Combining accounts of extraordinary musical invention, sometimes clashing egos, and technical aspects of innovative sound production, Geoff Emerick’s Here, There, and Everywhere1 is a must-read book for anyone passionate about physics and the music of the Beatles. As the Beatles were beginning their Revolver album in 1966, London’s Abbey Road Studios promoted 19-year-old Emerick to the coveted position of chief sound engineer for the Beatles. When the Beatles and their producer, George Martin, sought a novel sound, it was Emerick’s job to create it. In this article, I present just a few of Emerick’s innovations as examples of applied introductory-level physics.
The young engineer’s first challenge came when John Lennon told him, “I want my voice to sound like the Dalai Lama chanting from a mountaintop” for the song “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Hardly knowing what this request even meant, Emerick ran Lennon’s vocals through the horizontally rotating speakers of...