Audio Guides and the Value of Direct Input with NS Design Violins

 

As I begin to navigate the world of orchestra in a pandemic driven hybrid learning environment, I am developing some important strategies for keeping my students engaged and maintaining many of the values of the scholastic orchestra environment. I truly believe that it is our duty to keep and promote as many as possible, of the standard musical priorities we have always had in the orchestra classroom. Some of those values include: accurate rhythm, accurate intonation, intentional phrasing, bow placement, articulation, attacks and releases, the orchestra community, and many others. I learned quickly that the art of conducting is not super valuable when I have half of my class in person and the other half participating via Zoom with a significant delay. So, I have pivoted to selecting repertoire that is relatively metronomical and creating accompanying audio guides for use in rehearsal and the remote ensemble recording environment. 

These are recordings of all the string parts from the repertoire we are preparing with the addition of a click track or prominent metronome guide. I create these guides as part of my planning and use them to keep everyone playing together in rehearsal. Rather than conducting, I play my instrument and demonstrate freely throughout the rehearsal. As a result, I have needed to record string tracks quickly and cleanly in a very efficient way. I have found that the best way for me to do this is by using my NSDesign CR5 electric violin connected directly to my computer through a standard audio interface.  The 5-string violin through a direct input allows me to get a very clean signal with very little background noise, magnificent tone, extraordinarily stable tuning, and a consistent balanced audio recording product. The 5-string violin allows me to record viola parts without changing instruments or my finger spacing. I simply play cello parts an octave up and then lower the octave electronically after the fact. For the bass lines, I use a fretted NSDesign Radius bass. The frets provide nearly perfect intonation and help to guide a rhythmic performance with specific articulations. In other words, the bass guitar keeps things from getting tonally or rhythmically ambiguous.

For those of you that haven't recorded with a solid body electric violin in a direct input environment before, there are many benefits to this action. First, as I stated earlier, the NSDesign CR5 provides a smooth accurate tone quality. It truly sounds like an acoustic violin, even when there are no added effects. I can recording completely in headphones if I choose. Or, as I prefer, I can record though the sound of speakers, which I could not do if I was using a microphone and my acoustic instrument.  Second, during the recording process, a little bit of extraneous noise or talking will not bleed into the recording. This allows me to record at my home while other things are going on and even allows me to count rests out loud or shuffle about my studio during the recording process as necessary. I mentioned stable tuning earlier. One of the great benefits of the NSDesign electric bowed instruments is the proprietary tuning mechanism and the fact that once in tune, these instruments rarely slip or change open string intonation. This is a great benefit while recording. I check my tuning early in the recording session and can generally count on those open strings staying very stable for hours, if not days! And, when creating audio guides, we really do want the intonation to be very consistent.

What equipment do I need to make this happen? It is all pretty simple. I have the CR5 electric violin, a quarter inch phone plug connecting it to an audio interface. I use a Protools system with the Digi 003 interface. But, at school I frequently use the Lexicon Omega Studio interface system which is no longer produced. In the end, there are many audio interfaces available which are relatively inexpensive.  All you need is a mono, quarter inch input which connects to your computer by USB.  Today, most of these systems are pretty intuitive and your digital audio workstation software will find the hardware automatically.

While I use Avid Protools as my digital audio workstation, this works just as well with Garage Band on Mac and with Audacity, the free open source DAW used by millions. The CR5 sounds great though any interface and in any digital audio workstation environment.

Here is one I created quickly this week for a Chorale warm-up we are using.  It is the famous St. Anthony Chorale.

Anyway, I hope that this is helpful. Please keep an eye for another post in coming days which will go into more depth of my thoughts on hybrid teaching and learning as well as a bit more on our environment at NCSSM this fall.

For now, take care and stay healthy.

Peace.

Scott