Mixing "Within You Without You"

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George Harrison’s song “Within You Without You” was recorded on March 15, March 22, and April 3, 1967. On this day, between 7 pm and 12:45 am, it was mixed in mono and stereo.

On March 15, the rhythm track was recorded as one piece but was referred to as having three parts. For the mixing process, the song was divided into parts again, and Part 1 was mixed separately from Parts 2 and 3.

The mono mixes were the first to be done. Remix Mono 6 to 11 of Take 2 Part 1 were done, followed by Remix Mono 12 of Take 2 Parts 2 and 3, all those mixes using frequency control to speed up the tape by a semitone, as well as ADT (Artificial Double Tracking) on the string section and George’s vocals.

After that, RM10 (the best mix for Part 1) and RM12 (for Parts 2 and 3) were edited together at the 2:23 mark, with an additional overdub of laughter added to the end of the song. The laughter was taken from the sound effects library at Abbey Road, and came from a tape labelled “Volume 6: Applause and Laughter“. The result was the mono release of “Within You Without You“.

The same process was done to create the stereo mix. Remix Stereo 1 to 3 of Take 2 Part 1 were done, followed by Remixes Stereo 1 and 2 of Take 2 Parts 2 and 3. RS3 was then edited with RS5, adding the laughter sound as well. The result served as the stereo release of “Within You Without You“.

As reported by engineer Geoff Emerick, the session had only George Harrison and the engineering team present for the most part. John Lennon and Ringo Starr came in towards the end of it. Paul McCartney was in the United States for a ten-day break to visit his girlfriend Jane Asher.

It’s like at the end of ‘Sergeant Pepper’, “Within You Without You”, George’s track. There happen to be these peals of like, uncontrollable laughter, and of course, it was like, “Well look, we’d better not have all that laughter ‘cos it spoils this very serious, Indian, Eastern mood of George’s.” But I mean, George wanted it and stuff, you know, it had to be.

Paul McCartney – Interview with Andy Mackay, Club Sandwich, August 1982

The next night, we began mixing the track. There was a fair bit of discussion about trying to cut it down to make it a bit shorter, but Harrison was adamantly opposed and we never actually attempted editing it. I suppose everyone felt they needed to let George Harrison have his way on this one. It was a very difficult track to mix, with so many time changes and so much dense instrumentation. As a result, we had to mix it in sections and then crossfade between them. For aesthetic reasons, we ended up moving a few sections closer to one another, which had the added bonus of shaving a few seconds off the running time.

We also decided to apply a lot of effects; for some reason, they seemed to suit the character of the song. There’s a great deal of ADT on the vocal and on the sitar and dilruba — in fact, there’s one particular phrase where the tape nearly came off the machine because Richard was wobbling it so much! When we were nearly done, John and Ringo came by to have a listen. Ringo, who had the closest friendship with George, seemed quite enthusiastic — he loved the complex rhythms. John’s comment was a simple “Yeah, that’s quite nice.” It was hard to gauge how much they really liked it, but there’s no question that they, like the three of us up in the control room, had been won over to some extent. […]

Finally, at Harrison’s request, we tacked on a few seconds of laughter at the end, taken from the EMI sound effects library. Personally, it was something I never liked—I felt that it spoiled the mood. George Martin tried to talk him out of it, too, but Harrison was insistent that he wanted it there, though he never really explained why. […]

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

Last updated on January 14, 2024

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