Studio

The gear, the tape tricks and the hands on the faders.

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EMI gave them one room, four tracks of tape and an engineer, and they turned all three into something nobody had asked for: the orchestral climb in 'A Day in the Life', the backwards guitar on 'I'm Only Sleeping', a circus organ cut into pieces and thrown back together for 'Mr. Kite'. Nothing here was bought in. A vocal doubled by a machine built for the purpose (it's a clean machine!), a guitar and a voice pushed through a speaker meant for an organ, a piano solo recorded at half speed so it comes back faster and brighter than hands can play it. This category follows the equipment model by model and the technique take by take, and it counts the takes too, from take one, two, three, four, to the ones that needed a little more. Magical Mystery Tour carries more studio work per track than any record they made, ahead of Sgt. Pepper and Revolver, which is not the order anybody expects.

How were Beatles records made?

Four musicians, a producer, engineers inventing what each song needed, and four tracks of tape to fit it all onto. The pages here follow the instruments through it, the Mellotron and the Hammond and the tape loops, the tricks they invented and named afterwards, the rooms they worked in when Abbey Road could not do it, and how long each record took: an afternoon in 1963, or 'You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)', picked up and put down across two years.

Good places to start: ADT, Rickenbacker 360/12, Trident Studios and Multi-month.