Volume 3 of my free eBook Series on recording your piano playing is now available. You’ll see a whole series of articles on this website about this – all of which link to YouTube videos. However, I felt that for those who weren’t so used to manipulating unfamiliar software, it would be worth doing something more ‘step by step’.
Recording Your Piano Playing at home
Recording your piano playing at home is actually quite a big topic, depending on how much work you might wish to do. I already have a sub heading on this website discussing the various options. Therefore, I split the eBook into 3 volumes just to make file sizes more manageable and so that I could release them progressively.
Volume 1
Volume 1 looked at everything we need to think about for a more ‘point and shoot’ approach. The basic premise was how to simply use your phone plus a decent microphone to both record and edit a simple video. These things were covered also in this article. My microphone is a Shure MV88 (easily available on Amazon) and there is also now the more recent Shure MV88+ which also works on android devices. It also talks ab0ut what other accessories we might need.
Volume 2
Volume 2 branched out into some audio editing techniques. Specifically, it shows how you can ‘edit out’ mistakes, how you can add reverberation and equalisation. To do this I discussed specifically recording the audio separately from the video. I find this is generally a must for the home player wanting to go to the next level with recording themselves. Few of us have a fantastic acoustic space and so the audio generally needs a little help. Even professional recordings undergo a lot of processing before being released.
Volume 3
Volume 3 is the final instalment and picks up where Volume 2 left off. Now we’ll look at combining these separate files and then using some video editing techniques to improve the visuals. It talks about cutting from one clip to another, incorporating multiple camera angles, adding images and text. It also shows things such as how do you achieve a ‘zoom’ effect on an otherwise fixed video clip.
All of these techniques are used constantly in every film and TV program that we watch. This means that people all too easily get bored these days by just a fixed video angle. Given they are really so easy to do, it’s a shame not to use them.
Download for free
You can download all 3 volumes from this link.
You’ll be asked for your email address and first name so that I can inform you of new downloads and other events that may be of interest to you from time to time.
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave comments here, over on my YouTube channel or even my Facebook page.
I hope you find it useful as for recording your piano playing and look forward to hearing from you. Happy home recording!
