More on Recording your organ or keyboard

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More on Recording your organ or keyboard

Postby Hugh-AR » 21 Nov 2019 22:08

Whichever way you record your 'performance' it is important to get the finished product 'right'. Volumes have to be at the right levels, and the recording should be in Stereo (ie. have a left and a right channel).

Volumes are important as if you 'under record' your piece it will be too quiet for you to listen to. Yes, you could probably turn the volume up when you listen to it .. but then you don't want to have to turn volumes 'up' and then 'down' again every two minutes depending on what you are listening to. There is a critical level you should be aiming for to get the maximum volume possible without getting distortion. If you go beyond this point, 'clipping' will occur. This means that the part of the waveform that is 'over loud' is 'flattened' and the true sound is lost. In the example below you can see the horizontal red bit that replaces the actual grey waveform .. and the original sound is therefore lost. When we can't hear the sound as it should sound we call it 'distortion'.

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That's why you can never 'restore' a clipped track back to what it sounded like originally. How does anyone know what the grey part of the wave form did before it became the red bit? It's lost!

Usually, clipping will show up as 'bunches' in certain places, as in the red lines in this Audacity Waveform below. And you can see clearly that the 'Volume Indicator' (which is green when the volume is OK; then yellow; then orange when it's borderline; and red when it's too loud) is showing it's 'in the red'.

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And here is a recording which is way, way too loud and the whole piece has ended up 'in the red'.

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The expression 'in the red' comes from when we used to monitor recording levels with meters. The section of the meter indicating the recording was too loud was coloured red.

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If the recording went 'into the red' we'd have to stop the recording, set the volumes a tad lower .. and then do the recording again. But these days we are spoilt. If we under-record a piece (deliberately) we can then 'up' the volumes to that cut-off point digitally by NORMALIZING the track. In Audacity, you load the track in, then click the tab Effect (at the top); choose Normalize in the drop-down box; and Normalize it to eg. -2dB (0dB is the cut-off point).

So no need any more to be that accurate with your volume levels. Just make sure that they are under the maximum allowed.
It's all about the music ♫ ♪ ♫ Organ: Yamaha AR80 & Keyboard: Tyros 4
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Re: More on Recording your organ or keyboard

Postby Hugh-AR » 21 Nov 2019 23:42

Stereo was the next thing I mentioned. Why is it so important to have the recording in Stereo? Well, we all have organs or keyboards that must have cost a bit, so why settle for anything less than a recording that reflects the quality of your instrument? When we play our organ or keyboard, either with it's amps and speakers, or headphones, we are listening in stereo. How do we know it's stereo? Well, I'm sure your organ or keyboard can PAN voices and sounds either to the left or to the right (or somewhere in between). To get this effect when we are listening requires a left channel and a right channel ie. a stereo recording.

I have done a recording three ways (deliberately) so you can hear (hopefully!) the difference between having a mono recording and a stereo one.

First, I have recorded my AR 80 organ via only the left channel. As some of the sounds are 'panned' to the right, without recording a right channel those sounds are completely lost .. so you don't know what you're missing! The waveform in Audacity looks like this. The left channel runs along the top; and the right channel along the bottom (which is blank). You are getting sound to the left speaker only (nothing to the right). And if you're wearing headphones, it'll drive you scatty as you are getting sound only to one ear! At least with speakers both ears can hear the recording .. but your brain will tell you it's only coming out of one speaker.

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The song is called Elenore. Looking at the first section, this is what the Volume controls are showing while I am recording it (in green). A left channel, but nothing on the right one.

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.. and this is what it sounds like.



Second, I have had a stereo INPUT from my organ, but set Audacity to record in MONO. This time there are two channels, a left and a right, but they are mixed together into one ie. you do get sound from both speakers, and from both headphones. But the sounds from each are the same. This is what they call "Two-track MONO". At least this time I have all my 'panned' sounds .. but they are all pushed to the middle.

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Looking at the first section, this is what the Volume controls are showing while I am recording it (in green). A left channel and a right channel, but the recording levels are the same on both.

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This is what the track sounds like as 'two-track MONO'. I call this sound "coming out the top of your head"!



And here finally is the proper, Stereo recording of my organ .. which truly does reflect the quality of my organ, as I can't tell the difference between listening to the organ while I am playing it, and the sound from the MP3 via speakers or headphones. First the Audacity waveform. Look closely at the two channels and you will see they are different.

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And looking at the first part of the track you can see from the green volume bars that the two channels are different.

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And here is the STEREO MP3. Listen carefully to the INTRO in particular. Guitar chords coming from the left, and piano chords coming from the right. And then the whole track is 'fuller'. Which is how it should sound!

It's all about the music ♫ ♪ ♫ Organ: Yamaha AR80 & Keyboard: Tyros 4
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