Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by The Beatles. Released in June 1967, Rolling Stone called it "the most important rock & roll album ever made ... by the greatest rock & roll group of all time.
During the Sgt. Pepper sessions, the group improved upon the quality of their music's production while exploring experimental recording techniques. Abbey Road had four-track equipment, which permitted engineers to "mix down" previous takes into a single, base track, opening up new tracks for additional effects and overdubs. In theory, the process of making reduction mixes could go on indefinitely, so that the Beatles had almost a completely free hand in adding tracks to recordings. The mellotron also was put to great use. It is a keyboard-activated player of tape loops and samples. Added to this were the special audio effects of phasing, flanging, wah-wah pedals, fuzzbox, the Leslie speaker, and other effects like reverberation and echo.
A noteworthy feature of Sgt. Pepper is the high frequency tone followed by nonsense and laughs, which appears for a couple of seconds at the beginning of the LP. It was carried over to the CD. Lennon just liked it as a teaser and said it was "especially intended to annoy your dog." When played backwards, prurient ears hear an obscene phrase, but the official word is that it is meaningless.
George Martin's innovative approach included the use of an orchestra. The album became a cultural icon embracing the constituent elements of youth culture: pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control. No. 1 for 27 weeks in Britain and 19 weeks in the USA the songs on the album range from music hall, rock and roll and pop to traditional Indian music. Widely acclaimed and imitated, the cover was inspired by a sketch by Paul McCartney that depicted the band posing in front of a collage of some of their favourite celebrities.
During the Sgt. Pepper sessions, the group improved upon the quality of their music's production while exploring experimental recording techniques. Abbey Road had four-track equipment, which permitted engineers to "mix down" previous takes into a single, base track, opening up new tracks for additional effects and overdubs. In theory, the process of making reduction mixes could go on indefinitely, so that the Beatles had almost a completely free hand in adding tracks to recordings. The mellotron also was put to great use. It is a keyboard-activated player of tape loops and samples. Added to this were the special audio effects of phasing, flanging, wah-wah pedals, fuzzbox, the Leslie speaker, and other effects like reverberation and echo.
A noteworthy feature of Sgt. Pepper is the high frequency tone followed by nonsense and laughs, which appears for a couple of seconds at the beginning of the LP. It was carried over to the CD. Lennon just liked it as a teaser and said it was "especially intended to annoy your dog." When played backwards, prurient ears hear an obscene phrase, but the official word is that it is meaningless.
George Martin's innovative approach included the use of an orchestra. The album became a cultural icon embracing the constituent elements of youth culture: pop art, garish fashion, drugs, instant mysticism and freedom from parental control. No. 1 for 27 weeks in Britain and 19 weeks in the USA the songs on the album range from music hall, rock and roll and pop to traditional Indian music. Widely acclaimed and imitated, the cover was inspired by a sketch by Paul McCartney that depicted the band posing in front of a collage of some of their favourite celebrities.