Week #456 ~ Irishman's Heart to the Ladies

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I've posted another video, this tune played almost exactly the same as my earlier one, but this one is on my friend's Michael Kelly Legacy Oval hole mandolin, which I am trying to help her sell.... I just listed it in the cafe's classifieds.

Good luck with the sale! It's a nice-sounding mandolin, and well played there.

Even more feeling than in the first vid, Barb.
Why would anybody part with that instrument? It's just not right.

Bertram, sadly, it belongs to my friend who is a 72 year old single woman, still having to work to live, who is in a financial bind, and her house is about to go into foreclosure! She needs the money!

Hope you get a really good price for her instrument, Barbara. What a very sad state of affairs to have lived through your working life then to hit such hard times.

I had suspected something of the kind.
I hope it turns out alright in the end.
Foreclosure is even less right.

Another nice version Barbara - here's hoping for a quick sale! Great to have a nice clear sounding video demo-ing the instrument for potential buyers as well.

It’s a sad story, Barbara. I hope your friend get help enough to avert the foreclosure.

Finally I made a recording of the Jig with an app at my Smartphone. I made some pics of my Eastman to make it kind of a video.

Frithjof, that mandolin looks and sounds great!

Barbara, that's a sad story. Without wishing to get too political for the forum, it's a sad state of affairs when some people are in your friend's situation (or worse) whilst others don't know what to do with their cash. I hope you can sell that nice instrument at a good price.

Lovely stuff Frithjof, and a very sweet sounding Eastman you have there too!

Nice recordings from everyone. This is a fun tune.

Nice one, dustyamps, and the pictures are great.

What John said. I especially liked the tilted ones at 0:57 and 1:14 where everybody seem to stand on sloping ground.

Thanks for the kind words guys. These are all family photos I have, I should have captioned them. The first 2 photos are of my great grandmother. Her mom, Margaret Ann Murphy, was born in Tipperary, Ireland. Most of the kids in the photo at 57 are in the last photo as adults. My dad is the kid front and center with 2 buttons on his pants. The photo at 114 are my cousins.

Here is my simplified version of the tune I know as Health To The Ladies, played on my Sobell mandolin, Sobell octave mandolin, Forster cittern & a Wheatstone concertina.

Your recordings are always a treat, David. This one is no exception. I noticed especially the smoothness of the chords in the background - no harshness, no pick click, no rattling. Do you have a special method for your recordings?

I'm not sure what you are asking for. I don't really do any thing special when I record and I don't do any post recording sound manipulation other than adding a little bit of reverb to some of the tracks. I am better at playing backup than I am at playing melody so maybe that's why the chords sound better to you.

David, you did do a superb job in playing this. It is very enjoyable to listen to. I really like the way the concertina blends with your other instruments

That's great David! Hate to think how long it took to produce this?

Another masterpiece, David. The cittern gives it a very stately and majestic feel.

From start to finish it took about 4 hours to complete but I already knew the tune on the mandolin, so I just had to learn the tune on the concertina.

A fine version, David. Good combination of instruments, and a nice mix in the tracks.

Lovely stuff David!

Thanks David - that's interesting. I've got lots (and lots) of almost correct videos - but it certainly takes me more than four hours to get something thats even remotley as good as that for a single part.

Your backup playing is outstanding indeed, but only in comparison with other players. In comparison with the melody, I'd say that there's no significant difference. I always enjoy your tone, timing, and musicality.

I guess I'm asking for any tips and tricks in recording. Your multi track videos are very professional, and from the Birdfeeder Waltz discussion I think there are several of us trying to learn.

Dennis, I am one of those who learned a lot from David's recording strategy (albeit with a much smaller stock of instruments), and there is a balance of pros and cons everywhere. For instance, separate audio and video recording gives you more control over what you look like/sound like in either situation, but you have to sync them (i.e. you have to play the parts twice exactly the same way), and there's a lot more editing to do. You have less cam fright but more tool rage. You're Andy Serkis and Peter Jackson in one person, so to speak.

Lots of good picking above!

Bertram wrote: "... separate audio and video recording gives you more control over what you look like/sound like in either situation, but you have to sync them (i.e. you have to play the parts twice exactly the same way), ..."

Please pardon me for being dense, but I don't understand why you'd have to "play the parts twice exactly the same way".

Why not just have the video recorder and the audio recorder both running at the same time while playing?

I do that because my camcorder's built-in mic sucks, so I'll turn on the camcorder and also turn on the audio recorder (lately, a Zoom H2n) and let them both run simultaneously, while I'm trying to play something.

Then when I'm done recording, I remove both devices' SD memory cards and transfer the recordings to the laptop.

That does add double the complexity, because now for each part (whether melody, or backing, or harmony etc) you have 2 files to deal with (separate audio and video) instead of just video file with built-in audio, but sync isn't that hard because once you line up a few notes at the beginning of the tune, the rest of the tune will be in sync all the way through (assuming no issues with software or YouTube rendering misbehavior).

Maybe I'm just doing it very simple-mindedly. I don't do any cutting and splicing or whatever it's called, and I play mostly oldtime style stuff where each instrument plays basically from start to finish of each tune. Not much to it. I suppose it would be more tedious for bluegrass or complicated arrangements where they have all the solo 'break' parts to deal with.

An aside: I wouldn't be able to play something exactly the same way twice anyhow, as I use too many variations each time through and I have no clue what exactly I'm doing. Guess that means I'd be useless at creating slick Hollywood 'lip-sync' videos with overdubbed 'corrections' etc. Oh well! Don't want to anyway. Lol.

Interesting point, JL. Until fairly recently I recorded the audio to my PC then played it back while filming my playing of it. Syncing was then mainly a case of lining up the audio clip with the audio on the video, magnifying the files on screen so that I could get them lined up. This can cause slight discrepancies on the finished film offering, as you can see on more than one of my efforts! Bertram is right in saying that it takes a great deal of accurate playing to get the two tracks as near as possible to each other.
Recently I have acquired a Tascam DR-05 and I now do exactly as you do, running it along with my Sanyo camcorder so that the music will be in sync across both. I begin with a chord or other clear sound, then a slight pause, and this gives me a good visual point of reference for aligning the tracks from the camera and the Tascam. When I am adding in backing tracks or a second instrument I upload the Tascam track to my PC/laptop and use REAPER as my DAW, adding tracks as I want, then mixing to a final project which I then render to mp3 for using on YouTube videos. The track will align accurately with the video camera's audio, as it is still the Tascam track as the main audio track, just enhanced by the addition of the backing tracks and rendered. In the editing I often edit out the opening sound cue, though sometimes I leave it in. Adding in credits is also a good way of covering up the initial opening of the video, fading them in to cover the first few notes!

Where I am not filming live performance, the whole thing becomes easier, just matching suitable visual material to the soundtrack. My video editing program has long been Sony Vegas Movie Studio.

I came to separate recording for two different reasons:

#1 I wanted better audio quality than my webcam mics offer, and use a single condenser instead. The video recording software breaks the single input into stereo with reverted phases (an attempt at wide stereo, apparently, but totally weird if applied to a single signal). So I record audio via Garageband.

#2 When the video recording runs, any other application running in parallel causes halts and pauses in the recorded motion. I have to do it separately.

I've got no tricks for successful recordings but here are a few tips. First of all the beat is key for playing dance tunes, if you don't have the beat nothing else will fly. For recording I use a drum machine because I easily loose the beat when listening to a metronome plus I am a recovering rock and roller and it's easier for me to play to drums. That said when I rehearse the tune prior to recording I stomp my foot which is the best way to get the beat into your head. If you can't stomp your foot and play, then practice till you can.

I make sure that I set the tempo on the drum machine at a pace that I can comfortably play with and then I record the drum track first while playing mandolin along with the drum machine. Once the drum track is complete I record the melody, listening to the drum track on headphones. If I'm doubling the melody on an octave I will record that next to make sure the melody parts are in sync. I record the backup last. Sometimes I will go back and re-record the melody after I've recorded the backup track to try and get more feeling in the melody playing.

I usually record 8 bars of the drum track prior to the start of the melody, those 8 bars come in handy for syncing the video to the audio. I keep the drum track in the mix to let me know when to start my "Milli Vanilli" show where I play along with my previously recorded track. Once the video is complete I mute the drum track from the final audio mix and remove the additional audio track from the video. Hopefully some of this is helpful, if anyone wants more details or has questions, send me a PM.

Thanks Bertram, John, & David, for the recording info.

I have to admit that I about fell over in shock, upon reading (if I'm understanding this correctly) that Bertram and John had sometimes re-recorded the video portion of a particular track to make new visuals (video) for that track such that it would match the already-recorded audio portion of that particular track, but... I'm an old fogey, it takes time for me to get used to these kinds of ideas.

It took me a solid 10 years to acknowledge that even basic multi-tracking wasn't some new evil bestowed upon the music world to trick listeners blah blah blah lol. Once I finally tried basic primitive multi-tracking (my 1982 very first try! audio-only I put on YouTube in 2015), I discovered it was a lot of fun, opened up new worlds of possibilities.

I still have no wish nor intent to overdub new video onto preexisting audio of the same track, but I can probably get used to the idea that it can be useful in some cases for other people.

The reason I would not do it, besides the fact that I don't have the technical proficiency (ha, good reason), is because on the off chance that someone might want to learn how to play a tune by watching one of my videos, I'd rather that what they're seeing is actually the exact same thing that produced the sound they're hearing (for that particular instrument/track). Unless it's audio-only if I forgot to turn on the camcorder, or want to try goofy animations (on that video I was just so happy to get a contiguous 5 minutes' playing with only a couple of major goofs, I didn't care that I had no video to go with it, figured I'd try some crude 2D animations using Photoshop & Adobe After Effects).

Other times I go ahead & post an error-ridden video such as this one where I goofed on the up-the-neck notes at 2:19 & 3:23. I figure maybe my mistakes will help someone else learn what not to do. Now you can see why people prefer my MIDI-only instead of actual playing.

Anyway, thanks for your honesty, that's the important thing, IMO.

Bertram wrote: "I came to separate recording for two different reasons:
...
#2 When the video recording runs, any other application running in parallel causes halts and pauses in the recorded motion. I have to do it separately."

Understood.

I've had so many otherwise-good recordings ruined by my former computer stuttering & popping while recording audio. It was so infuriating to hear a good solid 5+ minute section where my playing actually didn't suck (for a change!) yet the recording was ruined by my stupid computer faltering every 20-30 seconds the whole recording. It didn't *always* do it, maybe about half the time, not predictable. I even tried physically disconnecting the Ethernet cable (no wi-fi, PC already in airplane-mode as usual) while recording, in case of network activity (Windows updates or some other foolishness) that was slowing down the PC, but nothing I tried seem to make any difference. Nope, no viruses or malware either, and I'd already eliminated unnecessary bloatware "services" etc.

That's why I tried switching to using the Zoom H2n to record, instead of recording directly to PC.

Last year I got rid of that computer (gave it to a lady who's taking bookkeeping classes in college, should be ok for that) & bought a better one (enough $ that I could've bought a good mid-level mandolin instead of keeping on using my $50 Rogue, but hey I've got my priorities, computer gear comes first heh) and I no longer have the popping/skipping while recording. I don't know if that's because of faster processor (almost double) and/or fast yet tiny SSD (solid state drive) instead of slow-but-spacious spinning hard-disk. Whatever the reason, the new PC works better, but I'd already altered my recording process to use the Zoom instead of the PC, so the new PC is mostly only an advantage when rendering long multi-layer videos or tinkering around with filters in Photoshop (still have giant digital-folders of family photos I should get cleaned up & restored). For video renders, say 3 tracks (3 video layers + 1 merged WAV audio track) in a 3 minute tune, on the old PC the render time was typically around 3-6 hours. I'd often let it run overnight, come back to it the next day when it had completed the render. On the new PC, a similar render might be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on complexity (whether or not I've used sharpening to reduce blurriness in the picture, or re-sized a large video down to smaller, etc). Much nicer than before!

Great tips here on multitrack etc. I have recorded audio/video separately and then synched up in my video app (I use Adobe Premiere Pro). To get a stable sync point I use a clapperboard app on my iPad, which gives sound and video which you can then sync back together - Digislate. There are other ways of doing it but I find it very easy to use and makes syncing the tracks afterwards simple as you have a very sharp spike in the video audio track and the solo audio track.

JL, I hope you recovered from the shock

In fact, what David described is mainly what I do as well (except that I use GarageBand's metronome instead of a drum track). This procedure has opened up a lot of funny options I always wanted to do, such as this one (you know now, slightly deflated, that the mic stand shown here is a mere visual camouflage to hide the seam between PiP frames).
My videos are not intended to be educational (in fact, you shouldn't try that at home, or else you'll get fat and bald), so I'm exempt from Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative.

Ah yes, I always think there is no substitute for a quick burst of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative, especially if it is double-tracked.

Thank you all, lots of interesting information there.

Bertram wrote: "... This procedure has opened up a lot of funny options I always wanted to do, such as this one (you know now, slightly deflated, that the mic stand shown here is a mere visual camouflage to hide the seam between PiP frames). ..."

That's a cool video! Nicely done.

"Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative"

Y'all are always sending me scurrying for the dictionary (actually Google nowadays lol) to look up all these new words and phrases. Nothing wrong with that, fun to learn new stuff, but whether or not I remember anything I learn is another matter.

Good health to everyone!

Well done Simon! I have always enjoyed this tune.

Too kind, Robert (really!)
I ‘learned’ it last night -a record for me, and wanted to get it posted but will probably post another one once I decide whether to play it Dud,Dud or Dud,Udu - the latter being easier to play fast but doesn’t feel as lively.

Sounds fine Simon and makes me want to get back into jig picking!

Good result after you ‘learned’ it last night, Simon.

I like the pace you play this one at, Simon. Clean picking and no forcing of the tune to try to get extra speed.

DUD DUD gets my vote for jigs, every time. You play melody on the octave so well. For me, even the mandolin requires too much stretching sometimes!

Thanks guys,
-Yes the jigs are calling, CC, go for it! I’ve had that before with reels that have heavy 3rd beats, now it’s jigs.
-It’s not such an achievement though, Frithjof. This tune, as it happens for me, is an amalgamation of about 5 other tunes that I already know. And it’s one that naturally flows for some reason -I do scales that sound like the first five measures.
-I tried playing this one loud, John, because the traffic outside is often heavy during the day. Also, with confidence, I wanted to get the notes to ring, it still felt awkward with some of the unintuitive or surprising turns between groups of phrases. I was actually painting a guitar at the same time, half an hour on each throughout the day, so the change in thinking processes was interesting, along with the indecision about pick direction. (on the painting I’m stuck between a sort of flower hippie style and something more geometric).
-I agree Gelsenbury, Dud, Dud, is the way to go, I like that bounce too.
Dud, Udu is great as a slow exercise using the same tune. I can already feel that it frees up the pick hand movement, makes it smoother, but for the moment it’s confusing. I just need to intellectualise it more at a slow pace, so my fingers know what’s happening, and then practise a lot, switching seemlessly from one to the other -maybe one part at a time to begin with, so I’m consciously aware of the change in pick direction.
And there I go writing at 5 am!
Have a nice day gentlemen/women. Gentlepersons?

You learned it last night, well enough for YT video? Wow. It takes me a while to get to know the song, feel the rhythm and try and play loud enough that my recorder will actually hear me..so Bravo Simon. Nicely done.

Thanks Ginny, I’ll think about this tune the next time I’m taking days or weeks, or even months trying to get a tune right.