Planning bounces on an 8 track

gentlejohn

gentlejohn

New member
Just interested to know how folks go about planning their songs on an 8 track recorder. I used to record Tracks 1 through to 6 then stereo bounce to 7&8. Using my 7&8 stereo submix bounce as my guide I would then continue by over-writing Tracks 1 to 6 and building the project up like that. However, I was informed by a tech who recently serviced my machine (a Tascam 388) that there is some minor age-related wear to the head's outside tracks (very common apparently) and, as such, he didn't recommend recording 'important' tracks (like sub-mixed bounces) to these outside tracks (namely 1 & 8) and suggested I leave these two Tracks for the 'not so important stuff' (like 'non-important' percussion for example!) I get what he's saying but it's kind of knackered up my usual workflow when recording - I feel like I'm recording on a 6 track now to be honest! In light of this, I am now looking for alternative ways to plan recordings that require sub-mix bounces and I'm wondering how other folks get round this situation?
 
If tracks 1 & 8 are truly compromised and you can in fact hear that that's true, then use 2 & 7 as your stereo bounce tracks and use 1 & 8 for less critical tracks.

Otherwise, yeah, that basic concept of planning out a session on an 8 track is pretty standard and logical. The second most popular way would be to fill up all 8 tracks and bounce to an external two track and then transfer that back to a fresh section of tape to preserve the original takes in case of any obvious fuck ups.

Cheers! :)
 
I would just try a couple practice bounces on those tracks to see how they turn out.
They could sound okay. I do a lot of bouncing on my 388. Don't hesitate to do so. A lot
Of people say that the sound Is no good with bounces. Not true.
I usually bounce multiple percussion parts down to one track and multiple harmony vocals too.
And when I record drums, If I'm doing a mono drum track using only 2 mics (overhead and bass drum),
I record each mic to its own track, then bounce that down to 1. You can get a really dense sounding song with multiple parts with an 8 track using bouncing if you plan it out well. And remember to use space within the tracks eg, a guitar solo on the vocal track when nothing is being sung.
 
Some of you might want to leave the room for this...!

As a teenager my son started Building tracks on my A3440 but became frustrated by the low track count and noise build up.
I then got hold of a Hi Fi VCR, an early Ferguson (JVC) without the agc but with good meters. So now he could bounce 4 tracks over to 2 and back with virtually no copy noise.

Better then was a MiniDisc recorder (and a Philips digital cassette recorder) but eventually he discovered MIDI and since his "keys" were on computer it was logical to do guitars on there as well!

He still likes the "sound" of tape (he says!) but tis a lot of work for a technically worse result.

I now have all the "bits" to build a 4 way, two way tape/PC interface but whether he will ever come home and ask me to build it and use it? Lap of gods!

Dave.
 
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