Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da-Be-At-Le-Sw-Hi-Te-Al-Bu-M

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Irk

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I need someone who knows a thing or two about a thing or two to answer a question or two for me. The song Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da has bass guitar in it right after the very brief piano start-in. The bass then plays for about four measures and the drums then kick in. When this happens, the bass becomes bassier. What is it? If you don't know then what might it be?

Also, tell me any recording facts and tricks about the White Album specifically.

One more thing. Has anyone heard "the Grey Album" by Danger Mouse? It is a dude who takes the Black Album by Jay-Z and crosses it with the White Album by the Beatles. A great way to bring hip-hop to rock & rollers and give hip-hop fans an intro to the Beatles.
 
If you have the anthology,or know someone who does,I recommend reading the liner notes.All kinds of interesting stuff about how things were recorded.
 
As I understand it, Paul double tracked his bass line thru most of the song with an acoustic guitar plugged straight into the board and overloading it. It could be that the first "bass" line is actually the acoustic.

White Album has lots of limiting/compression, I assume from Fairchilds. I know that "Yer Blues" was recorded in the smallest room at Abbey Road, as a band, with practically no separation. So on the "dead" verse you hear John's voice through Ringo's overhead mics...

Also, Back in the USSR was recorded during the period where Ringo "quit" the group for a few days. That's Paul on drums... same thing on Dear Prudence. Birthday was pretty much made up in the studio, from a riff Paul came in with that day. Julia, the last song recorded for the album, was perhaps the simplest production: John double tracked his acoustic and then double tracked most of his vocal. Done.

Other trivia: George brought his friend Clapton to the studio to do the lead on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, after trying and failing to nail a lead track of backwards guitar. Clapton's Les Paul lead was wobbled by use of an oscilliator, to make is sound more "Beatley."

Ah lets see.... Oh yeah. A snippet of a Paul song, where he sings, "Can you take me back where I came from..." is uncredited and uncopyrighted.
 
Fab4ever - you're my kind of Beatle nut! Just the kinda guy I could talk for hours with. Great info! Even little gems I've forgotten about. Man, you might give me a reason to go back to FLA! ;-)
 
Thank ya!
Dear Fab4ever,
You got any more tricks/facts? Revolver? RubberSoul? Abbey Road? etc.?
 
Geoff Emerick got heat from EMI for modding a bass speaker for use as a mic on Rubber Soul. Something about destroying company property.
 
Sorry guys I lost track of this thread!

Well I spend WAY too many hours reading Beatles books, listening to Beatles music, watching Anthology... etc. etc. (But my 2-year-old son is already a fan - of course RINGO is his favorite...)

Well, you guys know the "Twist and Shout" story right? Last track of the album (recorded ALL IN THAT DAY), Lennon's got a bad cold, everybody is tired, so they get jacked up for one more song. Lennon, stripped to his waist, gives it all he has. The record you all know was take one - no overdubs, nothing. They did try a take two but Lennon's voice was gone.

I love that story because it speaks to the Beatles as singers and players, which is the most important thing about them, along with being incredible songwriters.

Ok, what else.... well someone on the Beatles' team was one of the first to use DI guitars. On Revolution (the fast single version) John's massively distorted guitar was DI. The distortion was on the board, believe it or not. Yow...

I think the Beatles were the first to put a vocal track through a Leslie cabinet. It was on "Tomorrow Never Knows." John told George Martin he wanted to sound like 1,000 monks on a mountaintop, or something like that. Martin - who had an uncanny ability to translate John's nonspecific direction - came up with the idea of breaking into the Leslie cab to patch in a microphone. So after those incredible reversed, sped up and otherwise distorted loops, Lennon's vocal comes back in through the Leslie, which itself was miced of course.

Once Lennon, not the most technical sort, asked Martin if his VOICE could be DI'd. Sure, the producer replied - we'll just have to stick a cable into your neck!

About those loops - believe it or not, it was McCartney who first explored such avant garde sound looping, at home on his personal four-track. Lennon got into it well afterwards, after he met Yoko. In fact, the guitar solo "loop" on Lennon's "Tomorrow Never Knows" was McCartney's guitar solo from "Taxman" slowed down and reversed. You can tell when it gets to that octave leap.

That's all for now. More later if anyone is interested....
 
Another note on the Revolution cut, white album. John and the engineers had a major blowout on using that distorted guitar sound. He felt it was essential to the song, they felt that it sounded like poor engineering. Read that in Rolling Stone magazine years ago.
 
Here's somethin'!

I read a Geoff Emerick interview and he was sayin' that at one point (and I don't recall the song and maybe he didn't either) John Lennon wanted to record his voice by sticking a microphone in a plastic bag and then sticking it in a glass milk bottle half-full of water. What the #^$%^&

Also, has anyone heard about the bottles pouring Coca-Cola onto the tapes during the White Album(or any album for that matter?)
 
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