Did I bounce right?

[hank987]

I read the directions on 64's site and did the bounce. I tried this with only two tracks recorded and bounced to one virtual track.  I have no confidence that I did it correctly however. What is the best way to test and see if it is correct or not? I turned down the track volume for both track one and two and they were seperate. I would think that would say that that I did it wrong....yes?

[64Guitars]

You can easily verify which tracks contain information by looking at your song in BR Wave Converter or BR Explorer. You'll see an 8 x 8 grid like this:



The green boxes are tracks in which you've recorded something. So, you should see three green boxes - the two tracks you originally recorded, plus the target track of the bounce. Take note of the track-vtrack coordinates of each of the three tracks (for example, they might be Tr1v1, Tr2v1, and Tr3v2).

The next step is to verify which v-track is currently selected for each of the four playback tracks. Press any track button [TR1]-[TR4], then press the cursor right button multiple times until you get past the Track Level, Track Pan, and Track Reverb screens and come to the VTrack screen which looks something like this:

 VTrack ■□□□□□■■ <
   V3  V2  V1  V1

[TR1][TR2][TR3][TR4]

Notice how the four values are above the four track buttons. Each value corresponds to the playback track of the TRx button below it. So, in the screen above, TR1 is set to v-track 3, TR2 is set to v-track2, and TR3 and TR4 are set to v-track 1.

To listen to the result of your bounce, make sure that the bounce target track is selected and the two original tracks are not selected. Exit out of the VTrack screen and press RTZ (Return To Zero - ie; hold down the Stop button and press the Rewind button), then press Play to hear the result of the bounce.

You said that you "bounced to one virtual track". Normally, you should bounce to a pair of tracks rather than a single track. That way, you can pan each of the four playback tracks to wherever you want them in the stereo panorama. A single track is mono, so panning would have no effect.

[hank987]

OK, Thanks! using those tools it looks like I did something wrong, but that's OK, part of figuring it all out. Thanks again for you help!

[hank987]

Ok sorry to reply to my own post but when I thought I did something wrong I was looking at the wrong song! Well it may still be wrong! What I did is record two tracks...One on track one and one on track 2. Then I bounced them to 12v2. I also recorded a seperate track 3. I set the v track to look like this. V2 V2 V1 V1.

And so BR explorer looks like this....the x's represent the green of the BR explorer

v tracks  Track 1  Track2   Track 3
v-1        XXXXX    XXXXX   XXXXX
v-2        XXXXX    XXXXX

Is that right and should I feel confident that I can record over track 1 and 2?

[64Guitars]

Ok sorry to reply to my own post but when I thought I did something wrong I was looking at the wrong song! Well it may still be wrong! What I did is record two tracks...One on track one and one on track 2. Then I bounced them to 12v2. I also recorded a seperate track 3. I set the v track to look like this. V2 V2 V1 V1.

And so BR explorer looks like this....the x's represent the green of the BR explorer

v tracks  Track 1  Track2   Track 3
v-1        XXXXX    XXXXX   XXXXX
v-2        XXXXX    XXXXX

That all sounds okay if you're just experimenting with bouncing for the first time.

However...

Is that right and should I feel confident that I can record over track 1 and 2?

That statement suggests that you may have the wrong idea about v-tracks and bouncing. When you start a new song on the Micro BR, you have 32 empty tracks available to you. So there's no need to "record over" any previously-recorded tracks.

A hypothetical recording session might go something like this:

• Record the following 4 tracks (all on v1):
  TR1: Acoustic rhythm guitar
  TR2: Lead vocal
  TR3: Bass guitar
  TR4: Lead guitar
• Bounce the mix of the four v1 tracks to Tr12v2.
• Set v-tracks to Tr1v2, Tr2v2, Tr3v2, and Tr4v2 (they should already be there after the bounce but it's a good idea to check). At this point, tracks 1 and 2 contain the stereo mix of your first 4 tracks and tracks 3 and 4 are empty (because they're set to v2).
• While listening to the mix on tracks 1 and 2 (v2), record harmony vocal on track 3 (v2).
• While listening to the mix on tracks 1 and 2 and the harmony vocals on track 3, record mandolin on track 4 (v2).
• Bounce the mix of the four v2 tracks to Tr12v3
• Verify that the v-tracks are set to Tr1v3, Tr2v3, Tr3v3, and Tr4v3. Now tracks 1 and 2 contain the mix of your first 4 tracks plus your harmony vocals and mandolin, and tracks 3 and 4 are empty (set to v3).
• While listening to this new mix on Tr12v3, record something else on Tr3v3 and Tr4v3.

... and so on.

Notice that every time we record something we use an empty track. At any time, you can go back to the earlier tracks to remix or edit them. Nothing is lost. Also, when you're finished recording, you could potentially export all of your individual tracks to wav files and import them into a DAW for final mixing and editing.

See this message for another example...

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=545.msg3362#msg3362

[hank987]

Your statement about me having the wrong impression about v tracks was correct. The way that you described it makes much more sense. The Cowgirl in the Sand is a great illustration of that. I also downloaded the V track.pdf. I will be trying hopefully over the long weekend to try a true bounce. Thanks so much for your help.

[lemgandi]

Dang, wish if I'd had such a clear explanation. Took me a couple of hours of messing with it before I had a clear handle on bounce. The shipped documentation is notably unclear.