TromboneChat

This dudes tone is so juicy. Anyone know how to get that good of tone through a recording? Any time i try and record myself i sound 10x worse, maybe its just me but i like to think my iphone mic is the cause.

None of us know anything about your trombone playing. But it is safe to say that your iPhone mic is doing you no favors. A telephone is built to transmit voice intelligibly, not to record musical instruments at high fidelity. In order to capture the sound of a trombone realistically, you will need a professional-quality microphone. (At a non-trivial cost – at least in excess of $100). And probably some other gear that does not digitally reprocess the audio signal the way an iPhone does.

Of course you could acquire such a microphone and likely still not sound anywhere near as good as David Seder.

Practice for 10000 hours

Get a nice mic

In that order.

Burgerbob wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 5:27 pm Practice for 10000 hours

Get a nice mic

In that order.

No substitute for practicing - make sure that your practicing includes long tones and slow lip slurs, and that your music listening includes lots of great trombone players. Have the great sounds that they produce in your head while you play those long tones/slurs and try to copy them. If you don't already have a great trombone teacher, find one. Then maybe that 10,000 hours of practicing will pay off!

<Edit: Fixed Quote>

Sorry, I messed up the quote from Burgerbob in my reply - I like the 10,000 hours quote - somehow, i dropped it in my post.

Jim Scott

I guess theres no magic mic that will make me sound like that

Elow wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:37 pm I guess theres no magic mic that will make me sound like that

If your recordings sound 10x worse than you think you sound, you need practice!

harrisonreed wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:59 pm

Elow wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 7:37 pm I guess theres no magic mic that will make me sound like that

If your recordings sound 10x worse than you think you sound, you need practice!

That’s probably true

Listening to your own recordings is a humbling experience but helps you find and fix things that would otherwise be missed.

Recording gear is just like an instrument. The player is what matters most, but using the right tool for the job certainly makes things easier. A nice mic and interface will dramatically improve the accuracy of your recorded sound to your real sound (especially coming from a phone mic), but that accurate recorded sound can only be as good as the real sound going in.

Elow wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 4:26 pm Any time i try and record myself i sound 10x worse, maybe its just me but i like to think my iphone mic is the cause.

That's some pretty awesome playing in that link. It's not my concept of tone but it's so musical.

I think that your iPhone does not fully capture your tone. But I also think it is 100% accurate for intonation, timing, articulation, and expression, all things that a nontrombonist listener probably hears before tone.

A little while back I recorded a hymn tune for an elderly friend, myself on trombone with others on flugel and keyboard. It was done in a home studio with some good recording and mixing equipment.

It was the first time I had ever heard myself recorded. It was both humbling (do I really sound like that?) and informative and helped me with some timing and intonation details that I was missing.

It's a very useful thing to do.

walldaja wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 10:35 am Listening to your own recordings is a humbling experience but helps you find and fix things that would otherwise be missed.

This

--Andy in OKC

Personally, my iPhone (voice message app) tells me everything I really need: pitch, rhythms, tempo, articulation, whether I am getting the desired degree of connectedness (or detachment) of tones, note shape and even relative dynamics. There may be some loss of frequency, so the tone reproduction may be off, but the kinds of things that are sometimes harder to hear as you play are all there. Unless you are looking to publish a recording, the reproduction of tone quality is not exceptionally important. As a practice tool, your phone should work.

And..... I can’t leave the 10 000 hours alone. I’m in the middle of reading a book by the researcher quoted by Gladwell thus creating the 10000 hour meme. I just read a passage where he addresses what he sees as an unfortunate misconception about that figure. While the violinists studied (German conservatory students) had averaged about that amount of practice that was just part of the story. They best hadn’t all practiced that much. It was also the way they practiced (systematic, guided by expert teachers) that was the more vital part of the equation. Finally, these were just students. They would probably put in at least 20 000 hours before they would become true masters of the violin playing as soloists or in the best orchestras.

So don’t just practice. Get lessons with the best expert teachers you can and do the most effective, efficient practice you can, focussed on addressing your weaknesses and maximizing your strengths.

Carl Fontana carried a Hammond Hammer for recording. Seems to have worked okay for him. And Hugh Downs and Howard Cosell and everyone else in that time.

I don't think it's just 10,000 hours of practice and a mic. That Seder track sounds a bit weird to me, as if there is too much low harmonics in the tone. I think there's other sound engineering going on.

The best thing that happened when the house was finally empty enough to follow the link at the start of this thread was this popping up as a suggestion. Why am I VJOFan? Take a listen. Pretty classic stuff!

Heres an example, not the best playing so be prepared to cringe at how out of tune some notes are. Its a new horn that i havent gotten use to the tuning inconsistencies. You cant expect much from a 15 year old. Anyways, i like to think my tone is a lot different then what it sounds like on the video but oh well.

Elow wrote: ↑Sat Jul 25, 2020 9:11 pm Heres an example, not the best playing so be prepared to cringe at how out of tune some notes are. Its a new horn that i havent gotten use to the tuning inconsistencies. You cant expect much from a 15 year old. Anyways, i like to think my tone is a lot different then what it sounds like on the video but oh well.

It is a great attitude to put your playing out there for others to hear. I think the core of your sound is actually pretty accurately represented in this recording. Phone microphones take out some of the room resonance and favour middle frequencies so there is some loss, but the basic sound (which I like by the way) is assessable. But that is not so important really.

To me “tone” is just a component of an effective performance. When I listen to my recordings I hear the times when notes don’t speak exactly how I would like, notes that aren’t connected (or detached) as much as I want, phrases that don’t have the shape I am going for, places where I don’t sustain the air so the note trails off prematurely and of course the basics of tuning, tempo and rhythms. Most of that would be apparent even if the recording represented my tone as a constant sine wave. Generally, tone is pretty easy to monitor from behind the horn, but listening back can help catch a lot of other things.

This recording just confirms for me what I suspected in my earlier reply: your phone recordings are very much good enough for constructive practice work if you just listen to what is faithfully represented and not the flaws in frequency fidelity.

You may be surprised at how good it will sound when you get your air playing the music through every note. Your tone sounds pretty nice. You just need to start hearing the kinds of things that are keeping your best tone from speaking at all times.

AndrewMeronek wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 7:22 am That Seder track sounds a bit weird to me, as if there is too much low harmonics in the tone. I think there's other sound engineering going on.

You too?

I would like to be able to play like that but I don't want to sound like that, if that makes sense.