The Beatles at the Avant Garde

In their later albums the Beatles sucessfully incorporated traditional Indian music harmony and Avant-garde techniques used by classical musicians, such as the use of distorted tapes in studios to create new sounds into pop/rock music.

Rock-meets-world music (Love To You with it's pre-Sgt. Pepper sitar/tabla workout)

Tomorrow Never Knows Psychedelic/ Electronic Rock fusion was the most radical departure from previous Beatles' recordings for its skeletal bass/drums propulsion enhanced only with tape loops (contributed by all four Beatles and added in the mix-down process), more backwards guitar, mellotron and an eerie John Lennon vocal. Experimental music based on Indian music with Tomorrow Never Knows (which also contains the opinions according to the first rhythm of techno music history).

Aleatoric approach toward creating orchestral crescendos in "Day In A Life"

Steam calliope 'wash' used to help create circus atmosphere in "Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite" tHI

The backwards guitar and doubling of backward guitar parts in I'm Only Sleeping.

Aleatoric methods such run-off groove of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band).

Tomorrow Never Knows uses electronic avant sampling

Strawberry Fields Forever" began the new approach to creative songwriting
Lyrics describe a fantasy-like place from his childhood
New instruments used to create a dreamlike ambiance
Cellos, inside-the-piano playing, reversed-tape sounds, Mellotron
Mellotron: an early sampling keyboard that uses taped sounds to create orchestral sounds
Strings, choral voices, and a recorder ensemble
Studio tape manipulation techniques were used to create backward sounds
Two different takes were recorded and spliced together using variable tape speed techniques
Different tempo and different keys
Different instruments
The song ends, then fades back in with a backward segment that fades back out

"I Am the Walrus" was one of the strangest and most avant-garde Beatles songs. For all its weirdness, however, it wasn't devoid of some conventional melodic pop appeal, I Am the Walrus" is the densest and most symphonic track from the Beatles' psychedelic period, with so many layers of sounds and effects that it takes quite a few listenings to get to the bottom of them. Sung and written by John Lennon (although credited to Lennon- McCartney), the ominous mood of the song is established by the opening two-note riff, inspired by the sound of a police siren. Swooping strings then embellish the sense that listeners are about to embark on something resembling a bad acid trip. The very first line is fair warning that listeners are not going to sit back and be entertained by a straightforward story, with its almost nonsensical string of pronouns, as if Lennon is taking absurdist revenge on all those 1963 Lennon- McCartney lyrics in which the composers determined to use as many "you" and "I" pronouns as possible. "I Am the Walrus" is, in fact, a stitching together of several fragments that could have been developed into entirely different songs, but what could have been a mess flows together quite well, aided by the esteemed producer George Martin. In the verses, Lennon cleverly alternates between similar, but not exactly similar, melodies in which the surreal images fly at a furious rate. It's free association which does not make sense — and Lennon always said they weren't intended to make sense — like sitting on a cornflake, penguins singing "Hare Krishna," and, most unforgettably, the yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye (the last of which was actually adopted from a British school children's rhyme). There's the brief sexual reference (about a girl letting her knickers down) that showed up in many a mid-'60s Beatles song, and what may be the first deliberate reference to another Beatles song ( "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds"); "I Am the Walrus" itself would later be referred to in another Beatles track ( "Glass Onion"). At one point, "I Am the Walrus" suddenly derails into a burst of white noise jabber — as if a radio tuner has suddenly switched channels — and mournful strings introduce a dreamy line about sitting in an English garden that has no apparent melodic or lyrical relation to anything else in the composition. That detour is quickly steered back to the chorus, as if it's a miniature break from the nightmare (or from the absurd reality of life?). And what a strange chorus it is: Lennon declaring that he is the eggman, whatever that is, and is also the walrus, ending with a nonsense lyric, as responsive harmonies follow the ascending melody like a chorus of ghouls. The lengthy fade-out is no less weird than the rest of the track, with those ghoulish harmonizers (actually the Mike Sammes Singers) sounding like a children's nursery rhyme run amok and the memorable addition of dialog from a BBC broadcast of Shakespeare's King Lear (a snippet of dialog also appears earlier in the song)

Other songs with avant influence

Blue Jay Way
Revolution #9
Wild Honey Pie
I Want You She So Heavy
Rain
Whats the New Mary Jane