<P> The track was refined with remixing and additional parts added on 20 January and 3 February . During the latter session, McCartney and Starr re-recorded their contributions on bass guitar and drums, respectively . Starr later highlighted his fills on the song as typical of an approach whereby "I try to become an instrument; play the mood of the song . For example,' Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire,'--boom ba bom . I try to show that; the disenchanting mood ." As on the 1966 track "Rain", music journalist Ben Edmonds recognises Starr's playing as reflective of his empathy with Lennon's songwriting . In Edmonds' description, the drumming on "A Day in the Life" "transcends timekeeping to embody psychedelic drift--mysterious, surprising, without losing sight of its rhythmic role". </P> <P> The orchestral portions of "A Day in the Life" reflect Lennon and McCartney's interest in the work of avant - garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio and John Cage . To fill the empty 24 - bar middle section, Lennon's request to George Martin, the band's producer, was that the orchestra should provide "a tremendous build - up, from nothing up to something absolutely like the end of the world". McCartney suggested having the musicians improvise over the segment . To allay concerns that classically trained musicians would be unable to do this, Martin wrote a loose score for the section . Using the rhythm implied by Lennon's staggered intonation on the words "turn you on", the score was an extended, atonal crescendo that encouraged the musicians to improvise within the defined framework . The orchestral part was recorded on 10 February 1967 in Studio One at EMI Studios, with Martin and McCartney conducting a 40 - piece orchestra . The recording session was completed at a total cost of £ 367 (equivalent to £ 6,113 in 2016) for the players, an extravagance at the time . Martin later described explaining his score to the puzzled orchestra: </P> <P> What I did there was to write...the lowest possible note for each of the instruments in the orchestra . At the end of the twenty - four bars, I wrote the highest note...near a chord of E major . Then I put a squiggly line right through the twenty - four bars, with reference points to tell them roughly what note they should have reached during each bar...Of course, they all looked at me as though I were completely mad . </P> <P> McCartney had originally wanted a 90 - piece orchestra, but this proved impossible . Instead, the semi-improvised segment was recorded multiple times, filling a separate four - track tape machine, and the four different recordings were overdubbed into a single massive crescendo . The results were successful; in the final edit of the song, the orchestral bridge is reprised after the final verse . </P>

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