With the the new digital piano happily sequestered in our master room, it was easy deciding which of the three ways I was going to get recordings: record video and audio on separate streams, then sync and merge the two in post-processing. I’ve done close to about 30 hours of recording over the almost three weeks we’ve had the Casio PX870, my workflow now goes something like this:
Video is recorded in 1080p using the Note 9. The phone of course supports 4K footage at 60fps, but produces big files and the phone forces duration limits because of thermal reasons. Also, while the Note 9 supports the far more efficient H.265 codec, Adobe Premiere Elements unfortunately does not. There are workarounds of course, including using a tool like Handbrake to convert the H.265 stream into H.264 – but it’s just more time consuming to do so. The Note 9 also has a annoying habit of re-focusing, depending on how fast my hands are moving across the keyboard. Most of the recorded pieces are fine so far, but there’s been several – invariably involving pieces where fast playing is involved and notes separation in the degree of octaves – where the Note 9 focusing struggles to keep up.
In part to address this, I’ve been exploring different camera angles to, essentially, reduce the depth the video has to work with: basically the lowest note in the pieces I play, to the highest notes. That’s to a good degree reduced the focus hunting in the more recent videos, but not yet eliminate it completely.
Audio is exported in .WAV format from the PX870 to a flashdrive.
The source audio file is typically far too soft for use, so it next goes into Audacity for editing for a good amount of signal amplification. A bunch of other tweaks to taste follow: including reducing bass frequencies, adding reverb, and also removing background hiss noise – there’s still a little though the PX870’s .WAV output is otherwise pristine.
Both streams are imported into Adobe Premiere Elements. The accompanying audio from the video stream is deleted: the PX870 does not emanate audio when it’s in headphone more – and who wants to hear the kids in the background anyway haha. Just the tweaked .WAV file is used for audio.
Now comes the hardest part: manually syncing the video and audio streams. There’s quite a bit of trial and error, and I don’t always get it absolutely right. Most of the videos’ audio is synced exactly, but probably a fifth of them have got ever the slightest lag.
The streams next get cropped at the start and end. No one wants to see my unentangle the excess cable cord on my headphones so that it doesn’t dangle around, straighten the cuffs on my shirt, or adjust my bum on the piano bench haha.
And the two streams are finally merged and exported in 1080p, 15Mbps video and 224Kbps audio bitrates to .mp4 format.
The amount of time I take on average to record a single piece varies quite wildly, with the most variation coming out from how well I can play the piece! For example, a piece I’d been paying for years – like David Lanz’s Return to the Heart – I got it right in a single take. Likewise for Yiruma’s Chaconne and Elegy compositions – which are both really lyrical and at a tempo that’s not too technically demanding. But a piece like Yukie Nishimura’s 心が満ちる時 (Kokoro Ga Michiru Toki ) – the piece is in E Major (ugh) and involves more challenging finger work and phrasing – took 9 takes on two different sessions to finally net me a take that doesn’t sound too atrocious LOL.
Finally, the first two dozen or so recordings I completed sound great on laptops, tablets and the like: but the volume levels are still fairly low. So, I might have to go back and redo them again.
And here’s an example of the finished product from the first sessions a fortnight ago: the theme from Laputa: Castle in the Sky, the 1986 Japanese animated film by famed filmaker Hayao Miyazaki. The catchy song was composed by Joe Hisaishi, and has become standard repertoire for choir groups in Singapore. I was in fact introduced by the missus to this song through her old choir scores. The song as sung in the film is more modern-like with pop beats, but my version here is piano only, adapted from an online adaption I found, with a lot of improv and my cooking it up as I go along. In fact, at the end of the first refrain you can hear some obvious hesitation as I was frantically trying to figure out where to go with the song haha!
