Mixdown Session; Audio Post Production For Video; Random-Access Hard Disk Recording - Roland VS-880EX Application Manual

Overdubbing may consist of many musicians adding new tracks to the recording simultaneously or maybe
it will be a single vocalist. Overdubbing means to record new tracks of music in sync with music that has
been previously recorded. If you were to record music on the left channel of a cassette deck, rewind the
tape, and then record your voice on the right channel, you would be overdubbing the voice, using the
recorded music as a guide.

Mixdown Session

Once all the tracks of the music have been recorded, they must be mixed together into some type of release
format. For example, if the release format is CD, the tracks would be mixed into a final stereo recording. If
the release format is a movie, the tracks might be mixed into a final multichannel format such as left,
center, right, and surround. Whatever the final release format, the original recorded tracks must be mixed
(combined) together specifically for that format.

Audio Post Production for Video

The post production process for adding audio to moving pictures is similar to recording music. However,
the audio usually must be recorded while it is synchronized to the picture requiring that the audio
recorder and the video recorder be 'locked' together electronically.

Random-Access Hard Disk Recording

Traditional multitrack tape recorders are 'linear' recording devices. You begin recording at a place on the
tape and record your song in a linear fashion along the length of the tape until the end. Just like with a
typewriter, you can go back and correct a mistake, however, you lose the original in the process. For
example, the piano player can go back and re-record over the top of his or her original recording, but the
original is lost forever. What if the original was the best performance? Of course, a new piano part could be
recorded on a blank track, keeping the original track untouched. However, you quickly run out of tracks
for recording the other instruments.
The VS-880EX adds a new dimension to traditional multitrack recording. This is the concept described as
Random Access or Non-Linear. Instead of recording your song on a linear piece of recording tape, the
recording tracks of your music are turned into digital data and this data is stored on some type of storage
device such as a hard disk drive. The term random access means that you can access the data (music)
stored on the hard drive in a random manner. For example, let's assume that you have recorded a song on
your VS-880EX consisting of 2 Verses, 1 Chorus, 1 Verse, and the ending. If, for example, you wanted to
start the song with the chorus on a traditional tape recorder, you would have to physically cut the piece of
tape containing the chorus and splice it in front of the first verse. If you didn't like it, you had to replace
the section of tape back to its original location.
However, the VS-880EX provides random access to all parts of your song. For example, you just instruct
the VS-880EX to play the chorus first, then the first verse, etc. If you didn't like it, you just instruct the VS-
880EX to change the order as many times as you wish. Since it is not physically moving your song or re-
recording anything, you can rearrange your song a thousand different ways without ever using any
addition memory from the hard disk. This ability to "randomly access" all the parts of your song, allows a
new level of creative editing capability not available with traditional tape recorders.
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VS-880EX Application Guide