John Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever in 1966 while vacationing in Spain. Upon returning to the studio, the song was recorded in a number of takes. Normally this wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that this time, the two takes Lennon liked best were in two different keys and two different tempos.
Beatles producer George Martin was faced with quandary, limited as he was by the lack of sophisticated recording technology at the time. With today’s studio bells and whistles it’s far easier adjust pitch and tempo independently, but back then Martin was only able to select the speed of the recording.
Strawberry Field was the name of an orphanage in Liverpool which was located near John Lennon’s childhood home. He apparently always liked the name.
Speeding up one take would increase both the pitch and the tempo while slowing the speed would decrease both the pitch and the tempo of the other take. Sir George would eventually use a combination of speeding up take one and slowing down take two (or for the die-hard fans, takes 7 and 26 respectively) splicing them together to compensate for the differences.
An avid guitarist and a professor in Dalhousie’s math department, Dr. Brown is a big fan of The Fab Four. Using mathematical calculations to do his detective work, he attracted international attention in 2008 when he solved the mystery behind the opening chord of A Hard Day’s Night. Now, along with Robert Dawson, math professor at Saint Mary’s University, he’s plumbing the secrets of Strawberry Fields Forever in a new paper published by the Canadian Mathematical Society.
Read more here: Using Math to Navigate the Beatles ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’