Hi!
I'm Jon San Paolo. I'm here in Studio B at Electrical Audio,
and today, I'm going to show you how to do a mult-track tape edit.
[clunk,clunk.]
For this project, you will need;
1 multi-track tape machine, a console,
a band, audio tape,
1 white china marker, 1 sharp razor blade,
and 1/2-inch splicing tape.
So, in a recording session, if a band doesn't get it right in the first take, then they
have a couple of options:
First, they can re-record the song, hoping to get a better take.
They can - if there are a couple of flubbed notes here and there - they can try to repair
and do punches to the take they just did.
Or, their third option, which we're gonna do today, is to keep as much of the first
take as possible, and then re-record everything that needs to be replaced as a second take
that we will then cut the middle out of, and splice the good part of "take 1" together
to the good part of "take 2".
So, for today's demonstration, we've got takes of a song from a band called Lardo that came
in here to record.
And the idea here is that they made it almost all the way to the end of the second chorus,
an errant bass note was struck, everybody caught it, and take just sort of waned out
from there.
And the band decided that they wanted to just try and re-record it from the second chorus
-out because the entire first two-thirds of the song were great and keepable.
So, I'll demonstrate what it sounds like.
[take 1 plays]
...here comes the bass note.
...and so, at that point, we stopped tape, figured everything out.
And in terms of finding a place to count-in - from an engineering standpoint, we just
need a couple of measures ahead of time.
That way, any cymbals that need to be ringing by the time the edit happens are ringing,
and any reverb that should be built-up in the room is already in place.
Otherwise, it can sound stark and obvious and the idea is we want a seamless, continuous edit.
So, they actually counted-in halfway through the second chorus and played-out.
[take 2 plays]
...and it continues from there until the end of the song.
So, now that I have two usable halves of that take, I need to find an edit point, mark everything,
cut, and splice it all together.
When we were listening to it, every time I used the big "airplane" signal to mark the
errant note from the bass guitar, there was also a bass drum strike that happens right
there, that I think would be a good edit point.
Drums are usually very good edit points because the transient sound will mask any potential
artifact of an edit.
And it's an easy thing to track down when you're listening back.
So, I'm gonna play this back, and I'm gonna mark the tape with my white China marker
as I go.
I should point out - pay attention to what head you're working off of, because if you
are working off the repro head and you mark your sync head, that's going to affect your
edit, and vice versa.
In this case, I'm working off the sync head, so I'm gonna mark right here.
So now I'll play it.
I'll tap a couple of times so that I'm in tempo with the song - it'll help me visually.
And then I will find the note in question that I want to use as the edit, and at that
point I'll zoom in and kind of zero-in on right where that note is. I'll show you that
in a second.
[take 1 plays]
[sound of tape being moved]
... so that'll be the bass drum note.
So, my next step is to solo this up - to solo the bass drum track up and really zero-in
on it so that I can mark it exactly where it's struck.
So now that I know where that note was hit, I can put the Studer in "EDIT" mode, and because
it's solo-ed up, all I'm hearing is the bass drum.
And there it is, as I suspected.
So now, I'm going to just try and find the exact spot where it's struck, and I'm gonna
both listen to it and I can also use the peak meters on this machine - it'll do PEAK or
VU - as a way of visualizing if I'm in the right spot.
And once I find it, then I'll mark it.
[sound of tape being moved slowly back and forth]
Some marks are thinner than others but
now I know where it is.
And another thing that I would do, if the hash mark didn't already show me where I was,
would be to just mark where the edit point is, so that I know where the usable part of
the song is, and where the part that i'm gong to get rid of is.
So now I've found the beginning of my edit, I'm going to un-solo those bass drum channels
and listen for the end of my edit.
[take 1 plays, ends]
Same thing -
[take 2 plays]
So now I'll solo the channel up, find it, mark it.
[sound of tape being moved slowly back and forth]
I'm trying to get so you can see the mark.
...just gonna check that...
...yep, that's good.
That is dead-center.
And ... should mark where...
that way I'll know this is the part to be edited out.
Now I cut and splice.
If this was much more than a couple of seconds, I would probably wind it onto what we call
a "gash reel", which is just a pace for discarded edits.
Today, I'm gonna just let it fall on the floor.
When you re-join spliced tape - I try to avoid the slots, just cause I feel like it joins
a little easier.
So I grab my splicing tape, give myself 2 1/2 - 3 inches of tape,
start in the middle, and then work my way to the edges.
So I would grab either a Q-tip or, if you don't have one, just use a fingernail, and
just try and flatten it out and work out any air pockets or bubbles.
Make it as flat as you can.
That looks good.
Then you have to trim off any excess splicing tape, very carefully.
Put it back on the reel,
around the machine.
So we'll wind it back, and check our work.
[edit master take plays]
...and there you have it - a multi-track splice, so that we have an edit master that we can mix from.
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