
The synthesizer ended up being used in three other tracks on the album: “Here Comes the Sun,” “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” Harrison first played it during the “Abbey Road” sessions in August 1969, when he used it for the track “Because.” The Beatles are among the very first popular musicians to use this revolutionary instrument. Robert Moog poses with one of his synthesizers in a 2000 photograph. A month later, he ordered one of his own. Harrison received a demonstration of the device in October 1968. In the mid-1960s, an engineer named Robert Moog invented the modular synthesizer, a new type of instrument that generated unique sounds from oscillators and electronic controls that could be used to play melodies or enhance tracks with sound effects. ‘The End’ peppers listeners’ ears with a panoply of drums. This sort of sonic movement can only happen in stereo – and The Beatles masterfully deployed this effect. Harrison’s voice then enters in the center, in front of the listener, and is joined by strings located toward the right speaker’s location. At the end of the song’s introduction, a lone synthesizer sound gradually sweeps from the left speaker to the listener’s center. It’s soon joined by several delicate synthesizer sounds. If you listen to the record on a stereo, George Harrison’s acoustic guitar emerges from the left speaker.

Take the opening minute of “Here Comes the Sun,” the first track on the record’s second side. In “Abbey Road,” however, stereo is central to the album’s creative vision. The Beatles had recorded all their previous albums in mono, with stereo versions made without the Beatles’ participation.


Stereo’s two channels can create the illusion of sounds emerging from different directions, with some coming from the listener’s left and others coming from the right. Stereo recordings contain two separate channels of sound – similar to our two ears – while mono contains everything on one channel. Stereo was established in the early 1930s as a way to capture and replicate the way humans hear sounds. “Abbey Road” is the first album that the band released in stereo only.
