A Brief Rundown for Online Lessons and Recording Equipment

If you are considering taking online lessons or want to up your recording equipment a little, this is the post for you!

Let’s talk about overall equipment that I use.

Online Lessons

For lessons, I use a laptop (laptop or desktop is preferred as you can’t really control the microphone levels on tablets and phones). Next, I use an XLR mic. For me, the included phantom power does NOT produce enough power output. I kept getting a robotic sound and it would die out mid sentence, The fix was a Presonus 24c audio interface that directly connects to my computer USB-C port. Because of the Presonus, ANY XLR mic will do the job, so no need to break the bank on too many things. The best part about this setup is the very small amount of cables;XLR cable to Presonus, Presonus USB-C cable to computer. No power cords to walls or anything! Of course this is also great for recording projects directly into your preferred audio software.

Recording on Phone

Recording onto your phone using an external microphone takes a little more equipment. First off, I use an iPhone for all of my videos that I post on instagram and YouTube. The technology of the iPhone camera is far superior than most cameras I have used with HD and 4k capabilities at 30 and 60fps. If you already have it in your pocket, no need to splurge for another camera.

For the microphone, you’ll need a USB mic like the H4 Zoom or the Blue Snowball iCE. I have an older H2 Zoom mic that I used in undergrad for immediate feedback in the practice room or studio performances. Zoom recorders are expensive but they are worth your money to help you get better!

Once you have your phone and mic, we have to connect them!

You will need a Powered USB hub (which plugs into the wall) that you connect the mic to directly via the mics USB. Next you will need a USB 3.0 Charger Cable A-Male to Micro-B  that plugs into a USB to lightening adapter that then plugs into your phone. WHEW!! But now you have a better mic that you can manipulate in a room (that is what you are actually recording, the room) while catching HD video!

The downside of this is all the cables, but it does work! I personally prefer this over a Shure MV88 since that is attached to the phone itself and will take sound whatever distance the phone is from you, which you may not like.

Headphones

For playback, honestly whatever headphones you have will work fine. For trombone players you may want to look into in ear options as the over ear option may be in the way of the horn sitting normally. The go to over ear options that I like are Sennheiser HD 450BT. I like the wireless option to give me more freedom of movement, but if you have to use wired headphones, get an extension for movement.

Software

I’m most comfortable with iMovie and GarageBand honestly. I’ve been using them since the mid 2000’s so they are familiar. You can use whatever you are comfortable with and have the ability to produce your desired product. I will airdrop my video to my computer and load the video into GarageBand and remove the movie (under the File menu->Movie). I make whatever adjustments to the audio and share it to iTunes (under the Share menu).

I upload the same video into iMovie and drop the audio all the way down and pull the iTunes file into iMovie and line it up beginning to end with the movie. If I am adding sheet music to the video, I have most likely taken screen shots and cropped the music to fit on the video using picture in picture. Here is a video describing this process. Once this is all done, I save the file on my desktop and upload to my Youtube. Since it is on my desktop, it is also now in my cloud, so I can pull up the finished video on my phone and save it in my camera roll where I can now upload to my instagram.

Hopefully this is pretty clear, if not feel free to reach out to me for with any questions!