7 − Recorder

An undo/redo example

Here’s an extremely simplified example that extremely unlikely that you’d work this way, but it shows the principles involved:

Lead vocal 3rd take

Lead vocal 2nd take

Lead vocal correction

Lead vocal

Retake of guitar solo bridge section

Guitar solo

Piano (second part)

Piano

Scratch vocal take

Bass line

Copy and paste drum loop

Basic drum loop

Start song

This is the history of a recording session so far. Suppose that you decide that items 11 and 12 in the list are not needed (in other words, the first take (9) with its correction (10) have been overwritten by 11 and 12, but you feel that the original take (9) with its correction (10) has more energy, so you want to retrieve it:

1Press the UNDO key.

2Use the dial to scroll down to the step to which you want to go back (here it's 10).

3Press YES/ENTER. All steps up to the selected step are now undone.

Now you have the track back again. If you press the UNDO key, you’ll see that there’s a check mark beside 10 - this shows that this is the “undo mark.”

Lead vocal 3rd take

Lead vocal 2nd take

Lead vocal correction

Lead vocal

Retake of guitar solo bridge section

Guitar solo

Piano (second part)

Piano

Scratch vocal take

Bass line

Copy and paste drum loop

Basic drum loop

Start song

The actions above this "undo" line are undone.

Notice that we can still see items 11 and 12. This is because we can still redo them, if we decide that the first vocal take (9 and 10) was not so great after all.

To redo them is just as simple as undoing them: press the UNDO key, highlight the step to which you want to return, and press YES/ENTER.

Items above the “undo” line are visible and you can redo them until you perform another action after the undo oper- ation. For instance, if you decided that you wanted to have another go at repairing the lead guitar bridge…

You could undo all items up to item 7:

Lead vocal 3rd take

Lead vocal 2nd take

Lead vocal correction

Lead vocal

Retake of guitar solo bridge section

Guitar solo

Piano (second part)

Piano

Scratch vocal take

Bass line

Copy and paste drum loop

Basic drum loop

Start song

…and then re-record the guitar bridge.

After this, though, if you wanted to restore the vocal tracks which we’d recorded, you would not be able to. The new recording would replace everything above the line.

All the previous items are now erased:

All the later actions are permanently erased

Retake of guitar solo bridge section

Guitar solo

Piano (second part)

Piano

Scratch vocal take

Bass line

Copy and paste drum loop

Basic drum loop

Start song

TASCAM 2488MKII 65