Electrical Audio How-To: Editing a Multitrack Tape

Electrical Audio staff engineer and building manager Jon San Paolo walks you through a common situation where multi track tape edits come in handy.
www.electricalaudio.com
Shot by Ed Bornstein and Adam Luksetich
Edited by Ariana DeSimone
Audio mixed by Ed Bornstein
Demo Music by Lardo
Intro Music by Ed Bornstein

[@icespittingfire]

The correct bass note is very well chosen.

[@DerMensch1]

You guys have totally inspired me to move more towards an analog recording setup. One of the reasons I and so many others have hesitated to make that leap is because this knowledge isn't readily available. Thank you so much for sharing it. Really. Please keep vids like this coming. Fantastic and incredibly helpful.

[@JohnMorris-ge6hq]

And very expensive. Best piece of advance I can give is: 1. NEVER NEVER buy multitrack tape machine without a Head Report. And it doesn't matter if it is your brother in law or someone who promises you they are good. Make NO EXCEPTIONS. 2. Buy a machine that is fully restored. Keep in mind even little analog multitracks machine repairs will be expensive. 3. As attractive as they are stay away for pre Logic machines. Late 70's and beyond is ok. Don't get me wrong a Ampex MM-1100 or a Scully 284-12 sounds real nice but you don't want the headaches. 2 inch tape is REALLY EXPENSIVE. Buy in bulk. As in 50 or more.

[@manfredpseudowengorz]

... Sweet child of summer, watch the calibration procedure videos...

[@Mario_DiSanto]

@@JohnMorris-ge6hq You're really suggesting someone who is interested in getting into tape to buy 50 rolls? No one starting out should be buying 50 rolls ...

[@wolfetteplays8894]

@@Mario_DiSanto they should, otherwise it won’t be worth it

[@nicolle.mp3]

I had no idea you guys had an KZbin channel, let alone such an informative one at that! Please keep the videos coming!

[@crackthefoundation_]

Just looking at that 2" tape and knowing how expensive it is compared to a literally free digital recording makes me nervous nevermind recording to it god damn

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

It's not risky once you know how to do it!

[@jambam6176]

*AMAZING!!!...* That tape splice actually sounded better than a lot of the splices I do in ProTools. *;-D*

[@miracledaysband]

I have witnessed this live when my own band was recording in the 90's. I was so nervous when the producer cut the tape!

[@GilesDMT]

6:26 was my favorite part

[@BaphometsLounge]

I have always wanted to see how this worked, thank you so much for this excellent demonstration. I myself will gladly stick to digital!

[@visionofdisorder]

"I myself will gladly stick to digital!" - yeah, this is fascinating to watch but i don't envy this guy at all. seems like an absolute nightmare to work like that.

[@BaphometsLounge]

You ain't kidding@@visionofdisorder!

[@billlaut608]

​@@visionofdisorderActually, once you have the skills, editing multitrack is rather straightforward. And rather fun! But I'm definitely old-school.

[@avolution2449]

Hats off to you for keeping a straight face every-time you hit playback - what a horrible row ! :-) Great video though, thanks. Can I please request a ' using SMPTE offsets ' for a future How-to ?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Yeah, it's a good idea. We should explore synchronization in a few ways!

[@giuliano8031]

6:25 looks like someone made an easter egg.

[@christopantz]

casual 3 piece that plays a travis bean wedge, a veleno, and..... the congas?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Casual? Ouch!

[@Racosz]

What's the name of the band? Sounds pretty powerful. Really love these vids with all those informative techniques from the analog world. Well done job, guys.

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

It's Lardo, great Chicago band.

[@miracledaysband]

This was great!

[@crackthefoundation_]

None of the tape cutting guides were perfectly straight, rather increasingly curved. Why?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

90-degree (perpendicular) cuts have the potential to create noise. This is from a patent on an angled-cut splicing block: "(1) Magnetic recording is accomplished by the mixing of bias current and audio currents. When a tape is cut, the inaudible bias current may be cut on one segment where its voltage is above normal, and on another segment where its voltage is below normal. If two tapes to be spliced together exist in this condition, a noise click will be heard from the voltage jump at the splice. Therefore, a slanting cut must be made so that bias voltages present will be averaged and made inaudible at the splice. (2) In cutting and splicing at 90°, some iron oxide may very likely gather at the splice. The gathering of the iron oxide at the splice might, itself, cause noise at the splice. A slanting cut will obviate this effect as well. "

[@conorm2524]

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial I love this shit.

[@tonyneville4425]

Awesome man you work hard you do

[@galleryofrogues]

Really cool video!

[@doctordoctor6515]

It’s hard to describe how much respect I have for this guy. The EA crew seem like a bunch alternative superheroes 🦸🏻‍♀️

[@Broyale26]

I'd fuck 'em.

[@stevegladden1364]

When do you use the other cutting angles vs. straight cut? Also when you mark up the tape like this, it looks like the next layer (recording grit surface) comes back around and contacts this and leaving some deposits on it which seem like that would be bad? True? just live with it? The lesser of two evils in this case? :) I also watched the rest of the video and see you touching the recording side of the tape as well as dragging across the aluminum surface to cut it. :) Maybe not the world's most critical recording :) Very cool video very cool tape drive.

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Hi, You should use angled cuts when editing between any music or other program material, straight cuts only between program and leader. Tape is a physically resilient medium, part of what we wanted to do with this video series is show that tape is not fragile, scary, unapproachable to the uninitiated. We have transferred tapes that have been in basement floods, that have been stuffed into a box unwound, causing hundreds of creases, etc etc etc. There are often dropouts of other audio losses, but it speaks to the resilience of the medium that the audio is recoverable and the audio transferred even in these dire cases is quite good. Remember that tape stores audio magnetically, so your principal concern for preserving the audio should be to minimize contact with magnetic fields, either permanent or electromagnetic. It would not be great if you were very sloppy with a grease pencil to the extent that it caused buildup on the heads, but that is so far from the case with a small streak in a dozen places on a tape that packs against an adjacent layer that there is no compromise on the audio, nor any damage to equipment risked. As long as you have reasonably clean hands, the same is true about natural oils and such on your fingers when you touch tape- there's a near-zero risk of damaging the tape or corrupting the audio. You should still wash your hands though because it's gross if you don't. The headblock is machined very smooth, and remember that aluminum is non-ferrous, meaning it cannot store a magnetic charge that would risk erasure of audio. In short, be careful, but don't be worried.

[@stevegladden1364]

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Excellent reply and thanks for taking the time to leave it. I have some experience with much simpler equipment. It's really nice to be able to ask questions here and learn new things. I'm pretty comfortable working on this kind of stuff and this is an area I have not done a whole lot in.. Plenty of playing growing up years ago with four track stuff, fixing it modifying the bias frequency a bit etc. :) Take care!

[@AragonDubs]

I wish you a very good musical career, blessings!

[@KenjiKitahara]

Nailed it

[@WatchesnguitarsDK]

Wow! So cool and 'simple'. At least in theory. That poor guy that spliced The Black Album 30 years ago...

[@kibibu]

On the classic albums there's a scene where James complains about a vocal spice that literally nobody has ever noticed, 20 years after it was recorded.

[@weltfremd]

i always smile if i hear bloody edits in the radio

[@JohnMorris-ge6hq]

Billy Joel's single edit, "My Life" worse spice ever.

[@conorm2524]

You can hear edits in Sad But True by Metallica.

[@popsongtom]

Great work describing your process, John !

[@drofnoise555]

what is the purpose of different slots for different cutting angles?

[@lachijames6213]

Fade ins, fade outs and crossfading (in place of a hard edit)

[@AllenPendleton]

I grew up in the tape era and did edit tape myself but geez I say JUST PUNCH IN and be done with it.

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Punching is the right "tool" in a lot of cases, and we have a video about that! However, in some cases, like punching a full band or drums, punching is almost always riskier than editing. It's much easier to have the band pick the song up from just before they blew it and then edit the two pieces together on the multitrack.

[@ErikZmusic]

That brings back memories. When I was at Berklee in the late 90's one of my first assignments was to edit this 1/4" test reel. Something like 50-100 edits. Took hours. Removing long pauses in spoken word. Editing two takes together like this. All sorts of stuff. It always amazed me how well it turns out too. I only got a few chances on 2" tape, cuz by the time I was using the 24 track, Protools 3.0 had just come out and they were moving away from analog. Got to do my final project on a Studer 2" and SSL though. God those were the days. :-) I still have a couple reels in storage, but haven't' recorded analog in 20+ years. :-/

[@wolfetteplays8894]

Go back to it. Digital music plays Slave wages. The more people edit analog, the easier it will be to directly sort artists

[@JoeCoutureMusicCouture]

I am so thankful for DAW's😅

[@LittleZdy]

Amazing thanks Jon. You make it look so easy.

[@t.j4341]

What would be a good price for an Studer tape machine?

[@Bring_MeSunshine]

Excellent to watch, this, Jon. Love the pre-edit countdown markers with the chinagrapgh, too - neat. Only just found this channel. Good find, I say. Workers unite, you have nothing to lose but your your dependence on non-destructive editing and tape emulation plugins

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Thanks for your comment, and your solidarity. I must say, however, that our digital brethren are audio workers, too!

[@Bring_MeSunshine]

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Ha, ha. I have to come clean, I am one of the digital brethren, because of cost and space, but my journey started far enough back, that I have some experience with tape. It's just good to see a channel doing something different. Tape isn't the only thing I subbed to this channel, for. There's good, no nonsense, engineering, which is valid as ever, and transferable. Keep it up

[@MrGianfra93]

Really cool! thanks for this. A question: is the sound being reproduced from the exact middle of the tape head?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Indeed!

[@johnkaplun9619]

Inside the head there's a tiny donut shaped electromagnet with a tiny radial gap cut through it. The gap is where the magnetic field is focused and the recording occurs. The width of the gap affects calibration and performance in a few ways.

[@8068]

Nice job. I've never seen an oscilloscope mounted in a Studer remote panel. What's the o-scope used for?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Aligning azimuth and as a "phase checker."

[@bob4analog]

I so love tape editing! Nice vid!

[@LtdBoomer]

Wow..how easy it is to work with a DAW.

[@simonsays335]

This knowledge is literally gold dust, I have always wanted to know how this is done, thank you so much for sharing :)

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Literally?

[@simonsays335]

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial I have not experienced pedantry for some time now :)

[@Superdelphinus]

@@simonsays335 proof these guys are scientists

[@alcyonecrucis]

A master at work !😊

[@BigFatCock0]

Are those Jumpsuits required to work at Electrical Audio?

[@saam6768]

No but they all want to impress Steve.

[@colbydrums924]

I know this was a long time ago but in another Steve talks about it. He says a lot of time per day was taken up by choosing what to wear, and hes a guy who likes to go so he decided a long time ago to just have a uniform worksuit every day and save time. Efficient guy!

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

No, but they help identify an engineer in a session, which is useful in large sessions with a lot of personnel. They also identify us as workers, aligned with the struggle of workers worldwide.

[@sonikboom007]

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial sell me one gawdammit!

[@drofnoise555]

sonikboom good merch sale. id buy 3

[@duncan-rmi]

I wouldn't solo the kick so that everything else is totally muted- if the kick drum (or whatever) is busy, you could easily pick the wrong beat. leaving the rest of the tracks up but at a lower level will tell you you're still in the right place. depends on the song, of course, but as a general rule.... there may also be something else that prevents that being a good edit point, if the band are less inclined to do matching performances... I've done thousands of edits on 1/4" on up, even 2" quad video tape.

[@Sckott01]

That's a DARING spice. I would have just 24/48 to a DAC and edited it post mix.

[@PhatLvis]

Presume the band name is a self-deprecating joke.

[@666cordyceps666]

that's how it's done, kiddos! mew! Great content! Glad to find you!

[@michaeldowning796]

outstanding job

[@saysthemanbehindthemask]

Good day! I'd like to ask if I could use about 15 seconds of your footage in a documentary video that has a moment related to analog editing. Your's is the best I could find. I'd appreciate it if you give permission for this. I will of course credit you. Only cutting and taping of the tape will be shown pretty much. Thank you in advance!

[@massapower]

Like a True SURGEON !! 😁👍

[@marnetmar6246]

This is the coolest fucking channel ever

[@raybrodeur3886]

I just have a Tascam 488 and can just punch and re record in the bad spot and “TADA” it’s fixed.Can’t you do that with your more expensive reel to reel to reel?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

You can punch on our machines, yes. Splicing is for when you have sections the full arrangement that you need to put together. Punching is always less destructive and easier than editing, but in some cases where there's some special part of a performance on a take, and another special section on a different take, you would have to edit.

[@DougGrinbergs]

Boomer recording guy here. What kind of recorder is that? I know MCI, 3M, Studer, Otari, Stephens...

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Studer A820 MCH

[@floridapunkarchivist]

Greetings from Florida. Thanks for inspiring me to never do tape. Not worth it, kinda cool, but let's just be real with each other and recognize the fact that in 2021 this is pretty much useless....yes let the hate comments from the "vinyl sounds better than CD" crowd...pretty much the same peeps lol....love Electrical Audio but again...let's be real...I get amazing results from a Presonus Studiolive 32R to the point where no one gives a crap about what the heck was used for the record. Good mics are your best friend....not a tape machine or a console

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

If you're an archivist, as your name suggests, the strongest argument for tape is its archival durability as a medium. Tape lasts considerably longer than a human life, a hard drive functions for 5 or maybe 10.

[@floridapunkarchivist]

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Absolutely agree with you there and fully aware of the possibility of those that do not constantly backup based on the latest technology. EA just so you know I do plan on providing some stems to be mixed within the next few months or so hopefully...not a hater...just a 39 year old getting amazing sounds out of their 12 x 14 room

[@thecruddybug4437]

Thank you for the video - why are some of the slots for cutting slanted? Why would you want to cut slanted? Does that create a kind of crossfade?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Yes, exactly. The more angled the cut the longer the crossfade. The fade "cascades" across tracks more, as well, but even inside of each track the cross fade is longer.

[@2x_eyes]

band sounds like Polvo or Grass Is Green

[@HANGINGOUTWITHAUDIOPHILES]

beautifully done !

[@arend66]

Great job man, was a great master class.

[@charlesbonkley]

No amount of splicing can salvage that song from abomination... ...but awesome to see how this is done! Thank you for the awesome video!

[@northernbrother1258]

Bass players...amarite?! 🤣

[@HenrikHass]

😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😮😮😮

[@danielwetzel7777]

God y'all are the coolest

[@jargero8203]

What if I only have one yellow China marker?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

That won't do, nope. Cancel the session, send everyone home.

[@LlewynDaviesTheThird]

This is great. Thanks

[@nisabkerlekere7241]

Pain in the ass.....

[@xmaligno]

BRUTAL! 🔥

[@Mr_A_Mia]

Wow. Cool!

[@donhill3rd]

need to borrow my tuner maybe?

[@warshipsatin8764]

your ears need tuned

[@khonsuthecore4788]

6:22

[@due_2477]

so cool

[@UVG]

06:26 love that guy.

[@hoaovan2752]

Do you still have this set?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

What now? What do you mean?

[@hoaovan2752]

@@ElectricalAudioOfficial Do you sell this set?

[@TonySmithDrums]

That’s one awful song! Good video though!

[@saysthemanbehindthemask]

I kind of like it

[@valeriomina3822]

Hi =) could I know the band name?

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Hi, the band is Lardo. A wonderful Chicago band, check them out!

[@valeriomina3822]

Yeeeeeah! Super fuckin’ sound! I'm listening to it in my studio now! I love them! I love your “Electrical Audio” sound :)

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Thank you!

[@Beatgeneration2010]

Dreadful noise!

[@arkadybron1994]

I have to say, that I am somewhat amazed that you are still cutting tape in the music industry and haven't moved on to non-linear editing.

[@arminemrulov6483]

Yeah sure I'll just grab a 16 track, a anolog desk and a band that I have laying around in my closet..

[@vennum122]

Thank God for Fl Studio.

[@wasiuuu1]

what i joy to see that edit ..but that song ...... nooooooo !!!!! thx for video :-)

[@travisstewart4112]

I feel like this band could have gotten away with that ‘bad’ bass note.......

[@TheRealNewBlackMusic]

Yes this is the way we used to do things back in the 1970s. doesn't make much sense in the 21st century. Track to tape edit in digital 😉

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

Thank you for your opinion.

[@pbee73]

Its nice the world of analog but this method is extremely tedious and requires skill. Very little room for error and once you cut that tape, there is no "undo" button. Unless that track's final medium is analog you are better off doing all of the editing in a DAW.

[@JohnMorris-ge6hq]

Just to add to your good point. Most people aren't aware of how many edits (off the quarter inch masters) were made on a lot of the classic Rock albums. For example, The Who's 1973 album, "Quadrophenia" has roughly 400 edits in it. I am not sure if it's from the 2 inch or quarter inch tape. Unlike most albums "Dark Side Of The Moon" can be mixed from beginning to end of the album off of one single 2 inch 16 track tape. The 2 inch tape has edits at every song if not more. There was no automation in those days.

[@arfansthename]

Though, you can re-splice it.

[@conorm2524]

@@arfansthename Did engineers save up cut tape and splice them all together for spare tape?

[@alanboro]

All this hassle is just ONE button on a digital daw. Cut, concatenate, cross fade. Literally takes one second. Here it takes dozens of minutes

[@ElectricalAudioOfficial]

We are simply demonstrating how you edit tape, we don't insinuate in the video that editing on tape is quicker or easier.

[@jtsotherone]

this was an instructional video, a skilled tape op would do that edit very quickly, not 'dozens of minutes'

[@MrLostsoul1234]

Doesn't take that long at all. This was slowed down for the video. Think about back in the 60s, when labels and studios were pumping out dozens of singles per week. Much faster than what labels do today and they did it all by hand with "inferior" equipment and methods. I remember hearing from a friend when he started out at Abbey Road in the 60s. He'd have to make dozens of edits to a classical recording tape in an hour while everyone was on lunch.

[@ProfessorGroyper]

Next time record a band that doesn't sound like ass.

[@iHateFakeRap]

It clips.