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I recently purchased a Zoom Q3 to record my vocal practice. I primarily use linux, and was somewhat concerned that the quicktime format listed would be incompatible with linux media tools. Fortunately, this isn’t the case. mplayer handled audio and video playback just fine, though cinelerra and avidemux didn’t like the audio stream until I switched the q3 to compress the audio to mp3. This was circumventable by stripping out the uncompressed audio like so: ffmpeg -i ZOOM0001.MOV ZOOM0001.wav and adding the audio track separately.
On playback, mplayer tells me:
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
wav selected:
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 0.0 kbit/0.00% (ratio: 0->176400)
Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm: pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
mp3 selected:
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 192.0 kbit/13.61% (ratio: 24000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
The q3 did take a while to stabilize after connecting the usb cable, which may be due to a hardware or kernel (I’m on 2.6.35) issue. dmesg output follows:
usb 2-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
usb 2-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 2-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 2-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 9
usb 2-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 2-1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -110
usb 2-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 10
usb 2-1.2: device not accepting address 10, error -110
usb 2-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 11
usb 2-1.2: device not accepting address 11, error -110
hub 2-1:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 2
usb 2-1.4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 12
scsi11 : usb-storage 2-1.4:1.0
scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access ZOOM Q3 0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
sd 11:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] 3842048 512-byte logical blocks: (1.96 GB/1.83 GiB)
sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk
I’ve just split off this blog from my regular blog (which I just moved).
I’m in an Italian diction class (for singing), and as part of that I get to translate texts sometimes.
Having Spanish at my disposal is quite useful, as I can guess most things, and most things I’m not so sure about can readily be translated into Spanish.
As such, I’m not so sure that these will be useful to many, but they are useful to me.
So, first, an italian-spanish dictionary
next, the drae (Diccionario Real Academia Española)
and an old spanish-english dictionary for those words not found in the italian-spanish dictionary (deh and fida come to mind).
I was recently trying to locate a specific release of Rudolf Buchbinder’s Beethoven Sonatas 1-3, and I chanced upon some interesting downloads on musical analysis. Well, at least I think they’re interesting – unfortunately, my German is only slightly better than my Greek, so I cannot determine exactly how true this is. Fortunately, music notation is pretty standard, and other figures aren’t too hard to analyze.
Regardless, here are a couple of interesting musical links for the musically inclined.
http://www.wisskirchen-online.de/
Workbook for Upper-level Music Instruction Volume 1
Workbook for Upper-level Music Instruction Volume 2
(and I hope I did not completely botch the title translation)
Here’s a fun little pre-barbershop tune; the original lyrics are a bit out of date, but I think that the revision is excellent. My mom found it for my quartet back in high school.
Original Lyrics:
1. My moustache is growing, its genial warmth bestowing; its beauty charms the eye of all Broadway. Come forth like a fairy so light and so airy, and ramble o’er my upper lip so gay.
(written originally in 2003, and posted unmodified despite my impulse to do otherwise)
The day of my performance had finally arrived. My Mom picked up my three younger siblings and me from school in our new white minivan. As we drove to the community college I tried to avoid thinking about the upcoming performance and instead went over the past week in my mind.
As I had walked into the piano store Dr. Dean had greeted me with his usual, “Hello, Kimosabe Breath.” I scrunched up my shoulders to avoid the inevitable “wishbone treatment,” but to no avail. Dr. Dean jokingly gave me a Vulcan neck pinch without the release. As always he asked me if I knew why he referred to it as the wishbone. I responded that it was because I wished it would stop.
I never knew that Arvo Pärt was a modern composer. His music always made me think of Gorecki, and other such composers… Actually, I just found out that Henryk Gorecki is modern too!
In my defense, I should point out that Pärt composed in two styles. If you were to hear my mom’s CD you would have a better understanding of my confusion.
Hmm… Ikos really misled me…
My mother has a CD called Ikos. It has music by John Tavener (the modern), Pärt and Gorecki, interleaved with Plainchant. It’s an excellent recording, but I never took the time to look at more than the cover. Now I want to listen to it again, just to see what I missed, or what musical cues I should have picked up on to indicate that I was mistaken in the period.
I should also point out that I first heard this CD before I had any education in music theory. Of course, even if it were a recent acquisition, it’s possible that I may have been confused. If you listen to any music by Carlo Gesualdo, you might understand what I mean. Try listening to a part of O vos omnes (it’s the 2nd track on the 2nd CD). Incidentally, that CD (The Best of the Renaissance by the Tallis Scholars) is also excellent.
update: As a result of thinking about this, I bought Ikos. Maybe I should think less? Nah…