Revolver

Revolver was and is probably my favorite Beatles record. There is just a little bit of everything on it. Revolver was a pretty drastic change in the image of the Beatles. They go from short hair and pop songs to longer hair with mustaches and some of the stuff on Revolver would be considered strange even by today’s standards. Revolver is also an album where you can really tell that the Beatles had been experimenting. Experimenting with not only drugs but also religion as they went to India and with production techniques. The drugs and religion had a huge impact on the lyrics in the album. It was said that she said she said was written while Lennon was under the influence of LSD. Their songs become more abstract and on much more esoteric ideas as opposed to the love songs of most their previous records. I find it makes the music much more interesting because everyone can come up with different interpretations for the music depending on how they feel while listening to it. The production techniques on the other hand do almost the same thing just in a more subtle way. Revolver has the beginnings of many of the common techniques used today to make records. For example the use of compression and also the backwards things are more common today. They used these techniques to add more dimensionality then had ever been heard before and also each technique used fit perfectly for what they were trying to do. One of the innovations that I really enjoy on revolver is the use of nontraditional western instruments. The sitar in specific was something that the Beatles really helped popularize in the west. The part about the eastern instrument use I like the most was how they incorporated western and eastern music so seamless in “love you to” and “tomorrow never knows”. The use of ADT was also developed during the production of the album. This is something that probably has been in use from that day until the most records where they had to do doubles and didn’t record enough tracks. As jus a listener I hear really great songwriting first off. Even without the top-notch production I think I could still be listening to these songs. I also hear many influences worked perfectly together. As an audio professional I hear the great production value of the record. They do things that seem so simple like take a backwards cymbal or use feed back and use them in musical ways you wouldn’t normally think of. They use these production techniques to add a background ambience to the songs that otherwise you might never notice but really makes the song what it is.