Mixing "Good Morning Good Morning"

About

On this day, from 7 pm to 1 am, John Lennon’s song “Good Morning Good Morning” was mixed in mono and stereo. Also, the engineering team started putting together the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” prototype master tape.

Paul McCartney didn’t attend the session as he was enjoying a ten-day break in the US to visit his girlfriend Jane Asher. It is not clear if the other Beatles attended this session or if the engineering team was by itself.

On February 8, 1967, The Beatles recorded the rhythm track of “Good Morning Good Morning” and added overdubs on February 16, March 13, March 28 and March 29. On this day, the song was mixed in mono and stereo.

Two attempts at creating the mono mix were made from Take 11, and named Remixes Mono 1 and 2. This was the third RM1 to be done, as two rough mixes, made on February 16 and February 20, were also named RM1. None of those mono mixes were satisfactory. The final mono mix was done on April 19.

Five attempts at creating the stereo mix were then made from Take 11 as well, and named Remixes Stereo 1 to 5. RS5 was considered the best and served as the stereo release of the song.

The sound effects in between the tracks were arranged so that each animal was a predator of the previous one. We put a hell of a lot of sound effects on this one. Near the end of the sound effects, we have a little chicken squawking and I knew I wanted to segway into the reprise of ‘Sgt Pepper’ and, at the start of ‘Sgt Pepper’ on the warm up, there is a guitar lick, and this guitar lick sounded just like a chicken in my ears. So, I actually scissors cut the two together. So, the chicken turns into a guitar.

George Martin – From “The Beatles: Off the Record” by Keith Badman, 2008

“Good Morning, Good Morning” ended up with the dubious distinction of being the Pepper track with the largest number of overdubs, hence the most four-to-four reductions (premixes bounced between tape machines in order to open up new tracks). Despite that, it still sounds good, albeit a bit strident due to all the compensatory top end we had to add during mixing. There’s a lot of ADT on John’s voice, and on Paul’s lead guitar — in one spot, there’s a huge “wow” on the guitar where the effect almost makes it sound like the note was bent. One reason why our Automatic Double Tracking worked so well was that it had a sweep oscillator control that you could actually play like a musical instrument, allowing you to constantly vary the delay time in response to the performance. During that mix, I also enjoyed whacking the faders all the way up for Ringo’s huge tom hit during the stop time — so much so that the limiters nearly overloaded, but it definitely gets the listener’s attention! Add in the flanged brass, miked in an unorthodox way, and it’s all icing on the cake; take those effects off and the recording doesn’t have the same magic. That song serves as a good example of how simple manipulation can improve a track sonically.

Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006

To put together the “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” master tape, it was decided that there would no gaps, or rills, between the tracks. It was also decided that some tracks would be linked using crossfades.

The crossfades between “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “With A Little Help From My Friends” and between “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)” and “A Day In The Life” were made on this day for the mono version of the album.

At this stage, the album was almost complete, but the running order was slightly different. Although the second half was in place, side one had the songs in a different order.

The running order of the songs on the finished album was pretty much left to me to decide, with the Beatles giving final approval. We had to start with the song that gave the illusion of a concept, ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’; that has to be the first track, naturally. The reprise of this song, for the same reason, had to go last — except that the final chord of ‘A Day In The Life’ was so final that it was obvious nothing else could follow it. So the reprise of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band? was put back to second to last. That took care of three of our tracks already.

George Martin – From “With A Little Help From My Friends: The Making of Sgt. Pepper“, 1995

Last updated on January 21, 2024

Songs recorded

Staff

Production staff