Musicians, Singers, Producers, Recording Engineers, Mastering Engineers, and Anyone interested in MultiTrack Recording are welcome-Rytch Dri
The history of multitrack recording begins with Bing Crosby's gift of a commercially-produced reel-to-reel tape recorder to an inventive guitarist named Les Paul. There were earlier precedents (such as Sidney Bechet's 1941 song, "Sheik of Araby"), but the pe
rson credited with the invention of magnetic audiotape Multitrack recording was guitarist, composer and inventor Les Paul, who also contributed to the famous Gibson Les Paul model electric guitar for Gibson Guitar Corporation in the early 1950s. Paul had been experimenting with overdubbing in the late 1940s and in 1947, Capitol Records released a record featuring Paul playing eight different parts on electric guitar. These recordings were made with shellac discs; Paul would record a track onto a disc, and then record himself playing another part with the first. Paul's invention of multitrack recording was made possible by a gift from his friend Bing Crosby – an Ampex Model 200, the world's first commercially-produced reel-to-reel tape recorder. These machines were based on modified German Magnetophon recorders which had been acquired by audio engineer Jack Mullin while he was serving in the U.S. Mullin had studied and modified the recorders, hoping to sell the system to the Hollywood movie studios as a new means of recording movie soundtracks. After hearing a demonstration of Mullin's tape recorders in June 1947, Crosby became a major backer of the new technology — he hired Mullin as his chief engineer and immediately invested US$50,000 in the electronics firm Ampex so that the company could develop a commercial version of Mullin's machines. Crosby became the first performer in the world to pre-record radio broadcasts and master his commercial music recordings on tape. In 1948 Crosby gave Paul one of the first production units of the new Ampex Model 200 reel-to-reel tape recorder. Within hours, Paul had the idea of modifying the machine by the addition of extra recording and playback heads which could allow him to simultaneously record a new track whilst monitoring the playback of previously recorded tracks. Paul's multitrack experiments progressed rapidly and in 1953 he commissioned Ampex to build the world's first eight-track reel to reel tape recorder, at his own expense. Contrary to popular belief, however, the idea was not Paul's, but Ampex Special Products manager Ross Snyder's. (This is not to be confused with an 8-track cartridge machine, introduced in 1965, which played in stereo.) Ampex released the first commercial multitrack recorders in 1955, naming the process "Sel-Sync" (Selective Synchronous Recording). Coinciding the advent of full frequency range recording (FFRR), stereo and the high-fidelity microgroove vinyl LP format, multitrack recorders soon became indispensable to vocalists like Crosby and Nat "King" Cole. The earliest multitrack recorders were analog magnetic tape machines with two or three tracks. Elvis Presley was first recorded on multitrack during 1957, as RCA's engineers were testing their new machines. Buddy Holly's last studio session in 1958 employed three-track, resulting in his only stereo releases not to include overdubs. The new three-track system allowed the lead vocal to be recorded on a dedicated track, while the remaining two tracks could be used to record the backing tracks in full stereo, and this system was also used extensively by producer Phil Spector in the early Sixties for his famous "Wall of Sound" recordings. In 1958, Atlantic Records led the world, becoming the first record company to install an eight-track recorder in its recording studio. (It was installed by engineer Tom Dowd.) Frank Zappa experimented with a five-track recorder built by engineer Paul Buff in his Rancho Cucamonga, studio, Studio Z, in the early 1960s, prior to his work with The Mothers of Invention. However, recorders with four or more tracks were restricted mainly to American recording studios until the mid-to-late Sixties, mainly because of import restrictions and the high cost of the technology. In England, pioneering independent producer Joe Meek produced all of his innovative early Sixties recordings using monophonic recorders. EMI house producer George Martin was considered an innovator for his use of two-track as a means to making better mono records, carefully balancing vocals and instruments; Abbey Road Studios installed Studer four-track machines in 1959 and 1960, but The Beatles would not have access to them until late 1963, and all recordings prior to their first world hit single I Want to Hold Your Hand (1964) were made on two-track machines. The term "Sound On Sound" is used by Les Paul to describe the process of multitrack recording. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_multitrack_recording (read less)
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