Phil Music

[Philip Maynard]

I can not fit any more boats in the garage, while I ponder that problem I've come back to music. I have been playing for 30 years but for the past 20 I have always played briefly and then put it down for a year or more. I promised myself when I built my airplane I would get back to music and I am now twice as old as when I said that. I've decided it's time to stay with it.

http://www.lulu.tv/vlog/pmaynard

The first clip I played 2 days ago, the 2nd is from 3 weeks ago.

This site is the only one I've found that will not butcher the sound quality (if you send them 480 x 320 flash video format)

[J P]

Nicely done Philip. Sounded pretty good here on my lousy office headphones. Are you using the camera to record the sound, or a separate device?

[KMacDonald]

Dont quit you day job.




Just kidding.

[Philip Maynard]

separate mics

[Karl A. Hilbert]

I like it Phil. If you ever think about getting together to play with others PM me. I can handle some bass. I also think that there is an arthritic mando player lurking about the area.

[R.I.Singer30]

It never left you.Cool.

[Tar Devil]

Thanks for sharing, Phil. Nicely done!

[Todd Bradshaw]

Very nice Phil! Keep it up. Excellent sound quality, too. I got to a point after not playing much for years where I decided to either use it or lose it and I'm really enjoying just playing for my own amusement and to annoy my dog. My fingers aren't quite as fast as they used to be due to a bit of arthritis, but I think my brain makes better musical decisions than it did back when I was 20. Rock on Dude! Just exactly what kind of setup are you using to get a video with such excellent sound quality?

[Philip Maynard]

My recording setup sounds complicated, at the end I'll suggest what is actually important.
I'm using 2 x $50 radio shack PZM plate mics. I cut off the phono plugs and put on balanced jacks. The mics are about 2-1/2' apart and about 2' out from the sound hole. They go into a mackie 1202, then direct out into a compressor which is set fairly light as a limiter - just to flatten off the tops so I can get decent, more consistent levels - (I did not use this with straight audio recording but with consumer video hardware/software I have much less control of the sound and so I'm going for a set up that is set it and forget it - needs no further tweaking at all). I take the return from the compressor and put it back into the mackie and then boost the bass to 3 o'clock. This guitar has a "fine" sound but is light on bass. This bass boost does add low end noise and you can hear cars going by on my recordings, if you have a quite room it's not so bad. I'm not doing any NR or any other kind of processing. I send the mackie main outs into a Sony DAT which I use because it has very nice sounding analog to digital converters and I can get very accurate levels with it's digital meters. At this point the only adjustment I make is on the mic preamps to get just under 0 DB on the Sony. I'm recording with a separate digital sound card at 48k 16 bit and a Pinacle DC10 video capture card. I had bought pinacle's more recent DV capture card but I discovered with DV input I can not separatly record the audio and video and since my fairly cheap camera does not have mic or line inputs there is no way to record to a PC in DV format with a separate sound source, so it was back to my old DC10. My camera is poor at low light levels and that is half the reason the video quality is so bad. The required video upload format is 480x320 and they have to be under 10 min and 100mb. The original recorded video is somewhat better. Real lighting (or daytime recording) would make it look much better. The sound however is rendered from full 48k 16 bit to 160 mb mp3 and and so comes through very well. Also I have been playing this particular guitar for about a year now and have learned how to get that particular instrument to sound good.

What you need is clear full range mic's, good mic preamp, good levels, in that order. You could do this with much less equipment.

[MiddleAgesMan]

Very nice work, Philip.

Your style reminds me a little of one our local artists, Richard Leo Johnson. His early stuff (linked here: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Richard-Leo-Johnson/dp/B00004YL5I/ref=m_art_li_0 ) is just him with his guitars, 6-, 12-, and 18 stringed instruments.

His later work has included a couple unemployed symphony musicians from the now defunct Savannah Symphony playing various instruments including therimin and electric violin.

His 12-string style can only be described as Frantic, ;) , not that I would include you in that description. Imagine your style speeded up about 3 times but played in keys and rhythms that are other-worldly.

You can see more of him here: http://www.richardleojohnson.com/

If you tire of his music take a look at the photography side of his site. He's a pro and his work has appeared in several major architectural/design magazines.

[Vince Brennan]

Yeh... arthritic and nowhere near that fast or fluid! Nice stuff!

I played Irish dance stuff and folkie-rocky things (Fairport and the like) but mostly pretty strong on tradmusic.

See Old Music Project (http://www.oldmusicproject.com) for an idea of my tastes.