eljayski wrote:1. How much time, "on average," did it take for the Beatles to take a song from sketch form--lyrics, melody, and chords--to finished recording?...i'm speculating that there would be 3 basic phases: (1) developing arrangements and backing vocals, (2) rehearsing, then (3) recording. given that the lads from liverpool were such superb musicians, these phases might have been fairly short, as in days, rather than weeks. i'm sure it varied, too, song for song, and at different points in the Beatles' career.
An average over the period of '62-'69 would be almost meaningless, as the amount of time was highly variable. A few additional points:
1. Most, if not all, of the
Please Please Me album was a studio recording of material they had been doing live for quite a long time, so the amount of rehearsal that went into those tunes is huge, but that allowed them to record the whole album in a single marathon session in one day.
2. On the other hand, recording the tracks from
Pepper took extraordinary amounts of studio time (Ringo learned to play chess on
Pepper), and so the conception of these tunes may have been shorter in contrast to laying down the tracks. Additionally, there may have been very little actual rehearsal of songs like these - they laid down various tracks to flesh out various parts and someone would add another part when something good popped into mind. So even rehearsing was different in '66-'69 compared to '62-'64. (Of course,
Let it Be was intentionally done like '62-'64.)
3. The final mix of a song in later years (i.e., mainly post-
Revolver) might include tracks from weeks or months prior to the final-recorded tracks used on the same recording.
So, there's really no good answer to your question regarding the time it took. But, if you use 1964 as sort of a normalization point, a couple of days to write and rehearse, usually in a hotel room, then when the studio was available, likely a few takes to get each of the tracks down (part of 1 day; maybe a re-do for some tracks on a second day, but this second day would typically be a few days to a couple of weeks later), and then a mixdown to mono.
Check out Mark Lewisohn's "The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions" (if you can find one) for details.
Oh, and to the point about when songs were originally conceived, Paul was carrying around
When I'm Sixyt-Four in his head for at least five years or so before recording it in December '66.
