007 Changing Speeds - The 'Varispeed' Technique

Building off George Martin’s half-speed, wind up piano technique, The Beatles and their producer used varispeed — variable speed recording — to alter the sound of instruments, vocals, and even entire rhythm tracks of songs. These alterations changed the textures of these parts in sometimes subtle, and sometimes dramatic ways. Today, we examine how Martin and The Beatles used this technique on six recordings from 1966 to 68, and we invite pianist Jesse Reeks back to discuss the reason Martin used this technique on two of his piano solos.

You can listen to 007 Changing Speeds - The 'Varispeed' Technique online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

007 Changing Speeds - The 'Varispeed' Technique is an episode from Producing The Beatles by Jason Kruppa.

This episode is 00:20:01 long.

This episode was published on Dec 31, 2018.

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