Saving Tracks before bouncing

[SpikeVelvet]

Here's a question I have about saving tracks before I commit to bouncing. Say I have 2 guitars, bass and a guide vocal laid down. I like the way each track sounds but, I need to bounce something to achieve what I want. Is there a way to "preserve" the original tracks before commiting to the bounce? Should I import them to my pc? Or is there a way to export the tracks to another song on the same SD card? I'm assuming that each track stays where it was recorded and the bounce goes to a V-track. Can I do multiple bounce mixes to different V-tracks to experiment and see what turns out the best? And if I do that and have several bounces on different V-tracks when I go to erase to reclaim the track space is it better to erase the tracks or undo the tracks?

[SdC]

Thanks to the wonders of digital technology, all the original tracks are safe. That's why you bounce to v-tracks. It was only in the old days of 4-track tape recording that you'd had to sacrifice original tracks.

. Can I do multiple bounce mixes to different V-tracks to experiment and see what turns out the best?

yes

And if I do that and have several bounces on different V-tracks when I go to erase to reclaim the track space is it better to erase the tracks or undo the tracks?

Makes no difference. The Undo is only available for your last mixdown anyway, but easier to do!

[64Guitars]

Since you mentioned an SD card and you're talking about bouncing after recording only four tracks, I'll assume that you have a Micro BR.

Contrary to the way it's advertised, the Micro BR is actually a 32-track recorder. That is, each song has 32 locations where you can record a part of your song. So there's no need to erase or record over any of the tracks until you've filled up all 32. However, the Micro BR's built-in mixer only has 4 input channels, so you can only play back 4 of your tracks at a time. That's where v-tracks and bouncing come in. The v-track isn't a track at all. It's just a term that's used to specify which of the 32 tracks is currently assigned to one of the mixer's input channels. The 32 tracks are grouped 8 per mixer channel and you specify which of those 8 tracks is assigned to the corresponding mixer channel by setting its v-track value. When a new song is created, the v-track setting for each mixer channel defaults to 1. So, if you haven't changed the v-track settings, your first four tracks will be recorded to Tr1v1, Tr2v1, Tr3v1, and Tr4v1. To record more tracks, you simply bounce the stereo mix of these four tracks to Tr1v2 and Tr2v2, for example. Now you can set the v-track value of each mixer channel to 2 (the BR actually does this for you when you bounce but you should verify the v-track setting so you know which tracks are playing back and which tracks you'll be recording to). With all of the v-tracks set to 2, you can press Play to hear the stereo mix on Tr1v2 and Tr2v2, and you can record new tracks on Tr3v2 and Tr4v2. There's no need to erase your four original tracks on v1, so leave them there in case you want to edit them later or do a remix.

See the following page for more information:

https://songcrafters.org/64guitars/BR/Tutorials/V-Tracks_and_Bouncing.html

[SpikeVelvet]

Thanks for the responses guys. That clears things up alot!