GatorBlog

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.

Continue Reading »

These days I see way more advertising, way more special deals (and so-called special deals) flooding my inbox than ever before.  Businesses that have been around for a very long time going out of existence in a very short time.  Lots of “friends” always looking for a job, then disappearing when I don’t have anything to offer them.  Sad times indeed!

Fear not, the great companies will survive because they will continue to market, sell, and find creative ways to hang in there.  This commitment and creativity will set them apart when things pick up and really launch them.  The old dogs tend to get complacent and then uncertain, and the leading companies of the last boom are usually not the great ones of the next boom.  Times like these are opportunities for those who are prepared to weather them, and have the conviction to plow ahead!  Oh by the way…we plan to be one of these

  Continue Reading »

Hey all, I had shut off anonymous comments because the spambots had found me.  I opened it back up a couple weeks ago and it appears they’ve moved on (whew!).  I’ll try to keep it open, if they come back maybe I can find a CAPTCHA or something to keep things clean.  Also, if you’re into RSS Feeds, you can subscribe to the GatorBlog as well, just grab the feed down on the left where it says “Feeds RSS” or from this link.  I try to address mainly recording topics, though I do get distracted by life on occasion!

Speaking of recording topics, I have a couple RiffWorks tutorials on the website that have been viewed thousands of times (I hope by real people instead of spambots lol).  You can check them out at http://audio.gator-studios.com/ if you’re interested.

If you’ve used these, I’d like to know if you’ve found them useful for getting better results from RiffWorks?

Cheers, J.J.

Welcome to the official Gator-Studios.com Riffworks 32-bit blog!

  Continue Reading »