CentOS - Jun 2015 - Recording piano and voice

On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:15:35 -0400
Lamar Owen wrote:
> The USB MIDI port won't give you audio, just MIDI text.
That's what I thought.  To this point, I've never done anything MIDI and
I really don't know much about that; I just use my piano for the purpose of
playing the piano.
> What sort of sound card do you have?
description: Audio device
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio 
Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation

I think I will try to do this with Audacity as Fred Smith suggested.  If I
record the speaking part first, I can then somehow play it back and record the
piano track while listening to the voice track to get the timing right.  What
I'm doing doesn't really have a beat or rhythm like a song -- it's a
dramatic reading, but some of the words have a note or chord to sound along with
them so getting it coordinated will be the challenge.

Thanks to everyone for the help and suggestions.  I'll give this a shot and
see what develops.  The last time I used Audacity I just had a sound effect and
a voice part.  I recorded the voice part with Audacity, spliced in the sound
effect and that was it.  This is going to be a bit more complex.

-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com

On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 11:14:08AM -0600, Frank Cox
wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:15:35 -0400
> Lamar Owen wrote:
> 
> > The USB MIDI port won't give you audio, just MIDI text.
> 
> That's what I thought.  To this point, I've never done anything
MIDI and I really don't know much about that; I just use my piano for the
purpose of playing the piano.
> 
> > What sort of sound card do you have?
> 
> description: Audio device
>              product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition
Audio
> Controller
>              vendor: Intel Corporation
> 
> I think I will try to do this with Audacity as Fred Smith suggested.  If I
record the speaking part first, I can then somehow play it back and record the
piano track while listening to the voice track to get the timing right.  What
I'm doing doesn't really have a beat or rhythm like a song -- it's a
dramatic reading, but some of the words have a note or chord to sound along with
them so getting it coordinated will be the challenge.
Ah. You can also use Audacity to speed up or slow down a track by small 
amounts, without changing the pitch. This might allow you to make small
adjustments in the speed of the voice recording to help make it fit in
with the music the way you want.

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On 6/23/2015 10:14 AM, Frank Cox wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:15:35 -0400
> Lamar Owen wrote:
>
>> >The USB MIDI port won't give you audio, just MIDI text.
> That's what I thought.  To this point, I've never done anything
MIDI and I really don't know much about that; I just use my piano for the
purpose of playing the piano.
>
midi is the electronic equivalent of sheet music, or the song roll on a 
player piano.   its just codes for notes and timings, its not the audio.

do note, if this is a stage grade electric piano, using big phone plugs, 
the audio level out is not quite the same as consumer line level that a 
computer input would want to record, you'll likely have to crank the 
recording level way up, increasing the noise floor of the recordings.   
the cure for this is something called a 'DI box' (Direct Input), or 
using an amplifier or mixer that has a consumer line (1V P-P) output.    
an alternative might be to use the headphone output of the synth, with 
it set to moderately loud volume levels (say, 6-7 on a 0-10 scale)

-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

On 06/23/2015 05:14 PM, Frank Cox wrote:
<<>>
> I think I will try to do this with Audacity as Fred Smith suggested.
> If I record the speaking part first, I can then somehow play it back
> and record the piano track while listening to the voice track to get
> the timing right.  What I'm doing doesn't really have a beat or
> rhythm like a song -- it's a dramatic reading, but some of the words
> have a note or chord to sound along with them so getting it
> coordinated will be the challenge.
.
thinking about that, i agree to voice then music.

i was thinking along lines of a song, not a reading.

a reading would be more like adding music to a silent film where the
music accents the action.

in your case, the music would accent the tone and emphasis of your
voice.

as for usb, i thought back to when i went to a band recording set
up with a friend, i was cautioned not to step on any of the cables
connected between the equipment. i was told that they were usb cables
and they were fragile. the cables also connected to a computer. maybe
there was something special going on as like they were using all
digital musical instruments.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#MIDI

anyway, how about posting where we can listen to your efforts.


-- 

peace out.

-+-
If Bill Gates got a dime for every time Windows crashes...
 ...oh, wait. He does. THAT explains it!
-+-
in a world with out fences, who needs gates.
-+-

CentOS GNU/Linux 6.6

tc,hago.

g
.

Once upon a time, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>
said:
> do note, if this is a stage grade electric piano, using big phone
> plugs, the audio level out is not quite the same as consumer line
> level that a computer input would want to record, you'll likely have
> to crank the recording level way up, increasing the noise floor of
> the recordings.   the cure for this is something called a 'DI box'
Line-level is line-level.  A keyboard will be putting out an unbalanced
line-level signal, and a DI box converts that to a balanced mic-level
signal (usually XLR) for a soundboard.  Since most computers don't have
XLR (or other balanced) input, a DI box is not needed or useful.

Some computers/sound cards only have unbalanced mic-level inputs instead
of line-level (and some can be configured for mic or line); if you don't
have a line-level input, your best bet is to get something that does
(even a basic USB sound "card"), not to amp up the line-level signal
to
mic-level (especially because most of the mic inputs are mono, not
stereo).

-- 
Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>

On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 11:14:08 -0600
Frank Cox <theatre at melvilletheatre.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:15:35 -0400
> Lamar Owen wrote:
> 
> > The USB MIDI port won't give you audio, just MIDI text.
> 
> That's what I thought.  To this point, I've never done anything
MIDI
> and I really don't know much about that; I just use my piano for the
> purpose of playing the piano.
MIDI is used to translate your piano keystrokes into a digital format a
computer can understand. You play on the keyboard, and the computer
outputs the score of what you are playing, so that you don't need to
write the score by hand. :-) That sort of thing.
 
> I think I will try to do this with Audacity as Fred Smith suggested.
> If I record the speaking part first, I can then somehow play it back
> and record the piano track while listening to the voice track to get
> the timing right.  What I'm doing doesn't really have a beat or
> rhythm like a song -- it's a dramatic reading, but some of the words
> have a note or chord to sound along with them so getting it
> coordinated will be the challenge.
Record first whatever has less silence --- if the piano part is
continuous, record that first. Usually words have silence in between,
and can be cut and shifted around (slightly) to match the piano. But if
the piano is intermittent, record the voice first, and then cut&paste
piano parts later, as you would with a sound effect.

Either way, for best results some dubbing and some tuning with Audacity
will be unavoidable. :-)

HTH, :-)
Marko

On Tue, 23 Jun 2015 10:41:42 -0700
John R Pierce wrote:
> do note, if this is a stage grade electric piano, using big phone plugs, 
> the audio level out is not quite the same as consumer line level that a 
> computer input would want to record, 
My piano does indeed the big phone plugs. 

I have some adapter plugs in my junk box that will probably serve to allow me to
do the physical hook-up here.  I was really hoping to be able to get this done
without having to purchase additional hardware.

I'll have to dig out the manual for my piano and do a bit of reading to see
what's really going on with those plugs and whatnot.  The only thing
I've ever plugged into it so far is headphones.

I was looking at a higher-end digital piano a while back that can record a wav
file to a flash drive that you just plug into the piano.  Which is starting to
sound like a very handy feature to have available.  That gives me one more
reason to consider upgrading my piano someday, I suppose.

-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Real D 3D Digital Cinema ~ www.melvilletheatre.com