Friday 24 December 2010

Choir class audition. Dec'10

When I started my studies in the Conservatoire (about three months ago), I thought that my Choir class would be quite a chore... but it has turned out to be quite enjoyable, actually. On Wednesday 22nd we took part in the yearly Christmas concert, and a video of our performance is at: http://vimeo.com/18144039

The quality of the video is horrible, but not bad given the circumstances: it was shot by a relative of mine with no prior experience with video cameras, from a bad back seat, and while she was taking care of three small children...

Sunday 19 December 2010

Classical guitar progress logging (Dec'10)

The recording for this month is still quite rough on the edges, but here it goes: http://vimeo.com/17986724

Based on Basie by Andrew Forrest from Angel de Vicente on Vimeo.


The music is a guitar trio by Andrew Forrest: "Based on Basie", available at http://www.forrestguitarensembles.co.uk/trios.html (where you can also get the PDF of the score: http://www.forrestguitarensembles.co.uk/scores/trios/T0015BasedonBasie.pdf).

I used OMR software to get a MIDI file of the music. I play the first guitar, and the computer plays the rest. The web page says that this piece should be for grades 4-5, and I'm just starting grade 3, so there is still plenty of room for improvement...

Technical issue

I found an issue with my Jack+Rosegarden+Qsynth setting: I realized that the computer was out of tune (which could be easily seen by using the "Free Music Instrument Tuner", and playing the "concert A", which should be 440Hz.



With help from some guys at the Ubuntu Studio mailing list, I figured out that the problem was with sampling rates in Jack and Qsynth. When both were at the same sampling rate (I tried with 48000), then everything was OK.