Don't cut your recording off at the end!!!

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Don't cut your recording off at the end!!!

Postby Hugh-AR » 08 Jul 2019 15:40

When you are making a recording, when you have finished playing just wait for the sound to die away naturally before 'stopping' the recording. To have a tune you have played 'chopped off' at the end is a real shame, particularly when you have put so much effort into recording it.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. The song is Cavatina.

Click the LINKS below to listen. Press the 'back-button' to get back to this page once you have listened
1. This is how it sounds if you stop the recording too early at the end.
2. This is how it should sound at the end. Don't be in too much of a hurry to end the recording and just let everything fade away naturally.

Also, if you are playing an organ and are using the foot pedals it's a good idea to release the foot pedal a fraction after you have lifted your fingers off everything else. Then the bass note fades away last, all on it's own. Just a fraction after, mind you! Don't hold it down for ever!

Here's an example of doing this. The song is I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles.

Click the LINK below to listen. Press the 'back-button' to get back to this page once you have listened
Releasing the bass note last (and letting it fade away).


Hugh
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Re: Don't cut your recording off at the end!!!

Postby Rev Tony Newnham » 09 Jul 2019 07:32

Hi

Very good points Hugh. I hear it all too often on amateur recordings - and too often on supposedly professional recordings where the engineer should know better - and should be listening properly!

Also, hopefully you will have removed sources of background noise as far as possible (ticking clocks are often overlooked), but if you can't get silence - which is pretty well impossible outside of a recording studio - then put a short fade in at the beginning of the piece, before the first note, and also at the end, starting the fade as the reverb disappears into the background ambience. All the basic video editing programmes I've tried make this simple (and you can add a fade in & out on the picture as well).

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Re: Don't cut your recording off at the end!!!

Postby Hugh-AR » 09 Jul 2019 11:50

Tony,

Of course at the old folks clubs you played for you did a lot of recording using microphones; and again when you played church organs. And then put them up on YouTube. Doing 'live' recordings like this is great, as we can then watch you playing as well as listen to the music. But I can see that with microphones you can get the problem of 'noises off'.

This reminds me of when our children were young, I recorded 'Top of the Pops' from the television using a microphone. It was the December one where they played all the top songs for the whole year. Thought the children would like to listen to it again later. I warned them not to make a noise while they were watching, and hoped we wouldn't get a lorry passing up the street as we were quite close to the road. All went well.

Then much later they asked me if I would put the recording on for them to listen to again. Started it going, and then .. horror of horrors! There was a 'tweet tweet .. tweet tweet' running right through the recording. It was the budgerigar, which I hadn't taken out of the room when I did the recording! Funny how the brain 'cuts out' what it doesn't want to listen to. At the time of the recording none of us were aware of the budgerigar 'tweeting' in the room; but when the sound came from the speakers with the music there was no way you could filter it out.

Hugh
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Re: Don't cut your recording off at the end!!!

Postby Rev Tony Newnham » 10 Jul 2019 06:56

Hi

I did some lecturing at a Bible College about communications, and in the session on recording I got my students to listen for a short time and then tell me what they could hear. It's amazing what you don't notice unless you really concentrate, and that's especially true in your normal environment. We used to live close to a boarding kennels, and there were times when the dogs were a bit boisterous that a visitor would say "How do you cope with that noise>" and our response as often as not would be "What noise?". You just don't notice after a while. There was also a cattery a little way down the road in the other direction, and we sometimes wondered what would happen if both lots of animals were to escape - battle royal in the field behind our house perhaps!

Direct recording has it's advantages, especially in noisy situations, but obviously isn't possible with real physical instruments. Many of my recordings on You Tube were made at concerts & since I was playing several instruments, including acoustic ones, a pair of good microphones was the simplest option - but at risk of "noises off", but also the advantage of audience reaction. Live recording is quite an art - and I've had to deal with problems at times.

The main things is to learn to listen very carefully - but beware, you start getting too aware of technical faults. I find TV & radio news bulletins especially annoying as I can often hear the edits - and don't get me started on poor sound when they send out a news crew with no separate sound engineer! (All too common in these days of trying to reduce costs). Listen to your recordings carefully & learn from what you hear. Sometimes you'll even find that you didn't play what you thought you did!

A challenge - my recording of "Loved with Everlasting Love" on a Mustel Harmonium has an edit in it. I messed up one verse, and didn't notice until after the organ had gone back to its owner, and I was preparing the video - very annoying. See if you can spot the edit. Admittedly, it was an audio recording, and so easier to edit than video.



Every Blessing

Tony
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