Max tracks for a 424MkII

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bnoji

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I just had the need for four simultaneous tracks on my 424 but I've lost my manual and don't know how to set it up. I don't even know if it's possible. What I want to do is record 1 acoustic guitar, 1 electric guitar, 1 bass and a drum kit onto each of the 4 tracks....at the same time. What I want to end up with is a track with drums, one with electric guitar, one with acoustic and one with the bass.

It's imprtant that they are separate, but also recorded at the same time.

Thanks,
bnoji
 
Well, I know that the 424 can record all four tracks at once. But, how you are going to track all these at once is going to be difficult. If you had a bunch of seperate rooms, you could have everyone wear heaphones in all the seperate rooms playing their instruments. This might be impossible for you, though. I would try to at least overdub the acoustic.
 
Well, the fact that we record at the same time is important. It's an improv jam we're trying to record...we work off visuals and expressions a lot and things just fit better when we play together. Right now, I'm using the shitty "emulated speaker" line out on my amp direct into the mixer for the acoustic. The bass will also be direct. The electric guitar and drums are mic'ed. I was pretty sure I would have to buy some new equipment to do this, but I was looking for something fast since we're supposed to play again tommorow.
 
Ok, you guys need to buy a headphone amplifier that has like 4 insputs. Then, you should probably get tons and tons of headphone extension cords and a bunch of headphones for everyone. This way, everyone will here each other. Now, since you are doing acoustic and mic'ing electric, there probably will be bleed into the drum mics unless you guys are in different rooms or something. Bleed isn't so bad, it can actually make it sound kind of cooler, it's kind of like natural double tracking. Try and record in a nice big garage or something where there will be a lot of reverb. That will make the bleed sound nicer.
 
I used to do this kind of jam recording all the time. Lots of fun. You will get bleed from the other instruments, especially the drums. You'll want to position the mics so they only face the instrument being record. You might want to try using 2 or 3 mics on the drums, run thru a small mixer, and then into one track. You can download a manual for the Tascam 424 MKIII at the tascam website. The basic operation is the same for the 424, 424MKII and 424MKIII.

www.tascam.com
 
I'm not worried about the guitars bleeding into the drum mic's. I just want to have some control over the EQ and levels of each instrument. I'm not really interested in producing an album quality recording, I just want to make it sound decent. As far as I can tell, the 424 will record to all 4 tracks at once, but it will only do so with 2 different things...the left and right busses, so even though I can get 4 separate inputs and record to 4 tracks at once, I can only record 2 different tracks. Since we don't know how this is going to sound ahead of time, I need to be able to adjust levels after we have recorded...

I'm less worried about how I'm going to mic each instrument and more worried about how to get them each on a separate track...but still record it all at the same time.
 
Ok, what you are saying isn't right. I have a 414, but I am sure you do the same with the 424. What you have to do is direct recording. Only use the buss recording when you are only recording 1 or 2 instruments. Direct recording is easy. All you do is switch the buss knobs to 1,2,3,4 instead of L,R,L,R. At least that is how you do it on the 414. You will get the same amount of seperation, and each instrument will be on it's own track.
 
Yes! Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to do. I just never had the need, so I never learned how to do it.
 
bnoji,
If you do go with the headphones for everyone you can turn any amps you use backwards and won't get as much bleed in the tracks. We use phones when we live record, besides just plain hearing everything better, it allows us to turn the keyboard amp and the bass amp with the speaker away from the mics. Of course this works if you are micing the amps.
dtb
 
We got really good sound the last time we recorded, I just need more control over the levels of the individual instruments. The headphone thing isn't going to work because we don't have the spare cash for an amp and extra sets (I only have a single pair of 7506s). I can barely afford blank cassettes as it is, so I want to get by without buying anything new. The whole purpose of recording is just to have a reference of what we played since its unlikely we'll play it again...we're not aiming for a studio quality recording. We're also trying to keep it as relaxed as possible, not really bothering with takes or anything...it makes some of the people a little nervous and less inclined to experiment. Thanks for all of the info and suggestions, though.
 
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