M
Muckelroy
Member
I understand that most of the 60's stuff from the Beatles was done with 4-track machines. I've HEARD, or seen, or read, whatever........that many of the Beatles's albums, forgive me for not remembering which ones, have been remixed using original 4-track work tapes, which have each individual instrument on its own track. I think that due to the inability to accurately sync 5 tape machines together and play them all back, they bounced each set of tracks to one track of the master 4-track tape, and vaulted away that particular work tape. now, is this true? Or are these modern re-mixes just vamped up versions of the master 4-track tape?
That being said, I can only imagine how immensly complicated the tracking process must have been. I know they had 2 4-track machines, and I believe they recorded a set of instruments, say, drums, on 4 tracks of the left machine. They would then mix this all together, and bounce it to say, track 1 of the 4-track tape machine on the right hand side. Then, it seems that they'd vault that drum tape away, and put a fresh one on for the guitar/keyboard tracks. What boggles my mind is how they managed to manually/mechanically sync these two tapes up together. for the bouncing process.
If I had to do such a thing, and I had two identical, equally maintained machines, I'd measure off about 2 feet of tape from the head of the tape, and mark that precise spot that sits on the repro-head with a grease pencil. I'd do the same for both tapes, so that they have an equally-spooled, equally marked starting point. Anytime I'd do a bounce from the left multitrack tape, to the right master 4-track tape, I guess I'd just wind the reels to that precice point, so that the mark sits on the repro head of both tapes, and activate both transports at the same time. Is this what ol' George Martin had to do? Or did he just bounce back and forth from BOTH machines, so that mechanical synchronizing wasn't necessary? Or am I completely off?
-callie-
P.S. a brief edit.
There could be only one logical explanation for having 2 4-track tape machines, instead of just one. And I think that above method is WHY they had two. Otherwise, you'd run out of tracks REAL QUICK, and if you couldn't manually sync the two machines together, at some point, you'd be stuck with just one tape machine. So that's why I think that's how they bounced their stuff. Once again, smack me if I'm wrong.
That being said, I can only imagine how immensly complicated the tracking process must have been. I know they had 2 4-track machines, and I believe they recorded a set of instruments, say, drums, on 4 tracks of the left machine. They would then mix this all together, and bounce it to say, track 1 of the 4-track tape machine on the right hand side. Then, it seems that they'd vault that drum tape away, and put a fresh one on for the guitar/keyboard tracks. What boggles my mind is how they managed to manually/mechanically sync these two tapes up together. for the bouncing process.
If I had to do such a thing, and I had two identical, equally maintained machines, I'd measure off about 2 feet of tape from the head of the tape, and mark that precise spot that sits on the repro-head with a grease pencil. I'd do the same for both tapes, so that they have an equally-spooled, equally marked starting point. Anytime I'd do a bounce from the left multitrack tape, to the right master 4-track tape, I guess I'd just wind the reels to that precice point, so that the mark sits on the repro head of both tapes, and activate both transports at the same time. Is this what ol' George Martin had to do? Or did he just bounce back and forth from BOTH machines, so that mechanical synchronizing wasn't necessary? Or am I completely off?
-callie-
P.S. a brief edit.
There could be only one logical explanation for having 2 4-track tape machines, instead of just one. And I think that above method is WHY they had two. Otherwise, you'd run out of tracks REAL QUICK, and if you couldn't manually sync the two machines together, at some point, you'd be stuck with just one tape machine. So that's why I think that's how they bounced their stuff. Once again, smack me if I'm wrong.