Home 4-track demo project (lockdown)

[allcalmdown]

Hello,
I'd like some advice and to hear some opinions...

My band were supposed to go make a record this week but with the virus the studio had to close. We live is on lockdown so you can only leave to get food or essential stuff like that...can't meet in groups etc.

Luckily, I live with the bassist and we just bought a 4 track cassette recorder which is coming next week. (Yamaha mt400)

Our plan was to record and write through the lockdown. No intention of releasing these, it is just to have some new rough demos and experiment.

Our gear:
Yamaha MT4000 4-track recorder
We have only two mics (a shure sm 57 and shure sm58), we have a drum machine and a small portable pa to run it through.
We have a peavey amp for bass and a fender twin for guitar.

I'm not sure if you can record two tracks at once with the yamaha mt, but if we can: I was thinking of manning the drum machine (recording it with the sm58 close to the pa) and have the bassist play along live (with the sm57 on his amp). Or the other way around i.e. he mans the drums and I play live along, with a both being recorded. Then either the bassist or I do our part over it.

Which microphone would be best on the bass and which on the pa? Is putting a microphone against the PA even a thing people do? (I'm aware there'll be bleed, doesn't matter)

Another idea was to lay down the drum track direct input (or through the pa with a mic against the pa if that sounds better).

Then the bassist puts headphones on and does a direct input into the tape (we assume the MT has some sort of preamp so it won't just be a flat signal). Or he could have the mic on his amp.

Then I, guitar, stick the headphones with the drums and bass playing, with a sm57 against my amp and i play my part. Or I play first, then bassist does his DI over both.

Then we do the vocals straight into the 4-track at the end.

What is the best way to go about this? We can play fine, but we are like children when it comes to this sort of stuff.

The line up is guitar, bass, drum machine and vocals.

Any help would be really useful.

(Not the sort of that involves purchasing more things or making it complicated, just the best way for two fairly simple people to do as I described)

Thank you!

 

[gecko zzed]

You have four tracks to play with.

You can record everything live, or you can go track by track.

If you record everything live you can put drum machine in one track, guitar in another, bass direct into in the third and vocals in the last (using appropriate line/mic switching).

If you want to hear what you are doing, you can take the monitor out and feed it to the PA. You have to watch out for feedback and minmise bleed. But it will work ok . . .it's how a liove recording would work at a venue.

Youcan do as you have already worked out . . . do it track by track.

Drums on track 1, bass DI on 2, miked guitar on 3 . . . and that's where I would stop.
I would then bounce those three tracks onto track 4. You then have tracks 1 to 3 that you can free up and re-use. Vocals on 1, lead guitar on 2, maybe harmony on 3

 

[grimtraveller]

I would actually do it both ways just for variety's sake and to see which sounds better. Call the tape "The Lockdown Sessions" or something memorably corny like "Lockdown lock up."
Have fun !

 

[allcalmdown]

You have four tracks to play with.

You can record everything live, or you can go track by track.

If you record everything live you can put drum machine in one track, guitar in another, bass direct into in the third and vocals in the last (using appropriate line/mic switching).

If you want to hear what you are doing, you can take the monitor out and feed it to the PA. You have to watch out for feedback and minmise bleed. But it will work ok . . .it's how a liove recording would work at a venue.

Youcan do as you have already worked out . . . do it track by track.

Drums on track 1, bass DI on 2, miked guitar on 3 . . . and that's where I would stop.
I would then bounce those three tracks onto track 4. You then have tracks 1 to 3 that you can free up and re-use. Vocals on 1, lead guitar on 2, maybe harmony on 3

Yeah, that'd be good to bounce and make it bigger with additional guitar. But I don't think we have the gear to do a bounce, as we would just be going from RCA to 1/8in straight to my crappy laptop, into audacity or a free DAW. Wouldn't bouncing require some sort of audio interface?

If the Yamaha can record many tracks simultaneously than probably some combination of both. We only have four hands so, at least in two stages, or three if singing while playing. It'll probably hitting my head against the wall for the first day or two, but not much else to do than stay indoors and chip away at it.

Tbh, I'm such a newbie at this that I had to google what "line/mic switching" even was haha

 

[allcalmdown]

I would actually do it both ways just for variety's sake and to see which sounds better. Call the tape "The Lockdown Sessions" or something memorably corny like "Lockdown lock up."
Have fun !

We are quite young,so...The Quaranteens, how's that for corny? Haha

Thank you!

 

[grimtraveller]

"The Quaranteens......in house."

It could be worse !

 

[gecko zzed]

Yeah, that'd be good to bounce and make it bigger with additional guitar. But I don't think we have the gear to do a bounce, as we would just be going from RCA to 1/8in straight to my crappy laptop, into audacity or a free DAW. Wouldn't bouncing require some sort of audio interface?

If the Yamaha can record many tracks simultaneously than probably some combination of both. We only have four hands so, at least in two stages, or three if singing while playing. It'll probably hitting my head against the wall for the first day or two, but not much else to do than stay indoors and chip away at it.

Tbh, I'm such a newbie at this that I had to google what "line/mic switching" even was haha

I used to have a Yamaha MT3X, and you could bounce internally. You should be able to do the same: record tracks 1, 2 & 3 direct to track 4. No need to go to laptops, interfaces or anything else.

 

[grimtraveller]

I used to have a Yamaha MT3X, and you could bounce internally. You should be able to do the same: record tracks 1, 2 & 3 direct to track 4. No need to go to laptops, interfaces or anything else.

Yeah, it's a poor portastudio that doesn't allow internal bouncing. Mind you, they can be both a blessing and a curse.

 

[allcalmdown]

I used to have a Yamaha MT3X, and you could bounce internally. You should be able to do the same: record tracks 1, 2 & 3 direct to track 4. No need to go to laptops, interfaces or anything else.

It's something we will try then, but I'm going to get the basic process down before adding more than 4 tracks.
For example, when it comes to the mixdown: we don't have a tape deck. We have a computer and audacity. We have an RCA to 1/8mm. We don't have an audio interface. I'm trying to make this as uncomplicated as possible so we can just work and work away without spending too much time on the laptop or fiddling around.

Now I know this is called a mono-mixdown, but what does that mean for panning when it comes to the mixdown? (I'll probably keep everything on centre anyway, as I can't imagine there is much point in panning just 4 tracks as you we won't have a corresponding double to pan to the other side, right?)
So I was going to get the mix roughly where we want it by listening on the 4-track with headphones or through out speakers. Plug RCA to 1/8 in, change the computer aux to input, press record on audacity, press play on the 4-track...listen to it being recorded onto audacity while making minor mixing adjustments on the mt400
Will this result in a true stereo audio file with all pans intact that is essentially close to what we would hear when listening to the song on the 4 track? I know this is a pretty cheap and easy way, so there will be some sound quality loss. But it the main thing is we have a stereo file of our 4 track recording .

 

[ecc83]

Ooops! According to this https://usa.yamaha.com/files/download/other_assets/0/318660/MT400E.pdf

That recorder does not have XLR mic inputs and I am betting the Shure mic use XLR-XLR to the PA rig? (NB. MODEL numbers of EVERYTHING please!)
You will therefore need to adapt to 1/4" jacks and since I doubt they are TRS 'balanced' jacks you could get some hum. There are remedies such as transformers or using a small mixer but WTF did you not ask here first?

Re track bouncing. Son used to do this with a Teac A3440 O/R 4 track but the noise build up hissed him off so we went to bouncing two tracks to computer at a time to build songs. The MT-400 comes out on RCA phonos at -10dBV and therefore is at the right level to feed the line/mic input of a laptop. You will need a 2 X RCA phono plugs to 1/8" (3mm) stereo jack plug cable. You will also need to get into Windows Sounds & Devices setup to crank recording levels down. Download Audacity from 'Ninite' (Google it)

You can have a lot of fun doing this. It is almost impossible to damage gear by a wrong connection but be careful with the output of power amplifiers, i.e. do not short them or drive anything other than speakers.
You WILL run into hums and feedback. Plug up 'cold' and with all volume controls at zero, advance them slowly and check for nasty noises.

Where in the world are you?

Dave.

 

[grimtraveller]

Now I know this is called a mono-mixdown, but what does that mean for panning when it comes to the mixdown? (I'll probably keep everything on centre anyway, as I can't imagine there is much point in panning just 4 tracks as you we won't have a corresponding double to pan to the other side, right?)

Whatever you mix down onto, there should be RCA 2 outputs which should enable you to do a stereo mix. You should be able to use each track pan knob to place whatever is on the corresponding track anywhere in the stereo field. You can do a mono mix if that is what you desire but you're not limited to mono. As is ever the case in this foul scheme of ours, experiment and see how you go with different things. Yes, if bass and drums occupy the same track, I personally think they are better off down the centre. But you don't need corresponding doubles to pan to the other side. A lot of songs are mixed that way, a lot of songs aren't. Depending on what's on the 4 tracks, you could be very creatively inventive. There are common practices but few hard unalterable rules and depending on your artistic vision, there is a reason behind every decision, regardless of whether some people don't like what you may do.

 

[gecko zzed]

I looked through the manual and in fact it does not appear to have a bounce facility. That's a bit sad.

However, it is still possible to achieve by going out. i.e. take the three track outputs and patch them into the PA, then take a line out of the PA and patch that into track 4 (for example).

With the MT3X I used to have, that also had TS inputs, and I used mikes with 6.5mm jacks. Hum or other noise wasn't a problem, though I can't say the same for my singing.

 

[ecc83]

SOME people can hum and sing at the same time Gecks!

I hope OP tells me his 10/20 because if he is UK I could loan him a mic or two and some cables.

Dave.

 

[allcalmdown]

Ooops!
That recorder does not have XLR mic inputs and I am betting the Shure mic use XLR-XLR to the PA rig? (NB. MODEL numbers of EVERYTHING please!)
You will therefore need to adapt to 1/4" jacks and since I doubt they are TRS 'balanced' jacks you could get some hum. There are remedies such as transformers or using a small mixer but WTF did you not ask here first?

Dave,
Not sure I follow you about TRS or transformers etc...but we have bunch of XLR to 1/4 inch jack cables, so we were just going to mic up the amps, plug them into the 4 track. Record the drum machine direct into the 4 track. And record the vocals direct into the 4 track (though I read while browsing someone recommended that it would be better to do vocals = microphone to PA then PA mix out into the 4 track)

We can't afford to get mixers or buy more stuff. As far as I know this should work fine with what we have, right?

Is there any consensus on recording the vocals straight into the 4 track vs via the PA? (No frank sinatra among us, stripped down vocals...so if the quality difference is minimal between both methods, the ease of the just doing the vocals straight in seems more appealing)

Re track bouncing. Son used to do this with a Teac A3440 O/R 4 track but the noise build up hissed him off so we went to bouncing two tracks to computer at a time to build songs. The MT-400 comes out on RCA phonos at -10dBV and therefore is at the right level to feed the line/mic input of a laptop. You will need a 2 X RCA phono plugs to 1/8" (3mm) stereo jack plug cable. You will also need to get into Windows Sounds & Devices setup to crank recording levels down. Download Audacity from 'Ninite' (Google it)

It'd be nice...but yeah all that sounds a bit much to wrestle with just now, maybe it is easier than it sounds but it's one more complication and we are just simple Scotch folk. Our CPU's are already hot to the touch trying to follow this thread tbh.

You can have a lot of fun doing this. It is almost impossible to damage gear by a wrong connection but be careful with the output of power amplifiers, i.e. do not short them or drive anything other than speakers.
You WILL run into hums and feedback. Plug up 'cold' and with all volume controls at zero, advance them slowly and check for nasty noises.

Our gear is cheap, so yeah there is always that. We have pretty good amps (old Twin, Peavey, old Ampeg), but the PA is a crackling disaster - I don't see much need to use is past the rehearsing the drum machine and maybe as a monitor if we do the live approah=ch. Or if it advisable to do the vocals through the PA...not sure.
Cheers.

Where in the world are you?

Glasgow.

Whatever you mix down onto, there should be RCA 2 outputs which should enable you to do a stereo mix. You should be able to use each track pan knob to place whatever is on the corresponding track anywhere in the stereo field. You can do a mono mix if that is what you desire but you're not limited to mono. As is ever the case in this foul scheme of ours, experiment and see how you go with different things. Yes, if bass and drums occupy the same track, I personally think they are better off down the centre. But you don't need corresponding doubles to pan to the other side. A lot of songs are mixed that way, a lot of songs aren't. Depending on what's on the 4 tracks, you could be very creatively inventive. There are common practices but few hard unalterable rules and depending on your artistic vision, there is a reason behind every decision, regardless of whether some people don't like what you may do.

Yeah, - RCA with a Left and Right output. I'm just double checking with everybody because we tried to record our gigs with a wee Sony Tape Recorder while ago and when I tried to "mixdown" the tape into Audacity it was only coming out of one ear. But I realise now it was because the output was just a 1/8 jack and not a L/R.

Just want to make sure: When you say "you can do a mono mix if you " you mean having everything planted centre equates to being mono and not that the signal to Audacity will be mono using this RCA-1/8 method, correct? As when I say stereo I just mean it will be coming out both sides of the speakers haha, and we will have the option to experiment around with pans as you're saying.
But yeah, we were probably going to keep everything centre, if we start bouncing then we'll experiment more with panning. I just can't think of a reason why we would pan off to the side with 4 tracks, unless maybe to give the guitar more room. I'll need to research it more.


Thanks for all the replies, this has been a big help so far. Keep them coming if you like - all input welcome.

 

[ecc83]

Ok, so you are ok for mics and cables it seems. Sorry if the recording to PC seemed confusing, it can be but just dubbing over two tracks should be easy enough and it hardly matters how good the PC is? Almost anything made in the last 10yrs will record two tracks of audio. We had an HP 800 mega byte laptop with 500k of memory and a 20G hard drive running XP pro and that would record just fine.

If you have a decent space to play in you could K.I.S.Sir? Just setup as you would for a gig, but just the two of you, stick two mics about 2mtrs way about 300mm apart and record that. You might be surprised at how good that sounds.

I get you are strapped at the moment but if there is any small thing you need to borrow PM me and I will try to help.

Dave.(I have an A&H mixer I could leave on the doorstep but tis a bit of a shlep from Glasgy!)

 

[allcalmdown]

Ok, so you are ok for mics and cables it seems. Sorry if the recording to PC seemed confusing, it can be but just dubbing over two tracks should be easy enough and it hardly matters how good the PC is? Almost anything made in the last 10yrs will record two tracks of audio. We had an HP 800 mega byte laptop with 500k of memory and a 20G hard drive running XP pro and that would record just fine.

If you have a decent space to play in you could K.I.S.Sir? Just setup as you would for a gig, but just the two of you, stick two mics about 2mtrs way about 300mm apart and record that. You might be surprised at how good that sounds.

I get you are strapped at the moment but if there is any small thing you need to borrow PM me and I will try to help.

Dave.(I have an A&H mixer I could leave on the doorstep but tis a bit of a shlep from Glasgy!)

Sounds like it is straightforward once you just sit down and force yourself to work it out. We've never been good at that aspect, we play/do small gigs, but never got into recording - then last week was going to be our first EP (bad luck). Hopefully we can get a decent archive of our songs that is a bit better than the crappy phone recordings we use as reference just now...or at the least we will learn something.

Thanks, Dave - that's some yomp during a pandemic.
I think we have just enough gear for our modest goals, but appreciate the thought!

 

[allcalmdown]

Ok, so you are ok for mics and cables it seems. Sorry if the recording to PC seemed confusing, it can be but just dubbing over two tracks should be easy enough and it hardly matters how good the PC is? Almost anything made in the last 10yrs will record two tracks of audio. We had an HP 800 mega byte laptop with 500k of memory and a 20G hard drive running XP pro and that would record just fine.

If you have a decent space to play in you could K.I.S.Sir? Just setup as you would for a gig, but just the two of you, stick two mics about 2mtrs way about 300mm apart and record that. You might be surprised at how good that sounds.

I get you are strapped at the moment but if there is any small thing you need to borrow PM me and I will try to help.

Dave.(I have an A&H mixer I could leave on the doorstep but tis a bit of a shlep from Glasgy!)

If that "borrowing something" extends to a better drummer than the one we have now, then aye - I'll be in touch lmao

 

[grimtraveller]

I looked through the manual and in fact it does not appear to have a bounce facility. That's a bit sad.

Sacrilege ! Outrageous ! Where's the respect ? !

Is there any consensus on recording the vocals straight into the 4 track vs via the PA? (No frank sinatra among us, stripped down vocals...so if the quality difference is minimal between both methods, the ease of the just doing the vocals straight in seems more appealing)

My preference would be to go straight into the 4 track. I've always found portastudios to have fair on-board preamps. There again, I also thought they could all bounce so what do I know !

Our gear is cheap

You are folk after my own heart.

Just want to make sure: When you say "you can do a mono mix if you...." you mean having everything planted centre equates to being mono and not that the signal to Audacity will be mono using this RCA-1/8 method, correct?

Correct. Mono is a centre signal, everything panned centre and therefore both speakers put out exactly the same sonic information.

As when I say stereo I just mean it will be coming out both sides of the speakers haha, and we will have the option to experiment around with pans as you're saying.

One could describe stereo as the difference between what is coming out of the speakers. With mono, there's no difference. To put it another way, if you had a stereo mix playing and one of your speakers blew, it would have a detrimental effect on what you are hearing whereas if it had been mono, it would make no difference. It would just be quieter as you've one less speaker. But all the tonal balance remains he same. Or something like that.

But yeah, we were probably going to keep everything centre, if we start bouncing then we'll experiment more with panning. I just can't think of a reason why we would pan off to the side with 4 tracks, unless maybe to give the guitar more room. I'll need to research it more.

Well, you'd be surprised what a little judicious panning can do. One of the individual marks of each mixer is their panning. But just try various things to see how you like them. No one is more important than the person doing the mix at the end of the day.

 

[allcalmdown]

Sacrilege ! Outrageous ! Where's the respect ? !

My preference would be to go straight into the 4 track. I've always found portastudios to have fair on-board preamps. There again, I also thought they could all bounce so what do I know !
You are folk after my own heart.


Correct. Mono is a centre signal, everything panned centre and therefore both speakers put out exactly the same sonic information.

One could describe stereo as the difference between what is coming out of the speakers. With mono, there's no difference. To put it another way, if you had a stereo mix playing and one of your speakers blew, it would have a detrimental effect on what you are hearing whereas if it had been mono, it would make no difference. It would just be quieter as you've one less speaker. But all the tonal balance remains he same. Or something like that.
Well, you'd be surprised what a little judicious panning can do. One of the individual marks of each mixer is their panning. But just try various things to see how you like them. No one is more important than the person doing the mix at the end of the day.

Got it. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
I'll look into panning for the mixdown...seems like something that could add a lot to the sound if you get it right, or screw it up if you don't.

 

[TalismanRich]

Looking at the manual, page 24, under PingPong recording, it says it can do 3->1, then 2->1, then add 2 more for a total of 7 tracks.

Can you feed the drum track directly into the Yamaha? My first recording with a drum machine was the drum track directly into the recorder, and a mic with me just humming along and making comments like "guitar solo", singing the verses, etc. Then I went back and added a bass track to go with it. From there I had the song setup and could add tracks as need.

Have some fun guys!