Recording Strategy for 5 Musicians & 5 Vocals - Best

[draker]

Can someone please help us determine what's the best approach to take when using a D888 to record five musicians (2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 keyboard and electronic drums - mono/stereo outs) all with vocal microphones for a single song? What instruments should we record first, what next and then, lead and backup vocals, etc? What tracks are bounced and where? And finally, when should you employ the use of virtual tracks?.

For example: If we have 5 musicians playing live, and we record the basic song on 5 inputs...we only have 3 tracks left. If we wanted to record a vocal at the same time -- lead or scratch track -- that puts us down to 2 tracks. And if we wanted to mix what we've done, wouldn't we need two tracks left to mix a L and R channel? And then what about backing vocals, lead guitars, etc? Do I need to get a 12 or 16-track DAW so we can sing and play and record simultaneously? The Beatles did everything on a 4-track, so we're thinking we should be able to figure out how do do our music on an 8-track!

The KORG D888 manual isn't great about this strategy and there doesn't seem to be another resource to use - and other digital recording books aren't specific enough for using the D888. Any suggestions are welcome. I apologize, as obviously, we're not that experienced recording, mixing and mastering, but we're having a tough time determining the best way to record our band live and get the tracks down to a stereo mix to burn a CD. Thank you in advance for any help, comments, resources.