[Mark W]

Hello MG and David,

It's fun to be on the other end of show'n'tell, getting your replies, especially after my having been fairly absent from the forum and this Share Your Music section for a long time.

I've told Sherry privately that I might be transitioning into a phase in life that I have been longing for over the last couple decades, to return to doing some of my own music. Last evening I was about to record a piano collection named Intervals for Piano, that I wrote around 1978, and realized that the last piece still wasn't done. In 30 minutes I finished a collection of piano pieces that had been left unfinished for more than 30 years. Well, actually, when I was sitting in jury duty today, I conceived one more piece that needs to be added at the end; it will tie everything together in collection.

Yes, these are recordings from my own Yamaha C6 grand. A few days ago I splurged, and with Sherry's advice, got a Tascam DR-100 hand-held digital recorder at Amazon for just a few more dollars than half of its not-so-cheap list price. This amazing little recorder accepts input through XLR jacks from my Rodes NT5 mics, if I don't want to use its two pairs of built-in mics. I did absolutely no post audio processing, other than zipping the 24-bit 48Mhz wave files. So, no, Gary doesn't get credit for the sound. There's even the realism of slightly out-of-tune strings on the piano (or maybe not so slightly for more sensitive ears than mine).

The Intervals for Piano pieces, which I'll probably record next, are a little bit more difficult to play. I'm thinking that I might record them via MIDI from the Yamaha C6 which also is a Disklavier. I'll record the MIDI into Composer, and fix up inevitable wrong notes there. It won't be so bad that I still haven't gotten around to implementing metronomeless transcription in Composer, because I just need to change pitches, delete notes, maybe add a few, and change the MIDI note-on/off times-- none of that really requires that the rhythms are accurately represented. Then I'll play from Composer back to the Disklavier, as though I'm a virtuoso pianist, completely cheating, and record the real acoustic piano with the Tascam DR-100 and Rodes NT5 mics. The only hitch in this is that the fidelity of the Disklavier MIDI recording and playback can't promise to be perfect. But, I figure slight imperfections in timing and velocity of notes isn't nearly as bad as some of my bloopers. I'm too lazy to practice these pieces again to get them to a level that deserves any audience except the closest of friends.

Soon, I'll start learning about audio editing, and Sherry has been giving me some references to how I can learn more about this. You see, I'm really just MIDI guy, not an audio guy. But that is changing. For example, I have the new mind-blowing Melodyne Editor by Celemony, which just arrived in stores on Nov 16. It makes wave audio look like editable MIDI, so that you can correct specific notes in polyphonic audio. No kidding.

Cheers
-- Mark