Quest was originally just a long piano piece, written in high school.
When I was a junior or senior, I bought a TEAC 3340 four track
reel-to-reel tape recorder and decided to add additional instruments
to the song.
Eventually I added as many as eight layered instruments. This was extremely challenging.
- I recorded the piano on track 1, then composed and recorded various
additional instruments through the length of the song on tracks 2 and 3.
- I then mixed all three tracks down to track 4, thereby making them permanent,
but freeing up tracks one and two for additional instruments.
- I then mixed 1, 2 and 4 down to 3.
- I iterated this process until I had completed the song.
This was a long and challenging process because I had to write each melody, using each
new instrument, without knowing what I was going to add later yet knowing I couldn't
change anything about the track once I'd mixed it down with two other tracks. This
meant that I couldn't change its melody, but also couldn't change its volume or
anything about its sound (e.g., if it was too sharp or too muddled after adding
other instruments, there would be no way to fix it). In addition, white noise
accumulated with the addition of each track (especially in portions of the song where
most tracks were empty) and the more tracks I added the more fidelity I lost, making
everything sound muddy.