getting drums from 4 mics on to 1 track of a 4 track recorder!

J

jimbredin

New member
hi

im trying to record my band, in particlular the drums.
we have a mg10/2 which has 4 mic preamps.

http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/products/mixer/a_mixer/mg_series/mg10_2/index.htm
we positioned 4 mics on the drums, kick, snare, 2 overheads left and right.

what i want to do is run this into our four track the yamaha mt400.
http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/products/past_pro/multitrack/mt400/

in such a way that the drums all end up on one track on the 4track.

we had trouble deciding which output and input to use on the 2 machines.
what we did was use 2 guitar guitar leads(ie 1/4inch TR) going from the ST out of the mixer in to the inputs of channel 1 and channel 2 of the 4track.

we then proceeded to bounce down(i think this is the term) to track 4 on the four track.

was this the best approach? is there a more direct way, ie avoiding the bouncing?

i should mention that we used the mixer so pan the different cymbals etc to either side and we want it to be like this on the end result.

thanks

james
 
You can't get stereo onto one track of a 4-track. In fact, each track is mono. To get stereo, you have to use two, then pan those tracks hard right and left during mixdown.
 
yeah i just realised that by reading another recent post, oh well, we'll have to rethink. have and bands got experience with the problem of having a 4track and wanting to devote 2 tracks to drums? we have vocals 2 guitars and bass- is squeezing the 4 of these into 2 tracks really gonna work?

thanks

james
 
jimbredin said:
yeah i just realised that by reading another recent post, oh well, we'll have to rethink. have and bands got experience with the problem of having a 4track and wanting to devote 2 tracks to drums? we have vocals 2 guitars and bass- is squeezing the 4 of these into 2 tracks really gonna work?

thanks

james
Click to expand...

A few ways to do this:

1) Record stereo drums & bass together on two tracks, use one track for guitars, and one for vocals

2) Record stereo drums, bass & rhythm, use one track for lead, one track for vocal.

You can do those with or without bouncing. If you bounce, you only have to record one instrument at a time, but you'll add tape generations which can be noisy. If you don't bounce, you have to cut all the instruments in the stereo rhythm track together.
 
The thing I always hated about bouncing (besides the increased noise that mshilarious mentioned) was that once you made the bounce and recorded over the original tracks, there was no going back. So I would fill all 4 tracks, mix that to a new casseete on my regular cassette deck (either a mono or stereo mix, depending on what I needed), and then put that new cassette in the 4-track and record onto it. It's still a bounce, but gives you room to try over if not happy.

So, theoretically, you could record stereo drums on tracks 1&2, guitars on 3&4, mix those to a new cassette, then have two open tracks on the new cassette for bass and vox.
 
MadAudio said:
The thing I always hated about bouncing (besides the increased noise that mshilarious mentioned) was that once you made the bounce and recorded over the original tracks, there was no going back. So I would fill all 4 tracks, mix that to a new casseete on my regular cassette deck (either a mono or stereo mix, depending on what I needed), and then put that new cassette in the 4-track and record onto it. It's still a bounce, but gives you room to try over if not happy.

So, theoretically, you could record stereo drums on tracks 1&2, guitars on 3&4, mix those to a new cassette, then have two open tracks on the new cassette for bass and vox.
Click to expand...


I agree with MadAudio-- I use a MT400 for sketching out tunes all the time.

I have a friend of mine that uses a VHS recorder to record stereo drum tracks and then puts it to cassette. he claims to get a fatter bottom end but I haven't had the time to try it.
 
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