Recording a 3 Person Orchestra but the tracks are out of sync

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bassoon

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I've started a project of recording me and my two friends playing all the individual parts of an orchestral piece (Ravel's: Rapsodie Espagnole- II). The recording went well (I have a Zoom H4n with two mics also attached). However, I ran into some issue with the editing. When I imported the desired tracks into Audacity I realized that the tracks didn't line up. We all played while watching a video of me conducting to keep the timing consistent but the tracks were completely out of sync. I spent a fair amount of time cut and pasting to get the tracks to line up but there must be a better way.

I'm wondering if there is a good method while recording to be able to easily line up tracks later in editing?
 
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Let me get this right... you've got multiple recordings of multiple instruments being played three at a time and captured in stereo sets (two on-board mics on your Zoom)?

You should be able to visually align the tracks assuming they're all in time with the same thing, but I'm not that familiar with Audacity, ie. just push the whole track one way or the other to line up.

Problem might be that you don't have an audio cue to do this to... even though you played along to a video, given the disparate nature of the instruments, it would have been useful, before you started playing the piece, on a visual cue, ach set, to count in 1, 2, 3 then tap whatever you were playing on 4 (assuming 4/4 time) loudly to put a sharp visual spike in the wave file that you can more easily line up, THEN count in for real and start playing the piece.

That would help next time, but not much use this time, I guess..
 
I promise I am not on an earner! But Samplitude Producer is ideal for this problem. You can expand the timebase out to sample level and line things up to a grid. The demo download gives you 30 days to work on the project. If you only have 8 tracks (4 stereo) you can get the free forever Sam Silver. When your 30days is up and you have got the hang, download Samplitude ProX for another 30day dalliance!

Dave.
 
If i follow correctly, all performances were recorded to the same visual cue, so they should be at the same tempo,
but they are out of sync, as in, they don't start and end at the same time?

If this is the problem and they don't 'run out' of time, then any editing software should let you line the tracks up.

As armistice says, if there's no audio cue, it might be tricky to line them up.
My advice would be to look for an obvious landmark in the music. Maybe there's a big crescendo to an abrupt stop?
Use that as your cue to line up the separate parts.

Again, Armistice is right. Next time you record the conductor video, bang the table as a count in, so every subsequent recording has the same loud count in.
 
Thanks for your advice.

The way we did was that there is only one instrument recorded at a time so that we could later balance each part individually. The audio cue sounds like a good idea and I think we'll just restart and do that. In total there will be about 45 tracks so I'm glad there will be an easier way of syncing the tracks.
 
Thanks, I'll check it out. We do have more than 8 tracks. I think it'll be almost 45 when we're done.
 
ok, so create a video of me conducting and then create a loud sound at the beginning so that when I'm editing later there will be a distinct mark to line up to. Thats a great idea, thank you so much!
 
I don't get it! You're using the same recorder or diff ones? I record with people across the planet & send them stuff to work to. If they drop the stuff I send them into the recorder, without trimming etc, & play back to that there's no problem EVEN if I've not remembered to do a count in etc.
Are you & your friends listening to the previously recorded tracks or at least a guide track with the conducted video accompaniment?
Where does the visual cue come from? Is it synched to the recording? Are you conducting to imagined music or to a guide track?
You certainly seem to have made a rod for your own back.
Nevertheless, when you've managed to align what you have all should be sweet so long as you're listening to a common guide.
You need only tap your baton as a count in/synch mark.
 
we are using the same recorder and we are not playing with a guide track, just the video of the conductor. The video of the conductor is shown on a computer screen that is in the recording space, so the musician is viewing the video as if it were a conductor. Also, the conductor video was guided by the score so it is accurate to the piece(i was singing along in my head as well).
 
About a year ago my son was given a couple of 4 track cassettes and asked to make a stereo mix from them. We don't have a 4tracker (tried Cash Converters etc, no joy) so he had to play them on my Sony Dolby S machine. They played at double speed and two tracks were of course backwards. To add to the problem, the speeds were inconsistant since the start and finish were at opposite ends of the tape!
Nonetheless, using mostly just Samplitude SE8 he was able to produce a fairly decent result.

Dave.
 
Once the 1st recording is made it can be listened to with the synched video to provide the guide for the rest of the recording.
Each subsequent track could be added to the playback for recording.
The only way this can go wrong is if a) the vid isn't synched to the audio & b) the previously recorded tracks aren't played back when recording.
The latter is fundamental to multitrack recording.
If you're starting again record the conducting at the same time as you do the 1st recording & ensure they are in synch for subsequent playback/recording.
For example:
1) simultaneously, visually & auditorially record you conducting & the 1st (or guide) instrument into the video recorder.
2) Take the audio line out from the machine you play the vid on & insert it into the audio recording machine.
3) Playback the audio/video through the visual monitor & recording machine so that the next performer, wearing head phones, watching your gestures and their charts, sees the conducting & hears the 1st performer recording as they play & you record them.
4) repeat ad infinitum or as needed.
 
bassoon said:
However, I ran into some issue with the editing. When I imported the desired tracks into Audacity I realized that the tracks didn't line up. We all played while watching a video of me conducting to keep the timing consistent but the tracks were completely out of sync.
Click to expand...
I'm still trying to get my head around why each of you recorded your various parts watching a conductor and not listening to what you were playing to. You basically overdubbed and that is the point, you play to what already exists.
Or have I completely misunderstood your description ?

ecc83 said:
About a year ago my son was given a couple of 4 track cassettes and asked to make a stereo mix from them. We don't have a 4 tracker so he had to play them on my Sony Dolby S machine. They played at double speed and two tracks were of course backwards. To add to the problem, the speeds were inconsistant since the start and finish were at opposite ends of the tape!
Click to expand...
Kind of like what used to go on inside the head of the Syd Barretts, Brian Jones, Steve Tooks {UK}, Brian Wilsons and Roky Eriksons {USA} of this world. Sounds like a standard piece of acid drenched psychedelia from 1967 !
 
grimtraveller said:
I'm still trying to get my head around why each of you recorded your various parts watching a conductor and not listening to what you were playing to. You basically overdubbed and that is the point, you play to what already exists.
Or have I completely misunderstood your description ?
!
Click to expand...

I'm thinking that this might be part of the issue... recording one track at a time to the same visual clue and hoping to end up with an orchestral performance is a different game than slowly building that orchestral performance by listening to it AND watching the video conductor and ADDING one track at a time - that many instruments, there must be more ebbs and flows in timing that way, and they'd be difficult to deal with in editing.

I was thinking the OP was struggling to get alignment of the whole track, hence the visual cue in the wave trick, but perhaps it's more than that...
 
This has all been very helpful, and I thank you all for trying to make sense of what I'm trying to do. This is the first thing that I have attempted to record so don't pay to much attention to the original method. For any clarification I will describe the process one more time.

We began by making a video of me conducting the piece. We checked, and my conducting is accurate (I was reading the score as I did it). Then, we began recording part by part, one at a time. We had the musician set up with a computer just behind there stand, replicating the position of the conductor. We would begin recording and then press play on the conducting video (trying to get the timing relatively close on each recording). The musician would play through the entire piece and then we would move onto the next instrument.

I'm realizing that some of the issues from lining up may have stemmed from performance mistakes by the musicians as in skipping bars, counting rests incorrectly, not following tempo changes, and so on. We are going to try it with the audio cue and we will all try to learn our parts a little better and really count the bars of rest to not miss anything.

Thanks for the help, and I'll let you know how it goes!
 
Can I get something clear?

You say you make a video of yourself conducting? Is that a silient video and if so why?

I am certainly no musician but I would have thought it better to record conductor and at least one musical part together?

Dave.
 
The video was silent (though with the advice given, we are going to add an audio cue to our next one). I don't quite see the advantage of recording one of the parts with the conductor, especially because there isn't a single specific part that runs through the entire piece.

This is the piece that we are doing. The second movement begins at 5:00 which is the part we are doing.
Ravel - Rapsodie espagnole; Riccardo Muti, Philadephia Orchestra [Part 1/2] - YouTube
 
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