Piano Clues

When you’re happy with your recording and post-processing, you can save it to disk with Audacity’s Export As function.

There are several options, but I’ll highlight two:

Export as WAV file. This is the best way to save your recording if you want to edit it later. WAV files are uncompressed audio and contain exactly what you recorded. They are also very big, about 10 megabytes for 1 minute of stereo sound. If you want to burn your recordings to a CD-R, WAV files are the way to go.

Export as MP3 file. This is the best way for saving recordings that are you want to share on the internet. MP3 files are compressed audio, which means they are a lot smaller than WAV files, but their quality is also slightly worse.

(more…)

If you are happy with your recording, you can use Audacity to tweak it. It’s always a good idea to cut away unused silence (or wrong tones) at the beginning and end.

Two common post-processing steps are normalizing and noise reduction.

Normalizing

This is a trick that will make the sound of your recording as loud as possible, without distorting it.

If you record multiple pieces to put them on a CD, for example, then it’s important that each track is not significantly louder or softer than the others, otherwise the person listening will have to dial the volume knob up and down with every new track.

(more…)

Now that your digital piano or electronic keyboard is connected to the computer, we can record something.

Setting up the volumes

Go into the Volume Control Panel and enable recording for your chosen input (either Line In or Mic In).

If you are connecting Line Out to Line In, move the volume slider all the way up. Set the volume knob on your instrument about halfway.

(more…)

This is the first article in a series on recording the sounds from your digital piano or electronic keyboard on the computer, and how to make MP3 files of your performances for sharing with friends or on the web.

Even though these articles mainly talk about recording on your computer, the same principles apply to other digital recording devices. So if you have an MP3 player with recording capability, or a MiniDisc, or any other device with an audio input, you can use that instead and then transfer the files to your computer.

NOTE: These articles are written with Windows in mind. If you use another operating system such as Mac OS X, the hardware directions are similar, but the software will be different.

These are general instructions that should work with any instrument. Because details tend to differ between brands and models, I’ll often tell you to refer to your instrument’s manual.

Always check with your manual first which options apply to your instrument. You can often download the latest version of these manuals in PDF format for free from the manufacturer’s website. The same goes for any additional software you may need, such as device drivers.

(more…)