Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
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The Beatles
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Produced by George Martin
Engineered by Geoff Emerick

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Each of four original master tracks is isolated and shown in a different colour.*

(1) GREEN ___________ 0:00
Drums, 2 guitars, and bass

(2) BLUE _____________ 2:24
Horns and punched-in lead guitar

(3) RED ______________ 4:40
Vocals

(4) COMBINED ________ 6:54
[1, Green] + [2, Blue] + [3 Red] + [4 Yellow (Crowd Noise)]

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The following Information is from "The Beatles Recording Sessions" by Mark Lewisohn; and "Recording the Beatles" by Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan.

This song was recorded in February 1967, using TWO 4-track machines. After recording tracks onto the first tape machine, the recording was then mixed onto the 2nd tape machine.

This technique is called "bouncing". It refers to the use of a second tape machine to combine tracks from the first machine. This freed up one or more tracks to add additional instruments. In those days, this technique was used to overcome a limitation of 4-track recording equipment. Nowadays, modern multi-track and digital recording studios make such efforts unnecessary.

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2nd Tape Machine :
This "bounce" tape is what we are hearing.

Track 1 .. [ GREEN 0:00 ]
Drums, guitars, and bass (From "A", Tracks 1+2)

Track 2 .. [ BLUE 2:24 ]
Horns and punched-in lead guitar

Track 3 .. [ RED 4:40 ]
Vocals (From "A", Track 3+4)

Track 4 .. [ YELLOW 6:54 ]
Audience sounds*
*Note: Audience track (yellow) is not shown alone. The last bit is all four tracks together.

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Additional info

1st Tape Machine : "Recorder (A)"
(Not heard in these clips. Information only.)
Track 1 .. Drums + Guitars
Track 2 .. Bass
Track 3 .. Lead + Harmony Vocals
Track 4 .. Additional Harmony Vocals

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(Sections 107-118 of the Copyright Act; Title 17, U.S. Code)

• Category

  Music

[TheFRiNgEguitars]

Yep, awesome, and I like the red part, the unbelievable harmonies!

[saemikneu]

not all of Sgtp pepper was bounced down to 4-track. they had 2 4-tracks, giving 7 tracks (+1 for synching the same start time for the second tape machine which was rarely done).

[Joe Bloggs]

I'm only half joking. I would kill to have those as separate tracks. Well, not kill. Unless killing a small rodent would do the trick. I'd definitely kill a mole. Not on purpose though. Let's just say if I were driving, and mole ran out in front of my car, I wouldn't necessarily swerve to avoid it. Then you could give me the separate tracks of all the Beatle's recordings.

[Joe Bloggs]

Nice...do you happen to have this for the other 212 songs as well?

[G PurpleDiamond]

I really Like the Blue Part!

[Blakestone Welles]

he just asked what software he used to separate the tracks no need to talk down on him you full fletched autistic baby boomer

[madninjas178]

When it didn't have any comment

[madninjas178]

I remember watching this we

[Landon Balk]

So tell me how they got the crowd ambience in stereo on the CD versions? ADT?

[mrfester42]

I actually own about 8 CDs full of Beatles studio out takes and tracks from original recordings that I bought on Ebay some years ago. Interestingly enough, there is even a track of the Beatles messing around in the studio with Jimi Hendrix and they're all playing Day Tripper together with Hendrix sing along. Pretty fun stuff to listen to.