Now I know the recipe.McCartney’s Masterpiece: Bass on the Beatles’ Something by Rob Collier… In last month’s article, I did an overview of Paul McCartney’s melodic bass lines, citing short examples from seven different songs. It was clear something had changed with his playing. "Taxman" kicks that album off with one the best bass lines he ever put on tape, and his new fat tone cuts right through the chorus like a lead guitar. Paul's bass tone-not just his playing-is peerless on the later Beatles albums, starting with Revolver. Genius! Yet another Beatles innovation made possible via George Martin's technical imagination.
While I knew this was possible and had even used cheap headphones as microphones back in high school, I had never thought to use this trick in just this way.īy using a large speaker cone as a bass mic, you get more surface area to capture the larger wave forms coming from the bass amp. Most people don't know that microphones and speakers are one-in-the-same, it's just a matter of whether you want the sound to coming in or going out. Turner explains that George Martin had one of his engineers wire a speaker cone backwards and use it as a mic.
It's well known that he switched to a Rickenbacker from his famous Hofner just before this in the fall of '65 while recording Rubber Soul, but what I didn't know until I read Beatles '66 is that one of the keys to his fat bass sound on the later records was also due to some clever studio hacking. One of my favorite anecdotes is when Turner explains the shift in Paul's bass sound during the Revolver sessions.
It's thoroughly researched, but never pedantic. If you like learning about what makes your favorite artists tick, check this book out. Organized into chapters for each month of 1966, the book is a detailed tour through the Beatles' comings-and-goings during a year in which they covered tremendous creative ground. I just finished reading Beatles '66 by Steve Turner.
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