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[breathe]

I was recently listening to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and that shit was not done on one 24-track.

Nicholas

[Gio]

Record. Bounce. Repeat.
"Fly it in" was also a term back then. Splicing too.

That's what people did in those days. See "The Beatles" for more examples, only with less tracks available!

[meverylame]

breathe wrote on Fri, 03 September 2010 21:59

I was recently listening to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and that shit was not done on one 24-track. Nicholas

Could be wrong, but I believe that was a Stephens 40 track machine.

[Kurt Foster]

Wasn't Bohemian Rhapsody done by Roy Thomas Baker?

And I believe the first syncing of MT's was done at Abbey Road with 2 four tracks. No sync tones though instead the were doing something with the power supplies to the motors, some kid of tach trickery. It was very kludge-gie and they didn't do it a lot. A real pain in the tucchas.

I remember seeing a short documentary (60 minutes or something) about Bohemian Rhapsody when it first came out. It was a major technical feat.

kurt

[marcel]

 http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1995_articles/oct95/queen.ht ml

Looks like RTB produced and Mike Stone engineered.

Not done with multiple machines (although apparently done on several different 2" machines during various points in the process), just 24 tracks and lots of bounces.  Kinda makes me think of the recent I'm Not In Love thread.

Not sure who first sync'ed machines.

EDIT:  Imagine having 2 weeks in a great studio to work on the bridge of a song.

[Dominick]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasound
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/sound/fantasound1.htm

[J.J. Blair]

The problem with people who are coming up now, is that they have never had to bounce.  They can put off all decisions  'til later, which I think makes the production suffer.  The fact that we had to mix as we went, in many circumstances, really made us think about what we were doing, because we had to commit.  

It HAD to sound good, to tape.  I couldn't just slap some plug-ins on it, and have a million playlists with 50 different options.  

My advice to people starting to engineer: Start some recordings, giving yourself no more than 8 tracks at a time.  Figure out how to never increase your track count beyond 8.  Then when you can get those to sound good, you can move up to 16 on your next song.

[Seb Riou]

Quote:

My advice to people starting to engineer: Start some recordings, giving yourself no more than 8 tracks at a time.  Figure out how to never increase your track count beyond 8.  Then when you can get those to sound good, you can move up to 16 on your next song.

I can see and hear a clear difference between artists demoing on a 4 track K7 and ProToolsers

The first ones can actually write a song, and arrange it

[Eric H.]

I startes, like lots of guys, with the tascam portastudio k7 4Tracks. It didn't sound as good as my sound on sound 1/4 tape machine, but allowed for more mixing.
I am still amazed when I listen to those old tapes how many instruments I got on there. It is rough but fun to listen to, and your mixing is done in a snap, as there aren't many options.
Fun times. All I had was a SM58, a beyer M260 and some dirt alesis microverb.

[YZ]

J.J. Blair wrote on Sat, 04 September 2010 01:42

The problem with people who are coming up now, is that they have never had to bounce. (snip)

Oh yes! The idea of starting with a limited track count is very good.

[Wireline]

Not just starting out...keeping track counts in real numbers (in my bottom feeder opinion) keeps musical projects sounding very real, as opposed the other alternatives.

At some point, things don't get better, they just get different - when that happens, FIDO and move on...unless of course you are just milking clients on the hourly...

[ssltech]

breathe reflexively posted

I was recently listening to "Bohemian Rhapsody" and that shit was not done on one 24-track.

Really?

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bohemian+rhapsod y+multitrack

Ten seconds of searching for yourself (it took me THREE seconds) would prove your assertion wrong.

Also, the multitrack is out there all over the torrent sites. We've had one or two -somewhat contentious- threads about people downloading multitracks from Stevie Wonder, Doobie Brothers and others... including 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.

The above videos show people who have plainly (and ILLEGALLY) downloaded these and decided to show off on YouTube.

I've posted them so that YOU don't have to similarly break the law in order to have it illustrated for your benefit.

breathe reflexively posted

I'm not saying Nichols has Aspergers...

You know, I honestly mis-read that on first scan-through; -I thought you'd missed the 'a' out of your own name.



Here's my view: -This is ONE EXAMPLE of what can happen when a group of immensely talented and creative people are concentrated together and given the tools which require vision, dedication, focus, skill, talent and technical facility in order to achieve their goal.

THEY didn't ramble to a cyber-clique. They set the bar high and then figured out how to surmount it. -And they didn't spew free-association if they found it difficult. They made DECISIONS, they made them boldly, and they forged the results into monuments.

They never seemed to take the approach that there should be some magic wand, some talisman to make things happen FOR them; -Only tools which often had to be worked -HARD- to forge a REAL achievement.


If you seek that sort of result, you MUST work that hard, and begin with that level of dedication and talent.

Keith

[Eric H.]

How many times did it happen to you that even with a 100+ tracks in  the DAW, when mix day arrives, there is always someone wanting to add a synth part, or add a little perc, or change a line and redo a verse.
Those things probably didn't happen 30 years ago. Or did they?

[ssltech]

Human nature has not changed.

However, in those days, there was more of a technical back-up to say "no can do" if everyone was convinced that it would be a bad idea.

Keith

[Otitis Media]

Oh, and the guys that figured out how to syncrhonize fullcoat mag to a film projector were *WAY* ahead of anyone fiddling with a pair of Studers.

Synchronizing the decks is one thing, discrete location is another. Getting them to sync is a simple matter of using one deck's tach pulse to control the other deck's playback speed - terms like "VSO" should net you some search results.

SMPTE timecode made its debut in 1969, and the ability for multitrack machines to chase and auto-locate to a timecode master, or serve AS the master, came sometime in the 1970s.