Classical guitar progress logging (May'13)

For this month I'm playing Amor Flamengo, by Laurindo Almeida. I think it is the first time that I play something non-classical. Should work on getting it a bit faster and with more rhythm, but here it is what I get so far:


Amor Flamengo, by Laurindo Almeida from Angel de Vicente on Vimeo.

Classical guitar progress logging (Apr'13)

For this month I'm playing Andaluza (Danza española, n.5), by Enrique Granados (1867 - 1916), with a YouTube partner.

The video used is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTKOmmoBtw. With the help of youtube-dl (http://angel-de-vicente.blogspot.com.es/search?q=youtube-dl) I get the mp3 file:

angelv@pilas:~/GUITAR-APRIL$ youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format=mp3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTKOmmoBtw

Then I use that one for practice, with the help of audacity. With it, I can use this track nicely for practice by:

• splitting the stereo track and muting the right channel, which has mostly the sound of the first guitar, which I'm playing. I also normalize the audio, as it has some saturation in a couple of places.
• using the "Change Tempo" effect, so that I can practice slower, but maintaining the right pitch.

For creating the final video, I created a stereo track and put the YouTube recording in the left channel (after removing its right channel, which is where most of the first guitar was recorded), and myself in the right channel (so it is more or less like I'm playing a duet with Marisa Gomez). The result is here:

Andaluza (Danza española, n.5), by Enrique Granados (1867 - 1916) from Angel de Vicente on Vimeo.

As an aside: For this piece I wanted to try with my Aria Silent guitar but I just found out that the line-in jack in my Dell Latitude E6530 is one of these combined in/out connections. By mistake I bought just an audio splitter where in reality I needed a Headphone and Microphone Jack Audio Splitter, so I had to do it with the Acer Aspire 1810T netbook.

Presentations with org-mode + beamer

I decided to give a try to creating presentations with Org-mode (and Beamer). In the end I got something that looks nice (though further tweaking will be required).

Webs that helped me to get it:

• For a nice template: http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/rtc/event/introduction-r
• To get movie playbacks in PDFs in Linux: 
• http://abarry.org/the-complete-guide-to-embedded-videos-in-beamer-under-linux/
•  http://tug.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/flashmovie/flashmovie.sty
•  https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.text.tex/VLg2UE3kpLA[1-25-false] 
•  To shorten the titles, etc. in the footer:
•  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2011-01/msg00177.html
•  http://www.uncg.edu/cmp/reu/presentations/Charles%20Batts%20-%20Beamer%20Tutorial.pdf
•  To get rid of navigation symbols:
• http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1435837/how-to-remove-footers-of-latex-beamer-templates
• For semi-transparency:
• http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.editors.lyx.general/72441
• To scale images: 
• http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2011-03/msg01554.html
•  Greying-out images: in the TO-DO list

I also had to do a couple of small changes to the file flashmovie.sty (which is in the in this tar file). The basic theme of the presentation can be seen below and the resulting PDF (in Linux I think the embedded video will work only with Acroread 9.4.1) is this.

Settings for recording classical guitar

A few days after I wrote Settings for recording a guitar performance I got a new computer, so those settings don't work anymore, so let's write here my present settings for recording my classical guitar in my Dell Latitude E6530, running Xubuntu 12.10.

For the moment I use the internal webcam and the internal microphone. I have the following settings in PulseAudio Volume Control:

• Output Devices: set as fallback "Built-in Audio Analogue Stereo"
• Input Devices: "Internal Microphone"
• Configuration: GF108 High Definition Audio Controller: Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output; Built-in Audio: Analogue Stereo Duplex

I follow these steps:

1. I record video+audio with VLC:
• To avoid echo when recording, we put output volume muted.  (PA Volume Control, Output Devices). 
• To avoid saturation, we put input volume at 20%.
• We "Open Capture Device", with hardware set as /dev/video0 and hw:0,0
• The video goes to /home/angelv/Videos
2. To massage the audio:
• I open the .avi file generated by VLC directly in Audacity.
• We amplify the signal (Effects -> Amplify) if needed.
• We do "Click removal" (in Effects)
• We do some reverb, using GVerb. Based on http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=GVerb I end up with these settings:
• Roomsize:  50 m²
• Reverb time:  7 s
• Damping:  0.70
• Input bandwidth:  0.75
• Dry signal level:  0 dB
• Early reflection level:  -22 dB
• Tail level: -30
• We export the audio as .ogg
3. We then create the video (with OpenShot):
• open .avi and .ogg files
• create two titles and put them on the top tracks (one for the title, with style Gold2, and another one for the date, with style Gold Bottom). The size of the text, and its position can be set to whatever suits us with the title advanced options.
• in the third track, I put the backgroupd image for the title. Right now, I'm using a picture of Mount Teide (MEDIA/Pictures/Izana/pa300001.jpg). We can set the duration of the title, by right-clicking to access their properties.
• In the fourth track we put the .avi file (muted).
• In the fifth track we put the .ogg audio file.
• We add a dissolve transition between the background picture and the .avi file.
• We add fade outs to the .avi and to the .ogg tracks.
• Once this is done, we export the video, with the following settings: profile: web; target: vimeo-SD, quality: high.
• This generates a .mp4 file, ready to upload to Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Classical guitar progress logging (Mar'13)

Again recorded with my "normal" classical guitar, directly with the internal microphone of my laptop, and afterwards just added a tiny reverb with Audacity.

The pieces for this month are Nostalgia by Julio Sagreras, and Study in E Minor by Fernando Sor, and the video is here.

Nostalgia by Julio Sagreras, and Study in E Minor by Fernando Sor from Angel de Vicente on Vimeo.

Classical guitar progress logging (Feb'13)

I almost didn't make it for the February recording, but here it is. This time I recorded with my "normal" classical guitar, directly with the internal microphone of my laptop, and afterwards just added a tiny reverb with Audacity.

The piece for this month is Electric Guitar Barré, by Bryan Lester, and the video is here.

Electric Guitar Barré, by Bryan Lester from Angel de Vicente on Vimeo.

Adding dynamics to MIDI files

My current setting for creating a MIDI file for practicing duets was not very good, and the resulting files were always poor in dynamics, because it was quite a long and tedious process. So I asked in LAU the following:

"[...] I'm looking for an alternative way for note input. I am hoping for something like the following:

1. I just enter the notes, regardless of the duration of each of them.
2. Then I go into a second phase, where (using the PC keyboard or a MIDI
   keyboard) I just worry about the rhythm (the note durations). Every
   time I press a new key in the keyboard the program would play the
   next note from the ones entered in step 1. and record its duration. I
   don't care about how the score will look with these durations. I just
   want an easy way to create a more musical accompaniment. This way, at
   this step I only have to worry about the durations of each note.
[...]

Is there any MIDI editor that would let me do something like this?"

I ended up following the suggestion of using Pure Data. Despite never having used it, the YouTube tutoring videos by Rafael Hernandez are great, and after viewing the first 10 (about 90 minutes), the impatient guy in me had to code something and I managed to get a proof-of-concept implementation of the above. The code is horrible, and I'm sure it can be done much more efficiently and in a more elegant way (if any reader has suggestions, they are very welcome!), but for the moment this works.

The code itself is available, and  it looks like this:

I'm sure it hurts the eyes of any PureData programmer, but bear in mind that my exposure to PureData has been about two-three hours.


So, how does it work?  First, let's get everything connected (the MIDI keyboard to Pure Data, and Pure Data both to Midi Through and to FluidSynth):

Then, in step 1 (by clicking the toggle "To get notes from keyboard") and "Initialize list", we enter the notes of a melody, without worrying about rhythm or velocities. Then, in step 2, by selecting the other toggle (without a name), the notes will be played in the order of the notes just recorded, regardless of which keys I press, but recording their rhythm and velocities. A mini-demo can be seen below (also uploaded to https://vimeo.com/57762697):

If I send that to, for example, MusE, the resulting score is quite different to the original score, but it has the rhythm and the velocities as entered in the second step:

Then, the tweaks to do are much less than for my original setting, and it involves writing chords, and perhaps changing a few note durations using the piano roll.

This is certainly a big improvement in my MIDI recording from my previous ways.