I just finished reading a very interesting book, Here There and Everywhere, detailing the music of the Beatles told from the perspective of the recording engineer, Geoff Emerick. It’s an interesting insight into the inner workings of some of those classic recordings, in addition to his own personal opinions about the dynamics within the band, that shaped the music throughout their later years and even beyond the Beatles. Its not terribly technical in the account, so if you’re not an engineer you won’t be bored to death. If you follow the story that he presents you would understand that he wasn’t a real technical engineer, often going against the grain of common practice just to try new things. I leave with this quote from Here There and Everywhere

“Necessity was the mother of invention, and that was part of the magic of the album. You had to put the right echo on, the right EQ, the right signal processing, the playing had to be right, the vocal had to be right. It made things easier in a way, because otherwise there are too many variables and too many decisions to be put off until the mixing stage.”