Mike K said:
As for recording, I downloaded Audacity a free program. I have three mics on treble side and one on bass. I have an older computer that has a stereo input. I bought a stereo cord with the right size jacks and that was all I did. Left hand generally comes out quieter though due to only one mic. It is mounted on the left hand reeds with a flexible cable inside. Still micing the left hand is always an issue. I have not found independent volume controls for the two channels within Audacity.
Are your left and right hands independently miced or are they mono? Do you have separate volume controls on the accordion?
Quick way is to look at the cable. If it looks like the one below, you have a stereo setup and can control the volumes of each with a bit more control:
http://syner-g.asuscomm.com/mymusic/files/cable.jpg>
The left plug goes into the accordion and the right cables represent the left and right hands separately. You may need to get an adapter from an electronics store, but once done, you are gold. When you record, dont record one stereo channel, record 2 separate mono tracks in Audacity, and once they are separate, you can control the volume of each track independently and you can also control where in the stereo image the left or right appear via the PAN feature.
When recording, dont record from the MIC IN, that is a single mono input. Instead, record from the LINE-IN, which is a stereo (left right) input. Set up Audacity to record 2 mono channels where one is your LINE-IN left and the other the LINE-IN right... instant control over all volume levels!
Mike K said:
Part of my retirement planning is bringing the accordion back to a whole generation that has missed out on it.
That is the dream of all accordionists! In North America the accordion has dropped a LOT, but many are saying that it is making a come-back. I am not seeing it, but then again, I am not in the right places to make a fair judgment.
Mike K said:
I am having a hard time memorizing the songs. A lot of my playing is improvisation but just having the chords in front of me keeps me in the right place.
Like any muscle, it improves the more that you use it.
The recording thing Is a bit of a slippery slope. I started out recording in stereo on cassettes, then to 4-track cassettes, then recording stereo to computer. Today I record multi-tracks to computer and thats pretty much the ultimate in sound quality and control. It means I record left, right acoustic, accordion and left right digital accordion and left, right stereo image of the drums and left, right arranger instruments all in to separate tracks, just the way a professional studio does it. I do all kinds of cool things like add 2nd, 3rd or 10 more accordions, other instruments, full drum sections and so on, to the recordings. I just recently purchased a 16-channel pro quality mixer with integrated FireWire, which means that I can literally record 16 channels at the same time.
The up side is that the sound is of professional quality (though my playing leaves a lot to be desired... lol), the downside is the cost. Spending several thousand dollars just for the right Audio/Digital adapter or mixer with A/D abilities (which is what I use), along with a computer and supporting software is not out of the question, but I love the control and quality it gives me.
