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C.net Big Band


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This looks like fun. Some of the tunes are ones I play often-- I should be able to get a submittable version sometime in the next year!

 

I've been learning how to use Audacity to edit recordings of sessions made on my Edirol so I can learn the tunes the other folks are playing. It's a great program. I've also played with the "view spectrum" feature to identify notes, check tuning, and look at the overtones to see why my two concertinas sound so different. I haven't tried any double tracking yet.

 

Larry

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Okay, I was fooling around and decided to finally give this "big band" thing a go. So I've recorded a whistle track to Henk's "Polska 19." Nothing fancy, just playing the melody. I'm playing low Ds instead of the low Gs, but it's quiet and harmonizes anyway.

 

The process was a little convoluted, by the way. Playing along with Henk's track while recording in Audacity didn't work. The recorded track slowly slipped out of sync with the original. I thought maybe it was because the original was 22.05K, so I changed it to 44.1K, but it still didn't work. So I played the clip in Windows Media Player while recording the "Wave Out" in Audacity. I could then play along with the resulting copy -- both being recorded in Audacity I guess made it happy. I dunno.

 

But! The result played in synch with my copied copy, but not Henk's original MP3. So, I played with the speed a bit (leaving the pitch intact), reducing it by .63% (which seemed to get it pretty much in synch, as much as my somewhat sloppy playing could be).

 

A bit of a bother. Here's the result, if you want the unslowed-down copy for any reason, let me know.

 

http://whistle.JeffLeff.com/audio/whistle.mp3

http://whistle.JeffLeff.com/audio/combined.mp3

 

Jim, to record in one channel in Audacity, go to "Preferences..." in the File menu. Select the "Audio I/O" tab, and in the pull-down menu in the "Recording" box under "Channels," select "1 (Mono)".

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Beautifu combination!

Hm.

Lets think: so you take your instrument, sit in front of a computer, right?

Then you listen, learn the tune, right? Am I missing something?

Then you, uh, play along, right?

Then what?

Edited by m3838
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Jim, to record in one channel in Audacity, go to "Preferences..." in the File menu. Select the "Audio I/O" tab, and in the pull-down menu in the "Recording" box under "Channels," select "1 (Mono)".

Thanks for the attempted help. Unfortunately, the various tabs in my Preferences (under the Edit menu in more recent versions of Audacity) progressively disappeared until all I have left is "Mouse". Upgrading to a newer version didn't restore the other options, nor did uninstalling and reinstalling Audacity. I presented my problem on the Audacity Forum and received no relevant responses. I've figured out where some of these settings are in the Windows registry, so I think I need to look for the MONO setting there, too, though I'm annoyed that it doesn't work for me as it's supposed to, especially when it seems to work properly for everyone else. :(

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...so you take your instrument, sit in front of a computer, right?

Then you listen, learn the tune, right? Am I missing something?

Then you, uh, play along, right?

Then what?

Uh... you record your playing? :unsure:

(Just guessing. :huh:)

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Uh... you record your playing? :unsure:

(Just guessing. :huh:)

 

Bingo!

Wow, I should have thought about it.

But I get these crackling noises. I've tried different things, but the quality is still bad.

I'm on iBook, where do I go fot the right settings?

Thanks.

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I had a long and interesting telephone discussion with John Nixon a couple of days ago and I complimented him on his multi track recordings that I had been listening to.He lays down a master recording, as we present with The Cnet Big Band and adds instrument tracks to it.He explained that initially it is very difficult and a lengthy process to initially master the art of playing along with a recording,( as I did),but he also said that this work really payed off when he was asked to add his recordings on to the Paul McCartney album.

This idea gives you the opportunity to practice playing along with recordings and by submiting it in MP3 format your track will be added to the master by Henk.It would be great if we could get some of these recordings so that we can get the big band sound we are looking for.As has been said before if you do not like the master recordings send a new one to Henk but at least let us get started.

Al

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...John Nixon... explained that initially it is very difficult and a lengthy process to initially master the art of playing along with a recording,( as I did),but he also said that this work really payed off when he was asked to add his recordings on to the Paul McCartney album.

There are a couple of extra difficulties that can occur -- though they don't always -- with Audacity: The additional tracks may wind up either offset slightly in time, or at a different speed, or both. As it happens, Audacity's capabilities include ways to fix both those problems, but they're neither easy nor fun. (I think it may even be possible to correct for unsynchronized entrances on individual notes, but that could get really time consuming.)

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But I get these crackling noises. I've tried different things, but the quality is still bad.

I'm on iBook, where do I go fot the right settings?

Digital audio recording is a finicky thing. I think the technical issues with this project are the main reasons it's been slow to happen, not a lack of interest. Your problem could be many things. Post ten seconds or so of your recording that includes some of these "crackles" and maybe we can figure it out.

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  • 1 month later...
Uh... you record your playing? :unsure:

(Just guessing. :huh:)

 

Bingo!

Wow, I should have thought about it.

But I get these crackling noises. I've tried different things, but the quality is still bad.

I'm on iBook, where do I go fot the right settings?

Thanks.

 

 

Hi,

 

This may or may not help, but as a user of Audacity on a Mac (OS X 10.4) one problem I have come across, been frustrated by, and finally solved (sort of) is that when you alter the mono/stereo setting in Audacity it seems to reset the Mac's own sound I/O settings. The particular problem this seems to cause is that when it is reset to 'mono' input, it also changes the input to 8-bit recording - and the resulting recording is poor and crackly.

 

I suggest trying the following:

 

1. Go to the 'Utilities' folder in 'Applications' and open the Audio Midi Setup utility. Under the Audio devices tab, see what the Audio Input setting is (2 channel is always 16 bit, but 1 channel can be 16 or 8 bit). Set it to 2-ch 16 bit.

 

2. Open up Audacity and go to the 'Preferences' (under the Audacity menu) - in the Audio I/O section, try resetting the input from stereo to mono, and watch what happens to the setting in the Audio Midi Setup utility. If your system behaves like mine, changing the Audacity preference to mono changes the Audio Midi Setup to 1 channel 8-bit recording.

 

If this is happening then you can try resetting this to 1 channel 16-bit, after you have changed the Audacity preference to mono, and then try recording. It should be better (if this is the problem).

 

To avoid having to keep fiddling around with this, I generally just record in stereo (which is always 16-bit).

 

This may or may not be the problem for you - it was for me. I should mention that I am using a Griffin i-mic for audio input, though I don't think this is the issue.

 

I hope that helps. If not, apologies for the long read!

 

Philip

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Thanks.

I'll definitely pay attention to your suggestions.

In the meawhile I found a work around:

I record on my camcorder, then capture it to Ulead Studio (video for amateurs, a good one), create sound file in WMA. Transfer to mp3.

Above is done on the PC.

Sometimes I have a collection of tunes in various formats, that can't be played together from ither iTunes, or Real Audio, or WMA, or can't be imported into Audacity, or turned into mp3.

So then I play them separately on my PC through a pair of headphones, placed over the iBook's mike, and record them into Audacity. Export as aiff.,

put on the CD, back to my PC, download them and transfer into mp3.

Cumbersome, but quality is pretty good and I don't have to search for additional decoding software.

Amateur's approach.

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This sounds slightly more complicated than recording the tune on a Walkman.Listening to the tune on headphones and playing against it through a cam recorder. I suppose I will eventually catch up with technology but by then it would have moved on.I think I shall just plod on and it may all slow down to my speed.

Al

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For practicing and recording myself I use Retro tape recorder. 80es style.

Works very well. It records it's own noise etc., but it works and it's very cheap. Undestructable too. It has one advantage: since it's sound reproduction quality is low, it doesn't need special studio for recording. It doesn't catch clacking, ringing, wheezing etc. I mean it does record it, so when played on high quality player - impossible to listen to. But when played on this recorder - sounds good.

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  • 1 year later...
Reviving this old topic after a year's inactivity because I was reminded of it yesterday when I heard this story on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program:

 

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=10159619

What a shame this never took off.Henk did a lot of ground work for this idea,which we now know was before it's time.

Concertina.Net WAS FIRST.The rest followed !!

Thanks for the revival Dave.

Al

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