So, you have an organ/keyboard, reckon you can play a piece that you would be happy to put up for people to listen to, but are not sure how to go about it. In the early days when I had my Farfisa organ, the only way I could record it was by using microphones and recording the piece 'live'. Pretty much a disaster as the quality was terrible, and every time a lorry went past in the road, or an aeroplane went overhead, the mic would pick this up. But these days we have a
LINE OUT to record from (even my old hat AR organ has one) so it is best to record from that. Or, at a pinch, you could use the headphone socket.
The objective is to record the piece you can play as MP3 (a music file ending in .mp3). You may have a keyboard that can record to either WAV (.wav .. the best quality, but a huge file .. you use this format for making CDs) or as MP3 (a smaller file as it is a 'compressed' file .. best for internet use), in which case you are laughing
. Just go ahead and do that. If it's a WAV file, you can convert it to MP3.
Maybe you do have a means of recording your keyboard, but it is not in either of the formats above. It may be a MIDI file (.mid), or eg. Roland have their own format you can record to, and with the AR I can record to floppy disk, which gives me two files, a .b00 file and a .evt file that work together. In any event,
if you can record something and play it back in your own instrument then do that in the first instance as (a) you know you already have a recording you are happy with, and (b) you will have two hands free to do your MP3 recording and not have to think about what you are playing.
When making an MP3 recording, you need to make sure it is recording in
STEREO (ie. with a left channel and a right channel). Your
LINE OUT will have a left and a right channel (red is the right channel, and white the left).
The next step is to get the audio signal you are listening to
from your keyboard
to the place where you are going to make the MP3 recording .. either to your computer, or (as in my case) to your Laptop. My computer has a STEREO LINE IN (a 3.5mm jack socket) .. but I can't get my computer anywhere near my organ, so have to use my Laptop.
But my Laptop does not have a STEREO LINE IN .. it only has a MIC IN .. and that is in MONO.
The destination of your audio has to be an 'audio recording program'. There are several you could use, but I will only mention
AUDACITY, as it is the one I use, and it's FREE to download, and FREE to use. You can get AUDACITY onto your computer/laptop by downloading it from this LINK. The latest version is Audacity 2.1.3
(There is a later version available now, Audacity 2.2.1 - Hugh)http://www.audacityteam.org/To get the audio into this program on eg. your laptop, you will need a lead of some sort from your keyboard. My organ's LINE OUT is of the RCA (or PHONO) variety. To quote from Wikipedia:
An RCA connector, sometimes called a Phono connector or Cinch connector, is a type of electrical connector commonly used to carry audio and video signals. The connectors are also sometimes casually referred to as A/V jacks. The name "RCA" derives from the Radio Corporation of America, which introduced the design by the early 1940s.
So the plugs at one end of
my lead look like this (stereo audio are the red and white ones .. the yellow one in this picture is for video):
Although I
could have tried recording straight into my computer (which had a 3.5mm jack socket for stereo input) via a 3.5mm jack plug on the other end of my Phono lead ..
is it a good idea even to attempt this? I don't want to 'blow' anything! .. , it is easier to use my Laptop. And here was the problem. No
STEREO input on my Laptop. So I needed to find a device that would give me a
USB stereo input to my laptop.
At a first glance, this seemed an easy thing to do. I bought a
NewLink Audio Adaptor.
Product description was as follows:
Two 3.5mm sockets for Stereo Output (the green one), Stereo Mic Input (the yellow one); Volume Control Keys; Mic and Speaker Mute Button; LED Indicators; no external power required; Plug and Play compatible; no drivers required.
Stereo Mic Input; Stereo Output.
Nothing of the sort! What I got was both channels 'mixed together' and the same waveform on both left and right channels. I have recorded a DEMO so you can hear what STEREO
should sound like. In this piece, I have deliberately put sounds 'to the left' and 'to the right' to make it easier to hear what is going on.
STEREO Demo as it should soundAnd this one, what I got using the NewLink Audio Adaptor (listen to it carefully):
STEREO Demo recorded using the USB Audio AdaptorYou can hear what has happened. This is called '2-Channel MONO' and is not 'true stereo' at all. This is
NOT what we want to end up listening to!