Re: The Non-Tape-Loop

[Stefan Tiedje <Stefan-Tiedje@addcom.de>]

loop.pool wrote:
> <the first take broke down>
> 
> This expression has nothing whatsoever to do with the tape literally 
> breaking down. It refers to when a band in a recording session would 
> make such a bad musical mistake that the whole recording had to be 
> stopped and recorded over again.

I agree to that. In fact usually the first take is rarly musically good,
its fine to throw it away completely, it was just warm up. But If the 
band is bad, there is still a chance that you have to use it.

> Before the advent of digital recording,  a band had to play a song 
> from the start to the finish as perfectly as possible in order to get
> a good recording.

This was only true before tapes were used to record. The big advantage 
of tapes is, you can easily splice them.

> Even when playing to a click track it was incredibly problematic to 
> try and physically splice one well recorded portion of a song onto 
> another. 

I've done it a thousand times, not complicated at all. The only thing 
was, there was no undo. To edit rythmically correct needed some 
experience, but once learned its solid as a rock.

> It was done occasionally but it was extremely rare in most 
> recording studios,  especially more inexpensive local recording 
> studios.

I think the opposite is true, in cheap recording studios you had to get 
it on tape fast, thus people would even splice takes which are out of 
tune to each other.

> That all changed in the 80's with the advent of digital recording and
> digital crossfading.

The first digital recorders were very complicated, I am not sure if you 
could splice them. Maybe that phrase came up around that time, because 
for getting the superior quality you'd needed to have better complete 
takes.

> I'll never forget the very first ADAT recording session I was at. I 
> was blown away because as soon as we screwed up the first chorus, the
> engineer said, "Everybody play along with the tape and I'll punch in
> the entire band on the down beat of the chorus."

This was common practice with analog tape for decades before. Multitrack 
recording allowed to record part by part, or just punch in the track 
which was bad.

> The ADAT allowed for digital crossfading between the two sections of 
> the song.

The splice of analog tape is actually also a perfect crossfade. You cut 
in in an angle. With 24-track 2" Tapes it was a bit more problematic.

> Digital recording allowed bands to just play for one section of a 
> song.

As mentioned before this was possible decades before on analog as well. 
I remember my first own multitrack, a Fostex A-8 would do it easily.
And watch the Multiple SIDosis video, already in the 50's you could do 
this kind of stuff even with home recording equipment...

> Now if you hear the phrase  "the first take broke down"  it generally
>  means that the computers have crashed..................lol.

Yeah

Stefan

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         Stefan Tiedje
         Klanggestalter
     Electronic Composition
               &
         Improvisation

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