12-22-2024, 12:45 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-10-2025, 07:12 PM by Hugh Wallington.)
3. Recording level when making an AUDIO recording.
When you set up an AUDIO RECORDING, you press the RECORD and STOP buttons together to set up a NEW AUDIO (it does actually tell you that underneath).
You then have to make a choice of which type of AUDIO recording you want to make .. MULTI or SIMPLE. If you choose MULTI you’re heading for a load of trouble, as this option is specifically for doing Audio Multi Tracking .. which I shall be covering in another Topic (Thread) later. I only have one word for going down the MULTI road. It’s brilliant! (Maybe that is two words!) So choose SIMPLE for a ‘normal’ audio recording.
Note: Not all Yamaha keyboards have the MULTI option. The ‘touchscreen’ Yamaha keyboards (Genos and SX series) don’t, so they do SIMPLE recordings by default (that’s really sad!). Tyros 3 & 4 both have the MULTI option; not sure about the Tyros 5.
The red light on REC will now be flashing, and this message below comes up to tell you that you must click the PLAY/PAUSE button to start recording.
Press the OK.
As soon as you do that you get the screen below.
Note that by ‘default’ the recording level is 90.
You’re not recording yet, so it’s at this point that you can make any alterations to what you have set up eg. press the SYNC START, or change some of the VOLUMES etc.
All set, and ready to go?
Press the PLAY/PAUSE and you’re doing a ‘live’ recording.
The recording levels as you’re playing show as green and yellow bars. What you don’t want to happen is for the recording level to go up one more notch and be ‘in the red’. If you’re anything like me, you are so preoccupied actually playing the piece and trying not to make a mistake, there is no way you would ever look at these recording levels while you’re playing. I always put my recordings into Audacity afterwards and check my recording levels.
A keyboard acquaintance of mine (Michael Clark) has sung in clubs and played for Private Functions ‘up North’ most of his life, accompanying himself on his Tyros 2. I was so taken with the way he sang I asked him if he would record Mack the Knife for me, which he kindly did and sent me the MP3.
Click the below and have a listen to him singing.
https://app.box.com/s/5kwynagleja7v985i2hc8wrgj0zgtsrx
Not what I was hoping to hear!
I put the MP3 he had sent me into Audacity and this is what came up.
He must have had his recording volume far too high.
So I asked him to turn the volume right down and record it again.
Which he did, and sent me the MP3.
Same again! No difference! Took us quite a while to work out what was going on.
When I asked him to ‘turn it down’, that’s exactly what he did. He turned the master volume control for the keyboard right down so he could hardly hear the music .. and then recorded it.
What we discovered was:
The position of the keyboard’s master volume control has no bearing whatsoever on the recording level for recording.
I have checked this out on my Tyros 4, and can confirm that even with the master volume control on zero (ie. I couldn’t hear anything through the headphones), when I made a recording it recorded at full volume. So it’s only the ‘listener’ who is affected by the position of that volume control. I didn’t know that .. but I do now!
So going back to the ‘recording screen’ showing the REC MONITOR, which was set at 90, he eventually had to turn that down to 30 (!) in order to get a recording that was not overmodulated.
Listen to how this has all turned out.
https://app.box.com/s/nvum5j2f13etdbwci483w2dxhwtoid02
The waveform in Audacity is now looking like this. So only just OK!
Just goes to show .. one shouldn’t ‘assume’ things. I’m sure this must be in the handbook somewhere.
Hugh
More things to come.
When you set up an AUDIO RECORDING, you press the RECORD and STOP buttons together to set up a NEW AUDIO (it does actually tell you that underneath).
You then have to make a choice of which type of AUDIO recording you want to make .. MULTI or SIMPLE. If you choose MULTI you’re heading for a load of trouble, as this option is specifically for doing Audio Multi Tracking .. which I shall be covering in another Topic (Thread) later. I only have one word for going down the MULTI road. It’s brilliant! (Maybe that is two words!) So choose SIMPLE for a ‘normal’ audio recording.
Note: Not all Yamaha keyboards have the MULTI option. The ‘touchscreen’ Yamaha keyboards (Genos and SX series) don’t, so they do SIMPLE recordings by default (that’s really sad!). Tyros 3 & 4 both have the MULTI option; not sure about the Tyros 5.
The red light on REC will now be flashing, and this message below comes up to tell you that you must click the PLAY/PAUSE button to start recording.
Press the OK.
As soon as you do that you get the screen below.
Note that by ‘default’ the recording level is 90.
You’re not recording yet, so it’s at this point that you can make any alterations to what you have set up eg. press the SYNC START, or change some of the VOLUMES etc.
All set, and ready to go?
Press the PLAY/PAUSE and you’re doing a ‘live’ recording.
The recording levels as you’re playing show as green and yellow bars. What you don’t want to happen is for the recording level to go up one more notch and be ‘in the red’. If you’re anything like me, you are so preoccupied actually playing the piece and trying not to make a mistake, there is no way you would ever look at these recording levels while you’re playing. I always put my recordings into Audacity afterwards and check my recording levels.
A keyboard acquaintance of mine (Michael Clark) has sung in clubs and played for Private Functions ‘up North’ most of his life, accompanying himself on his Tyros 2. I was so taken with the way he sang I asked him if he would record Mack the Knife for me, which he kindly did and sent me the MP3.
Click the below and have a listen to him singing.
https://app.box.com/s/5kwynagleja7v985i2hc8wrgj0zgtsrx
Not what I was hoping to hear!
I put the MP3 he had sent me into Audacity and this is what came up.
He must have had his recording volume far too high.
So I asked him to turn the volume right down and record it again.
Which he did, and sent me the MP3.
Same again! No difference! Took us quite a while to work out what was going on.
When I asked him to ‘turn it down’, that’s exactly what he did. He turned the master volume control for the keyboard right down so he could hardly hear the music .. and then recorded it.
What we discovered was:
The position of the keyboard’s master volume control has no bearing whatsoever on the recording level for recording.
I have checked this out on my Tyros 4, and can confirm that even with the master volume control on zero (ie. I couldn’t hear anything through the headphones), when I made a recording it recorded at full volume. So it’s only the ‘listener’ who is affected by the position of that volume control. I didn’t know that .. but I do now!
So going back to the ‘recording screen’ showing the REC MONITOR, which was set at 90, he eventually had to turn that down to 30 (!) in order to get a recording that was not overmodulated.
Listen to how this has all turned out.
https://app.box.com/s/nvum5j2f13etdbwci483w2dxhwtoid02
The waveform in Audacity is now looking like this. So only just OK!
Just goes to show .. one shouldn’t ‘assume’ things. I’m sure this must be in the handbook somewhere.
Hugh
More things to come.
It's all about the music!
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