On November 29th, 2011, Bay State College AES held an event where multitrack recordings of famous songs were closely looked at, listened to, and discussed. Professor Daniel Goldfine presented multiple multitrack recordings of different styles of music from different eras, and with the ability of soloing tracks, analyzed how mixes fit together sonically, and in terms of musical arrangement. Topics that were also touched upon were recording and mic techniques, overdubbing, and mixing.
The first song analyzed was, "A Day In the Life" by The Beatles, which is a four track recording. Since this was primarily all The Beatles had available to them, it was talked about how they used one track for multiple purposes. For example, how on the vocal track, during vocal breaks there were occasional piano fills and some guitar. We also talked about how Slap Echo was printed to the vocals during recording, as opposed to being added afterwards. As we examined songs through different time periods, it was talked about how the number of tracks would normally increase. Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell's, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", was recorded onto eight tracks; The Police's, "Roxanne", was recorded to 16 tracks; Queen's, "Bohemian Rhapsody", was recorded to 24 tracks; and a song by Arcade Fire had too many tracks to count. Each song was critically listened to and thoroughly discussed from an engineers aspect to musical arrangement.
