Splicing

[Snowman999]

My first sessions way back when were at 8 and 16 track studios. The 16 track used 2" tape and you'd mix to 1/4" master. They were fine studios for what they were. But, if you blew a mix, you'd start all over again.

Then I found Don Casale Studio in Westbury NY. A great home 24 track studio with a board that came from Nashville that Elvis recorded on.

We were mixing and I blew a fader cue. I thought we'd have to start from the top. But, not with a Pro's Pro (he was the engineer for Iron Butterfly's InAGaddaDaVita) and so many other classic artists. We picked it up from a few beats before and mixed the rest of the track. Then came the magic (he could do this blindfolded) -

He cut the tape at the 1st half (on the beat), then he'd cut on the same beat in the second half. He'd tape them together, and it sounded perfect. He never had to do it twice. He'd be pulling the tape manually to hear something, I'd be listening and heard nothing. Always perfect.

Now we do it with a click of a button. His art form was much more impressive.

 

[rob aylestone]

Used to do editing of speech for a year or two. The test for our new guys was to give them a quarter inch tape and remove all the "er", repeated words like "you know" or "ok" and make the words flow seamlessly. The next thing we got them to do was rearranging famous politicians speeches to make them say totally different things. Most could get this after practice, then we'd give them music with instructions to remove a chorus, swap the verses around and that kind of thing. Amazing how after a while it gets easier.

 

[jpmorris]

My songs tend to be quite long, and mixing the entire thing in a single take is very painful, so I do exactly this. Usually there's a change or pause in the music somewhere, so I wind back to that, and start again a few seconds later. Then, when I have an acceptable mix for that part, I'll edit out the gap. Sometimes this takes me a few attempts.
More recently I have been composing the songs in such a way as to force me to edit sections together, for funsies. On the last album, I did this extensively, including a section that ran backwards. It sounded great on the demo, but when I did the final mix a few months later, it was difficult to reproduce, so I did "Computer-assisted tape editing", where I pulled the demo and a section of the mixdown into a DAW, and compared them. Then I measured the amount I'd need to remove to get them to line up, converted it into inches and repeated the process until they were about the same.

EDIT:

(The fun starts around 4:30)

 

[RRuskin]

Done it many times in the past.

 

[Snowman999]

I wouldn't even attempt it. I was always amazed at the ease at how he did it. Of course he'd been doing it for over 20 years (at least) when I met him. But, the other studios I'd been in, it wasn't even an option.

Good to see so many still record analog. I do think there's a warmth to analog that is missing from digital, and all the glam music I have (Slade to Mott to Alice Cooper)the vinyl sounds better.

But, I record for free in my basement. So, I can't argue about the end result.

 

[radi0j0hn]

Good old splicer

My first audio book, second edition "The DOS Tape" was recorded on an old Revox at (I think) 15 1/2 IPS. This gave a LOT more working space to cut out bad takes. Much better than 7 1/2 for the first edition.

I still have my metal splicing block, just for grins.

Later I used "Fast Eddie" to record on Windows and 550 MB SCSI drive that was very early "AV compatible." Editing was destructive and the drive was $999.

Now I use a Del laptop and SSD!