Electrical Audio How-To: Editing a Multitrack Tape 

And very expensive. Best piece of advance I can give is: 1. NEVER NEVER buy multitrack tape machine without a Head Report. And it doesn't matter if it is your brother in law or someone who promises you they are good. Make NO EXCEPTIONS. 2. Buy a machine that is fully restored. Keep in mind even little analog multitracks machine repairs will be expensive. 3. As attractive as they are stay away for pre Logic machines. Late 70's and beyond is ok. Don't get me wrong a Ampex MM-1100 or a Scully 284-12 sounds real nice but you don't want the headaches. 2 inch tape is REALLY EXPENSIVE. Buy in bulk. As in 50 or more.

... Sweet child of summer, watch the calibration procedure videos...

@@JohnMorris-ge6hq You're really suggesting someone who is interested in getting into tape to buy 50 rolls? No one starting out should be buying 50 rolls ...

@@Mario_DiSanto they should, otherwise it won’t be worth it

90-degree (perpendicular) cuts have the potential to create noise. This is from a patent on an angled-cut splicing block: "(1) Magnetic recording is accomplished by the mixing of bias current and audio currents. When a tape is cut, the inaudible bias current may be cut on one segment where its voltage is above normal, and on another segment where its voltage is below normal. If two tapes to be spliced together exist in this condition, a noise click will be heard from the voltage jump at the splice. Therefore, a slanting cut must be made so that bias voltages present will be averaged and made inaudible at the splice. (2) In cutting and splicing at 90°, some iron oxide may very likely gather at the splice. The gathering of the iron oxide at the splice might, itself, cause noise at the splice. A slanting cut will obviate this effect as well. "

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial I love this shit.

It's not risky once you know how to do it!

"I myself will gladly stick to digital!" - yeah, this is fascinating to watch but i don't envy this guy at all. seems like an absolute nightmare to work like that.

You ain't kidding@@visionofdisorder!

​@@visionofdisorderActually, once you have the skills, editing multitrack is rather straightforward. And rather fun! But I'm definitely old-school.

Casual? Ouch!

It's Lardo, great Chicago band.

On the classic albums there's a scene where James complains about a vocal spice that literally nobody has ever noticed, 20 years after it was recorded.

I'd fuck 'em.

Billy Joel's single edit, "My Life" worse spice ever.

You can hear edits in Sad But True by Metallica.

Yeah, it's a good idea. We should explore synchronization in a few ways!

Fade ins, fade outs and crossfading (in place of a hard edit)

Thanks for your comment, and your solidarity. I must say, however, that our digital brethren are audio workers, too!

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Ha, ha. I have to come clean, I am one of the digital brethren, because of cost and space, but my journey started far enough back, that I have some experience with tape. It's just good to see a channel doing something different. Tape isn't the only thing I subbed to this channel, for. There's good, no nonsense, engineering, which is valid as ever, and transferable. Keep it up

Hi, You should use angled cuts when editing between any music or other program material, straight cuts only between program and leader. Tape is a physically resilient medium, part of what we wanted to do with this video series is show that tape is not fragile, scary, unapproachable to the uninitiated. We have transferred tapes that have been in basement floods, that have been stuffed into a box unwound, causing hundreds of creases, etc etc etc. There are often dropouts of other audio losses, but it speaks to the resilience of the medium that the audio is recoverable and the audio transferred even in these dire cases is quite good. Remember that tape stores audio magnetically, so your principal concern for preserving the audio should be to minimize contact with magnetic fields, either permanent or electromagnetic. It would not be great if you were very sloppy with a grease pencil to the extent that it caused buildup on the heads, but that is so far from the case with a small streak in a dozen places on a tape that packs against an adjacent layer that there is no compromise on the audio, nor any damage to equipment risked. As long as you have reasonably clean hands, the same is true about natural oils and such on your fingers when you touch tape- there's a near-zero risk of damaging the tape or corrupting the audio. You should still wash your hands though because it's gross if you don't. The headblock is machined very smooth, and remember that aluminum is non-ferrous, meaning it cannot store a magnetic charge that would risk erasure of audio. In short, be careful, but don't be worried.

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Excellent reply and thanks for taking the time to leave it. I have some experience with much simpler equipment. It's really nice to be able to ask questions here and learn new things. I'm pretty comfortable working on this kind of stuff and this is an area I have not done a whole lot in.. Plenty of playing growing up years ago with four track stuff, fixing it modifying the bias frequency a bit etc. :) Take care!

Go back to it. Digital music plays Slave wages. The more people edit analog, the easier it will be to directly sort artists

Indeed!

Inside the head there's a tiny donut shaped electromagnet with a tiny radial gap cut through it. The gap is where the magnetic field is focused and the recording occurs. The width of the gap affects calibration and performance in a few ways.

Literally?

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial I have not experienced pedantry for some time now :)

@@simonsays335 proof these guys are scientists

Aligning azimuth and as a "phase checker."

Studer A820 MCH

You can punch on our machines, yes. Splicing is for when you have sections the full arrangement that you need to put together. Punching is always less destructive and easier than editing, but in some cases where there's some special part of a performance on a take, and another special section on a different take, you would have to edit.

Punching is the right "tool" in a lot of cases, and we have a video about that! However, in some cases, like punching a full band or drums, punching is almost always riskier than editing. It's much easier to have the band pick the song up from just before they blew it and then edit the two pieces together on the multitrack.

No but they all want to impress Steve.

I know this was a long time ago but in another Steve talks about it. He says a lot of time per day was taken up by choosing what to wear, and hes a guy who likes to go so he decided a long time ago to just have a uniform worksuit every day and save time. Efficient guy!

No, but they help identify an engineer in a session, which is useful in large sessions with a lot of personnel. They also identify us as workers, aligned with the struggle of workers worldwide.

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial sell me one gawdammit!

sonikboom good merch sale. id buy 3

Yes, exactly. The more angled the cut the longer the crossfade. The fade "cascades" across tracks more, as well, but even inside of each track the cross fade is longer.

If you're an archivist, as your name suggests, the strongest argument for tape is its archival durability as a medium. Tape lasts considerably longer than a human life, a hard drive functions for 5 or maybe 10.

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Absolutely agree with you there and fully aware of the possibility of those that do not constantly backup based on the latest technology. EA just so you know I do plan on providing some stems to be mixed within the next few months or so hopefully...not a hater...just a 39 year old getting amazing sounds out of their 12 x 14 room

That won't do, nope. Cancel the session, send everyone home.

your ears need tuned

What now? What do you mean?

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Do you sell this set?

Hi, the band is Lardo. A wonderful Chicago band, check them out!

Yeeeeeah! Super fuckin’ sound! I'm listening to it in my studio now! I love them! I love your “Electrical Audio” sound :)

Thank you!

I kind of like it

Thank you for your opinion.

We are simply demonstrating how you edit tape, we don't insinuate in the video that editing on tape is quicker or easier.

this was an instructional video, a skilled tape op would do that edit very quickly, not 'dozens of minutes'

Doesn't take that long at all. This was slowed down for the video. Think about back in the 60s, when labels and studios were pumping out dozens of singles per week. Much faster than what labels do today and they did it all by hand with "inferior" equipment and methods. I remember hearing from a friend when he started out at Abbey Road in the 60s. He'd have to make dozens of edits to a classical recording tape in an hour while everyone was on lunch.

Just to add to your good point. Most people aren't aware of how many edits (off the quarter inch masters) were made on a lot of the classic Rock albums. For example, The Who's 1973 album, "Quadrophenia" has roughly 400 edits in it. I am not sure if it's from the 2 inch or quarter inch tape. Unlike most albums "Dark Side Of The Moon" can be mixed from beginning to end of the album off of one single 2 inch 16 track tape. The 2 inch tape has edits at every song if not more. There was no automation in those days.

Though, you can re-splice it.

@@arfansthename Did engineers save up cut tape and splice them all together for spare tape?