Video Recording

One thing that has proven to be a lot of fun and is well suited to my skills is doing videos of music performances. I have been recording recital and concert performances since the beginning of my career but with the advent of relatively inexpensive high definition, widescreen video equipment there is a whole new dimension of services that I can provide.

One of my biggest strengths as a video producer is (not surprisingly) the quality of my audio. The way I see it, if it’s a video of a music performance if nothing else, it should at least sound good! Because I’m music-centric, I’m always keenely aware of where the focus of the music is at any given moment and I make sure to capture that as a priority. Nothing is more frustrating to me than having somebody tearing it up on a solo onstage and the shot the director puts up is a closeup of the bass-drum beater!!!

I maintain a site of video clips on my YouTube channel “CCMRecitals” but have embedded some of those here for your viewing and listening pleasure.

"Winter Games 1988" by the Ohio Metropolitan Pops Orchestra

I did the audio and video recording on this one, a truly huge project! 32 microphones and 5 cameras. All told it came out great!

Julia's Swing by Phil DeGreg

Phil is one of my favorite clients! He knows the value of making a quality video, is a great performer and understands how to put on a show that looks good as well as sounds good! This one was from his last recital at the College-Conservatory of Music

The Girl From Ipanema performed by the Samba Jazz Syndicate

This was a great concert/session! Fantastic band and great performance. Between Kim Pensyl (trumpet) and myself I think we had $18,000 of microphones on that stage!
This is a really cool arrangement of a classic song that has well, kinda gotten a bad rap as being almost a parody of bossa nova, so when they did this arrangement in an up-tempo 7/4 I thought, "well done guys!"  

Air Conditioner performed by Pat Linhart

Pat Linhart always puts on a fun show, taking the term "Faculty Recital" to out-of-the-box extremes; love the schtick she worked out with Frank Weinstock from the audience, former Dean of the School and Professor of Piano. I do have one little confession about this recording though, at 4:36 I overdubbed a single duck call onto the live performance, other than that it's all just the way the audience heard it.
    The audio for this track was multi-tracked and mixed down in the studio later (you just can't get that kind of presence on background vocals or unamplified acoustic guitar any other way.

Mourning Dove Sonnet performed by Timothy Hampton

This is a more traditional one-camera shoot representative of a standard recital recording that I do. Audio is recorded separately on my computer professionally mastered and synced to the video later. I liked this piece because of all the unusual performance techniques it employs.

Clerow's Flipped performed by Nathaniel Andrew

Nat's a great guy who made quite a name for himself during the two years he was in Cincinnati from Australia getting his Master's Degree. You could just tell that he was on the way up to big things someday. Every time he sends me a pic on Facebook, it seems to be of a "croc"!…
   The audio on this recording was done with a single stereo mic in the audience, then professional mastered using my great software tools providing a good balance between sound quality and price!