 5 min
0:00 the engineer who recorded a huge chunk of sergeant peppers jeff emerick was just 20 years old when the session started yeah 20 and walking into abbey road studio 2 every day with the beatles no pressure wow last week on the show we were talking about all these untold stories of genius in the studio but that one detail0:27 that's just incredible a 20 year old kid helping to build what might be the most famous album ever it was the perfect storm you know the band had just stopped touring in august sixty six they were done with screaming crowds they came back to london and for the first time the studio wasn't just a place to quickly0:47 record songs between tours it became the destination the instrument so what was that shift like i mean what did you see change in the room everything the vibe went from let's get this done to what's possible george martin their producer called it almost continuous technological experimentation and he wasn't exaggerating they spent something like seven hundred hours on1:16 that record seven hundred hours so what were they doing for all that time breaking the rules for one they invented stuff john lennon hated singing the same vocal line twice to create a doubling effect so jeff and the engineers invented adt artificial double tracking a system using tape machines to do it for them automatically oh so that's1:41 how they get that classic dreamy vocal sound exactly and then there was ringo's drum sound jeff started close miking the drums putting microphones right up against the skins people didn't do that it was considered improper but it gave the drums this punch this presence they never had before suddenly they weren't just rhythm they were a lead instrument2:05 okay but the tech is one thing where did it really change a song where did it become part of the art itself strawberry fields forever that's the one it's the mona lisa of tape editing john had recorded two versions of it one was kind of slow and dreamy the other was faster heavier with brass and cellos he2:28 loved the first half of the slow one and the second half of the fast one but they were in different keys and different tempos you can't just stick them together that's what george martin thought john just looked at him and said you can fix it george so george and jeff emrick went to work they realized that if2:50 they sped up the first take and slowed down the second the pitches and tempos would almost meet in the middle almost they had to slow down one of the tapes by exactly 11.5% and at one minute into the song there's this tiny almost invisible edit where one universe flows into another it's magic it shouldn't work but it3:15 does you know that feels like a pattern we see again and again it's like when early filmmakers realized editing wasn't just for connecting scenes but for creating a new kind of meaning between the shots the tool itself became part of the art form that's exactly what it was the four track tape machine became the fifth member of3:40 the band so they finished this masterpiece this thing built with seven hundred hours of studio wizardry but what does that mean for the beatles as a live band it meant it was over there was simply no way to reproduce that album on stage in 1967 the complexity the overdubs the orchestras on tracks like a day in the4:03 life it was impossible they traded the stage for the studio permanently so in gaining this incredible new sonic palette they kinda lost the raw live band part of themselves they did and some people at the time felt that loss but what they created instead was the blueprint for the modern album sgt pepper's wasn't just a collection of4:30 singles it was a cohesive work of art from start to finish it pioneered the whole idea of a concept album and its influence on production is i mean it's everywhere oh completely producers and engineers today are still chasing those sounds the way they use compression the tape loops the way they literally cut tape into pieces and threw4:55 it in the air to create the circus sounds for mister kite they were painting with sound it's why people still argue about whether the original mono mix is better than the stereo one each is its own masterpiece they didn't just make a record they showed everyone else what a record could be
