Multi track recording for starters

In my first article I posted two songs that I recorded all by myself using a multi track recorder and some musical instruments. Multi track recording allows me to put some ideas together without having to call other musicians to play with me. You don’t necessarily need a lot of expensive equipment to start. However as you progress you may want to take advantage of many slick features that better equipment offers. In this article I will describe the very basic equipment and how to put them into use. I will follow up with articles in which I will be exploring the advanced features such as using insert effects, ping pong recording, mixing and mastering etc.

For starters you will need at least the following:

• Musical instrument
• Multi track recording device
• Headphones
• Microphone

Musical instrument
Any musical instrument will do. In fact if you are a singer and you would like to record only vocals then your instrument comes to you free as your voice. If you would like to use an electric instrument or an electric acoustic instrument such as an acoustic guitar with a pickup, you may or may not choose to use an amplifier, it is up to your taste or budget. You can plug them directly to your recording device. If the cable jack you are using is 6.3mm (1/4”) and the device is 2.5mm or vice versa then you can buy an adapter from an electrical supply store like Radio Shack or Circuit City. For acoustic instruments you will always need a microphone.

Multi track recording device
You have several options in choosing a multi track recording device.
• Analog devices using cassettes or reel tapes
• Standalone digital devices with hard disk
• Software that you can load to your computer



Analog home recording multi track recorders are being replaced with the much better digital devices and they are very hard to find. Internet resources such as e-Bay may be your best bet if you are looking to buy one of these. The picture to the left is my old Yamaha MT4X. It is a four track recorder with four inputs and records on a cassette tape. A band of four instruments could connect one instrument per input and record a song in one take. Usually the quality of the recording is good as long as you keep the recording heads clean and degaussed with the proper tool after a few hours of use.

Some of the most popular vendors of multi track recorders are Tascam, ZOOM, Fostex, Boss, Alesis, 365 Systems, Korg. Prices start from about $200.00 for a new four track recorder and go up depending on the number of inputs, tracks and features to thousands of dollars. However it is possible to record more than four tracks on a four track recorder by mixing two or three tracks into the fourth track (often referred as bouncing tracks) and reuse the tracks that were bounced to the fourth track. The Beatles recorded some of their popular works on a four track reel tape.

The ZOOM HD8 digital recorder that you see in the picture is an eight track recorder with two inputs. It has seven recordable tracks and the last one is for the drum track. It also has a master track to mix and master your final recording. This machine is full of slick features. You can record up to 10 V-Tracks per track and save them. It has a drum pad on top which can be played by hitting the pads with fingers or even drumsticks. It has over 450 pre programmed rhythm patterns made of drum and bass, and some blank patterns which you could create your own drum patterns. It has many insert effects which I will be experimenting with in the future blogs. Most digital recorders provide a USB connection to a computer. Once loaded to a computer you can further edit the tracks using some powerful software or even send your tracks to different musicians across the globe so that they can add their own tracks to your tracks.



Some of the most popular computer based recording systems are Steinberg Cubase, Apple Logic Studio 9 and Apogee GIA Package, Cakewalk, Arturia Hip Hop Producer, Bias, Celemony.

I use Cubase VST which is full of features such as effects with a lot of control over their intensity, plenty of recording tracks and V-Takes, the capability of mixing midi tracks and audio and many more. I use it with a Tascam, US-224 control console which can be seen in the picture. It is easier to control the computer software with a console rather than the mouse clicks. Additionally the computer has only one input while this console has two. There are other consoles that have more inputs and more features. Software systems are very powerful in many ways. However they require a lot of computer resources such as a fast CPU, a very good and large hard disk and most importantly a lean running operating system. If these requirements are not met you may face a latency issue and the tracks that you are trying to mix may not sound in synch with each other.

Headphones
Any headphone that is compatible with your recording device will do. I recommend using a headphone to monitor the previously recorded tracks while you are recording new tracks. If you use of open speakers and microphone as your input, then your previously recorded track will also be picked up by the microphone and recorded into the current one. If you are connecting your instrument direct to the recorder’s input then you can use open speakers.

Sony, Sennheiser, Stageworks, Direct Sound, AKG, Shure, Behringer, Samson, Pioneer are some of the headphone manufacturers.

Microphone
A good microphone can do magic in recording. There are many things to consider in buying a microphone but I will talk about it in the future. This article is about setting a basic environment and get the feel out of what multi track recording can do for you. For the time being you can use any microphone that can be attached to your device. If you are using computer software the microphone supplied with your computer is fine for a beginner.

AKG, Samson, Shure, Behringer, Neumann, Telefunken, M-Audio, Blue Microphones are some popular microphone manufacturers.

What is next?
Now that we have established the minimum equipment requirements we can start recording a simple song. In my next article I will go step by step into recording a song.