[MUSIC] Multi-track recording is a super power. If you think about it, it allows us to stop time. When we listen to this recording back, it sounds like everybody's playing and singing at the same time, but they're not. We're able to actually start and stop time. Punch in, do things on different days, do things in different locations. It's really like a super power. So we talked about single source recording, where you're recording basically live. Now we're going to move into multi track recording. And this is something that is a very recent development. In fact, I'm old enough to remember when I was a kid I had a sound on sound recorder where you would go back and forth between just two heads and you had to play back what was on the one track and play along with it and record on the next track and then bounce it back to the original track erasing the original signal. Now, Les Paul and Mary Ford did this way back in the day. And they had hit song after hit song, tons of number one records. And I really encourage you, if you want to know something about the history of multi-track recording go back and take a look at, they also made a lot of music videos. Les Paul and Mary Ford and the recordings that they were able to make just doing the sound on sound, bouncing back and forth between two tracks. Then of course in the 60s, especially multi-track recording really started coming into its own. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass were about what was actually inspired by Les Paul and he did the same thing with his trumpet. And he would actually play all these trumpet parts, one at a time, and put them together into this whole section. And they too had just massive, massive hit records. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass was actually kicked off of the top charts by this band called the Beatles that came from England. And that's when multi-track recording really started coming to its own. When the Beatles first started recording, they were recording on two and three track recorders, where you would do the rhythm section and then you would do the vocals and then you might do some sweetening, and that was basically it. And by the time they were done they were camping out in the studio, and just doing a lot of stuff with multi-track recording. And then of course it just grew and grew and grew, it started with tape. But now, of course we're in the computer and track count. The number of tracks that you can have. The number of plug in compressors, and EQs, and reverbs that you can have is almost unlimited. I'm just going to pick out three things that I would say might be good for you to hear when you're first starting out. The first thing is, obviously get a nice interface and get some microphones. Because recording into your laptop or whatever you have otherwise is really not going to cut it for very long. So start figuring out what gear you want to have and start getting a variety of mics. Then I'd say get comfortable using either a Click Track or better yet some drum loops. So you can keep all your multi-track recording stuff together. You can keep in the same groove. Now sometimes at the beginning it's really hard to use a Click Track which is why I say you might want to use a drum groove instead. It's a little easier to lay into. And that's not appropriate all the time, if you're recording an ensemble playing, especially like a jazz ensemble or a classical ensemble, something like that obviously a Click Track is not an appropriate thing. But you do want to get to where you can make peace with a Click Track. Where you can use it if you need to or play along with a drum track that's totally in time. Because you do want to keep things together in time to where you're not having to constantly worry if you're doing a multi-track recording and just record it wild and things speed up and slow down, it can get really kind of hairy by the time you try to do many overdubs. And then finally, if you're starting out but even if you are a pro, it's good to keep in mind how things are going to fit together. So often we'll go in and we'll record each part as though it is the only part and we'll just fill up all sorts of space. And I'm talking about both space within the bar and also space within the frequency spectrum. Keep in mind that all these things are going to have to work together. So it's okay for maybe one guitar just to be high-endy and very trebley and doing something very sparse. And it's okay for some other aspect to be just be low frequencies, and again maybe it's taking up different parts of the bar. Just keep in mind that everything at the end of the day is going to have to go together and play nice and in some ways I think that's really the secret to multi-track recording. Is to really have in mind from the outset that how these things are going to kind of fit together is a puzzle. And if you're exploring, if you’re in the studio searching for parts, again think about making parts that are going to fit together as a whole and not a whole bunch of parts that are going to fill up a whole lot of space. Those of you who have been doing multi-track recording for a while, maybe you have a nice studio at your disposal, maybe you’re doing it in your laptop, but I want to quote Orson Welles, who famously said that the absence of limitations is the enemy of art. Just be sure that you're not throwing more and more stuff on because it's fun, because it is fun, let's face it. It can be a lot of fun to explore this stuff and to experiment around. But when you get down to actually trying to make something that you want to be proud of, that's going to be art. You want to make sure that the gear, the equipment is actually being used in service of the art and the emotion you're trying to convey and not the other way around. Because that happens a lot. So, multi-track recording is a superpower. It's really a lot of fun. It gives you the power to stop time. So you should have fun with it and do some good work.
