Need help with multitracking

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rockabilly1955

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i am having trouble multitracking with my fostex that only records a max of 2 simultaneous inputs. I do rockabilly music which consists of upright bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and vocals. I have been doing electric guitar and vocals at the same time and then go back and do acoustic and finally add upright bass at the end. My problem is that the timing is totally off. When we all play live, it comes out nice, but when multi tracking doing it as i mentioned, it comes out horrible with the timing being so off that we cant complete the recording. I wanna try to do each track seperately so i can edit each individual wav later on my pc. Any ideas on how to get the timing right? or the order in which i should record each instrument? I plan on later buying a much more capable recorder with more than 2 simultaneous recording inputs capability, but for now any ideas or advice is appreciated. thanks :confused:
 
Use a click track/metronome for the timing. Try recording acoustic, bass, electric guitar, vocals. There is no rule, experiment till you find what works for you.
 
Well, I'm sure your music is pretty dynamic as far as tempo, etc. is concerned, but my guess would be that the acoustic guitar and the bass are the "rhythmic center" of the tunes. If this is the case, pick one of those two players (the one with the best rhythm and timing) and have them lay down the first track. Either that or have them both record at the same time to really solidify the rhythm. Then put the electric and vox over that. I think that will allow you to have the feel so necessary to Rockabilly because you have people still playing together (multitracking solo tends to sterilize the feeling in the music) and you'll have a good rhythmic base for the "lead" instruments ot express themselves over.
 
i have read that the rhythm and percussion like drums should be recorded first and in our case its the upright bass. The only problem is that alot of our songs start with an electric guitar riff which is why i usually record it first. Recording bass first might also throw off the timing but maybe i'll try
 
Are you talking about the band's timing in trying to play together, or are these latency issues with tracks not aligning properly on the recorder after you have your first 2 tracks done?
 
In the cases where I have done this sort of thing, it has involved a drummer, but I think this should work anyway. Basically if there was some other sort of a riff or intro other than the rythm track we wanted to record, we would have the drummer just do stick clicks through the parts, then edit them out with the software, which you can do with the most basic editors. In this case have one of your rythm guys do the counting by taping their instrument. This should work so long as the player has a steady enough tempo. Hope this helps.
 
another thing that you could try is to get everyone together, stick a mike in front of them, and record the whole song live onto a single mono track (making sure that someone does a count in).

Then you can start re-recording each instrument separately, with the person playing along to the guide track.
 
Well, because you have two inputs, you can record the electric at the same time. You can also have the guitar play with the bassist and not record it just to have the timing in the beginning, or you can have the bassist tap out the on-beat so the guitarist has a rhythm to follow.

Just some suggestions.
 
very good ideas guys. I will try that. Our little live sessions go pretty smooth. Its the multitracking and recording that gets us
 
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