Recording "Piggies"
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- Album Songs recorded during this session officially appear on the The Beatles (Mono) LP.
- Studio:
- EMI Studios, Studio Two, Abbey Road
Songs recorded
1.
2.
Staff
Musicians on "Piggies"
- Paul McCartney:
- Harmony vocals
- John Lennon:
- Harmony vocals
- George Harrison:
- Lead vocals, Harmony vocals
Production staff
About
The day before, The Beatles recorded the basic track of “Piggies“, a George Harrison-penned track. On this day, from 7 pm to 11 pm, they recorded overdubs. As George Martin was on holiday for most of September 1968, Chris Thomas produced this session.
Take 11 had been recorded on a four-track tape, and the first task of the day was to copy it to an eight-track tape to give room for overdubs.
George Harrison recorded and double-tracked his vocals, using ADT (Automatic double tracking). In the bridge of the song, George wanted his vocals to sound like he was singing pinching his nose. Technical engineer Ken Townsend found a creative way to achieve that goal:
We fed the microphone signal through a very sharp echo chamber filter, an RS106, so that it chopped off everything above and below the 3.5 kilohertz level, creating a very narrow band of sound.
Ken Townsend – From “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn
George and Paul McCartney added some harmony vocals, while John Lennon sang the melody two octaves below them.
George also recorded some pig snorting noises that wouldn’t be used in the final mixes.
At some point, John isolated himself in the control room to create a sound effect of pigs snorting and grunting, using for that purpose a tape from the Abbey Road sound effects collection, named “Animals and Bees (volume 35)“.
It’s from an old EMI 78rpm record and The Beatles may have used a combination of that and their own voices. That always works well – the new voices hide the 78rpm scratchiness, the original record hides the fact that some of the sounds are man-made.
Stuart Eltham – From “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” by Mark Lewisohn
This sound effect would be added during the mixing process, on October 11. A string arrangement would also be added on October 10.
Last updated on September 6, 2021