new toy for recording covers etc

[AlanK]

Hey all, hope you're managing the ongoing insanity.. I think early retirement is in the cards for me... I'm IT support at a Cdn university and things there are just a wee bit tyranical and woke of course, I'm tired of dealing with it all so.. maybe more time on the drums in my future

Anyhow, I've been recording vids of my playing, and jams with friends for years now both on my Alesis and my acoustic set. Usually use my cellphone cam, a Gear 360 and sometimes a crappy Action Cam. I hvae all sorts of mics also, and Ableton Live to do a ton of DAW mixing but it's so much work. I finally went for a Zoom Q8 vidcam which has mediocre video (not shabby in well lit scenes) but has the bonus of the terrific Zoom mic quality. This version has a pair of mics up on top of the camera, you can interchange them for other snap in options.. and has a pair of XLR / 1/4" inputs directly on the camera. This means I can get 4 tracks of decent audio and skip all the Ableton work, go straight to DaVinci Resolve and just edit it and produce from there.

I still have a lot to learn, this weekend I did some random covers on a whim.. haven't played the DM10X in a while.. I have some issues of low vol with the left crash and the right crash sometimes doesn't sound.. also low ride volumes (in some of the tunes).. I just didn't mess around much with settings.. my kick drum head was a bit loose from temp changes in the basement, my pedal could use some adjustment.. and besides, I'm kinda out of practice and look/play pretty awkwardly most of the time. Finally, I was playing through Addictive Drums, and there's still a bit of latency that I had to get used to (play my acoustic Yamaha's most of the time so that put me off a bit), and because the onboard mics on the Zoom picked up the speakers (drums and cover song) as well as the outputs from my mixer post AD2 came directly into the Zoom, there was a very slight difference in placement when I was lining up the audio and video tracks. I'll work on splitting the cover song from the mix better so I can add it in as a separate track eventually, then hopefully I'll just align the 4 audio tracks to the song better without it being stuck in the audio tracks by default (since I had the EQ mix of cover and drums in my maiin out from my little mixer.. all this to say I need to spend more time on learning how to route my mixer channels properly.

You'll see I screw up enough, plus get out of sync when I can't hear my cover tune well enough or the latency gets me messed up but usually a quick fill and I can get back in time for a while at least.. sorry I'm all about excuses.. hahaha.. so, lots of Zep tunes I love from the ol' days, a few more modern, couple of slowish ones (House of Love was pretty bang on) and of course, had to do one of my favourite old Kiss songs! This was all totally unrehearsed and like I say, don't play a lot these days esp on the e-kit so it's a bit lame but sure was a lotta fun. I was impressed how nice the kick drum came through on some of these songs (when my foot coordination worked).

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeCEKB4kEajtLZpkIPnOKu_3b5zfgz-mf

By the way I found the camera at Gadgetward (look them up) and they sold it for about a hundred bucks lower than everywhere else (Amazon, Long & McQuade)... came fairly quickly from overseas and was in perfect condition.

https://zoomcorp.com/en/ca/video-recorders/video-recorders/q8-handy-video-recorder/

[Joker47]

I'm kinda out of practice and look/play pretty awkwardly most of the time.

heh heh....I feel you, brother....

What's the cam you linked do for you that you didn't get before?

I just ordered a Roland Go:Mixer Pro-X Audio Mixer, that looked like it would be a real simple way to record and video attempted playing of covers.

Does the camera do more than that would? Or, just another option? (I'm a little scared to see myself play, but think I could learn a lot from it. LOL)

J

[AlanK]

Yeah it took a bit of nerve to start recording my journey. It all started at a drunken halloween party, going downstairs and finding musicians and getting on the drums after 25 yrs stagnant. We became friends and jammed more, and I started filming a bit with my old crappy cellphone.. it looked and sounded horrible. But I recorded almost all our get togethers, tried a couple of crappy camcorders, the action cam, then got a Gear360 which is decent quality, sound's ok, even with my Samsung Galaxy S7 phone cam and internal mic.. but the audio has that balancing.. can have my guitar buddy doing some sweet playing and then I jump in and his sound cuts off to balance with my drums.. very frustrating. I also tried micing us and using Ableton Live but it was so much bloody work, and a few times I screwed it all up, not a sound tech and it'd be just two of us, nobody to watch levels and all..

This Zoom cam has the technology of their superb recording devices, not horrible video but it's simpler.. easy to bring to a jam sesh and not have to bring a laptop, mixer, bunch of mics.. I just used the right and left out from my mini mixer at home where my cover and the drums were coming out of and plugged it into the camera, plus it gets a stereo room recording, then after I plug it to the Mac and bring into a video editor and voila.. great audio quality, didn't have to spend thousands on a bunch of cameras and other gear to haul around.

And as goofy as I am, and I hate looking at myself, it really has helped me learn what I'm doing wrong (not that I fix anything, hahaha).. but it makes me feel like a rockstar when I can turn on youtube on a big tv with the soundbar and feel like I'm playing in a live concert on the screen.. its mostly to share with my kid out west and brother out east, and let the guys I play with see how we did and then once in a while some external folks have a look.. I figure some day I'll be gone and my family can have a few laughs watching what gave me a lot of joy (and pain).. until youtube finds out I'm dead and takes down the channel I guess.