My newest piano/synth recording - Rachmaninoff - Vocalise

CyberGene

Rachmaninoff - Vocalise

I know I'm getting boring with all these videos but, well... who cares 🤣

From the YouTube Description:

I play Vocalise op.34 by Rachmaninoff. It was composed and published in 1915 as the last of his 14 Songs or 14 Romances, Op. 34. Written for high voice (soprano or tenor) with piano accompaniment, it contains no words, but is sung using only one vowel of the singer's choosing. It is performed in various instrumental arrangements far more frequently than the original vocal version, and in this case I play the voice part on a synthesizer: the U-He Diva software plugin that I control through an ASM Hydrasynth keyboard. The patch programming is mine.

Piano: Garritan CFX controlled by a Yamaha AvantGrand N1X.

Audio Recorded in Logic Pro X. This time I recorded the video not on the SD card but instead used a cable to record directly on my MacBook Air. For some reason the video track can't sync perfectly with the audio and there's some drift more progressive towards the end, although not extreme. Apologies for that.

David B

Really beautiful! The two parts were synchronized wonderfully. Which part did you record first?

God Bless,
David

CyberGene

David B Thanks. I recorded the piano first because it’s difficult even in itself and I would have struggled if I had to play it in sync with a recorded solo 😕 That being said, the solo part is recorded in MIDI and I adjusted the timing of a few notes because the rubato in the piano was too strong for me to follow it (the rubato turned out a bit overdone on repeated listening and that’s my biggest self-criticism towards this particular recording).

MHirsch

Nicely played!

Just discovered your video directly on YouTube and was expecting something like this

https://youtu.be/gfNdqUdKihg

Or like that

https://youtu.be/6rrkae_ok8Y

CyberGene

MHirsch solo piano ones are difficult to play and since I can only play keyboards… a piano and synth 😀

jdg78

That was lovely - thanks for sharing!

To be honest, I didn’t notice any synching issues between the audio and video - it all looks very seamless.

I also really like the way you framed the shot of the piano portion - very artful. What kind of camera do you use?

I always struggle to find a good angle when I record video, although I’m just using an iPhone to record so the capabilities are somewhat limited.

CyberGene

jdg78 I also really like the way you framed the shot of the piano portion - very artful. What kind of camera do you use?

Thank you. I use a Fuji X-E3 camera on a tripod that allows tilting the camera, so I can do the diagonal framing. I purchased that camera to make pictures but I’ve been making pictures only on my iPhone for years now, it’s so much easier 🙂 So, the Fuji finds use only for these occasional piano videos…