Music Production

Here's some perspective from an old guy:

When I was little, my dad had an Ampex reel to reel and explained to me that it could do "sound on sound," allowing you to record something while something else was playing. I was always fascinated with that idea but he never actually used that function. The "clicked" movement for me came really young: when I was 9 or 10 it dawned on me that I could use two portable cassette players (both with speakers) and do my own low-rent version of "sound on sound," recording something on one, then playing it back and recording it, plus something else, on the second...and then do it again. My friends and I made goofy little skits like Layer 1 = singing loudly and badly, Layer 2 = Layer 1 plus pretending we lived next door and yelling at them to shut up, Layer 3 = Layers 1+2 plus the neighbor on the other side telling them all to shut up, Layer 4 = Layers 1+2+3 plus "this is the police, you are surrounded"-type idiocy. It sounded terrible, but we thought it was hysterical.

In high school, that Ampex reel to reel ended up in my room, and while I never did figure out how to get the "Sound on Sound" thing to work, what I did figure out was that since it had stereo Aux inputs as well as microphone inputs, and they each had their own level controls, that I could record drums on a cassette, then while I played the cassette back through the aux I'd mic up a bass through the front. Then I'd take that drum and bass mix and do what I later learned was called "bouncing it down" to a cassette...and then do it again! I could get a drum/bass/guitar/vocal recording that was good enough to play for my friends.

When I was a senior in high school, my school bought a cassette 4 track recorder, and they let me use it. To me that thing was solid gold: I already knew how to bounce stuff down so I know I wasn't limited to 4 tracks! I'd record tracks 1, 2 and 3, bounce them down to track 4, and have three new clean tracks! And I could keep going...you know...as long as I didn't make a mixing mistake early in that process that got carried over to all my subsequent work. For me the biggest hurdle was getting good sounds out of primitive equipment and techniques. If only "lo-fi" had been a thing back then :D . When I later learned that Sgt. Pepper's was done using four tracks and roughly the same methods in terms of pre-mixing and bouncing I about fell out of my chair.

In college I got to work with 2" 24 track tape and outboard equipment with a patch bay and stuff and was in heaven. No automation on the board: if you had a big mix, you got a couple of buddies so there were six or eight hands, and you practiced your moves a few times like a dance before you mixed it down to two-track.

My music career aspirations stopped in the late 80s, but when I got back into it as a hobby in the late 90s, I got my first experience with a DAW via Cakewalk and a SoundBlaster card. Cut and Paste editing? Automated mixing? Are you kidding me?

About fifteen years ago I got an little two-input USB audio interface that came with a Lite version of Cubase. I really liked Cubase, and still use it today, upgrading it every couple of years. When they stopped making drivers for my little 2 channel interface I took the plunge to a rack-mounted 8 channel one that lets me mic a whole drum set at once...and that's my setup!

My workflow is still primitive: I still treat this stuff like a fancy 4 track recorder with unlimited tracks. But I love all the stuff that's available, from building songs from loops to pitch and timing correction to amp modelers to (of course!) mix automation :)

Take this from a guy who used to edit songs by cutting two-inch tape with a razor blade and piecing it back together: the ability to express oneself, or assist other people in expressing themselves, has never been more in reach in terms of equipment availability, budget, or ability to understand. We truly are living in the future, and I hope you're all having a blast.