You've just got your first 4-track machine back from the shop. And you're panicking. Before you go any further listen to ten hints from Graham White of the Gateway School of Music and Recording in south London. Follow these and save some time, effort and money. Tony Bacon copped an ear.

1 GET SOME MIKES

"First, go and buy the best mikes you can afford. Then spend a lot of time experimenting in the space where you set up your gear. Move the mikes around, and listen to the changes in the sounds you pick up — maybe get a musician friend to plan an acoustic instrument and move the mikes around it and around the room and learn what mikes can do.

"Which mikes? If you have friends who are using some mikes and they get the sounds you want, then those are right. It's an area where personal preference counts for a lot, but something rugged and good like the Shure SM57 and 58 series can cope with almost anything. After those, I'd recommend the Tandy PZM mikes which are very good value for money and you can use in most situations — I've heard some very respectable portastudio demos indeed where people have used nothing but PZMs. Basically, experiment with mikes, and use your ears." (See this month's microphone feature by Martin Sheehan for more details).

"In your first little while with the machine, get the sound on tape right. Experiment widely with your basic equipment, just your portastudio and some mikes first — learn to use what you've got. Listen to how sounds work together and get used to using your ears."

2 THINK BEFORE YOU LASH OUT ON FX

"Don't spend money on FX right away — use acoustic spaces in the place where you set up your gear. Find out how to use acoustic reverb; find a biggish space, put your guitar amp in one corner and a mike high up, and listen carefully to the results you can get with no FX units at all.

"When you've gone as far as you can like that, the FX unit I recommend you buy first is a compressor. A lot of people advise a reverb first, but I'd say get that second. A compressor will make you think about the dynamics of the sounds you're putting down, and it will do things like giving extra control to vocal performances and tightening up bass lines. If you're already using acoustics intelligently in the way I've explained, then a compressor will make a bigger difference to a portastudio demo than any other effect.

"Unfortunately a good quality compressor is still a relatively expensive machine, and used well it won't be obvious. It's not like a glaring gating effect, it simply tidies things up. Nor is it like reverb, where people sometimes use the effect to mask a poor original sound. You want to learn how to start with a good sound, and then try to subtly improve it and keep control over it. A compressor will help you there. It's good to get a compressor that has a variable threshold and compression ratio, but what you really need is to be able to adjust the envelope. If you can't do that then a compressor may be more trouble than it's worth. The Drawmer machines are among the best, though they start at around £275, which might be more than you paid for your portastudio."

3 DON'T TOUCH THAT EQ... YET

"Leave the EQ alone for a while — it's pretty basic on a portastudio anyway, it's usually just bass and treble in effect. So get used to performing your own EQ acoustically — and even if you use mainly electronic instruments, an understanding of mikes and acoustic sounds can pay off, even if it just gets you to listen critically. So use the mikes as their own EQ — move a mike nearer to a glass window or nearer to a wall or a sheet of wood. Listen to the differences these things make, and note them for future reference."

4 BOUNCE WITH CARE

"When you start bouncing tracks together to make room for more new tracks, make sure the bounce is good before recording over bounced tracks — obvious, maybe, but you'd be surprised what people do.

"Try to bounce instruments together that are of different frequencies. If you bounce lead guitar and vocal together, say, and then want to brighten the vocal later, you boost the EQ and the guitar comes out too, which you may well not want, but you can't help it. If you bounce together different frequencies, though, say bass drum and hi-hat, you can get at one or the other later, via the EQ, much more easily.

"Don't forget you can put down a live track as well, as you bounce tracks. It's often effective to double-track one of the lines you're bouncing, say a guitar line, which will help add an impression of depth to your demos."

5 BEWARE CROSSTALK

"Always try to leave a guard track between the tracks you're bouncing from and to. So bouncing from 1 and 2 to 4 is a good idea, because track 3 will minimise any pick-up of noise from 1 and 2. So try not to bounces between adjacent tracks — it can be difficult to avoid with just three tracks, but it can be worth the effort. Most modern portastudios won't 'crosstalk' on adjacent bounces (as this interference between tracks is called), but it's best to be sure, specially if you've got an older or secondhand machine."

6 GET SOME CHEAP EXCITEMENT

"Some better-off home recordists like to add a touch of Aphex Aural Exciter to the tracks being bounced, which stops them losing clarity, usually an inevitable part of bouncing. You can get a similar effect by boosting the high frequencies on the tracks you're bouncing from, but be sure not to boost too much otherwise you'll saturate the tape and that doesn't sound good. Experiment, and see how far you can go with such things. Tape is relatively cheap, after all."

7 USE THE RIGHT TAPE

"Manufacturers adjust the set-up of a machine to suit a specific tape — using any other tape will mean a poorer performance. So find out what tape is recommended for your machine, the dealer you bought it from should know. Otherwise get on to the UK distributor of your machine, because it's not always in the manual. It's worth checking anyway. But generally you won't go far wrong with Maxell XLIIs or TDK SA — and I've found that you get a small improvement in sound and fewer dropouts using C60 rather than C90 tapes — the tape is slightly thicker, and I think the tape coating might be better stuck to the backing material."

8 SAVE UP FOR A REVOX

"When you come to master your 4-track recording on to a 2-track machine, it's worth getting a secondhand Revox A77 reel-to-reel machine for the job if you can afford it — although again, it will often cost more than you paid for your portastudio. But it will be a truly valuable addition to your set-up.

"Try to get one that runs at 15 inches per second, and you'll get better quality than you would if you used a cassette machine, which most people do at this stage. Also, with a reel-to-reel you can experiment with editing your stereo mix, too (see 'cut & splice', June issue), which you can't do on cassettes — a useful skill if you want to further your engineering, and fun too! You can use the Revox as a spare delay line, as well, using the record and separate playback head, which you can't do with a cassette. Keeping your masters on quarter inch tape will preserve their quality and give you better quality when you come to do cassette copies for record companies, selling at gigs, or whatever. And the Revox will last you longer than a cassette machine — a secondhand Revox will cost about the same as a good cassette machine anyway, and it has all these advantages."

9 GET A PATCHBAY

"A patchbay can be a useful addition to your set-up — you can buy one quite cheaply, or you can make one from a sheet of aluminium and a load of sockets. It makes the organisation of the mix much easier and will save you that irritating quarter of an hour's search for the right lead with the right plugs on it, by which time you'll have forgotten why you needed it anyway."

10 LEARN TO CRITICISE YOUR OWN WORK

"Check your final mix on as many systems as you can — try it on your hi-fi, on your friend's hi-fi, on a ghetto blaster, on a Walkman, just as many different systems as you can possibly get hold of, and note which things sound different. It can also be educational to take a piece of commercially produced music that's in the same general area you're working in, and compare your final mix with it. Listen carefully to what the differences are — and if there's a very good bass drum sound, say, on the commercial record, try to imagine what they did to get that sound and how you might go about getting nearer to it on your next recording. Use your imagination."