Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Record and post your favorite songs.

Since this is the "beginners" forum, I thought it would be neat if we could all record a favorite song or two and post it up so the other beginners could here us play.

We are all around the same ability (kind of) so its certainly NOT a contest in any way. Whether you have been playing for a week to several years or more, it does'nt matter, as long as there are no "ringers"!

I have a few improvised version of some songs that I would love to share with you all, and I would certainly love to hear some recordings of fellow beginner forum members.

Now, heres where I need some help. I need some good suggestions on exactly "how" to do this. i.e "how" to record a song that you perform on the acoustic piano and upload it to this forum.

I do have a digital piano with midi recording capabilities, but that does'nt help anyone else out. As soon as we come up with a good method, we can all post up a favorite song or two for the rest of the members to listen to.

Is anyone interested in doing this?

Your digital w/ midi should be a big help in posting your recordings. You'd need a midi compatible program and your keyboard would essentially become a midi controller--then you would just record whatever you play, save it, upload it and post it on here. If your computer has an microphone, you can set up your digital relatively close and record the ambient noise--or just hook up a cable from your digital's line-out jack to your computer's headphone jack and record that way.

Have you seen the Member Recordings Forum?

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/forum/29.html

Yes copper, thanks, however, I'm trying to keep this a "beginners" thread. A little faster than softball, but a whole lot slower than hardball!

As soon as we can play advanced Chopin, Bach, Debussy, et al [at tempo] then we might feel inclined to post there. But, we're beginners and as such we're a little intimidated by posting our mistake laden recordings for other adult beginners to hear/critique let alone accomplished players in the member recording forum.

Is it possible to play on an acoustic piano and record it somehow for the computer? How would one go about that?

Maybe you're right, there's some pretty good stuff over there. If I ever make it to the beginner-who-is confident-enough-to-record level maybe I'll post here.

I'd be happy to even hear an Alfred's level 1 piece, or a 5-finger piece and wouldn't be judgemental at all. Maybe if everyone made a pact that they all had to play something below a certain level, and state how long they've been learning and how much they practice, it would put everyone on an even "playing" field. I love to listen to anyone play from beginner to concert pianist. I just enjoy hearing people play. Again, I would be happy to listen to anything no matter how simple one felt it was.

Won't someone be brave enough to get things started. I wish I could but I don't know how to record from an acoustic piano to a computer.

I found an old recital program from my very first recital, dated 1978, "shock". I don't believe it's been that long since I started playing. I know when I was younger, I didn't practice very much and I've also left the piano sit quite a bit here and there in between. I'm actually no further ahead in my playing than I was back in about '85 because I hadn't touched a piano for quite a bit of the time after that and when I did, it took me a few years just to get back to where I was and I'm still stuck there.

Recording an acoustic piano on a computer is not really very difficult.

You need:
- Something to capture the sound
-- A microphone
- Someplace to plug it in
-- A computer with a built-in mic port
-- or a computer with a sound card with a mic port
- Some software on the computer with recording capabilities
-- Windows XP comes with a VERY basic sound recorder
--- Look under Start->All Programs Accessories->Entertainment -> Sound Recorder

-- Press the record button
-- Save as a .wav file

This would give you the most basic capabilities. There are many other options available that add a huge array of capabilities.

One upgrade to this basic scenario is worth mentioning. A .wav file can be VERY big. It is better to deal with a compressed format file. A compressed file makes a tradeoff between sound quality and file size and allows you to make smaller - easier to manage - recordings.

The most popular compressed format is called .mp3. I think you'll find that most uploaded recording files will be in this format. The basic XP sound recorder doesn't support this format you'll have to find some other software to do that.

Another option may be to record directly to .mp3 format using an mp3 player. The quality may not be the greatest, but some inexpensive .mp3 players come with a recording option. Once you have the file on your .mp3 player you could copy it to your computer.

I haven't looked, but I'll bet you could search and find some more detailed explanations of this elsewhere in these Forums.

Sarabande;

I'm with you, it's not really the super-acomplished piano players that I am interested in (however, I do like their music). But rather, I would like to hear recordings from our beginer group, especially if they add "new" recordings over time. That way, we can monitor and appreciate each others progress. This would personally be the most fun for me;... to see and hear everyone advance over time.

Copper;

I believe your suggestion of recording onto an mp3 is best. I do have digital recording capabilities on my digital piano, however, to keep things "equal", I think that we should all use the exact same method of recording from our acoustic piano's.

I think that their may be some type of not too expensive mp3 recorder that we could simply place near the acoustic piano and hit "record" while we play. Since this is the beginer forum, I would expect to hear several mistakes and off tempo's. Who cares right??

I have no problem being the first guinea pig as, well lets face it, we're all just pixels on a screen! It's not like anyone actually knows the other person!. Besides, if your the kind of person who wants to make fun of someone for ANY reason... well than you just SUCK!!

I will try and do some research on the net to see if I can find a lesser expensive mp3 recorder. This may be something that we all may want as once you upload your song into the computer, you CAN convert mp3 into a wave format via some free websites on the internet. Once you convert into a wave format, you will be able to "burn" your music onto a cd. Then go play your custom cd's on the stereo, in the car, or send some to friends!

I do realize that you can record via your computers microphone input (and a mic), however, I would suspect most peoples computers are not next to their piano and this is where the pain in the *** factor kicks in!

If anyone comes up with a good digital recorder (wave or mp3) and where to get it, please post it and I'll pick one up. I would have no problem letting someone else borrow it as well if they turn out to be expensive. Heck, we could all just mail the thing around if we want!

hmmm . . . as computer illiterate as I am, it may take me a year to figure out how to record unless I hook up my 20 yr. old casio keyboard up to the computer which I've been meaning to do in which case you'd hear no dynamic variation. Also, I have about a 30 yr. old michrophone that still works, don't know if I could "plug" that into my new Dell computer. Well, I'll look into it all further, but it may take me a while.

Do you have a video camera?? capture and transfer to pc (pinnicale studio or whatever) then just copy out the audio..

when I figure out how to post a sound file, I'll post mine (Alfie)

I suppose one has to have a digital video camera? Well, I think it's starting to sound like I have a lot of excuses, hee!, hee! Based on the fact that no one has recorded anything, one things for sure, we must all know more about playing the piano than computers at least!

Well OK, I guess I have to take that as a challenge.

I may not be able to play a piano, but I've been working with computers for 30+ years and I should be able to manage a simple upload.

You can find the most basic simple piano solo ever recorded here:
http://savefile.com/files.php?fid=4655238

Savefile.com seems to be the service people here like to use to upload files. If you want to use it just go to savefile.com, click the "Upload my File" button and follow the instructions.

I guess I should apologize for not giving you much to sink your teeth into, but it does meet at least a couple of the suggested criteria. I did actually play it, it is a favorite song and as sarabande suggested I did use 5 fingers.

Maybe I'll try recording some 2-handed stuff on another day.

This was recorded by pressing the record button on my P120, then copying it to the computer by connecting the P120 audio out to the sound card audio in.

Of course the motivation was the suggestion that we didn't know much about computers.

Now the ice is broken...

Cryptkeeper and I have been posting our personaol recordings for months. The one I just posted is still on the first page of threads and it is even titled "Greensleeves Recording..."

Here's a link:

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/32/1573.html

Thats it, I was able to finally get the stupid non-working custom avatar thing to go after numerous hours, so I'm not going to let this beat me either.

stay tuned!

I use Audacity to do my recordings, it's freeware available here:

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I find this software very easy to use, and I just recently started learning how to add more tracks and do more with it than when I first got it. The two tracks on my piano page (see bottom here) were recorded with Audacity, and my soon-to-be uploaded new tracks (stay tuned!) are as well.

I plug an Audio-technica digital mic into the computer, and record straight onto Audacity. Then Audacity allows you to convert to WAV or MP3, very convenient!

The other hurdle is finding somewhere to upload your recordings, if you don't have your own page. Copper used savefile.com, so maybe you could tell us more about that. Is it like those photo sites (Photo bucket and what ever the other one was) that allow you to store a file? What are the size limits? Most of my pieces, converted to MP3 are around 3MBs, a little more for anything above 5 minutes or that was made with more tracks.

Hmm, gotta get my page updated so I can share my newest recording here!! Excellent thread, Mr SuperHunky!

I'm getting some recording equipment (USB interface + condenser mic) for Xmas so hopefully I can post some recordings of my upright soon after that. I have a 10year old Clavinova but the sound quality is rather lackluster, all the notes sound "tinny" to me...

~pianocliff

http://savefile.com/ is really easy to use.

Click the URL
The next page gives some options, if you want to register you get a few extra features.

Whether or not you register - it's free

After that page Click the Upload button.
Then on the next page put in your file name and click the upload button.

There is a 60MB file limit - this would be about 60 minutes of music.

Files that haven't been downloaded for 14 days will be deleted.

I think I'm going to try both. On the digital piano, I'm going to connect my line out port to my computers microphone. Then, once recorded, save the file on savefile.com as copper had suggested.

Then, if that works, I will drag my computer near my acoustic and use a digital mic as shiroKuro had suggested and do the same as mentioned above.

All I need to do now it buy a mic for the computer, and a patch-cord for the digital to computer. When I finally get some songs uploaded, I'm gonna charge .50 cents per song to listen to it (to re-coop mic and cord costs). However, For a limited time, I will be offering a 30-day free trial period to all adult beginers.

This is my way of "giving back" to the music community!