Multitrack Recording with the ZOOM LiveTrak L-8

today i'm walking you through how to use the zoom l8 mixer as a multi-track mixer no laptops just recording into the sd card and actually mixing on the unit itself and you're going to hear exactly what i hear so if i turn the reverb up you're gonna hear that i turned the reverb up um i'm really looking forward to doing this stephen i know i promised this a long time ago it's happening today let's get into it [Music] in this video i'm just recording the chorus of a song of mine called good to me but just for fun i actually created the entire song using the zoom l.a and put it together in another video so you can enjoy it and have a listen there's a link below that you can go and have a listen to that if you wish to getting started let's go in and select a new project which means we go settings we go project new project are you sure yes i'm sure done all right we're we're getting there uh i will exit out of that pressing setting i'm gonna set the tempo and you can do this by actually you can do a tap tempo so i want 126. so i'm gonna get roughly there's 128.4 let's just dial that back uh till we get 126. there we go lock that in by pushing the button and i'm gonna set the level of the metronome as well so going back into setting i'm now going down to metronome i'm going to the level the master level ah it's already set at 60 for me but you can just turn this up or turn it back down so 60 perfect i'm then gonna go and i want to pre-count four beats yeah and this click i'm gonna have it on record and play to start with i'm gonna change this because i don't want it on every track once i get into a groove but for now record and play perfect there's all my settings so let's just reset this camera now so you can see the the full l8 as i go track to track and i want to explain that i'm just going to be using this microphone and moving it from uh from input to input on those first six tracks uh for doing this today so let's uh let's do it okay we've started a new project make sure you're on this recorder screen and then we want to go to track one that's where my mic is running i'm just using this mic hit the record play so it's lit up red and then hit record to start the actual recording you press play afterwards and we're going to record the first track uh which is a little guitar track i'm going to put that down first i'm gonna have the metronome kick in and i'm just gonna put a little cue uh to start with so i can get my vocal starting with a vocal really for this so here we go pre-count of four [Music] all right stop that is my guitar locked in now in order to play this back and record another track you need to hit this overdub button and we will go back to the start of the track so i'm now at the back at the start and i'm going to change this to be green so that track is now going to play i'm gonna um track uh six and just [Music] literally switch this track way ah right okay i'm a little bit quieter i thought i didn't get signal for a second there so oh that's too much let's turn it down a bit still quite hot and i'm just gonna get some little snaps and finger clicks in there um i've gone back to the start of the track this first track will play and we'll be into it so again hitting record hitting play [Music] do [Music] okay now i've got two tracks i'm gonna turn off that metronome because it turns to bleed so i can have that now playing and now i can adjust the levels of these as they're playing back which is great for getting a mix that you want but let's turn the metronome off settings metronome click off i shouldn't need that anymore i hope i might turn it back on if i do a rhythm track but now let's get the vocal and i'm gonna um another track [Music] okay literally just um sorting out levels as we go oh you've been so let's see if i have this set to it loud okay so back from the start same process i'm going to hit record the track 2 that i want is armed here we go oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me that's all i need and i now have uh three parts in there so let's just go through a couple of things punch in punch out recording if i want to redo this and then we'll add some other parts and just for fun to carry on with this so let's get a mix now and again we've got this track six selected which are our clicks so let's just get a sound and a um let's put some reverb on everything um we and and see if we get a sound that we like from that so from the top this time i'm just gonna play oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me so i can adjust these levels as i'm playing and i can adjust and say i think i want more reverb on that vocal um again just choosing the selection of which track you're changing or i can say less reverb on the guitar so um but let's say i didn't like that vocal take i wanted to do another one i would go in and hit record again making sure this overdub is on if overdub is not on it will not work to play and record so i'm now overriding this channel i just i didn't like that take let's do it again so back from the start record oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me [Music] yeah so let's add in a couple of harmonies now and and we'll talk about mixing we'll also talk about putting a couple of markers in so that we can really find the spots that we want nice and simply and zoom does this really well [Music] alright my next track is armed for recording so let's uh let's put in a harmony back to the start overdub still on record oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me awesome next track um a lower [Music] a lower harmony we made it um let's put this in uh what are we gonna do for this uh oh you've been so good to me that'll that should do us um from the top good to me oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me [Music] all right so let's now play around with some of the mixing of this i'm going to select that high harmony i'm going to pan it out to the left i'm going to put a bit more reverb on it than the others i'm going to select the low harmony oh look it's already panned to the right because i was playing with this before make sure there's some reverb there um and let's now do a mix but i want to come in i don't want to keep going back to the start every time i want to come in now from where those harmonies come in for mixing so what i'm going to do is push this main knob to set a marker for when those first harmonies come in oh you've been so good to me [Music] perfect now when i hit back it's right on that point of good to me good to me and i can mix these harmonies in where how many's in where i want them good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me okay cool we're i think we're getting there let's now just it's kind of missing something so let's just fatten it up with a little groove and i'm gonna double up those clicks so we're gonna move on to track number five [Music] hit record um i'm not worrying too much about levels as you can tell i'm going to hit this back twice now so that we actually get right to the start of the track and uh we're still on overdub hit record hit play let's put in another multi-track path oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me something like that um and again let's let's mix that in now i will bring it up as the track plays and just find a nice spot for it oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me [Music] okay so you get the idea uh there really is a lot you can do with this and uh let's just one thing i wanted to do is add on that first guitar channel let's just add a bit more bottom end to it it sounds a bit thin to me um and and again i'm not worrying about mic placement or any of that sort of stuff so the last thing if i'm happy with this now what i can do um i have all those eight tracks recorded on the sd card with no effects no eq that i can now take into my logic for me on my computer if i want on my laptop or if i've got the mix that i'm happy with or i want to just make this a simple project i can now hit record on the master and and this will record a stereo file so it's going to get that panning including the effects including the eq that is on all of those tracks so again if we go back to the start we're going to hit record and play oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me [Music] there's the faint sound of uh of the the metronome still bleeding through but that's it we really have that whole thing sorted now um that's now a stereo wave file with that panning with the effects with the eq all ready to go if we wanted to export it now just to dive in to the punch and punch out effect a little bit more let's say i wasn't happy with the second um harmony just just the middle one um so the good to me can't believe let's say i didn't like that one is we are gonna re-plug this mic in we are back in track three and we're gonna arm it for recording but what we're gonna do this time we'll go back to the start we're just going to hit play first i'm going to take out these other tracks that i maybe don't need to hear so much and to punch in and punch out after pressing play i just hit this record button afterwards so let's give it a test run you can see what happens oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me okay so i hope that was clear what happened if i make it really obvious let's just do that again so that you can tell that it's different um so i'm gonna have the original good to me and then i'm just gonna go can't believe because then you'll notice that it's definitely different um so let's just go from there play first and then record to punch in record again to punch out good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good to me okay that was pretty that was beautiful wasn't it good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good okay so again i don't want that there let's just tidy that up and then we're good good to me i still can't believe why you'd be so good too not my best effort but now we have again uh hopefully a reasonably nice track uh to play that i can still mix different levels as it plays oh you've been so good to me i still can't believe what's good to me [Music] okay there we have it uh it's it's a super super intuitive and i say intuitive it will take a little bit of time to get used to it but this is really smooth really good really easy to put together if i wanted to do another guitar part obviously i do have channels seven and eight that i can use the jack inputs and i could put another guitar part over top of this i just used the mic to make it nice and simple so i hope that's useful to you and those of you that have been playing around with it it's a really great tool for songwriting and testing out ideas [Music] you

Channel: David Shanhun

Views: 51,078

Keywords: multitrack recording zoom mixer, multitrack recording zoom l8, zoom l8, zoom l12 multitrack, how to multitrack record, how to multitrack record with a mixer, using zoom livetrak as a multitrack recorder, multitrack recorder, punch in punch out zoom, overdubbing zoom, recording zoom l8 mixer, basic multitracking zoom livetrak, zoom livetrack, markers zoom livetrak, stereo mix zoom livetrak, zoom livetrak l-8, l8 mixer, zoom livetrak l-8 recording, zoom livetrak l-8 mixing

Id: MXJIKlacPpw

Length: 21min 45sec (1305 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020