Sonoma Wire Works has had FourTrack out for a while, but I’m just getting around to iPhoning myself so I’ll give a review of it! First off, FourTrack is a four-track. What the heck is a four-track? Let’s look at some brief history.
Back in “the day” (as in way back in the early 1960′s and before), recording was a little bit different than today. Good studios had things like record-cutting lathes, driven by a falling weight. Gravity was much better at keeping time than motors of the day. In these olden times, you didn’t mix tracks, you mixed people. You moved the people around to balance the sound into the mic. I guess if you told them to move closer in certain sections, they were the original automated faders! They played live, it cut the wax, and if the take was good it was done.
I’ll skip the Les Paul part (you should read up on the man, we wouldn’t be here in recording without him), but the jist is it was figured out how to record more than 1 track at a time, with tape. It cost a bunch of money, but it was doable so over time studios with a bunch of money started putting them in. Let’s keep the cliff notes version going…in 1967 the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s” which was recorded on…a four track.
Now let’s be honest with ourselves. Abbey Road Studios has unique acoustics, and the very best equipment money can buy. A large selection of the best mic’s, preamps, compressors etc. were at their disposal. But all crammed down into 4 tracks of tape. So while the iPhone mic is not exactly a Neumann, for $10 you’re at least mixing and making decisions like the Beatles! Even better, you don’t have to limit yourself to 4 tracks at the end of the day.
The final piece of history is mine. In the late 80s we borrowed a 4 track to record our band demo. We couldn’t afford one, but it was the holy grail at the time for a band. And we had what turned out to be a hell of an engineer make our tracks sing! In 1992 I finally saved up enough for my own 4 track. I also had a MIDI interface and a Roland D-110 to trigger drums off SMPTE code striped on the 4 track. That plus the computer, was probably around $3K. Ten bucks, plus being able to use Instant Drummers in RiffWorks would have been simply too hard to comprehend even in 1992!
My usual long and boring preamble being done, let’s look at FourTrack. First, even though it’s from Sonoma Wire Works (makers of RiffWorks), there are no riffs or bars here. It’s a linear recording program, just like a 4 track. The program allows 1 mono track at a time to be recorded, while the other 3 play back. You can pick a spot in the middle of a song to record on a track (a la punch in) with the time wheel (or whatever it’s called). Each of the four tracks can be mixed and panned independently. Just like a 4 track.
Some things to note:
- There is no input level control. You need to mix like in the old days (move the sound source instead of the fader). It’s not a big deal, just keep it from going over +0db. One of the promo vids shows a drummer playing with some version of Hot Sticks to keep the volume down, and putting the iPhone behind pillows. It worked fine. Be creative!
- There are no effects in the program. If we were stuck forever with the iPhone version, that might not make some folks too happy, especially since we’re recording on a little iPhone mic. I’ll talk both why this is not a big deal, and what you can do if you really want to be crazy and actually record songs intended to be final versions on this thing!
- There is no foldback or monitoring. In English, you can’t hear what you are recording through the headphones. We’re all used to this, but it’s not the end of the world. You can hear what’s playing, just slide the headphones off a bit if you can’t hear what you are recording. This didn’t turn out to be a big deal.
- It’s been a long time since I used a 4 track recorder. If this is all you are going to use, there’s things you need to think about before you do them vs. a DAW or RiffWorks. Like the order you record tracks, which ones get bounced and which you’ll want to be separate at final mix time (like the vocals). Fortunately you don’t have to think too hard about this if you use a computer to mix in the end. I’ll explain more!
A real example
Like most dudes I learn best by messing around with something. So I jumped right in to try and write something quick on the fly and record it. For me, RiffWorks is the best songwriting tool on the planet. FourTrack to me is the best “I’m in the car and have this idea” songwriting tool on the planet. And you can take your stuff right into RiffWorks or any other DAW. Best of both worlds! (Van Halen, not Hannah Montana lol)
First thing, you want to force quit Safari. Things got stuck after goofing around just a bit, so I headed over to Sonoma’s site to see what was what. There’s a lot competing for memory in an iPhone, and at Sonoma’s suggestion, I force-quit Safari and had no hiccups after that. Then it’s a matter of arming a track, sliding to record, and recording!
I talked about the old days of SMPTE and outboard MIDI to have a computerized drum or metronome to play to. FourTrack includes several metronome options, including 3 actual drummers. You can set the BPM on the metronome. This is important if you are going to add Instant Drummers or other MIDI drums later. Since you can’t export the metronome drummer, you’re gonna want to. So think out the tempo of your song and record to it.
The simplicity of the whole thing made it go very quickly. Sure I had my usual vast quantity of redoing tracks, but it was no slower than RiffWorks or a DAW. With the ability to re-record or punch in a section, I was able to think up the lyrics a line at a time without having to redo them all. I recorded 2 guitar tracks, a bass and a vocal in no time…while writing my short masterpiece in real time. You are not worrying about effects or inputs (other than keeping the level within reason), so you’re focused on only one thing – playing.
So, with 4 tracks all used up, it was time to “bounce”. For you young folk, bouncing goes like this. You mix the tracks you have the best you can, and “record” the mix to 2 tracks for stereo, freeing 2 more tracks up. For you older folks, yes I know we used to bounce 2 or 3 tracks to one mono one…how did we ever survive? lol You can bounce to the current song, or to a copy. I chose to bounce to a copy, i.e. a new song file keeping the original intact. I like to be safe!
4 track thinking…or not!
With 2 free tracks, I decided to record a backing vocal and a solo. Once these were complete, it was mix time. At this point I discovered a problem. I’ve long since forgotten my 4 track ways in favor of seemingly unlimited tracks in the computer. My vocals were uneven, but were bounced. No way to change any levels or re-record now!
I figured, this is just a test so not a big deal…it was time to get this tune out into the world. To do that, it’s computer time. I’m sure there’s somebody out there with no computer and just an iPhone (which would be odd, since you need the computer with iTunes to even activate the thing, but I digress). For the 99.9% of the rest of us, there’s 2 ways to get the music out of the phone and into the real world. First is through RiffWorks, either one of the paid versions or T4. I’m a longtime user of RiffWorks Standard, so I fired it up, hit import, and it gave me the opportunity to import from the iPhone right into RiffWorks. I picked the song file I wanted, and poof there were 4 tracks now in my SongLayer, still with their panning info. Cool!
Now that each track was a RiffWorks layer, I could have added compression, eq or whatever to each one. I chose not to, so I could show what the raw FourTrack song sounded like. I did add one thing, which was drums. The metronome drummer is very cool, but doesn’t come along for the ride. If you have Instant Drummers in RiffWorks, you’re gonna get much better tracks anyway with the variation and intensity. ”Uh Gator, there’s no drummers for the SongLayer.” Yeah I know, but if you recorded to a metronome or metronome drummer, you know the BPM. Simply make some new Riffs at that BPM, pick the drummer settings you want, and throw them up in the song bar for as long as the song is. Think of the regular riffs now as your drum track. Mix and match however you want. Done.
Here’s the raw output of the recordings from the iPhone, on the iPhone’s mic, with Drummerheads “Four On The Floor” direct from RiffWorks.
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Abbey Road quality? Nah. Does it get the point across? Sure does! I’m a big proponent of writing first, then recording. In other words, get the song worked out first, then focus hard on recording each track. When they are the best they can be, then set about to working on the mix, the effects etc. When that’s the best it can be, then worry about mastering. FourTrack fits right in for me in that respect.
But, not being exactly content, the next night I went back at it. When syncing to the computer, it gives you an http address for the phone with a specific port, or tells you you can import directly into RiffWorks. The first time I went right into RiffWorks, so this time I thought I’d check out what happens when I point a web browser at it. A nice interface came up, complete with both the original and the copied/bounced versions of the songs, and the ability to download each wav file individually. Nice! I grabbed the 4 original tracks I had bounced, plus the 2 new ones. Now I had all 6 tracks! That got me thinking, if I kept bouncing to a copy, whatever I recorded I could still get at all the original tracks when I got to the computer. I could bounce 3 times and get 10 tracks. Or keep going and get more. This FourTrack is not really a 4 track, it just looks like one!
With all 6 tracks downloaded to the PC, I decided to import them into a traditional DAW program, Mackie Tracktion. They popped in with no issue, and I grabbed some quick grooves from Toontrack’s EZ Drummer for the drum part. Since I had all the original tracks, I did some quick work to them. The bass was problematic, since not only was that little mic not ideal for the task, it also was affected by my room and placement. Bass and small rooms don’t mix very well, and a mic will pick up the big differences in frequencies. I threw some heavy compression and EQ at it, and it came in line better. The vocals got a little eq and some compression to even them out too. The guitars just got a little reverb thrown at one of them to make it sound a bit bigger. A little limiting at the end, and a quick effort results in a new track.
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Studio quality? Maybe not quite my studio quality, but it’s better than some things I’ve worked on in the past. Not bad though, it stands up fine. Given no opportunity to work out mic placement, or use of our beloved direct-in boxes like a GuitarPort/TonePort/PodXT etc. here, I’d say this little experiment worked out quite well.
What can be done if you really really really want studio quality out of FourTrack?
From the input side, it appears you can use an iPOD video cable (with the other end being the red, white and yellow composite output). On the iPhone, the yellow would tie into the mic input (instead of video output of the iPOD). This would give you some capability for input, though whether it’s normal line level I don’t know. With that input, you could plug in a mixer, GuitarPort, etc. to get direct and controlled access for the recording input. A mixer would also give you some ability to monitor directly what you are recording, be they vocals in a mic or a live guitar/bass. From the output side, you could take the red and white and plug them to a mixer or monitors, giving you a better shot at a good mix than using earbuds or headphones. It still won’t be Abbey Road, but it should be on par with any other 16bit 44.1KHz mono recording you could do in a computer. And that’s something Sir George Martin probably would not have been able to conceive of back then!
Overall, FourTrack is really cool. It’s $10 which is a lot in AppStore terms, but let’s think real world. $10 for this? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Everybody should have a copy.
More info at http://www.sonomawireworks.com/iphone/fourtrack/
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I'm J.J......and I'm a Gator!