"Rain"

"Rain" is a song by The Beatles, first released in the late spring of 1966 as the B-side of the "Paperback Writer" single. Both songs were recorded during the sessions for Revolver but neither appears on that album.

Geoff Emerick, the engineer for both sessions, described one technique The Beatles used to alter the sonic texture of the track: “'Rain' also had an unusual sonic texture, deep and murky. [The Beatles played] the backing track at a really fast tempo while I recorded them on a sped-up tape machine. When we slowed the tape back down to normal speed, the music played at the desired tempo, but with a radically different tonal quality.”

A similar technique was used to alter the tone of Lennon's lead vocal. It was recorded with the tape machine slowed down, making Lennon's voice sound fast when played back with the tape machine at normal speed.4

The last verse of "Rain" includes backwards vocals, one of the first uses of backwards vocals in a pop recording.8 Both John Lennon and George Martin have claimed credit for the idea. According to Lennon:

“After we'd done the session on that particular song—it ended at about four or five in the morning—I went home with a tape to see what else you could do with it. And I was sort of very tired, you know, not knowing what I was doing, and I just happened to put it on my own tape recorder and it came out backwards. And I liked it better. So that's how it happened.9”

Emerick confirms Lennon's "creative accident,"7 but Martin remembers it differently:

“I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John's voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it on another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTLJMSbEnn0