“… and i want my voice to sound like the Dali Lama chanting from a mountaintop, miles away.”

And with these words from John Lennon, Geoff Emerick was initiated into the world of recording The Beatles. The track was Tomorrow Never Knows, the first song recorded for and the final track played on Revolver. The solution Geoff came up with was to send the vocal straight into a speaker box called a Leslie that is normally used to achieve a tremelo effect on a Hammond organ by spinning the speakers inside the cabinet. The backing tracks of drums, rhythm guitar and bass were recorded as a tape loop that required 2 engineers using pencils to keep the tape taut enough to play while overdubbing. The Leslie effect on the vocals gave just enough of an other worldly sound to fit the sound and vibe John was looking for. This was just the beginning of a long history of incredible innovation that Geoff Emerick ushered into the world of pop recording.  Following the jump are my impressions of a new book I just read called Here, There and Everywhere by Geoff Emerick.

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	released December 2006 buy: The Great Auk @ Fake Science

My opportunity to work with The Great Auk came about through a mutual friend and Fake Science artist Chris Campbell of Subimage. Chris had Carrie work on one of his tracks and he wanted to return the favor by booking time in the studio with me to record a song or two. I knew after the first session that I wanted to do a complete release with them. The whole project spanned more than half a year due to challenging schedules for all of us but we kept at it long enough to get 7 songs.

The instrumentation was fairly straight forward. Bernie played electric guitar and Carrie played violin and some acoustic guitar. Both sang vocals. The general routine consisted first getting the backing guitar track followed by by violin and vocal overdubs. Often the initial guitar track needed a vocal reference to get the pacing right so we would set up mic for Carrie to sing a scratch vocal. (more…)