Using Your Audio/MIDI Sequencer

Now that you're in the studio (or at home), here are the steps you need to take:

Step 1 -- Pick a tempo in beats-per-minute, or BPM. Of course, the best place to pick a tempo is in the rehearsal room -- not the recording studio. Don't waste time in the studio arguing over tempo. You'll have plenty of other stuff to argue about anyway. So we are presuming here that in your digital audio/MIDI sequencer software you have already hashed out the tune's BPM. Enter the tempo (in the appropriate place). If you only have source material that was not recorded to a click, then you have to stick it in your digital audio/MIDI software program and sync it to a click. "Find the Tempo" is not a fun game for most folks, but some remixing engineers are quite good at it.

Step 2 -- Record the song to the click track. Make sure your tape machine is recording at a 44.1 kHz sample rate, since some record at 48 kHz as a default. If you don't record at 44.1 kHz you will have to use analog outputs out of your tape machines and analog inputs to your computer later. Tape machines do not usually have a sample conversion option. Remember, you are synching a computer (slave) to a tape machine (master). Make sure these are working properly. Track the drums first with other instruments playing as scratch takes, then overdub the bass and the rest of the instrumentats one by one while letting the performer hear the click track. Letting each performer hear the click track nice and loud will help. Tracking each instrument one at a time after the drums enables you to concentrate on getting a good sound for each instrument.

You may choose to record onto a tape machine (ADAT, DA88, analog tape recorder, etc.), but you could also record directly into the audio tracks in your digital audio/MIDI sequencing program. Since it's the same the machine generating your click track, this would eliminate having to synchronize the tape machine to the computer if you're going to dump your mixed tracks into the computer. The problem with tracking to computer is that you'll need an excessive amount of computing power. We did our editing on a Macintosh PowerPC 9500/132 with 88 MB of RAM. This did not work well for recording several tracks, but it did work well for editing (which we'll cover on the next installments of this tutorial).

Step 3 -- Whether you tracked to an analog tape machine, or directly into Pro Tools or into another digital audio/MIDI sequencer program, it is now time to mix! Add your fine reverb and delay and do a MONO mix -- most of this will be in mono. Pick one or two instruments that you want to be in stereo and mix those accordingly (um, in stereo).

COFFEEBREAK

If during any step of the recording process you are using a tape machine, you're going to want to make sure that the loudest instrument going to your softare program is going into your computer as close to 0 VU as possible. That way, the rest of the tracks will automatically be somewhat "premixed" and you won't have to change the "Sample level" in the Beatnik Editor Pro later. Our remix worked out well when we followed these steps and later on normalized any low-output tracks. Then we adjusted the level of that specific low -- or high -- output instrument loop in the Beatnik Editor Pro. If you're using a hot rod computer all the time, then you're cooler than all of us and this doesn't pertain to you...so there.

Step 4 -- Now that you have your mix, mute everything but the drums. Make sure no prefader auxiliary sends are corrupting your drums-only tracks. You should hear only drums and the reverb that you put on those drums (if any). Now synchronize your tape machines to the computer, and take your studio monitor mix output out of your patchbay (if you have a patchbay) and put it into the input of your computer, so it goes into one track of your audio program. Now, dump your mono drum track into your computer. Be sure to use analog outs and ins in this step of the process to avoid sample rate problems. If you're using ADATs, they record at a 48 kHz sample rate unless you set them up in the beginning of the session (like I said before) to record at 44.1 kHz. You can use digital I/O's directly into your computer for a pure digital transfer. For stereo tracks you need to add a stereo track in your audio program and then dump the stereo signal into your audio program onto that specific stereo track. Dump every one of the instruments that you are going to use in the remix into the computer (as we did with the drums) at their respective level. But note this, if you please: Do not change the fader levels!

Step 5 -- Did you take that CoffeeBreak? It's important, so be sure to double-check that you understand our CoffeeBreak above. Now you should have complete individual tracks of each instrument that you want to include in your Beatnik remix all recorded into your digital audio/MIDI sequencing software on your computer. You should be able to play any of the tracks back with the click track volume up, and it should still be in time in relation to the click track. If your tracks are out of synch, you should check the steps you've taken up to this point before moving on. But if it's cool, you are now ready to move on to the next step -- manipulating the loops that you want to use.