Tambourine and other misc instruments. | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

The Hole Got Fixed said

If you listen to that comparison, hopefully my above essay makes sense (I’ve got the first 2 bars of Track 1, then the first 2 bars of the left channel of the stereo mix of the 2009 remaster).

I hadn’t considered the moggs, so well done on checking that out!  I’m still 50/50 on it though, particularly as you have to rely on two stereo tracks that are mixed between each other: there is obviously a clear track for the harmonising guitars besides the rhythm guitar which is probably the one mixed with the rhythm section. This makes it harder to be certain, we don’t know for sure it’s not there or if it’s an artifact. And we still don’t know who played it, but it’s interesting how wobbly the timing of it is in parts. I am sure that’s a double-rower tambourine though, that’s clear enough.

Hmm let’s have a listen to the bass track…hang on! There’s a tambourine! And a shaker!  And it looks like the tambourine is deliberately following the hihat in parts (which would explain the sound of the mono master at least). If you A/B the bass part and the percussion track in the quiet bits you can hear that they seem to be playing a separate hihat/crash track with the percussion (most clearly in the “middle 8”), and this could account for “hearing” a second tambourine.

Billy Rhythm said
The Canadian ‘Beatlemania – With The Beatles ‘ album had extensive liner notes on both sides of its sleeve…  On the back there’s a track by track description where they list “who played what” in the percussion department…  I remember particularly with ‘Don’t Bother Me ‘ there being multiple “exotic” instruments being used…  Apologies for I no longer am in possession of my copy so I can’t reference the notes with accuracy…  I do remember something being said about Ringo playing a “loose skinned Arabian Bongo”…  It may even have been Tony Barrow who authored the text, a credible source…:-)

One of the oddities of Beatles For Sale are the very complete liner notes for percussion on that album too, what we would now call a “value-add” for an album uncertain of its status.

The Hole Got Fixed said 

If I solo the bass track, yes, there’s something that sounds like a shaker, but upon closer inspection, Harmonix has reduced higher frequencies on the bass track, then increased higher frequencies on the same track, and put that in the ‘precussion’ track, so when I play the bass and percussion track at the same time, the shaker turns out to be the tambourine, but EQd.   

Sounds to me like hihat, tambourine played on the hihat beat and a shaker or a second tambourine swishing, and the reason I’m hearing it that way is the tambourine double-hits are inconsistent and I can hear a swish between those double-hits. I’m A/B’ing alternate sides of the bass and precussion tracks and still hearing it. We’ll never be sure without the real multitracks, let’s at least agree on that.