Members maarkr Posted January 4, 2012 Members Share Posted January 4, 2012 So I'm reading about the early Beatles recording on a 4 track machine, which was apparently new in 1964. Rhythm was common on track one, main vocal on two, backing vocals et al on three, and George Martin or other accompaniments on four... as an example of track use. I'm assuming the tracks were on a single tape. So I'm confused about this statement: Take three Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members daklander Posted January 4, 2012 Members Share Posted January 4, 2012 They import it all into ProTools, edit it there and export back to the 4 track. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted January 4, 2012 Members Share Posted January 4, 2012 the process is called bouncing.e.g. first you record drums on 3 tracks with the 4th free. then you mix them to the 4th track to one single final drum mix with eq aso.then you record to the 4th drum only track on another track the bass, you can overdub the bass in using another free track to record another take. you still have one track free, so you can bounce the two bass tracks to this free one as a "final" mix and have again two tracks free and try another overdub.when the bass is final you can mix the final bass track together with the final drum track to the final rhythm section track.then again you have one track with a final part of the mix and three free tracks for the next instrument/voice you can record in which order you record, whats next etc, is part of the production process and takes a lot of experience and knowing what you do and what you want to do.most of the time it was started of by a guide track where the whole band was recorded at once by a "room mic" as first track. once the rythm section was done, the guide track was not needed anymore for sync and could be freed for more overdub bouncing capabilities. and sure to keep everything tight and sync, the tape drives had exact counters and every position was watched and noted and taken care of. yep that was very fragile and a pain in the a... hard job to do at all, but at that time the only way to do.when they did it, it really was rocket science and people who did recordings, were not only experts but also geniuses, cause they invented most of the procedures when they did the recordings. today everything became much simpler with endless tracks undos and redos etc not only in the digital world but also the analog became more userfriendly.but from how it was done before all the new stuff was invented, you can learn a lot about recording and mixing and what things are important and what not the processes are mostly still the same, but the technology makes them much easier, but using just the technology without knowing what you do or how things work is much more painful, then having only an analog 4track and need to do it the old way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Flogger59 Posted January 4, 2012 Members Share Posted January 4, 2012 And the weird panning is due to the console's limitations; tracks 1 & 2 were panned hard left/right. The board was meant to record stereo orchestra tracks on the first two, and 3 & 4 were for soloists,so they therefore had pan pots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted January 4, 2012 Moderators Share Posted January 4, 2012 So I'm confused about this statement: Take three Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Zooey Posted January 4, 2012 Members Share Posted January 4, 2012 the process is called bouncing.e.g. first you record drums on 3 tracks with the 4th free. then you mix them to the 4th track to one single final drum mix with eq aso. But the Beatles wouldn't have been constrained in this way because they had more than one 4 track recorder. They could do stuff like record all four tracks and bounce it to a single track of a second machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Flogger59 Posted January 4, 2012 Members Share Posted January 4, 2012 "Takes" refer to separate full band takes. They might run a tune down several times and keep each take. Then decide which is the keeper, "was the best", to move forward with. What version, what "take", are they going to use to overdub or punch in on. To build upon. The Beatle's take numbering system was a bit more involved than that. Take numbers would rise for each track added, so takes 2 & 3 could be added to Take 1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members beatpoet Posted January 5, 2012 Members Share Posted January 5, 2012 What's funny about the Beatles' recording process around the time of Sergeant Pepper/Magical Mystery was how the songs could change so drastically from take 1, to takes 2 and 3 or however many else. I guess it's a testament to theirs and George Martin's ability, being able to do multiple versions of the same song, as band, before settling on the right one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nice keetee Posted January 6, 2012 Members Share Posted January 6, 2012 and today music sounds so much better with auto tune Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted January 7, 2012 Share Posted January 7, 2012 But the Beatles wouldn't have been constrained in this way because they had more than one 4 track recorder. They could do stuff like record all four tracks and bounce it to a single track of a second machine. That's true, but they did both internal (mixed to a different track or tracks on the same machine) and external (mixed to a second deck) "reduction mixes" or "bounces," depending on the song and their needs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members t_e_l_e Posted January 7, 2012 Members Share Posted January 7, 2012 But the Beatles wouldn't have been constrained in this way because they had more than one 4 track recorder. They could do stuff like record all four tracks and bounce it to a single track of a second machine. i was talkinh about the process and not any specifics or limitations. bouncing as process can also be done on a 24track machine or multiple 4 tracks or what comes handy. and it also can be used in the digital world to create submixes, to reduces tracks or even as an effect. yes in the digital world you have "unlimited" numbers of tracks and yes you could also have "unlimited" numbers of groups, which are more or less a flexible not finalized (cause you can still edit everything) bounced track. understanding bouncing as process, what it does and how it works, helps you to arrange your mixes, especially when you have more than 24+ tracks to mix. even if you still can change everything its good to start with the rythm section (drums and bass) and built upon it, than to work on all tracks simultaneously, where its hard to distinguish which sound came from which track and how should it fit in the stereo field or in the eq spectrum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted January 7, 2012 Share Posted January 7, 2012 and today music sounds so much better with auto tune Well, there's obviously the "bad" autotuned stuff out there, but I think most listeners are never aware of many of the other times where it's been used, because it was done with an ear towards making it sound natural and transparent. IMO, George Martin and the Beatles and their various engineers used what was state of the art in many ways for their time. True, they lagged behind Les Paul and Atlantic Records and even some English studios like Trident in terms of track counts, but they used the modern techniques of their day and even pushed things quite a bit in terms of techniques and approaches - all in search of new sounds. For example, the Beatles loved varispeed on vocals... which gives vocals an "effected" and slightly "artificial" sonic character when used somewhat modestly. Push it too far and it's "Darth Vader vs The Chipmunks." IOW, it can, and has been over-used too - just like gated snare drums and autotune. But on some things, it can sound fantastic - for example, McCartney's vocals on Here, There And Everywhere, which is double tracked and vari-sped. Penny Lane was treated in a similar manner. So was Lennon's voice on I'm Only Sleeping. Would they have used autotune? I suspect that, had it been available to them, they probably would have at least experimented with it. I think John in particular would have loved it. He apparently hated having to do endless vocal takes as well as the tedium of doubling his vocals, and he really embraced ADT for quite a while because it made his life easier. Today, if they sing it twice, the engineer can sync it up, even if the signer didn't - in ways that John could probably never have imagined back then. And if the source material is half-way decent and the engineer is decently skilled, the listener will generally be none the wiser. However, the one major factor that IMHO matters above everything else is the song - and under all the production techniques, you've got some great songs on those old Beatles albums. It's not just studio tricks being used to hide a lack of talent, or to provide an audible hook for a mediocre song being performed by the pretty face star of the hour. IMO, that's one heck of a difference. Autotune isn't the devil, and it isn't evil, although the misuse of it could be considered as such. I for one am very happy it exists. It's saved me many times, and it's benefited things musically countless times. The example I use frequently is a vocal that has fantastic phrasing and inflection on a line, but one or two words are a bit too far off on pitch to be acceptable... but try as you might, you never beat the feel of that first, flawed take. Or it's the best you have available of the three vocals the singer gave you for the comp. Autotune's fantastic for that. Do your comp, then go into Graphic mode and do it right, and they'll never know you were there... Is that "cheating?" I suppose - but then again, so is punching-in and even multitracking itself if you think about it. And I'm okay with that. We're supposed to be magicians in a way - creating the illusion of a "performance" that never actually happened. And if I feel I can make something sound better with a tool, I'm going to use it. IMO, it's not the tool - it's the way it's used. Or over-used. I know that it's used as a talent substitute sometimes, and that it's been over-used as a "effect", and that we've probably heard a lot of "lazy" use of it - where people just insert it on a track in Auto mode and let it roll without adjusting anything... but the tool isn't to blame for that... that's operator error. Another big concern is the trend towards over-correction. I personally like to leave some humanity in things, and generally don't like them quantized, adjusted and shifted into "perfection" - and if you listen to those old Beatles records, there's a lot of "humanity" there. I don't like to leave in big clunkers, and I regularly use the modern tools to do what needs to be done, but I don't want to kill all the life out of it either. To me, it's a balancing act, and I think they pulled it off brilliantly in terms of what they fixed and what they left in on the Beatles stuff. But the technology of the day was quite primitive by modern standards, and they were relatively limited in how they were able to do things compared to today... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted January 7, 2012 Share Posted January 7, 2012 So I'm confused about this statement: Take three Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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