4 Track Recorder
Fast forward a couple years, the three high school boys had moved on to separate colleges. They had not quite given up on childish things and decided to record an album over the summer.
A new piece of recording technology was acqired: a four-track tape recorder
. The three didn't have to record all at the same time. The four separate tracks allowed for a more thought out recording process (no longer being sixteen didn't hurt either). The ability to overdub made possible the addition of solos (guitar & saxophone), vocals on their own tracks; most importantly, each instrument or vocal had its own track and was mixed creating a superior product.
That's all great, but how to play the tape? The four-track still recorded on a basic cassette tape, but with essentially only one side. When one side of a cassette tape ended it had to be flipped over to play the other side of the tape. With two tracks on either side of the tape, the four-track recorder allows the use of all four tracks in the recording of one song.
They needed to get the songs onto a computer to create a compact disc (CD). The question was how? Michael knew of a guy from high school that had a CD burner. They went to his house, lied about being his friend and set to work getting the cassette tape technology into the computer and out as CD technology. A sound recording program
was used – the mixing was done on the four-track – and a CD was burned. The Summer ended and they
went their separate ways.