Editing in the 60's. If you read Geoff Emerick's book, the editing they did on Strawberry Fields is amazing. They had 2 takes recorded on different days. One on Friday in A and one on Saturday in Bb. The take on Friday was also slightly slower than Saturdays. John L. liked the first half of Fridays take and the second half of Saturday's (I am making up days and keys cuz I can't remember them). John left the studio saying edit the two together. Geoff said, "That's impossible." John said, "I don't care do it" and left the studio. So what Geoff did at that time was pure genius. To marry the 2 takes they started the multi track machine recorded I assume to a 2 track master tape and slowly VCO'd up Fridays take till it was close to Bb at the edit point. Then they VCO'd down Saturday's take so it was at the same pitch as the edit point from Friday's take. Then they spliced the 2 track master at the edit point. The exact edit point is known to be at the second refrain, "Let me take you down, cuz I'm (EDIT) going to" The Big EditWhat I have called the Big Edit, the cross from take 7 to take 26, occurs at 1:00 into the song. This is at the second refrain, where we hear from take 7 "Let me take take you down, 'cause I'm", and then go into take 26 for "going to, Strawberry Fields". It's a daring edit that depends in part on the way John's vocal line wanders during "going to", and in part on the instruments coming back in after a pause during "'cause I'm". Considering also that the takes are at different tempos and keys makes it all the more amazing that most of us need to be told where the edit is-- I know I did! An early version of the story is in Hunter Davies's book "The Beatles, The Authorized Biography", 1968: [quoting George Martin, referring to John:] "He'd wanted it as a gentle dreaming song, but he said it had come out too raucous. He said could I write him a new line-up with the strings. So I wrote a new score and we recorded that. But he didn't like it. It still wasn't right. What he would now like was the first half from the early recording plus the second half of the new recording. Would I put them together for him? I said it was impossible." [Davies' narrative:] "George Martin. . .noticed that by speeding up the slower-tempo recording by 5 per cent it not only brought it to the same tempo as the other one, it also brought it into the same key. By chance he was able to meld both together without too much trouble." This, told about a year after the event, is quite poorly recalled by GM. It was the fast one that was slowed down, not the other way round. I would also argue that the slower, sparely arranged earlier take is the more "dreamy" one, not the later one with heavy percussion and trumpets! Variations of the same story have been repeated elsewhere. George Martin told it again in his book "All You Need is Ears", 1979. "Up to that time we had never remade anything", he recalls incorrectly. "We reckoned that if it didn't work out the first time, we shouldn't do it again." Regarding the two takes, here he writes, "with a bit of luck, we might get away with it, because, with the way that they keys were arranged, the slower version was a semitone flat compared with the faster one. I thought: If I can speed up the one, and slow down the other, I can get the pitches the same. And with any luck, the tempos will be sufficiently close not to be noticeable. I did just that, on a variable-control tape machine. . ." This again does not match the evidence of the tapes; take 7 appears to be at normal speed. Note that here GM indicates more concern with the key than the tempo. No version I have seen describes the fact that there is another edit at 0:55. In take 7, the second verse follows directly after the first verse, with no refrain in between. The song structure in take 1 is the familiar one, but by take 7 John had changed it. As a result GM probably originally considered placing the Big Edit at the end of the first verse. GM gets the credit for the good judgement not to do it that way, but rather to cut the line "Let me take you down, 'cause I'm" from one of the later refrains in take 7 and insert it from 0:55 to 1:00, so that the Big Edit hits in the middle of a phrase, where it is less obvious. My ears also seem to detect a slide in the tape speed during that phrase, which probably effects a better match in key and tempo-- or is it my imagination? [more http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/beatles/strawberry-fields.html] Dennis M. Wage 700 Cantrell Avenue Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 310-4242 Cell (615) 352-9159 Home http://focus-audio.com http://hammondb3organ.net http://overdubs.net On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 8:00 PM, Bill Coe wrote: > Except for When I'm 64, where they sped it up a half-step. > > > On Feb 27, 2012, at 3:46 AM, Goff Macaraeg wrote: > > > Also take note they used that "magic" recording trick, I think the > Beatles used and jealously guarded. They recorded the song in F and VSO'ed > it down to E, gives it that hit quality. > > > > Goff > > -- > Subscription Options/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.zeni.net/hf/ > Hammond-Leslie FAQ: http://theatreorgans.com/hammond/faq/ > HammondWiki: http://www.dairiki.org/HammondWiki/ > hammond@zk3.dec.com archives: http://zk3.hammondforum.com/ > The Hammond Age List: > http://www.tonewheelgeneral.com/agelist/agelist.php?l=h > Images may now be posted to this list in .jpeg, .png, or .gif format if > the total message size is less than 200K. < BETA! > >