Working On Songs Sent Via CD/Cassette: A Question About Track Separation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike Freze
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Mike Freze

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Hi!

I was hoping to one day offer demo services for songwriters/bands needing work on their original songs via an Internet website offering this service.

Can someone send a CD or tape cassette to you that you can import to Cubase to work on (editing, adding instruments or vocals, mixing, etc.) that will show up as separate tracks to work with?

For example, if a singer/songwriter who plays guitar sends me a CD to add instruments, vocal harmonies, whatever, how can this be done if he or she records the vocals and rhythm guitar on a CD or cassette and sends it to you? Will the song import as one file (vocals and guitar together on the same track) or can it be done so when you import the song in Cubase, the vocals and guitar come up as separate tracks to work with? If effects or panning needs to be done spearately for the vocals and guitar but they show up as one track, you can't adjust either one spearately: change one effect and everything is changed on that one track.

So how can they send you a cassette or CD recording that keeps all the tracks separated for editing purposes when you call the song up in Cubase? Is it even possible?

This would be even more of a problem if there are more instruments or vocals (say, two guys with two instruments that harmonize with each other). How can the imported tracks be kept separated?

Or do you just have to overdub on the one file that gets imported into a Cubase track to add effects?

Mike Freze
 
Normal cassettes put out Left and Right so if someone recorded guitar on the left and vocal on the right and sent those to you, you could play them into two tracks of Cubase and they'd be separate.

If whoever sent you the cassette used a 4 track cassette recorder and sent you that tape and you had a 4 track to play it back you could do 4 tracks.

Cassette is only good enough for scratch, and the 4 track thing is to crazy (to me), so I'd go with the two track method. But since you can't use any of those tracks in the final version (not likely) I'm not sure why it's important to keep them separate.
 
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