The London Philharmonic’s recording in Ludwigshaven, in 1936, represents the beginning of the march of the magnetic tape recording technology to becoming the standard of the music production for half a century. After the World War II, the German magnetophone technology ended up in the hands of the Allies, and within just a few years the Americans adapted it, improved on it, and started manufacturing it themselves. Ampex Electrical and Manufacturing company became one of the first successful producers of tape recorders, and Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing company, or 3M, became one of the first recording tape manufacturers in the country. As early as 1948, a music and movie superstar of the time, Bing Crosby, started not only recording his hit ABC radio network show using Ampex, Model 200A recorder, and 3M, Type 111 tape, but also invested 50,000 dollars in Ampex, and his Bing Crosby Enterprises became Ampex West Coast distributor. You couldn’t get a higher endorsement than that in the industry at the time. And sure enough, everyone followed suit, in spite of the steep price tag of these machines. The 200A was 4,000 dollars, which is almost 40,000 dollars in todays value. Nevertheless, the radio networks and the leading recording studios, one by one, acquired tape recorders and started using them in the production and broadcasting work, led by the ABC radio network which bought additional 12 units of the Model 200A in 1948, after acquiring the initial two for the Crosby show earlier that year. Which brings us to the time that the LPs and the 45s were introduced on the market. Remember? We talked about it. How CBS came out with the LP record in 1948, and RCA came out with the 45 format record in 1949, both of which were of much higher audio quality than old 78s. Actually, the term High Fidelity originates from this time, when it was used to distinguish the new record formats quality from the old. Well, the tape recorder was a high fidelity instrument as well; actually of a higher fidelity than LPs and 45s, and it was the perfect machine to use to record the material that would be transferred onto those new high fidelity records. Plus, using a tape recorder, you could record, erase, record, erase, cut, paste, splice, edit to your heart’s desire, and then make a master record disc for duplication from the final version of the tape. And not destroy a master disc every time you make a mistake cutting the live music performance directly to it, which was the case until this time. The editing capabilities and possibilities using direct to master disc recording were extremely limited. The tape was much more flexible editing medium, and its advantages became obvious very quickly, for the radio broadcasting work, as well for the music production work. And so the sales of the tape recorders grew steadily every year. In 1952 - 150,000; in 1953 – 200,000; in 1954 – 225,000; in 1955 – 360,000; in 1956 – over 400,000 were sold. Even if it had just one audio track. But wait, why not have more tracks on a tape recorder? It turned out, there was no reason to have just one track, and so two and three-track tape recorders became a standard issue in the 50s and even throughout the 60s. And now, instead of having to record the whole band and the singer onto one tape track, you could split the instruments onto two tracks and record a singer onto the third one, and mix the balance between them later, as you play back the recorded tape. At first, all tracks had to be recorded at the same time, as the recording head was capable of only full on and full off state across the tracks, but even doing it that way represented a fundamental change in the music production methodology. Many of the seminal record producer Phil Spector’s so-called “wall of sound” recordings, and numerous Motown hits, were recorded using these three-track tape recorders. By the way, did you notice the term “mix” a few sentences back? As in mixing the balance between the tracks after they were recorded. Well, this is its origin. The mix. You know, the “we’ll fix it in the mix” thing that you still hear in the control rooms to this day. This is its birthplace. Ampex took it one step further, though, and created the multi-track recording method that will remain the standard in the music production to this very day. It devised a tape machine that could record on each track separately, using its revolutionary Sel-Sync function, that enabled it to select a track to record on, while synchronously listening to other tracks that were already recorded. Thus the name Sel-Sync. That way, you could record each track, one at the time, and as the tracks get recorded, you could listen to them back, while recording other tracks in sync with those that were already recorded. The guitar legend Les Paul was by that time already experimenting with different multi-track techniques, and the first Ampex 8-track tape recorder with the Sel-Sync function was created specifically for him. It came to be known as the “Octopus”. 7 feet tall, weighing 250 pounds, Ampex Model 5258 was delivered to Les Paul in 1957. It’s price tag at the time was 10,000 dollars, which would be close to 85,000 dollars today. The following year, Atlantic record label acquired one too, and became the first label in history to use a multi-track tape recorder with a Sel-Sync function in its studios. And the music production would never be the same again. More affordable, 4-track tape recorders were brought to the market, and became ubiquitous in the recording studios in the 60s. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones recorded their 60s hits using these. The Beach Boys recorded their seminal 1966 album Pet Sounds using 4-tracks, as well as new 8-track tape recorders that were beginning to be produced at the time. EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, the studios where the Beatles recorded, acquired its first 8-track recorder in late 1968, and portions of the Beatles’ White Album were recorded using those new 8-tracks; so was their single Hey Jude, as well as their 1969 album Abbey Road. Of course if we can have 4 tracks, and we can have 8 tracks, why not have even more? Just make the tape wider and add more tracks on the recording and playback heads. And sure enough, the 16-track tape machines, using 2-inch wide tapes, started to appear. In 1968, CBS installed one of the first of these new machines in their New York City music studios, and recorded the Blood, Sweat, and Tears second album, using it as the main multi-track recorder. Grateful Dead followed suit, and then Frank Zappa, Jefferson Airplane, and so on, until the 16-track machines replaced 8-tracks as a standard fixture in the professional recording studios throughout the 70s.
