Piano Clues

“Normalizing” is a post-processing step that is done to make recordings as loud as possible.

It works like this: the computer scans the recording to find the loudest part. Then it determines how much louder it can make this part. Finally, it amplifies the entire recording by that amount.

I explained in a previous article how to normalize your recordings with Audacity and other audio programs.

That method works fine. However, there is an alternative method and that is to use the free program MP3Gain.

(more…)

If you have a digital piano, electronic keyboard or MIDI controller, you can easily get access to many more sounds by hooking it up to the computer using a MIDI interface. Instead of being limited to just the on-board tone generator of your piano, you can now use an almost infinite number of “virtual” instruments.

In this article we will look at this quick and relatively inexpensive method to make your digital piano sound even better. Some of this software will cost money, but we’ll also look at free options.

In another article, I explain how to convert a MIDI recording to MP3 using software instruments. Although the idea is similar, the article you’re reading now focuses on live playing: you press keys on your piano and sound comes out of your computer in real-time. Of course, you can also record your live playing and we’ll talk about that too.

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

(more…)

Music software doesn’t have to be expensive. There is a lot of good free and almost-free software on the web, you just have to know where to find it. On this page you’ll find links to legal versions of music programs that I use and recommend.

(more…)

This article explains how to convert MIDI files — music files with the extension .mid or .midi (or .kar for karaoke) — to MP3 and/or WAV.

The advantage of MIDI files is that they are very small — easily 1000 times as small as an MP3 of the same music — but the disadvantage is that they usually don’t sound very good. And you can’t put them on your iPod either.

So if you want to learn how to convert your MIDI files to MP3’s and how to make them sound good doing so, then read on.

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

(For live playing with software instruments in real time, read how to use virtual instruments.)

(more…)

You can’t. At least not without a lot of work.

The idea is seductive: it’s easy to convert MIDI to sheet music, so if it were possible to extract a MIDI file from an MP3, then you would have easy access to the sheet music of your favorite songs.

The problem is this: An MP3 — or WAV or any other type of audio file — is like an apple pie. It’s easy to make apple pie from apples: you cut them up and put them into the pie. But it’s impossible to get back the original apples once you have the pie!

(more…)

To be honest, I don’t know much about recording acoustic pianos other than that it is black magic.

You need at least one microphone — two is better because that gives you stereo sound — and a recording device. Of course, you can use your computer to record on, but that does mean you need to put it somewhere near the piano (or buy very long cables).

You will get the best recordings with a set of good condenser microphones, but they are expensive and you need other equipment as well to connect this all to your computer.

Not just the quality of the microphones matters: the acoustic quality of the room is at least as important.

(more…)

Red Dot Forever can only play what you just recorded, it cannot load existing MIDI files. To play MIDI files, use any of these programs:

• Windows Media Player (already on your computer)
• VanBasco’s Karaoke Player, a great program that also has an on-screen keyboard, can slow down or speed up the playback and transpose it. Click for detailed instructions
• MidiNotate Player, which shows the MIDI data as sheet music.

If you like to fiddle with sheet music notation, you’ll find that most notation programs can also import MIDI files and convert them to sheet music. However, unless you played perfectly in time, you’ll need to perform some manual cleanup to make your score look good.

(more…)

If everything is set up, you will need to get a program to record MIDI. There are many available, commercial and free, but I prefer to use Red Dot Forever.

This is my favorite program because:

1. it is very simple to use
2. it is free
3. and I wrote it myself

Click here to download the latest version of Red Dot Forever (1.04)

(more…)

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…)