Blog Entry 3 - The Beatle's Revolver

 The year is 1965 and Rubber Soul has recently come out, Beatlemania is at its height and The Beatles are starting to tire of their fans and their sound. They've grown tired of the pop melodies and bubbly love songs that garnered the huge fandom they now sit on. They want to enter the studio with a new attitude and create a new sound that will change what everybody expects of them and create something new. The Beatles are starting to get older, starting to see the world in a new way and starting to use a lot of drugs and the creative juices are starting to flow almost as if for the first time and despite what every screaming girl at Shea Stadium might say, the real music is about to begin. This is where Revolver steps in. Revolver is without a doubt one of the most innovative record of the 60's. The way George Martin and The Beatles utilized the technology and resources around them to turn their imagination into a spinning sonic masterpiece is nothing short of brilliant. The amount of audio reversing using tape machines is surprising. It makes me wonder what people thought of this at the time, just laymen listeners hearing reversed sounds on the radio being used for main stream pop music must have been such strange thing at first. It challenges what people were used to so much. Layering is also a popular method on this album that has become immensely popular today. In modern time guitarist layering their guitars on albums is almost expecting and to think that at the time John Lennon was forging this new territory but layering his voice, doubling it up with delayed tape machines in And Your Bird Can Sing, George Martin thickening guitar sounds in I Want to Tell You. The most interesting innovative aspect of the whole album to me being the use of the Lesley Cabinet in Tomorrow Never Knows. I have to agree with what was said  in the "Everything Was Right" podcast. This truly is a great Beatles record and is personally my favorite. As I listen to it I get really inspired to try new and innovative things with my music. I almost feel like I'm copying them, but they make we want to reverse sounds and explore new territory. Especially as someone who wants to go into movies and video games, it makes me think of new ways to create interesting environments. Tomorrow Never Knows feels like a trip into another dimension, with all its layering, composition and use of sound effects it feels like another world. When you have your headphones on you can just close your eyes and drift away and enter another world. I find that truly inspiring for my work and what I want to do. If they could do that back then with what little they had, I can only imagine what I can do when I set my mind to it and work as hard as they did.