Guitar Feedback
Audio feedback, in which a high-pitched electric noise can be heard, was used by composers such as Robert Ashley in the early 60s. Ashley's The Wolfman, which uses feedback extensively, was composed early in 1964, though not heard publicly until the autumn of that year. In the same year as Ashley's feedback experiments, The Beatles song "I Feel Fine", recorded on 18 October, starts with a feedback note produced by plucking the A-note on McCartney's bass guitar, which was picked up on Lennon's semi-acoustic guitar. It was distinguished from its predecessors by a more complex guitar sound, particularly in its introduction, a sustained plucked electric note that after a few seconds swelled in volume and buzzed like an electric razor. This was the very first use of feedback on a rock record. Speaking in one his last interviews — with the BBC's Andy Peebles — Lennon said this was the first intentional use of feedback on a music record. In The Beatles Anthology series, George Harrison said that the feedback started accidentally when a guitar was placed on an amplifier but that Lennon had worked out how to achieve the effect live on stage. In The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Mark Lewisohn states that all the takes of the song included the feedback.
The Beatles continued to use feedback on later songs. "It's All Too Much", for instance, begins with sustained guitar feedback.
Read more about this topic: The Beatles' Recording Technology
Famous quotes containing the word guitar:
“Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)