More performance videos

Yesterday evening we (the musical group) were sent a link to an online directory holding several video files. These are of much better quality than the ones sent previously: they appear to have been filmed from a camera standing on a tripod, so there's no jerking around of the video. Not only that, the sound apparently was taken directly from the soundboard so it's also better quality.

Whilst theoretically this should be good, the sound exposes problems with the mix. For most of the songs, the keyboard is too loud and unfortunately the keyboardist made several mistakes, making listening to the songs painful. At one stage echo was added to the vocals; this was fine during the reggae song when they were added, but no one thought to remove them afterwards so they also detract from the otherwise excellent vocals - I had never heard the vocal harmonies previously. Fortunately there were alterations; in one of the later songs, I can hear my guitar suddenly being raised in the mix to an almost reasonable level.  

I suggested that we make a 'proper' recording: if output can be taken directly from the mixing desk then we can record a song, listen to it then improve the mix. Without having external ears, most of us are going to want their own part louder, leading once again to imbalance. No one has responded yet to this suggestion. Members of the audience say that the balance was fine, but there's no recorded evidence of this.

The videos are contiguous; as opposed to music tracks that I make where the song will start a fraction of a second into the track and will end a fraction of a second before the end of the track, these videos simply run back to back, so a song might start in the middle of one video and finish in the middle of the next. This actually is advantageous: I put all of the clips in the movie maker program without the need for transitions. The result appears to be very good (I haven't watched it all the way through yet). Apart from the singers who move about, the musicians are extremely static. This was because we barely had any room in which to move due to the smallish stage. That said, the bassist and I managed to pull off a few synchronised - and spontaneous - neck moves at the end of some songs.

I was thinking yesterday evening about the weedy/thin sound that my guitar makes; I initially considered buying an equaliser pedal that should improve the sound. These pedals are less expensive than I thought they would be so buying one won't be a problem (although where to put it on the pedalboard is a thornier problem). But before I do so, I want to check some of the possibilities offered by my multi-effects pedal that I have so far ignored: specifically the pre-amp stage.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
167	21/04/2009	Dangerous ideas	ERP, Kaizen
575	21/04/2013	Finally, a thesis title	ERP, DBA
576	21/04/2013	Who knows where the time goes?	Sandy Denny
832	21/04/2015	More home movies	Home movies
1124	21/04/2018	Sandy Denny: 40 years gone	Sandy Denny
1211	21/04/2019	Hardware woes	Mobile phone, Computer