View the video on YouTube!
See "Illustrating The Beatles" on the Art blog.
For more recording details, read on!
Back when I was a business analyst at Nike, there was a group of us who were doing digital recording. Periodically, we would challenge each other to record something different. This challenge was to pick some song from the 1960s and record our version of it. I was lucky that every Beatles' song ever recorded was done in the 60s.
"Back In The USSR" gave me a chance to stretch out and sing all those fun Beach Boys parts! I also got to play the signature riffs while updating the sound a bit. Since I didn't have a balalaika, I just let it rip on the electric guitar. It was a TON of fun to record, even the organ parts. I am a pretty lame keyboard player and this was about the limit of my skill. I let the Alesis drum machine bang away at a preset pattern, dropping in fills A and B as desired, live. Then I added lots of live banging around on the Alesis touch pads to get the bigger drum fills.
After I was done recording the whole song, something very important was still missing: the airplane! I had always loved the sound of that "jet" coming in for a landing. I have no idea how they did it in the studio with George Martin, but I was making whistling turbojet noises even before they recorded this song in 1968. I whistled and hissed my jet sounds on two different tracks, doing something reminiscent of their cadence throughout the song. It was a gas!
My thanks to The Beatles for all the fun!
Equipment:
Korg DR1600 16-track digital recording station
Epiphone Dot electric guitar through a Boss digital preamp, direct
M.V. Pedulla 5-string Thunderbass, direct
Shure SM58 mic
Alesis drum machine
Yamaha synthesizer
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