I got a Zoom (yay I no longer have to fight to check out the one at the library), so violin-friend and I made another practice recording today. Please give a listen!
It's Italian Summer by Brian Crain

https://app.box.com/s/lpoy7pna...55pcina6guormrd8hbw7

Bernard, are you here? Do you have any advice about recording strings? I feel like my piano sounds pretty good in the recording, but the violin sounds much better in person than it does in the recording (to my ear anyway).

Anyway, if Bernard or anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Play around with placement. Pre-select a number of places to put the zoom, then start playing and have a 3rd person move the zoom every 10 seconds or so. Refer to your placement map during playback to further refine what sounds best. You may have to move the violin farther away from the piano than you would naturally prefer to give yourself more control over the blend...

Which Zoom model did you get?

Does it have inputs for external microphones? If it does, get another microphone and about a 10 ft mic cord. Mic the Violin on a separate track and then mix them in the DAW that comes bundled with the Zoom. I think it's Cubase.

It's nice to have a good blend of the two instruments and use the close mic tracks to bring out the violin either throughout the performance or just in spots where you feel it might be lacking in the blended recording channel.

BTW, your performances were very good!

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BTW, your performances were very good!

Thank you Mark!!

Ron and Mark, thanks for the comments/suggestions... I will try Ron's suggestions once we take the Christmas tree down. Right now, it's right where Violin-friend would normally sit! She was a little cramped yesterday actually!

Mark, I got a Zoom H4n pro, so it can take mics in. But I don't have any external mics right now. But eventually I would like to experiment with the sort of thing you describe.

I recently made a new music-friend, a woman who plays cello, so if she and Violin-friend and I play together, which we're discussing, I would definitely want to do something more with mic-ing.

Getting good recordings is an art as well as a science. Mic placement is crucial to getting the best sound captured. It takes a lot of experimentation and mic placement is one of the most critical aspects that affects the recorded sound, IMO.

The type of mic, mic pre-amp, signal chain, all make a difference as well, but placement still rules.

The Zoom has decently noise-free mic pre-amps.

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Getting good recordings is an art as well as a science.

Indeed! And requires as much patience, if not more, than anything else we might try to do at the keyboard.

I'll try to make little adjustments over time... It's funny because I got the Zoom since it was the simplest. Set up, hit record, use the resultant file.

While, yeah, but as it happens, nothing is ever that simple, is it!