Bouncing - Totally Baffled

[RockChick]

Hey guys
How you all doing?  Hope you good!  I am soooo fustrated with this bouncing malarkey.  I puchased my Micro BR last week (which I am completely in love with) and thought I was doing really well with it - until I tried to bounce.  I understand the basic idea of it, though the jargon confuses me ... well I am a blonde! hehe. 

I recorded drums TK1, guitar Tk2, piano Tk3, and Keys Tk4 and was wishing to record vocals.  So I thought that I would bounce the 4 tracks and free up another.  I followed the directions in the manual and because I think I was recording mono I bounce them onto V4.  This seemsed to have worked - when I went back to the 'normal' mode and checked the V tracks muted 1, 2 & 3 all the tracks played on 4.  My problem is -

1  - how the heck do I hear that 'virtual' track whilst recording the vocals?

2 - how do I master & MP3 them (I have done this normally without bouncing - is it the same?) 

If someone could help I would be so grateful, but please can you simplify it .... remember I'm blonde!  :-)

Thanks in advance

RC

[Pedro]

Hello RockChick and welcome to the forum!

Bouncing is very easy, but the whole process can be quite confusing. Including the Virtual Tracks business, which I find particulary confusing.

1  - how the heck do I hear that 'virtual' track whilst recording the vocals?

Be sure you are in the main song menu and then press the right cursor (>) until the Virtual Track menu shows (its the last one, after the reverb menu). Now you just have to select Track 4 by pressing TR4 or scrolling the arrow and then using + select Virtual Track 2.

Now be sure to mute all the other tracks, by selecting empty Virtual Tracks, for example Virtual Tracks 2 or putting the volume 0.

2 - how do I master & MP3 them (I have done this normally without bouncing - is it the same?) 

Yes, its the same. The mastered tracks will be the currently selected Virtual Tracks.

Now a tip: Unless you haven't panned any track (L or R) you should have bounced to two tracks (bounce to stereo). This way you avoid losing sound information. If you bounce all your tracks to just one (bounce to mono) track you are losing spatial information and that can make a song sound bad. When you are in bouncing mode select the bounced tracks destination and press + until TR12V2 are selected. This means that all the tracks will be mixed to Track 1 and Track 2 - Virtual tracks 2. This will not overwrite any of the original tracks because they are all stored in Virtual Track 1. Then you will go and select these virtual tracks 2 and select empty virtual tracks for tracks 3 and 4. There are 8 Virtual Tracks, so "virtually" you can make 8 different songs with all the four tracks.

I'm sorry if this is to confusing, soon I will post a video solely about mastering.