Multitrack Tape Recorder 2 + 2 = 4 Some lucky American soldiers escaped from World War II not only with their lives, but with a sample of the first mass produced tape recording technology. Among these was Colonel Ranger who gave one of these fascinating pieces of sound equipment to inventive musician Lester Polfusl. Polfus immediately set to using the medium productively and fashioning changes to the equipment itself. Polfus better known by his stage name, Les Paul, tried many experiments with tape recorders while trying to perfect a unique sound, eventually he added another recording head to the standard one-head tape recorder to make 'sound on sound' recordings. This simple innovation opened the doorway through which modern music production would enter. Paul first made 'sound on sound' recordings using disc cutters, but the tape machine he created made the process of manipulating the recordings easier than ever before. Perhaps two tape recorders had been used together in the past, but Les Paul's design made sure the two recordings were perfecty in sync (or perfectly delayed by moving one head in exact increments). It wasn't long before he had designed a more complex model with multiple recording heads. The story as recounted by Polfus in an interview with Denver Smith: It was for me, for experimenting. It happened to be that I was doing it for a radio show. . .It was my radio show. That's what I invented it for. To replace the disc, and go to tape, to make a multitrack recording. Sound on sound recording. Later to take it and make the one inch tape with eight tracks and stereo. Paul's inventive producing led to a string of hits, and the content of sound recordings released to the public was changed forever. A well studied electrician and musician, Les Paul is the sound artist who created the modern role of the producer in the recording business. His home-based studio was the first in a line of personal bedroom and attic studios that made sound artistry an accepted hobby, in his words: The whole nine yards of what I did back there when it was a rare bird is now common, and so is recording in your basement or bedroom studio. It used to be a freak thing. Now anybody can do it. It's great because it's the way it should be.