Recording your accordion

[JerryPH]

I had kind of promised to try to make a video on how to record your accordion. Man what a project it turned into being!

It turned in to something like 20 hours of work and I probably covered only half of what I really wanted to, but at 26.5 minutes long, it comes to the limit of the length that I want to make in one shot for these kinds of videos.

Anyways, enjoy it for what it is, a small vid where I tried to shove too much info into... lol

<YOUTUBE id=2AceE7A46W4 url=></YOUTUBE>

Cheers!

 

[Keymn]

I had kind of promised to try to make a video on how to record your accordion. Man what a project it turned into being!

It turned in to something like 20 hours of work and I probably covered only half of what I really wanted to, but at 26.5 minutes long, it comes to the limit of the length that I want to make in one shot for these kinds of videos.

Anyways, enjoy it for what it is, a small vid where I tried to shove too much info into... lol

<YOUTUBE id=2AceE7A46W4 url=></YOUTUBE>

Cheers!

Nice video.
I stay with my original software too because it is what I am familiar with. Cakewalk 1.0 on a floppy? Think I paid 200- $300? Went through several upgrades.
I used the 1.0 on stage with laptop for several years to play my midi backing tracks. Files loaded fast!
Nice tone on your Hohner!

 

[artelagro]

Perfect Jerry
Many thanks
Garth

 

[Howie]

Good job Jerry, your video will help a lot of people. I'm a Reaper fan too.

 

[boxplayer4000]

JerryPH,
Thanks for your video; its very helpful. Your website is interesting as well. I look forward to reading the rest of your site in due course.
I use my Apple's Garage Band software for recording audio stuff as it appears to have a good reputation with people who better understand these things and its handy being able to record two tracks at once without any extra software.
In 'talkingreeds.com' I refer to Mario Bruneau, a Canadian accordionist and his opinions on accordion tuning.
My background is engineering and in a previous life sailed a few times up the St.Lawrence seaway to Chicago etc. delivering Volkswagens and loading grain.

 

[wout]

Nice! Would Love to hear more recordings of Your lovely morino as well

 

[JerryPH]

Thanks for the kind words everyone (and to nuuksu and his comment about my nasty mic on the youtube video... lol).

I did this project as my small way to give back to the community that has rekindled my passion in this instrument and keep my interest going, and if I help one or two people in the process, well, that makes me happy.

 

[losthobos]

thanks Jerry...just what i needed at this point in time...top man

 

[debra]

thanks Jerry...just what i needed at this point in time...top man

That sums it up! Thanks Jerry, for putting in the time to tell us all this.
Now if only we had the time to make more recordings...
The most rewarding thing about making your own recordings at home is that you try over and over until you get everything perfect, which sadly is almost never the case with a live performance in front of an audience.

 

[JerryPH]

Thanks gentlemen, and that is so true, and even on a recording, I've never had the desire to play something over 50 times to get it "perfect", but a few repetitions to get it closer happens pretty much every time.

In this video I did one take of the main song and listened twice while improvising the chords and 2nd instrument solo, no retakes there, and I did not care because musical perfection was not the goal of that video, but showing the results was.

The one thing that is a huge challenge if you are alone is this... think about it, in that one scene, I turned on the computer screen capturing, turned on the audio recording and turned on the video camcorder all before starting to play, and I did this twice, once for each instrument and then had to synch this all together. This is where a knowledgeable 2nd person could come in and make the job so much easier.

But what is life without those small challenges here and there.

 

[debra]

...
The one thing that is a huge challenge if you are alone is this... think about it, in that one scene, I turned on the computer screen capturing, turned on the audio recording and turned on the video camcorder all before starting to play, and I did this twice, once for each instrument and then had to synch this all together. This is where a knowledgeable 2nd person could come in and make the job so much easier.
...

It gets worse: We once recorded a whole concert with a videorecorder (good digital video sound not so good) and the Zoom H2 (digital sound is pretty good) and then put both together. To our surprise the video and sound did not run at exactly the same speed on the computer. You probably would not notice when recording one song, but after 45 minutes you could notice that sound and video were no longer in sync. Luckily I was not the guy trying to solve this issue...

 

[JerryPH]

That is where a little knowledge and the right software make that kind of a terrifying event quite easy. With the right software, it is a relatively simple 2 step process:

1. Leave audio as is.
2. Cut each song of the video track in to it's own section and minutely stretch or shrink the track length to match the audio. For a live concert, one can use the applause section in between each song as a huge buffer to sync up the next track.

Yes, it can be a couple hour job, but in this case quite worth it. It does make me wonder what was wrong with the camera to cause it to record the video to not play back in the proper time. I kind of think the Zoom H2 was not the one at fault in this case, they have an strong track record of being excellent and accurate recording devices.

 

[Nuuksu]

My experience with this situation is: I have noticed that video isn't exactly constant frame rate always. Recording with webcam usually always lead to this with default settings. Webcam software that I use can record PCM from any source and ellimintaes out-of-sync problem for simple cases, but recording audio with DAW needs more surgery. Then some video editors expect only constant framerate video and if rate isn't constant exactly same thing happens - audio and video run out of sync. Better video-audio equipment sould provide timecode IO for syncing things, Ardour DAW also has video and audio syncing feature.

 

[noeledom]

Great Video Jerry really enjoyed watching it.. well done more please....