RECORDING Techniques – Remembering Analog Tape
The Splicing Block
In 1974, I was 16 or 17 years old and had started hanging around the one studio in my hometown. I was fortunate enough to be hired to play bass on sessions there, and because I was fascinated by everything about the recording process, I’d hang around the studio even when I wasn’t booked. The first time I saw the engineer cut up a master tape to remove four measures from the intro and 16 measures from the piano solo, I was pretty horrified. After all, cutting tape is the sort of action that can’t be undone.
The basic process isn’t particularly difficult, and with practice, the results can be excellent. But once you cut the tape, you can’t uncut it. Tape editing wasn’t limited to 2-track masters, either. Sometimes an edit needed to happen before a track was mixed or even before the overdubs were finished. That meant editing the multitrack tape. And although taking a razor blade to 2" tape isn’t really any harder than cutting 1/4" stereo tape, it certainly feels scarier.