User talk:Isomorphic

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[edit] Piano recordings

There are many ways. I'll start by describing what I do.

I find a decent grand piano in a quiet place. Sometimes I use my piano at home, which is a nice 6' grand, and other times I use a piano at a college or church.

I use an inexpensive stereo condenser microphone made by Sony. I got it used as part of a trade when I was getting rid of some other gear but they are around $100 new. Sony is constantly tweaking the model numbers and prices but something in that approximate price range should work OK. I usually attach the microphone to the piano lid with tape, so that it faces towards the dampers, especially if I'm in my living room. If I'm in a studio or church, sometimes it works better or as well to have the microphone in the area for the audience or congregation. I usually clip it to a music stand so that I can position it.

The microphone is crucial to the whole process. Piano does not record well in mono, and you absolutely must have a condensor mic intended for recording rather than something intended for stage use. I've tried to record with an SM58 which is a highly respectable vocal mic for stage use and the recordings come out sounding like mud.

I have an iRiver H340, which is a sort of open-source-friendly iPod. There are three important differences from an iPod: (1) it records from a line in, a built-in microphone (which is worthless), or an external microphone; (2) it looks like a hard disk when it is connected to a USB port on a computer, so you can get files off it; and (3) it supports the OGG format used by Wikipedia. Though there are periodic reports that the H340 has been discontinued, you could still get new ones last time I looked. They are around $400, about the same as an iPod.

The H340 though it will play back OGG will only record to MP3, so I do have to transcode the files on my computer before uploading them to commons. At the same time, I also cut the inevitable footsteps and other crud at the beginning and end of the recording. There are open source tools for doing this. I use cutmp3 and mp32ogg.

That system works well for me because I have the H340 anyway, and since I often record things in public places I need a portable and compact setup.

Many musicians record to their computers. If you have a notebook computer or if your piano lives next to your desktop computer, this will work. You can use the same type of microphone, or there are now supposed to be some reasonably good USB mics out there that have built in A-to-D. If you have a more ordinary sort of microphone you would want to match up a good sound card to it or use a USB A-to-D converter.

There are lots of other ways to do it. In the olden times I used a field recorder (cassette) and then encoded the files at my computer in a seperate step. Some people still use DAT. The high-end way to do it is to get a digital recorder like the one Marantz is selling. They reportedly work great and are very easy and intuitive to use but for $1000 they better be.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask more questions. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:58, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A page move that may be of concern to you...

Francis Stanley Gabreski has been moved around again. I have no pref one way or the other about what the article should be named, I just wanted to bring it to your attention. Cheers. youngamerican (ahoy hoy) 15:26, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Upcoming NYC Meetup

You wanted to know when the next meetup was being organized in New York City. Plan for Saturday, 9 December 2006. While you're at it. Come help us decide on a restaurant. See: Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC. Spread the word. Thanks. —ExplorerCDT 22:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Architecture bulletin

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