STONE
WALL'S HELPFUL HINTS FOR
RECORDING VOCALS TO ACCOMPANIMENT TAPES
If you are planning on singing to an accompaniment tape for your recording
project, there are several things you need to know about use of accompaniment
tapes for recording purposes.
1. "Tape Hiss" and "Tape Generation
Loss": There are two basic formats for recording: analog and
digital. Cassette tapes are analog; compact disks ("CD") and digital
audio tapes ("Dat") are digital formats. Analog tape machines operate
by pulling a plastic tape with magnetic information across a magnetic head.
The magnetic head processes the magnetic information and produces the sound.
Each time the tape is used, the tape suffers wear and tear as the analog machine's
transport pulls the tape from one reel of the tape cartridge, over the magnetic
head (friction involved here), to the reel on the other side of the tape cartridge
. Over a period of time the tape can fatigue (stretch) and wear out. This
fatigue and wearing out of the tape can alter the pitch (tuning) of the music
being sung to. Digital formats such as a CD do not have a direct touch of
the digital information because CDs use lasers to read the digital information;
DAT machines use tape similar to analog but of a higher quality, and thus
the tape hiss is greatly reduced. Additionally, the information is in a digital
format rather than analog and there is no generation loss as found with analog
tapes. Accompaniment tapes, by their very nature, are at lease one generation
removed from the original source. If you make a copy of an accompaniment tape,
then that is a second generation removed from the original source. Each time
the analog tape is pulled across the magnetic head, there is generated a "tape
hiss". When an analog tape is recorded, the tape hiss is likewise recorded
to the new recording (next generation) of the tape. With each generation of
a tape being recorded, the quality of the information is diminished. This
is referred to as "generation loss".
2. "Public performance" versus "Recording":
Most accompaniment tapes will have copyright notices and language to the effect
that they are intended for public performance only and not for recording.
Most accompaniment tapes are not available in digital format intentionally
so that the work product of the accompaniment tape folks cannot be reproduced
in a high quality manner and used in place of live musicians in the recording
studio. When digital formats for accompaniment tapes are available, they usually
cost over $100.00 per song and normally include a license to record. You
are responsible for compliance with all copyright and license laws. See Stone
Wall's "Copyright Infringement Notice".
3. "Stone Wall's Procedure/Advise": Stone Wall
normally dumps (records) the accompaniment tape to digital format and the
musician(s) will then sing and are recorded digitally. Because of the tape
hiss and generation loss attributable to analog recordings, especially when
compared with the high quality equipment used at Stone Wall Studio, there
is often a marked difference in the quality of the recorded track versus the
quality of the vocal tract recorded at Stone Wall. Nonetheless, we use our
equipment to enhance and clean up, as much as possible depending on the quality
of the tape presented, the accompaniment tape. To get the best possible recording,
we suggest that you buy a new accompaniment tape(s) of the song(s) you want
to record. Make a copy of the original tape to practice singing to. Bring
the original accompaniment tape to the studio with you and we will use the
best generation to go with your singing.
We hope this will help you leave Stone Wall with as good a recording
as
possible if you choose to use accompaniment tapes.
Thank You!!!!
NOTE: When a singer uses an accompaniment tape to record
a demo or other project, the singer assumes all responsibility for compliance
with copyright laws.
