How To Track A Rock Band Live To Tape! 

More of this type stuff Rick. There isn't enough quality footage on You Tube of professional live tracking of full bands with detailed setup info and such. You the man!!!! keep up the good work we love it!

Always heard people talking about how good tape sounds for recording, and now I see why. Thanks, Rick!

Hi Rick, I hope you read this. I want to say thank you for all the great information on your videos. You provide detailed, simple and easy to understand tutorials on every aspect of recording, mixing and making music. There are a lot of people in RU-vid with great knowledge but they provide too much information that gets too technical and then hard to follow. You go directly to the point and explain everything in a way that people at all skill levels can understand. Yes, I am a new fan of your videos and I'm learning a lot more thanks to you.

Amazing video Rick! Thank you for keepin' us entertained and for providing us some pro information about any music topic there is.. Cheers 🍻

This is STILL the best. Miss studio days!! Thanks Rick!

Great to see a comparison of the waveforms. Now I understand why Steve Albini rarely uses compressors. Tape magic!

WHOA! The difference in that waveform is wiild, especially the snare. Also, that compression makes them look so much cleaner. This makes me really want to get a tape recorder, except then I have to deal with the upkeep of a tape machine

Fantastic! But where the heck is the second video!? Can’t find it anywhere!

Thanks Rick I love listening to discussions from the engineering side on how music is engineered. I’m especially a big analog fan and own a TASCAM 32 and several other decks.

a personal favourite after watching your talks on computer music , thanks rick

Great video and great band! Love the tape sound.

Rick back-catalog of awesome videos...

Thank you for sharing this. I enjoy all of your videos.

Thanks for being awesome! I'm a musician/teacher (drums) in the atlanta area. Hope to meet you sometime!

Another awesome vid rick! Your my new fav!

I'll toss in another "funny from down under", or two; firstly, Figure 8 mics. You can use them in a Middle=Side (MS) pair for a really precise stereo recording (string quartets, for instance), or you can exploit one of their really interesting characteristics; almost totally nulling out any sound from the sides. If you are tight on mixer channels and working in a small live venue, use a small Fig 8 unit like the AKG CK-94 One lobe aimed at he batter-head of the snare, the other at the high-hat. Pretty much everything "off-axis", like the Bass and keyboard / guitar stacks and the rest of the drum kit will be nulled out because they are more-or-less ninety degrees "off axis". See also "wide" percussion instruments like Vibes and such. a pair, tweaked for "best location" on a big mallet-board. The other 'forgotten" mic" is the PZM / boundary-layer "plate" mics. Some may remember seeing these used as vocal mics on some early 1980's music videos. ALL WRONG; talk about "psycho accoustics". Best used when attached (gaffer tape is your friend, mostly) to a large, hard flat surface like a wall or floor, otherwise, because of their size, they have outrageous "high-pass" characteristics. Recording a big pipe organ? A spaced pair of "hemisphericals" on the hard wooden floor captures the entire organ AND the room in impressive style. Recording a close-harmony backing vocal? Tape a spaced pair onto the "big" control-room window. Standing a few feet back, the singers face the window, not a mic stand in sight, and do their stuff. THEY do the musical balance and feel the harmonies; you just catch all the goodness. In such an application, if you lack real PZMs, you can fake a boundary layer mike by taping a pair of GOOD mini-mics, (DPA 4060, or Sennheiser MKE2 or similar, to the wall or the window. This use of mics is closely related to the old theatre trick of a row of "foot-mics", often AKG 451s with a CK1 head amounted via an a-51 "knuckle" adapter along the front of a stage. The mic assembly must be "sof-mounted to the ploor for obvious reasons. They are not there to catch the footsteps (normally) but originally to catch enough of the performers voices for some subtle enhancement. In later days, they were, and remain, the last-ditch backup for when a radio-mic transmitter dies. The performer are 'trained" (as much as possible) to hear and feel when their mic has gone bad, and to line themselves up with a downstage mic and knock 'em dead.

I live for this. It's so valuable.

I’m really happy to see I’m not the only one using tape to record with. I just wish I had this machine! More body with tape, to me digital it too sterile

I had an old Studer A80 2” 24 track machine for a long time. I was lucky to have probably the best maintenance engineer for old Studers in the world, named Otto Garms. He was the house guy at the British world famous studio called Rockfield. He did a bit of outside work and only charged what I could afford, being a small independent studio. The sound was unbelievable and if you could ever find one that is still working and someone who could maintain it, it would knock the spots off the Otari, that you have, no offense. The Studer A820’s were amazing too. Many great records of the bygone era were recorded on Studers, A80’s, The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Pink Floyd, Zep, Queen, list goes on. There are still some around.

Oh crap you got a 24 track Otari. Very nice I love tape. Rick I live 30 minutes from ATR. Got to know the owner and buy my tape there. The ATR service Center is amazing.

That's great stuff. I'm happy to say I do almost everything just like you do, aside from that ride cymbal trick! And I have a good collection of large and small diaphragm condensers.... But I managed to lose every sennheiser 421 I ever owned ... And I must have owned about 20.... I even had five of the old white ones from the sixties... I guess they just looked so expensive that people had to just gank them. Now i'm going to definitely do some tracking tonight after I get done fixing my amps. I have 2 Leslie amps in my shop for repair..

rick! this is really great but....where is the 2 part? thanks a lot

Hi Rick, been watching your videos and subscribed for a few months now. Thoroughly impressed overall by your musical genius by how you've taught your kids! I wanted to ask if you teach how to play by ear or recommend someone who does in TX?

I had heard that you definitely want to use flat wounds on a Rickenbaker bass, because the fret wire is softer and you'll wear them out much faster. This may only be the case on older Ricks, but that's what I heard.

I’ve always been a person who thought it would be best to track each instrument one at a time and layer it up from there to make it much easier

Man this is such a great video for peeps like me who grew up 100% ITB. What's your take on tracking directly to tape vs bouncing out and back from a DAW?

Cool stuff. Now I have to research that whole out of phase mic on the toms.... kinda defies logic to me hehe. Great stuff.

A note re: flat wound strings. When they are fabricated, the strings are wrapped on the core, then run though rollers to flatten the strings. When they are made, the strings are drenched in oil to facilitate flattening. On occasion, some of the strings sound dead. This is because oil has been trapped between the core and the wrap. To GREATLY improve the tone of the strings, boil them in water for about 10 min to express all the left over oil. They sound immediately brighter. Give it a try. Steve.

great video!

Thank you so much for this example. I was hoping one day you could explain about the masterization process. If it has stay the same as it in 70 to 90's or has it change with the new tools used in recording today.

She told me to get a job and i said heck no babes!! LOL Great video folks!!

Hey Rick, Great film. What role does Pro Tools play in the session? Do you track to tape, then dump into Pro Tools and mix from there?

Hi Rick, I don't know if I overlooked it on the video, but I missed some critical work flow steps. OK, I got from mic, to cable, but then to where? Board preamp (or desired stand alone pre)? And if using the board pre and are avoiding tracking an eq'd signal, i.e. just want an uncompromised mic/preamp signal to tape, do you come out of the insert send off of the board (if using the board preamp), or, at least, is that a workable option? Hey, thanks for posting this video!

Analogue anytime any day!!! Wow!!!!

its actually more saturation/distortion than compression. thats why it sounds much louder. still - in a great way!

On the MTR do you find your choice of tape a factor in tone. Also I noticed the tape play back was quite different to the going to tape have you set up the replay to playback brighter/fuller or are you setting the whole record playback to a spec you prefer to get the best out of the tape you use? By the way tape rocks but nothing will change my mind with CTRL Z love your vids by the way

What tape did you use? AMPEX/QUANTEGY 456, 499,GP9 BASF 900, 911 ATR And how much bias 355nwm 520nwm etc What speed did you use and EQ: 15ips, 30ips AES, IEC, NAB Thanks for the video

Hey just a heads up that your pop-text @1:00 says Sennheiser instead of Electro Voice. Cool video!

Hey Rick, Do you by any chance know a specialist of Otari Tape machine's? greet Ruben!

Do you move the tracks to digital when mixing?

❤

part 2?

I love the sound of tape, but couldn't one achieve the same effect with an outboard compressor? Or, in worse case, a plugin?

Did the bassist say his pickups are microphonic? Or did I misheard? If he did, am I missing out on something? Last time I checked pickups weren't, what's going on here? Have I been living inder a rock? Care to explain, guys, pls? :c

What was that music at :25 seconds in?

I am confused, does Sennheiser make an RE20?

Wheres part 2?

Where is part 2?

Geez...that band is the quintessential hipster band. Like, down to the bassist who really isn't a bass player but has to play a rickenbaker with flat wounds

Supervillan is actually a good name

Way cool, Supervillian is da tits! +1 for Zod Audio

And I thought how someone would use cassettes in 21 cent.

Istanbul was Constantinople (Now its Istanbul not Constantinople)

Sorry, but what the hell is the point if we can´t listen to the recording, instead you give us the cameras audio.

ANALOG BaBy!😁🤟

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12:18 I love rick, but that is not a good sounding snare..

11:15 is that a Saul Goodman action figure on the monitor?