After numerous chats with friends about my various roles in music production, it’s become apparent I often use terms which are – to some people – words they may have heard before but (understandably) have either no idea, or an incorrect idea, regarding their real meaning in the context of recording music . With that in mind, I thought I’d try and de-mystify the process of recording music and also cover some of its history.
I’m going to take some liberties and use some poetic licence with what follows. ‘Experts’ will just have to wince and bear it… this isn’t for them anyway!
Once upon a time…
Before the latter 1950s, music was recorded and played back only in mono. Radios and record players had just one loudspeaker. So no left and right. Just one loudspeaker.
In the recording studio the tape machines had a single mono reel of magnetic tape and all the instruments and singing would be recorded live in one take, onto the one mono track. Any mistakes and the performer(s) would have to do another take in its entirety.
During the 1950s the idea of recording more than one track on the same physical reel of tape became practical for studios. Having the tracks running side by side on the same one physical tape meant they were always going to be synchronised (locked in time) together. To attempt to use several of the mono machines together to achieve the same result would have meant being able to synchronise them ‘somehow’. This would have required a degree of perfection almost impossible with the available technology of the era.
Recording on multi-track machines meant that you now didn’t have to redo absolutely everything if a mistake was made. Plus the engineers could achieve better clarity and balance with the added control ‘after the event’. The concept of a mixdown was born, as those multiple tracks would need blending back together for the final product which was, at first, still in mono.
At the very end of the 1950s the first stereo albums were released, though few but the wealthy had a stereo playback system. A common usage of the recording studio’s new three track machines was to record the backing band live to the first two tracks (in stereo), then record the vocals separately to the third track whilst the singer(s) listened to the now pre-recorded backing track on headphones. This meant the singer(s) could have more than one go at a performance without the whole band having to repeat theirs.
Did I mention stereo? Why yes I did. Taken for granted now but still merits a quick explainer. If you have two ears, and they both work, you hear sounds and can tell what direction they come from – left or the right. That’s because a sound coming from the left takes very slightly longer to reach your right ear than your (nearer) left ear, and visa versa. Your brain is clever enough to use that difference and create a stereo image. So to create that illusion from a recording you need two speakers with each one connected to one of two tracks. A left track and a right track. In the mixdown each individual recorded track can be panned to either the left or the right or both sides. Equally, to both sides, puts the sound in the middle.
Did I mention tape heads? Why no I didn’t. The tape head puts the sound onto the tape. Each track has its own tape head. Three tracks on the tape means three separate tape heads, but still just one tape. So basically the tracks are just like three lanes on one road.
Through the latter 1960s and 1970s the multi-track recorders grew bigger and bigger to enable more and more tracks, on ever wider tape. Before too long twenty four tracks on two inch wide tape became standard. This meant each instrument and vocal could be recorded on its own track and be placed anywhere between full right and full left in the stereo image on mixdown.
The final part of the music production chain is the mastering process. After the final mix is finished the mastering engineer has the job of making that final mix optimised to sound its best on the playback equipment used by the general public. To be honest, that is a much more complex subject than one might imagine, with many aspects. I think it’s best left for a separate blog of its own.
I hope this blog has been informative and interesting. It is intended for people that ‘don’t already know’ but do wonder ‘how it’s done’. I’ve used ‘tape machines’ to illustrate these principles but of course these days the vast majority of music production is done digitally using computer technology. The principles remain exactly the same though and I think the tape machine story makes it easier to visualise.
Kudos and credit to my good friend Philip Lewis-Jones for copy editing and proof reading. Top job.
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