LOVE SPIRALS DOWNWARDS FOUNDER RYAN LUM DISCUSSES USING THE SONY MDM-X4 FOR THE BAND’S LATEST ALBUM, FLUX.

I got the MDM-X4 mainly to record vocals, figuring that four tracks of audio would be plenty for our vocal tracks. But soon after I started using the MDM-X4 for recording Suzanne Perry’s vocals, it became apparent to me that I could get much more out of this unit than I first thought I could from a 4-track recorder. By planning my editing, I found I could free up a track or two, which then gave me ideas to add more guitars to many of the songs, which I did. Using the MDM-X4 gave me more creative options with my guitars, which in the end helped make the songs better.

Flux (released on Projekt Records label) was much more electronic-based than our previous CDs, so I decided to not use our analog 8-track for this recording. I did much of the album’s instrumentation using Cubase for MIDI sequencing, my Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler for drum loops and hits and lots of the audio — such as recording guitars and vocal samples into it. When I was ready to start recording vocals I wanted to use a recorder that would sync up seamlessly with my MIDI tracks, so I could stop and start in the middle of a song and have the recorder locked up (something my analog 8-track could not do as well). I also needed a recorder that was able to do hard disk-like editing, so I could copy and paste audio parts. I chose the MDM-X4 because it did everything that I wanted, while the competing products did not. The Sony unit, by far, had the most sophisticated editing of all, allowing me to copy and paste audio to anywhere I wanted on any track and on any song.

Another thing that I loved about using the MDM-X4 was that I was able to totally rearrange songs after everything had been recorded. For example, on the song “Ring,” after I recorded all the vocals the song was crying out to me for a new section for a short guitar solo. So, I added an additional guitar track to the song with just a few button pushes, and the song is that much better because of it.