I always try to process photos I take but sometimes I get behind and don't get to publish them as soon as I'd like to. This bunch of photos however got lost in a maze of folders on my hard drive. I thought I'd lost them but I discovered them in an unexpected folder location last night, 8 months after taking them! Oops...
So, way back on Saturday 8th August 2009 I went along to 'Perform Your Arts Out!' at University Square, Coventry.
The event was a 'Young People’s Festival' put together by a team of young producers collaborating with Imagineer Productions.
Along side dance troupes, improvisation comedy groups and other musical acts were local band The Satin Dolls.
I remember it being an enjoyable afternoon, sunny and hot and The Satin Dolls certainly rocked the event with a great performance.
Before I went to the late night gig at Coventrys Belgrade B2 Auditorium on Saturday night (see earlier blog), I went to Februarys 07:0H:03 at Esquires Coffee Shop at the Transport Museum just a few hundred yards away.
Featured artists of the evening were Fix Monday (pictured) and Susie Clarke. It was another packed house and both artists put in great performances. Susies vocals were fantastic and the Fix Monday boys showed everybody how to do 3 part harmony and a totally unplugged performance in the middle of the audience - nice stuff indeed.
Fix Monday were filming their set and encouraged the audience to submit their camcorder/mobile phone vidoes afterwards. I look forward to seeing the final results!
Congrats to the organisers for pulling another excellent evenings entertainment out of the bag!
On Saturday I popped along to an evening of late night music in the B2 auditorium at Coventrys Belgrade Theatre.
Taken from the Belgrades website: 'Mustard and Blood presents a series of themed, late night gigs showcasing the finest grass roots musicians from in and around Coventry in a unique opportunity to enjoy the very best of what the city has to offer.'
On stage were Resurrection Men (pictured) and Charles Dexter Ward and the Imagineers. It was a great night and indeed a great idea to put local talent on at the Belgrade, thumbs up to the organiser Jonny Nicholds - hopefully i'll be popping along to see Jonnys band The Bellows performing at The B2 in March.
Recording Acoustic Guitar and Vocals with the Kodak Zi8
Following on from my article about recording acoustic guitar and vocals simultaneously here I decided to post an article demonstrating the audio quality that can be obtained recording a video using the Kodak Zi8 pocket HD video camera and it's external mic input.
The video clip i've produced required no post production editing or syncing of seperate audio and video clips - it was straight from the camera (except for one file conversion as i'll explain later). So for anybody wanting to create video clips with decent audio quality (without buying more expensive video equipment or recording the audio seperately) this low cost pocket HD video camera might be of interest to you! And for those singer/songwriters who already have a small mixer and some decent quality mics this might be an alternative to buying the Zoom Q3 that's definately worth considering. The video clip was not shot in one of the cameras HD modes as I am only demonstrating audio quality.
Despite several reports of audio problems on the internet (horror stories of auto gain problems and it's 'hot' input etc...)I have found that with the input gain set to minimum on the Zi8 and using the headphone out from my Fostex MR8-mkII to feed the Zi8 I can get very acceptable audio quality on the video clip. Some tweaking of the headphone level was necessary until I'd obtained a reasonable signal level without overloading the input to avoid the symptoms many people have described.
I've watched several YouTube video clips of guitarists using portable audio recorders (such as the Zoom H2 or H4n) feeding the Zi8s mic input, but the audio quality of some of these clips isn't great. It's also hard to work out if the audio sounds bad due to the Kodaks mic input, any editing/transcoding the author has carried out or YouTubes final transcoding of the video.
So, I decided to post an embedded Quicktime video clip of the results as well as posting it to YouTube so at least you have a chance to hear what the audio actually sounds like before YouTube gets it's mits on it.
Here is a short clip of the Crowded House track 'Fall At Your Feet'.
Embedded Quicktime Player
Apologies if there is a sync issue between the video and audio, the .m4v file that the embedded player is referencing is in sync. Perhaps there is an issue with quicktime browser plugins? grrr.... This is the actual size of my re-sized .m4v video file at 480 x 270 (see 'Recording Notes' below).
Embedded YouTube Player
The audio quality isn't too bad on YouTube but i can here some audio artifacts (distorsion in the low and high frequencies). The video would definately have looked better if it had been recorded in HD (720 or 1080) or indeed if I'd uploaded the original WVGA (848x480 .mov) file. It may also be the case that YouTube reserves higher audio quality if the video is indeed HD - I will investigate this!
Update 01/03/2010 I've uploaded the original WVGA (848x480).mov file to YouTube, this can be seen here
Recording Notes
Perhaps surprisingly I recorded the video clip on the Zi8s lowest video quality setting 'WVGA' (Wide VGA) which produces a 848 x 480 .mov file - but as I mentioned above I just wanted to test the resultant audio quality that can be obtained using the Zi8s external mic rather than that of the video. Another reason for me recording WVGA is that my poor old PC won't play HD movies (at 720 or 1080) very well. However, I wish I'd uploaded the original WVGA 848 x 480 .mov file to YouTube, even though not HD it would have looked better on the player on my channel ! (I got carried away making the movie iPOD friendly).
I then used Quicktime to convert it to a 480 x 270 .m4v file using the 'export for iPhone' setting - this meant that I could play this on my iPod Touch and the video would perhaps be more 'web freindly' for many. To my ears this conversion step in Quicktime hasn't noticably reduced audio quality from the original .mov file.
Update 01/03/2010 I've uploaded the original WVGA (848x480).mov file to YouTube, this can be seen here
The firmware of the Kodak used for this video clip = 1.06. No equing of the audio was performed - this was the direct sound of the mics through the Fostex MR8-mkII.
A quick note about lighting: The video was recorded at nighttime (dark outside) so I had to rely totally on indoor artificial light - not something these pocket cameras are great at. So, I purchased four 60 watt daylight bulbs and clipped them to bookshelves and other furniture in my room - with the daylight bulbs spread out evenly around me (along with the rooms main ceiling light) this helped to preserve video quality and made me more 'visible' without any nasty shadows.
I must try and get hold of the Kodak remote for the Zi8 so I don't have to keep walking over to the camera to start and stop it !
Conclusions
I'm pleasantly surprised by the audio quality of the Zi8 using the external mic input when used with decent quality microphones. I seriously doubt that the audio quality is as good as Zooms Q3 but it is fairly acceptable and certainly offers more video options. However, like others I fully expect Zoom to bring out a HD version of the Q3 fairly soon - VGA (640 x 480 only) - what were they thinking? - they could have at least made it WVGA for that nice wide screen look. Anyway, now that I've got the audio test out of the way I'll certainly be recording my next Zi8 video in HD at 720.... HD here I come... (now, time for that PC upgrade...).
Recording Acoustic Guitar and Vocals Simultaneously
Recently I've been trying to record vocals and acoustic guitar at the same time in order to get some ideas together. I wanted the simplest (and quietest) setup possible so I decided to rescue my old 16-bit Fostex MR8-MkII and a trusty old Alesis 3630 dual compressor out of the spare room and setup some mics.
I've tried recording acoustic guitar and vocals together before but I've always ended up with too much spill from the vocal onto the guitar mic ending up with awful phasing sounds and less ability to mix and eq the two tracks independantly.
I was aware of figure of 8 pattern mics and hypercardioids but opted to purchase two Rode NT-3 hypercardioid mics. I think figure of 8 pattern mics might give better rejection if the nulls are aligned properly but I was a bit put off with the rear lobe pickup issue (I don't want any room ambience) and thought that the Rode NT-3 microphones would be more usefull for other future projects.
From the photo above you'll see that I positioned both mics almost at right angles to each other to minimise spill from guitar to vocal mic and vice-versa. The guitar mic was aimed at 12th fret around 2-3 inches away and I warbled into the vocal mic at equally close distance too.
The NT-3's have a very focused pickup pattern and substantial rejection from the sides and suffice is to say that I'm very pleased with the results (although I'm very out of practice vocally and guitarwise at the moment as you'll hear)
Anyway, here are the end results of a test recording of a snippet from the Crowded House track 'Fall at Your Feet'. I aim to get back into practice and record a proper full length version of the song sometime but as always I've enjoyed the technical challenge and hope this information might be usefull to anbody trying to record vocals and guitar simultaneously. I must say it was also a joy to record to hardware - I haven't done that in ages!
Vocal and Guitar Tracks Together
Flash Player
Quicktime Player
Guitar Track Only
Flash Player
Quicktime Player
Vocal Track Only
Flash Player
Quicktime Player
Update: 12/02/2010
Vocal Mic
Since recording this test when recording vocal and guitar at the same time I've moved back to using my Rode NT1-A for vocal, but I still use the more directional NT3 for the guitar angled down in the same fashion. This is because there's generally more spill from the vocal onto the guitar mic then there is the other way round - mainly because vocals are usually louder then acoustic guitar - so I don't need the vocal mic to be too directional and indeed I can get away with pointing it straight at my mouth (not angle upwards). The large diaphragm NT1-A mic also seems to suit vocals better (as may be expected) and is more forgiving if I need to look down at the guitar occasionally (singing at a slight angle to the vocal mic). In conclusion for me the very directional NT3, positioning it angled downwards and it's good side rejection characteristics seems to be the most important factor in producing good isolation between vocal and guitar. Nevertheless, if the NT3 produces a vocal sound you like, you don't need to look down at the guitar too much and if getting a very clean vocal track is critical then using the NT3 angled upwards is definately the way to go...
Also see my article "Recording Acoustic Guitar and Vocals with the Kodak Zi8" here
Last night I popped down to the launch night of 07:0H:03 at Esquires Coffee House Coventry.
It was a packed house with a very attentive and appreciative audience and much credit should go to Stylusboy and Atlum Schema for putting this together.
Featured artists of the night were Lee Mitchell and John Garrison (Pictured) with Stylusboy and Atlum Schema playing a few songs to get the evening started.
The combination of exceptional talent made for one of the best quality acoustic evenings I've been to in Coventry for many years. Top stuff, well done all !
A handful of photos of the featured artists can be seen here.
Information about future 07:0H:03 evenings can be found here.
Last night I popped down to Escape Bar in Coventry to see Jesus Deluxe, Spotlight Kid (former members of Six by Seven and Model Morning) and Castillo.
As usual Jesus Deluxe (Pictured) were excellent but I was also very impressed by the first band Castillo (who i think were No Cassandra previously). This was the first time I'd seen them - great band and stunning lead vocals - good stuff indeed!
All in all it was a cracking line-up of original talent and the sound engineer did a fantastic job.
Inbetween chatting with a few people I'd not seen for ages I managed to take one or two photos of Jesus Deluxe towards the end of the evening.
Feeds: 