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Edit - Double posted

Thank you, Rintincop - Great links.

Woody - Don't be so hard on yourself. Do you know Thelonious Monk? Also known as just plain "Monk". But plain he is NOT! He is super. Here he is playing his 'Round Midnight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMmeNsmQaFw&feature=related

I actually met TM in the Village back in the mid 60's. He was always an Name. I never heard of Wynton Kelly. Makes me wonder......What have I been missing?

Great links there rintincop. What a good exposure. This will surely help me to listen more to the jazz masters.

Rintincop,

By any chance, you wouldn't have an index of what tune is in what video, would you?

westarm,
OT - How's the recording coming? Have you figured it all out yet? There is a posting over on Piano Forum about a Edirol R-09. The sound is fantastic (it also costs about $130 more than the Zoom H2). I would really like to hear the results of your H2. If you're not ready yet to post it here on the thread PM me with it.

ok guys, my first recording and posting...ever. it isn't much, but am sure that Rosa is right in saying that jumping in feet first is the way to go.

this is just lesson 1, the shell voicing. i can play it better of course, but nerves got the best of me.

on an H2....what is odd, is that when i listened to it on the recorder, the volume was fine....on boxnet, it was much, much quieter. any tips on using that site?

i've got plenty to learn.

ok...here it comes....duck!!

http://www.box.net/shared/mn61dwrwow

Nice work westarm. It is tough sometimes once you push that record button. I had a lot of trouble with this when I started making recordings to post here. The more you record, I think, the less your nerves get in the way. Keep at it. I'll leave the constructive criticism to the better trained ears here. But it sounded good.

As far as the volume of the recording. Your recording is definitely very soft. It looked to me to be at around -30 dB which is very low. Dunno if the Zoom has any built-in gain functions, but I would look into that first. You want to set the gain on your Zoom as high as possible without clipping the input signal.

Then, if you need to, you could post-process the signal further with something like <a href=http://audacity.sourceforge.net>Audacity</a>. Open up your recording with Audacity and run the "normalize" effect on it. Set it to something like -3 dB and that will boost the whole signal for you.

There's quite a bit of information on the forum here about using the Zoom. If you haven't seen it already, there is a <a href=https://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/1/15934.html>Zoom mega-thread</a>.

westarm, thanks for the posting. I have to wait to get home this afternoon before I can listen to it. (I'm on a government computer here at work and it will not let me open second sourced files). How easy was the H2 to set up? IS it pretty straight forward to use? How does it compare to the sound you hear on your piano, similar?

Westarm,

Nice work. Record as often as you can. That thing's so easy to use, you'll forget it soon enough!

Can you try recording with a metronome? I think it'll sound instantly better.

Hey, Westarm --- great debut. I turned the volume up to max on my speakers. I heard you loud and clear.

RE: nerves and recording. Yes, everyone faces that. Try recording a lot - in other words, record while you practice.

deeluk, are you recording with a Zoom or are you using a digital piano?

I'm using a digital. I do usually normalize all of my recordings as I described. Though I do it through Cubase instead of Audacity. I also have an analog recording setup using a firewire interface that I have used. The digital is much quicker and easier to use though.

That's what everyone has been telling me. I sure if a get an H2 and play around with it, maybe mixing it through Audacity, I could make it work. My piano is an acoustic so I have to go the recording route. Thanks for all the info. With that and westarm already posting with an H2 (I can't wait to hear it) I should have it covered.

hey all, thanks for the comments.

yes, deeluk, the Zoom2 does have a gain function that can be regulated. i had it on low, and frankly didn't bother to check. what i will do is make some recordings at different levels to find what is best for my playing, piano and room. i will download audacity, thanks.

Woody, setup is easy and it is a pretty easy unit to use. when i bought the Zoom2 it was to post here and check my work....and i'm pretty sure i'll be happy with it. plenty of bells and whistles...you can use an external mic, record in different ways, etc. it isn't the top of the line, but will do what i need.

knotty...yes, i heard those times i hesitated. normally, i play it okay and have used my metronome. i will double my efforts at that...good point.

thanks for your support.....this was kinda tough for me.

From what I've read, the H2 is very well regarded. So, I don't think you can go wrong with it. It probably comes with some free version of Cubase or something. Cubase LE maybe. You might consider using that as your audio editing software as it is a bit more capable than Audacity, which is freeware. The learning curve might be a little steeper. In either case, I know I've read that people have made acoustic piano recordings without having to do any postprocessing. I think it's just a matter of getting that gain dialed in right.

just looked over my documentation, and the Zoom 2 has three levels of gain...on top of that, you can set a recording level from dB0-dB137 while you play to tweak it.

found no audio editing software included, but has a built in tuner, metronome, and you can convert between .wav and .mp3 files. it does also have a built in normalize function. maybe i'll try that on the file i uploaded and see if it helps.

here is a question...when i upload an mp3 to boxnet, what is the standard bit rate? 128kbps is the one that pops up, but i can go down or up to 256?

But it didn't hurt all that much did it? If you record all the time when practising you'll get used to it being on not think about it. Plus, you'll be able to evaluate your own playing. In my case, I'm not recording a Grotian or Bosey so I really don't need anything fancy just usuable. Thanks for your information (and yours also deeluk). I'm sure I'll have more questions once start recording.

That sounds like the ticket. I'd mess with that and find the right level. That'll give you better results than processing in software.

Ah well, stick with Audacity then. I thought someone mentioned it coming with software, I guess not. Audacity is fine. But you probably won't even need it.

The built-in normalize will probably help with that first recording. I wouldn't necessarily do it all the time. If you can get the level right, you won't need to normalize.
You got me there. I don't think box.net does any sort of conversion on the files you upload. It is just a file server. I suppose it has some sort of builtin support for streaming MP3s online. But for downloading and playing the file locally, I would expect it to give back what you fed it originally. I'll try and verify this with one of the files I have uploaded. I typically use some sort of VBR encoding.

OK, just downloaded one of my old recordings. It came back down as a VBR file just like I uploaded. So, maybe the box.net streaming player does some sort of conversion. But if you save the file locally, you get whatever you uploaded.