Who Played Bass on Dakota? ... Track bouncing

[Uncle Fiesta]

By November 1963 Abbey Road was using 4-track. One of its first jobs was to record I Want To Hold Your Hand and its B-side, This Boy, on October 17th (my 9th birthday!).

Before this, they would have copied from one 2-track machine to another, mixing in any additional instruments/voice as they went. Paul appearing to duet with himself on A Taste Of Honey is one example of this technique

[Fenderman]

The Beatles used the 'bounce down' technique a lot more after 1966 as 4 track became insufficient to them and other artists as music was becoming more adventurous.
I wonder if The Shadows ever used this technique?

[iefje]

The Beatles used the 'bounce down' technique a lot more after 1966 as 4 track became insufficient to them and other artists as music was becoming more adventurous.
I wonder if The Shadows ever used this technique?

I think they did with both versions of "Foot Tapper" on 2-track machines and with "Rhythm & Greens" on 4-track. Or maybe four tracks were sufficient for the latter? "Maroc 7" and "Tomorrow's Cancelled" featured quite a few extra instruments in relation to the four members of the group (excluding the orchestra on "Maroc 7"), so maybe the 'bounce down' technique was used on those, as 8-track did not yet exist or wasn't available yet at Abbey Road Studios.

[JimN]

You can do a lot with four tracks. Four-track can allow ten tracks to be recorded with no layer more than two generations back, but it (the 10-track bounce) works best in mono. For stereo, it requires more careful planning and compromises.

Alternatively, a backing track can be laid down in stereo on two tracks, with lead instrument recorded to the empty track 3, then bounced to track 4 whilst a harmony line is added, and then a third lead line can be added to the newly-vacated track 3 from which the bounce to track four was provided. Stereo effects (reverb, echo) allow the lead instrument tracks to be placed in spatial context within the stereo mix of the backing track.

[Fenderman]

If someone recorded a 10 track recording in mono wouldn't a lot of the instruments be lost in the background? I thought stereo would offer a better soundscape as you could have more separation between the instruments?

[Uncle Fiesta]

I was always told you shouldn't 'bounce' between adjacent tracks. So you'd have to bounce tracks 1 and 2 onto 4, adding in any extra part(s) if necessary, and use track 3 as the 'buffer.' I don't remember why you have to do that, but it was a recording engineer who told me, so I assume he had a good reason.

[RayL]

If someone recorded a 10 track recording in mono wouldn't a lot of the instruments be lost in the background? I thought stereo would offer a better soundscape as you could have more separation between the instruments?

Unless you are standing in the correct central position between two stereo loudspeakers, or are wearing headphones, any stereo recording will not be heard with the correct spacial separation between the instruments. Part of the skill in mixing pop music is to make a mix that will be acceptable in all the different ways that people listen to music. Most of the time people will be hearing the sound as variations of mono (left and right mixed together).

So after I have mixed a track on the studio's high quality monitor loudspeakers, I will record it on to a test CD and play it on some average hi-fi speakers, and play it on some tatty plastic speakers, and play it on a laptop's speakers, and play it in the car (both standing still and at motorway speed). I often listen to the mix at a distance - on the floor below. As well as loud, I listen to it soft, because the ear hears frequencies differently at low levels.

The studio monitoring allows me to press a 'Mono' button and combine left and right channels. The mix has to stand up in that situation. In addition, any mix made in the evening, or late at night, has to be listened to again in the morning. The ears get tired after a long day recording and what seems a wonderful mix at midnight might have, say, the hi-hat obviously too loud when played the next morning.

All of the above assumes modern digital recording for Fenderman's hypothetical 10-track recording. If we are talking only about recording on magnetic tape, then are we talking recorders capable of 2-track, 4-track, 8-track (all will need track bouncing to achieve 10 tracks) or 16-track and above?
Ray

[RayL]

I was always told you shouldn't 'bounce' between adjacent tracks. So you'd have to bounce tracks 1 and 2 onto 4, adding in any extra part(s) if necessary, and use track 3 as the 'buffer.' I don't remember why you have to do that, but it was a recording engineer who told me, so I assume he had a good reason.

In the days of magnetic 4-track recorders, it would be very, very, rare to have the luxury of not using track 3! To avoid the sounds on one track bleeding into another, the machine's heads were designed so that there were 'guard bands' of unrecorded tape between each of the recorded tracks.
Here's a pic of a 2-track head. The tape passes over it from left to right. You can see that between the two recordings, there will be a guard band of unrecorded tape to maintain separation.

2tkheadsbig.jpg (43.29 KiB) Viewed 10482 times

Ray

[Fenderman]

The Beatles used the 'bounce down' technique a lot more after 1966 as 4 track became insufficient to them and other artists as music was becoming more adventurous.
I wonder if The Shadows ever used this technique?

I think they did with both versions of "Foot Tapper" on 2-track machines and with "Rhythm & Greens" on 4-track. Or maybe four tracks were sufficient for the latter? "Maroc 7" and "Tomorrow's Cancelled" featured quite a few extra instruments in relation to the four members of the group (excluding the orchestra on "Maroc 7"), so maybe the 'bounce down' technique was used on those, as 8-track did not yet exist or wasn't available yet at Abbey Road Studios.

8 Track already existed as the US was using 8 track as early as 1959, the only studio that had 8 track facilities in the UK was i think Chappel or De Lane Lea (The Beatles recorded a few sessions for Pepper there in 1967).
EMI had 8 track installed in summer 1968, and used this for some White Album sessions.