Lots of good work there! I would be proud to have that kind of a collection under my belt.
For info on recording, there are several options and ways to record, let's start with what you have.
- Built-in mics on your accordion. If you can get enough gain to get good sound, they are usually one of my favorite ways to record, when possible. Did you know that on most audio programs where you can record each hand to a separate track, that you have complete control over where in the "stereo image" they appear? Look for a PAN control in your recording software, that decides what speaker the sound comes out of, and there is an infinite level of adjustability between left and right. My suggestion is that if you are just making a mono track, set the PAN settings to center on each side, that means that both the left and right hands come out equally out of both speakers. This is also what MONO sounds like. For a bit of spice, set one side to like 30% left and 30% right, to create a little separation. Play with this to taste. Also, when creating multitracks, there are no rules as to where you place each instrument in the image. I used to like creating the effect of 2 accordions, each on opposite sides of the image, and have them share the melody and harmony separately.
When talking ANY kind of sound capturing using mics (external or internal), one thing you have to remember, when playing back the recording and recording/adding another track, you cannot let the sound of the music exit your speakers and be captured by your accordion mics, and the ONLY work-around for that is to wear headphones. On that topic, briefly, it is a good idea to invest in some good headphones that you can wear comfortably over long periods of time. I always preferred the "over the entire ear" models, as they blocked out all outside noise, letting me hear just what I needed to. I managed to find a good set of loud, comfortable and sonically accurate headphones for under $50 that were more than good enough for my needs, but using the Roland RH-300 headphones that I got in the deal with my Roland accordion, I noted a much higher level of comfort, and that makes playing longer periods of time at 4:00am quite fun, actually.
External mic(s). One mic can capture a lot of the sound coming out of the accordion, however, I find that external mics also capture more of the keyboard/valve, bass button clatter. This is neither good nor bad, but depends on what you are looking for, so be aware of this. For best effect, a couple of mics can be used, each placed in front and to the side of the right and left sides of the accordion in front of you. This gives you added control of boosting the bass volume if/when it's needed. The quality of the sound captured will be directly related to the quality of the mic used to capture the sound. Another issue with external mics is room acoustics. If you are in a room with boomy sound acoustics or a larger room with hard walls where the sound bounces all around, expect a lot of unwanted reverb or echo. Most any room can be treated to reduce these effects, but sound management can get quite complex in some cases.
Recording sound captured via camcorder. There is NO factory camcorder that has the ability to come even close to good quality sound from it's internal mics. The secret here is to "port in" the sound from good mics. Now, one can do this "live" by simply using the camcorder to capture the sound from a quality mic or two, but the downside to that is that the camera is in control of the attenuation and volume control. Soft passages are made louder and loud passages are made softer, so as not to clip. For an amateur recording this can help more than hinder, however song sound dynamics are drastically reduced. Using an external recorder connected to quality mics and recording in real time the EXACT same performance that the video recorder is capturing results in much better results, however, the technical complexity rises, as you must know or learn how to sync the music from the external recorder to the video via a separate video application like Pinnacle, Vegas, Premiere Pro, etc... and kill the sound that is on the video camcorder so it does not muddy up the properly captured audio from your external device.
For a little extra info, I recently went to a Bayan recital and his accordion had no integrated mics, so they used two quality external mics. Though the sound was very nice (they used some really expensive mics!), every register change on either hand, every valve drop and lift and every press on every bass note and every bellows sound was clearly heard, yet I am pretty sure it did not detract from the event for me, as I was expecting these things as being part of the normal things one hears during a recital, but for home recordings, I cannot see it being something that I would like in my recordings, personally.
One thing that I am kind of looking forward to is hearing the recording results of my works using a 100% digital accordion, where there are no mics, no valve or key clatter (unless I want to turn that on), no bellows sounds and ZERO chance of feedback. I think that at least in the beginning, it will all be very strange for me... lol, but the ease with which to capture 100% pure digital sound without any extraneous external sounds will be interesting, and when creating multitrack, I will be able to listen to the main track and record additional tracks without needing to wear headphones, again, thanks to no analog mics present anywhere.
