Flash@TMB Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 It was actually 3 track machines they used!I haven't checked, and could well be wrong... but strongly suspect that they used the equivalent of a bounce down technique. By this I mean using several recorders to give them as many tracks as they needed in order for everything to have it's own track, then mixed those together into groups and sent each group to a new machine... until eventually they arrive at the final mix. The trick would be in synchronizing the tapes.So for instance they could have 2 guitars and the bass on the first machine, then use 2 more machines for the drums, and another machine for the vocals. For the next layer they would mix each drum machine down to a single track, the guitars and bass to a single track, and then the vocals to a single track. Then they feed those tracks into the final 3 track machine and mix them. OK that's probably crap but you get the idea!What I'm saying is that I very much doubt they recorded just 3 tracks in total! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash@TMB Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 Oh and Keilan - a really good book for you to check out. It's a history of the Beatles called "The Love You Make".The title comes from the last line of the last (proper) Beatles song on the last (proper) Beatles album: "and all in all the love you take is equal to the love you make"Or something to that effect.Bloody good read! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cloud Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 Acoustic kit - for those who can afford the set up time and have a quality drum kit which is well tuned and rattle free!How long does it take to set up an acoustic kit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash@TMB Posted September 7, 2005 Report Share Posted September 7, 2005 How long does it take to set up an acoustic kit?Well that depends. Say for instancea band is 90minutes late for a gig. When they arrive they discover that there's a brand spanking new drumkit on stage, with brand new skins of a high quality, even snare, cymbals, and a pedal. All really nice. And what's more someone has taken the time and effort to tune it properly. The sound engineer has hooked up 9 microphones to it, and spent ages EQing the sound in perfectly. The audience is already pissed off because the band is late, and there are 3 other bands scheduled to go on before the bar shuts and have all been there for the past 3 hours in plenty of time. Including the headline act that's travelled halfway round the world, and the band that 100 people in the venue have paid to see. BUT just then the drummer... because despite all this, and the fact that they are bottom of the bill and only scheduled to play a 15min set that should have ended half an hour ago, he's throwing a tantrum and refusing to go on stage unless he gets to "dismantle the piece of shit" (that cost twice as much as his own) and errect his own instead "which all the other bands are welcome to use", apart from his 45 value pack of cracked cymbals... Under those circumstances he will be claim that "the job will only take 5 minutes".So there you go. 5 mins. Remember that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Stax Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 Well that depends. Say for instancea band is 90minutes late for a gig. When they arrive they discover that there's a brand spanking new drumkit on stage' date=' with brand new skins of a high quality, even snare, cymbals, and a pedal. All really nice. And what's more someone has taken the time and effort to tune it properly. The sound engineer has hooked up 9 microphones to it, and spent ages EQing the sound in perfectly. The audience is already pissed off because the band is late, and there are 3 other bands scheduled to go on before the bar shuts and have all been there for the past 3 hours in plenty of time. Including the headline act that's travelled halfway round the world, and the band that 100 people in the venue have paid to see. BUT just then the drummer... because despite all this, and the fact that they are bottom of the bill and only scheduled to play a 15min set that should have ended half an hour ago, he's throwing a tantrum and refusing to go on stage unless he gets to "dismantle the piece of shit" (that cost twice as much as his own) and errect his own instead "which all the other bands are welcome to use", apart from his 45 value pack of cracked cymbals... Under those circumstances he will be claim that "the job will only take 5 minutes".So there you go. 5 mins. Remember that.[/quote']Maybe 6 mins. An additional minute to place his stick bag that contains 2 sticks and a mouldy cloth in a place he can't reach but his 'favourite drummer puts it there'.Tre Cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Stax Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 Drums are easy to record when you know what you are doing Three weeks ago in Exile...Set up my 3 piece kit.Mark mics it close with two added ambient mics several feet away.Ziggy flings my 6 guide tracks onto a cd.I play along to them.Mark records said playing.Drums sound great, recordings sound fab. (will sound even better post production)Mark and Ziggy spend the same amount of time as the recording dumping the files/tracks into Cubase on Ziggy's laptop.Ziggy will go and work his magic elsewhere.Took no more than 4 relaxed hours...We go get pissed!Fun productive day was had by all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flash@TMB Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 Maybe 6 mins. An additional minute to place his stick bag that contains 2 sticks and a mouldy cloth in a place he can't reach but his 'favourite drummer puts it there'.Tre Cool! Now you are assuming he had sticks... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Stax Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 Now you are assuming he had sticks...True! Then add another 2 mins whilst hunts around the stage and then asks the staff... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hardcore Mel Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 My problem is that I want my band to sound like this-http://www.hevydevy.com/mp3/Canada.mp3Probably having to sell my house to pay for the squillions of layers hehejonny lucifer told me that if you can pay to get to canada, devy will record your band for free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tav Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 What I'm saying is that I very much doubt they recorded just 3 tracks in total!Apprently sometimes they did! When I heard about it the first thing someone suggested was "don't they just do bounce downs" and apprently a lot of the time they didn't....I just have so much respect for the sounds they got back then without all the technology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cloud Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 jonny lucifer told me that if you can pay to get to canada' date=' devy will record your band for free.[/quote']don't tell him that! we won't see him for several months Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
threeornothing Posted September 8, 2005 Report Share Posted September 8, 2005 Apprently sometimes they did! When I heard about it the first thing someone suggested was "don't they just do bounce downs" and apprently a lot of the time they didn't....I just have so much respect for the sounds they got back then without all the technology.For the first few Beatles albums at least, the studio was still a strict place to be...regulations were set by EMI, who owned the studio, and built all the gear they had, NOTHING else would be used (not without it first being disassembled and rebuilt to learn about it!) The engineers had to wear a suit and tie and shiny shoes, and speak only to the artists when spoken to. Experimenting with tape machines etc would have probably lost the engineer the job. So strict guidelines were adhered with regards to mic placements etc (ie. they weren't allowed to get the mic too close inside the kick drum etc) The first recordings may have bounce downs, but these would either be on the same machine (ie. 1&2 to 3) or possibly 3 tracks to another 3 track machine. Abbey Road was recording full orchestras with singers all live, so the engineers must have been highly skilled. The "console" only had 8 inputs and 4 outputs, enough probably to drive the 3 tracks and a monitor (another point of note, they monitored in Mono on ONE speaker!!!) Obviously, with bouncing stuff down comes a loss of quality, so bounce downs would have been kept to a strict minimum. The importance being the sound going to tape. Some studios today will still print say 6 tracks of drums, even if theres 15 mics...the reason being, that the "mix" should be about balancing levels of the sounds already captured...But anyway yeah, the suggestions above that everything was recorded on seperate machines isn't true, there was no time code in those days, it would have been a fucking nightmare for the tape ops! Sgt Pepper was recorded on a 4 track, but I'm sure I've read somehwere about them driving two 4 tracks together with a sort of crude tone on one track driving the other machine...anyone know any more about this??The guy who revolutionised recording at Abbey Road was really Geoff Emerick. He was a young tape op who became the first engineer that was under 40 at abbey road and started engineering on Revolver. He had to fight the officials at EMI to do things otherwise not allowed, such as close micing the drums, keeping the tape machines in the control room (essential for the backwards loop generations etc, something they pioneered on those sessions) and broke the communication barrier between artist and engineer (this might have been a bad thing ) He also stuck his neck out on the line, telling the mastering engineer to transfer his mixes flat (they always had to cut the bass on the Beatles recordings because they could not risk pressing millions of records only for them to jump on everyones turntables!) Frustrated at them never getting the bassey sound of the american motown recordings (Motown were far advanced in recording technology at this point by not restricting themselves to custom made gear like at EMI studios!) and broke the rules on Paperback Writer, which then became one of the best sounding ever Beatles records at the time....But yeah the crux is, the engineers were highly skilled in recording full orchestras to one mono track....remember the studio opened in the 30's, when they weren't recording to tape, but cutting straight to a lathe!! So multitracking was not exactly needed in those days, and in either case...they were very limited to what they could do anyway Yes I read too much into this shit....I love retro technology Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MTA Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 For the Sgt Pepper time they used 2 4trk recorders which where manually sync'd, They would start the first machine then the second then using the varispeed control sync the two together. It is hard enough syncing 24trk's with Proper controllers let alone by hand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Byre Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 V-Drums - for new bands with limited cash they can come in and start recording without the hours required to set up the acoustic kit. Also' date=' we can record the midi from the Roland and then select sounds later on in the final mix! ( which obviously you cannot do with the acoustic kit!! [/quote']Wrong!!!Nathen, as an experienced user of ProTools you should know that 'Sound Replacer' is a quick and easy way to change one drum sound for another without even going anywhere near MIDI. And, as you no doubt already know, this gives you the ability to change to absolutely any drum sound - not just the sounds in the Roland.Also, you can feed the drum sound through a gate and use that to trigger the sound in your Roland head. We have dDrums here and we use this technique quite a bit to layer the sound of a real kit. These techniques are not limited to ProTools, you can do it on a reel-to-reel or even live. Just take the mic signal from the direct-out on the desk and use that line feed to trigger the dDrums, or whatever you are using. Many gigging drummers use this trick every day of their lives as they have sponsorship deals with companies that make rubbish drums, but they and their drum-tecs still have to get a decent sound. I first used that trick back in 1978 using an MS20 Korg synth (which I still have BTW) to rescue a kick drum sound that some would-be engineer had managed to make a pig's ear of because he thought he knew it all . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Byre Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 Band rehearsals at OCEANROCK STUDIOS are guided rehearsals with Nathan Edwardson in the studio teaching the band songs and working on timing. Brilliant stuff! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cloud Posted September 9, 2005 Report Share Posted September 9, 2005 Brilliant stuff!24 an hour for that? I'd offer the same service for a tenner an hour, easy money if you can get it from gullible customers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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