When you "record" your (sampled) piano playing...

[Len]

do you record using MIDI, or do you play it straight in and record it in audio? Sorry, I've only just started in this wonderful world of sampled pianos (Black Grand :) ) and was wondering what people's approaches were generally.

Obviously its easier to manipulate if in MIDI by somehow it sounds less "human" than recording the audio. Am I dreaming?

Cheers all

Len
www.lenmusic.com

[B.C.Johnson]

I think there are certain "humanizer" plugins you can get.

I usually record with midi, so I can tweak out clinker notes.

[FredProgGH]

Well, if it's a sampled piano to being with and you record a MIDI track in real time, don't change it at all and play it back it should sound exactly like an audio recording of the same performance would anyway.

Of course, the major reason to record it as MIDI though is generally to mess with the performance (usually in the hopes of improving it). Well, that and the fact that the MIDI file will be insanely smaller than the audio file.

[Len]

Hmm, yes I figured recording in MIDI should be exactly what I hear when I play it in, but somehow when I then play back, it doesn't sound quite as good. I must be dreaming then.

[FredProgGH]

Hmm, yes I figured recording in MIDI should be exactly what I hear when I play it in, but somehow when I then play back, it doesn't sound quite as good. I must be dreaming then.

Well, that's assuming your MIDI recorder is accurately reproducing the performance. Maybe it is skipping velocity layers or some such thing. But generally it's the audio recording that has more leeway for errors like compression artifacts or noise to creep in. get someone to help you do a real blind listening test where they play you both files at random and you don't know which is which. That will let you know if you're imagining what you are hearing or not!!

[area51recording]

I like recording my piano stuff as midi first. Since I'm engineering for myself, I sometimes run into a situation where if I record the piano as audio and the performance becomes more, erm, dynamic than I originally planned I run the risk of having a good performance marred by such things as digital "overs". Recording as midi lets me wear my piano player's hat first, and then my engineer's hat when I'm satisfied with my piano performance.

[thesoundsmith]

Another advantage of MIDI is the ability to create extended temp arrangements with cut and pasting of sections. Plus those minor 'oopsies,' if you don't want 'em, you don't have to redo the whole track - great time saver (though you lose some of that if you have to play the part back to record the audio before mixing.)

Be sure you don't have an input quantize function turned on, this will definitely alter the performance. Try recording the audio AND the midi track at the same time, then play them back. They should remain virtually phase-accurate.

[Len]

Try recording the audio AND the midi track at the same time, then play them back. They should remain virtually phase-accurate.

Good point!

[FlyingRon]

Some MIDI recorders (especially those combined with notation programs) have quantizers built in that are designed to "clean up" the timing. Make sure that those are off.