The Beatles and tech

The iconic intro to Strawberry Fields by the Beatles almost didn’t happen. The now famous flute-like intro is played on a mellotron, which was very controversial for session musicians at the time.

Musician unions were concerned that sampling would put them out of work. In an effort to keep their jobs, the musician unions had agreements with most of the major studios in England that mellotrons would not be used during traditional studio hours.

To get around this, the Beatles recorded the mellotron parts late at night during non traditional studio hours, technically complying with the studio’s agreement with the unions.

Tech is going to change and we can’t stop it. That means some people are going to be out of work in the music industry. There’s a fraction of the amount of orchestras recording today, then there were in the 1960’s.

And then there’s a bunch of people who will be working who wouldn’t have without tech evolving. There’s an estimated to be over 10,000+ recording studios in Nashville alone working at least a couple times a week. I doubt there were 10,000 studios in the whole world until the at least the 1990’s.

We can try and prevent tech creep in our fields (no pun intended) or we can figure out how new tech changes the game and adapt. The second option is definitely the less frustrating route.