I am looking at recording my digital piano via a digital recorder onto CD using a burner
Has anyone experience of such techniques I also teach various forms of guitar and it would be useful to record materials for backing By this I mean non copyright stuf such as my own creations

I am writing music and I want to have a notebook which my friend can engineer in his studio and also to record my studne singers and provide backing tracks

I have looked at midi keyboards but they do not give the touch even of a good digital piano

Anyone got any experience in this area

Firstly - what's your budget?

In the lower/mid price range is the Fostex FR-2LE - this retails for £499 and will be in the shops late March / early April.

This is a flash recorder using CF cards and capable of recording at 24-bit / 96kHz.

You can download the recordings to PC for editing and CD burning via USB or take them from a CF card reader into the PC.

This should be a very nice machine.



At a lower price (about half this) is the ZOOM H4 - this sells fror about £200 and does a similar job, but not to the same quality (it's nice nevertheless).



You will need decent microphones if you want to do anything serious.

Again, what's the budget? (all my microphones are £1,000+ each).

I hope this helps.

I will look in later - with an idea of budget and exactly waht you are trying to do, I can maybe hone it down a bit.

John

John Hi

Thanks for the response I have looked at the Zoom H4 My budget would be £500 tops otherwise I might just as well buy a laotop with CD burner put Cakewalk on it and record into that

I am partially sighted so complex setups are not for me, particularly as I want a notebook for ideas and to record basic backing tracks for wannabe jazz singers

I am looking at the Tascam range at present - any thoughts Tony

The Tascam is way over budget - the HD-P2 is excellent, but is around £800.

Either of the ones I recommended are within budget and will act as a notebook - only they won't burn CDs.

If you have access elsewhere to a PC with a burner, either the Zoom or FR-2LE should do - and if you have no money, Audacity editing software is free.

If you want to grow, the FR-2LE will be the better choice as you can add decent mics later.

£500 is a very low budget if you need CD burning as well, but if you have access to a PC with CD burning at school (for example) then my suggestions would do the job.

Otherwise it's the HHB "BurnIt" or Marantz portable CD - but I would not like to do it this way as it's so restricting.

John

Have a look at the Edirol, lots of people on here use it and will be able to give advice. You could record on it, then burn the soundfile to CD via a PC - depends if that suits you or not.

The Edirol R-9 seems to be OK, but every forum I have looked at so far seems to recommend the Zoom H4 over the Edirol (same price bracket).

John

I have an edirol R9 and am very happy with it. I use it to record singing and piano and edit using audacity. I then burn onto CD using Nero.

V happy with the results!

You don't say if your digital piano has outputs at the back (or wherever) although most digital pianos do. I have just succeeded in taking the basic sound output on mine (not MIDI) and playing this into a standard laptop and into a simple editing programme. Just plug the cable from the piano sound output to the 3.5 mini jackplug microphone socket on the laptop.

There is no cost at all if you happen to have a laptop or computer handy. If you have to buy a laptop a very cheap one will do - mine is very elderly and running on Windows 98.

After that you can either burn to CD or transfer the .WAV file to a computer with CD burner by using a memory stick stuck in the USB port.

Dont get involved in MIDI. All this does is send a series of tones to the computer which then have to be dressed up artifically to sound like a piano, trumpet or what have you.

I was told by 'experts' in PC World that this method of recording could not be done. I have just done it and successfully edited the results. Similarly you do not need to use a microphone. Using this method avoids picking up extraneous background sounds, clocks ticking etc.

Very best of luck

I was going to suggest much the same as Digital

Take a cable from the headphones socket on the piano (if you have no other outputs) to the mic input on the computer and use something like Audacity (free download) to record.

One tip - most PC mic inputs are set up for non-powered mics and are automatically boosted. If you find you're getting a badly distorted feed even when the mic input volume is right down, go into the mic input settings and turn off the boost.

You could then spend some money on some decent sound-editing software like Adobe Audition, and may not need your studio engineer.

http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/

Best wishes

barry

For freebie Audacity is great! Its a very intuitive software package so even a luddite like me can successfully record, edit and burn CDs.

Yes - well - PC World

If you really want recording advice, you may find it best to drop into the Sound On Sound Forum - you will get a lot of recording help there.

John




Yes, Audacity is a great little free recording and editing program.



John

Can you suggest a suitable microphone for use with either of these machines for recording an acoustic grand piano? The purpose is to put together about an hour's worth of piano music for web streaming, download, and demo-quality CD.

Perhaps you can also help in other ways?

1. Will a single microphone do or would two or more be better?
2. Should they be identical or have different frequency responses?
3. Where should they be sited?

Budget? Obviously as little as will do the job, and there is no point delivering more data than the recording device itself can handle (is there?). Not the £1000+ per mic' that you spend. But say up to £500.

Perhaps an amateur set-up isn't the way to go and I would be better booking time in a professional recording studio?

Given that you don't seem to be wanting to produce "commercial" standard CDs, I would suggest you try the Zoom H4 (or cheaper and arguably better the H2 which I have) or Edirol R9. They have built in mics which are actually pretty decent. Pop either on a mic stand a few feet away from the piano (or stick them on a table at a pinch). They record to Smart Media and you can copy files to a mac or PC by USB. I don't think I would bother trying external mics with any of these.

For the Fostex a couple of condenser mics and mic stands. Condensers used to be hugely expensive but reasonable ones can be bought now from as little as 50 quid (even less from some manufacturers). have a look at http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk. There are many ways of micing a piano but I think you may as well just set up a stereo pair (so identical mics) a few feet back from the open lid (same as one of the all-in-one recorders above).

Well thanks for that. Zoom H4 or H2 +mic stand and use its internal mics = probably good enough. You just saved me several hundred pounds over the Fostex + 2 mics!! (and made the whole business a lot easier)

If I did want to produce a commercial quality CD, what should I expect my outlay to be?

A soprano friend and I managed to get about 5 tracks down in a day for £100 using the local arts college's facilities and one of the technicians to actually do the work

I use an Edirol R-09HR (HR is the latest model with a lot of new features and remote control.) It gives very good results and will record in WAV and MP3. WAV at 96/24 sampling rate is superb and far exceeds the sample rate of audio CD's. It's a bit pricey at around £250.00 but well worth the money.