4 Track Recording Questions

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Hey. So I've got this Tascam 4 track and I've never used it or any other recording device for that matter to record music and well, I'd just like to experiment a bit with sound recording and I'm wondering if anyone out there might have available for me some recording tricks/tips... I'd like to be able to record backwards if such a thing is possible. I have this really old crappy keyboard that only has a DC power In and nothing else so I'm guessing I'll need a pretty good mic to record it yes? Can you reccomend a decent mic for under 100 bux? Thanks people for any suggestions/tips/tricks...

― Matt Likens (greentypewriter), Thursday, 10 February 2005 03:38 (twenty-one years ago)

A Shure 58 goes for about $70-$80 or so? good multi-purpose multi-directional mic.

As for recording backwards, just make sure you map out the tracks, and then reverse the map when you record backwards, less you record over something you didn't mean to record over... for example.

1: vocals
2: (empty)
3: guitar and stuff
4: drums

but when you flip the tape..

1: drums
2: guitar and stuff
3: (empty)
4: vocals

That's all you have to remember.

― donut christ (donut), Thursday, 10 February 2005 03:51 (twenty-one years ago)

actually, that might be a Shure 57. Check the websites, and look for the one that doesn't have a big round silver cap.. that's the unidirectional singing one. the multidirection ones have a smaller head, and they're cheaper.

Also, make sure you got the right cords and stuff. You'll need a cord that has female XLR (to connect to the mic) on one side and male whatever (1/4"? RCA? to connect to the 4 track) on the other.

― donut christ (donut), Thursday, 10 February 2005 03:57 (twenty-one years ago)

you can get a decent mic pretty cheap, the standard answer is a Shure sm57 which should cost about $80. you really need a preamp for the microphone though. this boosts the signal that the mic produces, so is essential for micing up stuff. if you don't have one everything will sound really quiet & wimpy.
ideally though if you have a friend who's any good at soldering they should be able to fit a jack plug to your keyboard, its a very cheap & simple operation and 100x more preferable in sound quality.
does the 4 track have a high & normal speed setting?
if so heres how to get 6 tracks of stereo :
1. record on all four tracks at high speed (as fast as the machine will go - the faster it is, the better quality).
2. mix down those 4 tracks in stereo onto a second tape via yr hifi.
3. if you put the mixdown tape in the 4 track machine & set the speed control to 'normal', you can now record on the 2 spare tracks!

(xpost)

― zappi (joni), Thursday, 10 February 2005 03:58 (twenty-one years ago)

oh and that works if your machine only records at normal speed as well - but the sound quality won't be as good.
use as good quality tapes as you can afford as well (unless you like it sounding really hissy of course!)

― zappi (joni), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:02 (twenty-one years ago)

thirded the sm57. you should be able to find a workable preamp for not too expensive, i can't recommend any brands as the only ones i know anything about are even too expensive for me

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:22 (twenty-one years ago)

sm57 and sm58 are essentially identical. SM58 has an on-off switch and a pop filter (the big round silver cap"). the difference ends there. A great option for home recording is to get 2 radio shack PZM (pressure zone microphone) mics, plug them into channels 1 & 2, and get awesome stereo mixes with tons of room sound (beware of phasing). They're these weird flat things that are well under $100 each. Good for drums, singing, amps, whatever.

tape op magazine is good reading. check out their book.

― superultramega (superultramarinated), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:26 (twenty-one years ago)

The key to four tracks is bouncing - ie: record the drums first, with an overhead on one track, and the mics for snare and kick on the other two. Then, bounce all of them down to one track. Then record guitar, with an amp mic and a DI line on seperate tracks... then, bounce those down to a second track. Then bass on the third track and the final empty track for vocals... that's just an example but think along those lines.

You might want to look into the Really Nice Compressor and Really Nice Preamp, which cheap but high quality.

― DougD, Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:27 (twenty-one years ago)

RNP's are "relatively" cheap but still a good couple of hundred..

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:30 (twenty-one years ago)

they do sound great though

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:30 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost dougd otm about bouncing. It's good practice for mixing too.

also, preamps are somewhat redundant with cassette 4tracks (I assume it's cassette, but you actually didn't specify) because the medium is inherently noisy has limited frequency response, and the electronics aren't exactly fancy. Better to work with what you have and save money for a fancier recording device while you learn.

That being said, the ART tubeMPs are cheap and work okay.

Try to make whatever you're recording sound as good as possible going into the machine rather than fixing it in the mix...

― superultramega (superultramarinated), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:32 (twenty-one years ago)

I need to check out those Real Nice Things.

― superultramega (superultramarinated), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:33 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.fmraudio.com/

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:34 (twenty-one years ago)

i use my tascam porta 05 from 1988 and get 32 tracks
you mix onto 1,2 and 3 then keep track 4 for final recording.
keep doing so you 32 tracks.

― La Camilla Henemark, Thursday, 10 February 2005 04:38 (twenty-one years ago)

tape op magazine is good reading. check out their book.

ESPECIALLY their book, which compiles the first several issues, from several years back. in recent years a certain amount of studio professionalism has crept into tape op, whereas in the early days they were writing about really really lo-fi recording, and they were aiming at a really really lo-fi audience. it was great. those early issues are loaded with tips and tricks you'll find useful.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 10 February 2005 05:40 (twenty-one years ago)

don't bounce too many times tho. you'll lose sound quality. mind you, that's sometimes a nice thing. what tascam 4 track is it?

― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Thursday, 10 February 2005 08:40 (twenty-one years ago)

It is a MF-P01 Portastudio

― Matt Likens (greentypewriter), Thursday, 10 February 2005 15:18 (twenty-one years ago)

Bouncing down is limitless fun, tho with a 4 track it makes things quite complicated; you'll have to map things out in your head if you want to have a certain set of stereo pans, etc. etc. I tend to think back to 60s psychedelic records where you can tell they did a live recording of drums&guit&bass or something and then bounced it all to one track and overdubbed strings&voc&harpsichord or whatever to the remaining tracks. It's silly when you hard-pan things left and right but it also sounds quaint and is fun as hell to listen to on headphones.

You'll read a lot about bouncing down being a hazard to sound degredation and this is true, but let's face it if you were going to record a commercial pop album you'd be using Protools and your tracking problems would dissolve into a beautiful dream of limitless sounds and armies of hiresgraphix mixers at your disposal. A lot of the charm of hearing someone's 4track recordings is everyone will record a different way and the total sound will be idiosyncratic to your own style or however you were feeling that day.

The second thing i recorded on a 4track i wanted to see just how degrading i could make the sound quality so i made a song overdubbing 7 layers of electric keyboard and bouncing them down, hoping it would have this majestic orchestral feel, when in reality it got all mushed up in a crunchy soup.

4-tracks are a beautiful thing, i used to record with one all the time before i got my computer setup (PC). I do recording and overdubbing with Internet Audio Mix and then processing with CoolEdit 96, which are both free. I have 2 of those rediculously cheap beige computer mics that look like styluses and they have this amazing 'analog' sound to them, tons of room noise and nice compression. Anyways thats my idea setup.

4-tracks are best tho (sorry for getting off track) cos they're so immediate and if you have a friend with a 4-track it's like a sonic orgy. You can use their 4-track as a mixer and im pretty sure you can sync them up but ive never gotten around to figuring out how to do this. Has anyone any experience in doing this?

― Adam Bruneau (oliver8bit), Thursday, 10 February 2005 16:32 (twenty-one years ago)

'idea' => 'ideal' in paragraph 4, natch

― Adam Bruneau (oliver8bit), Thursday, 10 February 2005 16:34 (twenty-one years ago)

what I'm doing these days is recording stuff on my Marantz 4-track, it's a good one, and then taking all the analog crap and putting it into q-base my friend has. It gives the finished product a certain cool sound you don't get by just using all the (great) stuff he has at his disposal, you know.

but yeah, the trick is to get it sounding good as you record, you can't really fix it later too well.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Thursday, 10 February 2005 23:24 (twenty-one years ago)

How do you bounce down tracks 1,2 & 3 to track 4?

Do you need other equipment, or can you do it just on the 4 track console itself?

― Sasha (sgh), Thursday, 10 February 2005 23:39 (twenty-one years ago)

1.record your music onto tracks 1, 2 and 3.
2.and then Playback tracks1,2,3(ie:have them set for play, not record) with the 4th channel switched to on/record (& so the trks1-3 will be recorded onto track 4.

― come on sock it to me, Thursday, 10 February 2005 23:57 (twenty-one years ago)

uhm, folks are leaving out an essential step with bouncing, which is PANNING. You usually have to set all the source tracks you want to bounce panned to one channel (L or R), and then set the destination track to record that channel. So you set tracks 1, 2, and 3 to playback and pan them all hard left. Set track 4 to record the left channel. Ride the faders on the source tracks to level everything the way you want it and voila - all three tracks are now one track.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 11 February 2005 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

at least that's how it worked on my old Tascam.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, 11 February 2005 00:06 (twenty-one years ago)

---
sm57 and sm58 are essentially identical. SM58 has an on-off switch and a pop filter
---

my old school 58 doesn't have an on/off switch...

― chris andrews (fraew), Friday, 11 February 2005 00:54 (twenty-one years ago)

Re: tapes - probably, the manual will tell you which kind of cassette the 4-track was designed for (the manual for my Fostex says to only use high bias tapes with the "EQ 70 µsec" designation).

If it has a built-in equalizer, use it (or better yet, use an external one.) Boost the treble for vocals to make them stand out better - you'll have to experiment a bit for each different instrument. But, it also depends on your philosophy (Phil Spector vs. Mitchell Froom).

― Ernest P. (ernestp), Friday, 11 February 2005 04:46 (twenty-one years ago)

other philosophies to consider:

old-school ween -- bounce and bounce and bounce until the original tracks have degraded beyond all repair. then keep going.

old-school gbv -- go into the basement and record the entire band live on a single track. use the remaining three for vocals. or record the band on various tracks, but then bounce them down to one, still leaving you with three for (unbounced) vocals.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 11 February 2005 06:21 (twenty-one years ago)

also, heavily oversaturating the instruments when you record (i.e. recording with the v.u. needle going way into the red) almost always leads to interesting results, especially with non-percussion instruments, but sometimes even with those.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 11 February 2005 06:33 (twenty-one years ago)

sorry - SM58S has an on/off switch for an extra $5-$10. my mistake.

xpost

― superultramega (superultramarinated), Friday, 11 February 2005 17:45 (twenty-one years ago)

"also, heavily oversaturating the instruments when you record (i.e. recording with the v.u. needle going way into the red) almost always leads to interesting results, especially with non-percussion instruments, but sometimes even with those."

heh. Is that how you get the Flaming Lips drum sound?

I'm getting a 4-Track soon hopefully, so this is a useful thread. Just wait until I unleash my psychedelic-country-folk-krautrock song cycle!

― stew, Friday, 11 February 2005 20:12 (twenty-one years ago)

eleven years pass...

It is a MF-P01 Portastudio

I just bought one of these in a charity shop for £25, now all I've got to do is decide what I'm going to do with it,

― Larry 'Leg' Smith (Tom D.), Tuesday, 10 May 2016 15:10 (nine years ago)

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