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Was watching the old 1968 hey Jude promo film the other day also known as right now and I was wondering if it was lip synced seeing as I could clearly see john lennon playing an epiphone casino when in the audio I hear acoustic guitar. enter image description here

My question is was it lip-synced along with a backing track and if so, was the present audio combined? Because in the beginning they are playing around some theme song (clearly live) for David Frost. When you lip-sync for promo films, do you pretend to play your instrument and sing while the track blasts in the speakers, or do you play along and then they take out the audio from your play along, and paste the original track over? If it's mimed along with the backing track blasting over the speakers and the audio isn't removed, how do you make those drums sound normal,seing as drums are quite loud? A Combination of two normal sounds that play the same thing create a chorus effect, do they not? Why can't I hear that on "Hey Jude"'s 1968 Promo Film? Also at the end, you can hear clapping from the controlled audience so what's going on here?

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Help, please, can't get this question off my mind.

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The Beatles play the intro live, as you correctly guessed.

The audio for "Hey Jude" is the single version of the song and the band is miming to the song in the studio. That's more or less standard for TV or for music videos: the engineers play the pre-recorded sound in the studio and the musicians try to make it look like they're playing live. What is unusual here: McCartney is actually singing and Lennon also has a mic although he hardly sings into it. The guitars are unplugged and all the rest of the band and all the background vocals come from tape. Normally they try to dampen the drum sound, but the studio audience will hear some live drums which can sound a bit strange.

Normally only the pre-recorded audio goes out on TV or onto the video, but if there's an audience, the engineers might mix in a bit of audience sound. That's not necessary here: the handclaps are on the original single.

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  • The vocals are not identical. I compared the TV to the Past Masters [orig single] version & the vocal is not the same. I spilt into stems using AI & lined both up in Cubase, panned L/R. Paul's a serious pro, so there's not a lot of difference, but they are not the same take. Once you hear that, you can hear in the TV version there is some playback vox making it to the broadcast stream. There's a very slight Hey/hey Jude on the opening line, which is much clearer once you have both versions lined up. The piano, however, lines up nicely. So, I'd go with Live vox over playback [inc DT vox].
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 10 at 13:55
  • I'd post it up to soundcloud… but Beatles will get taken down in 20 minutes with a copyright strike. It's not worth the trouble.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 10 at 13:56
  • @Tetsujin Paul's voice is the only thing that might not be full playback. John is singing background but doesn't even have a mic.
    – PiedPiper
    Commented Jan 10 at 14:31
  • The block BVs are off the tape, but John's 2-part is live; there's even a bit at 4:10 where John also ad-libs, on camera - i.sstatic.net/tU2m0.jpg
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 10 at 15:07
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    @Tetsujin You're correct. McCartney is singing live (he's certainly capable of it) and Lennon's mic is also on, even if he hardly uses it. I'll try to work out how to amend my answer, that is unless you want to add another one.
    – PiedPiper
    Commented Jan 10 at 16:23

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