Hybridization
During this same period, with the help of their producer George Martin, The Beatles began to include snippets of electroacoustic materials or treatments in some of their songs. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the first pop album conceived entirely in the studio. Several tracks on the disc make use of a variety of electroacoustic techniques, such as:

• variations of the playback speed of the tape;
• reduction mixdowns” which by re-recording allow the user to reduce the number of channels used;
• sounds played backwards;
• the creation of artificial sounds, such as the 47-second decay of a note played on the piano in A Day in the Life;
• the creation of an audible endless loop in the run-out groove that only hi-fi purists (whose turntables did not have an auto-stop function) would discover;

Sgt. Pepper is considered by many connoisseurs and critics to be the first progressive rock album.

In another vein entirely, Captain Beefheart produced more traditional rock albums, but the sounds used were often close to those found in electroacoustics. Finally, in exploring and extending the limits of their instruments, such musicians as Jimi Hendrix produced quasi-electroacoustic sounds.

The idea of hybridization appeared in the electroacoustic arena fairly early as well (Pierre Henry’s 1968 Messe pour le temps présent is a notable example) but it was not until the 1980s-90s that it would be explored more thoroughly by such composers as Michel Chion, Jacques Lejeune and, here in Canada, Marcelle Deschènes, Alain Thibault, etc. A particular case is the work of Torontonian John Oswald, who in the 1980s systematically appropriated existing recordings to make very personal “remixes”, a practice he would name “Plunderphonics”. What is particularly interesting about Plunderphonics is that it is neither a form of DJing or quotation as such but rather a real remix of an existing work based on its inherent sonic, technical and timbral characteristics.