the wind-up piano

the solo is george martin on a piano at half speed, an octave low, played back at double speed. the 1965 sleeve says “george martin on piano.”

before the piano, he tried a hammond organ. “not right,” as mark lewisohn tells it from the tape box. this extract was first released in 2026.

for this 1964 recording, gould had his steinway altered: “no piano need feel duty-bound to always sound like a piano.” martin wrote his solo “like a bach invention”, and quoted this one in “all you need is love”.

1948. guitar parts recorded at half speed, so they play back twice as fast and an octave higher. cut on discs, not tape.

the solo is george harrison’s 12-string doubled by martin on piano, the tape at half speed, the trick he’d used on “misery” the year before (geoff emerick, who ran the tape).

music “literally impossible for people to play,” so he wrote it for player piano. one voice speeds up as the other slows, and they cross in the middle. recorded on his own pianos.

1963. one plucked string, re-pitched note by note by changing the tape’s speed, then cut and spliced into the bass line.

1965. the same loop of a preacher’s voice on two tape machines; “the machine on the left was slightly faster,” and the voice comes apart.

his own voice, sped up, from the songs he first made for camille, a shelved album in that voice.

chaka khan’s “through the fire” (1984), sped up. she said he “didn’t mention that he was gonna speed it up.”

houston, 1995. dj screw slowed whole records down with a four-track’s pitch control, and the voices drop with them.

a hammond and bach. matthew fisher’s organ solo drew on bach’s “wachet auf”, and in 2009 the law lords gave him a share of the song.

martin couldn’t play the organ runs fast enough: “the only way i could do it was to slow the tape down to half speed.”

four years on, martin played a harpsichord on a lennon song, an electric one. lennon said it began with yoko playing the “moonlight” sonata, and him asking her to play the chords backwards.