Concert I took video at Saturday 2 March 2024 - Joscho Stephan Trio

murrayatuptowngaller · March 8

What's F35...oh, airplane ear-damaging...

The camera was a 2016 Google Pixel that has such a dead battery it can't boot...so I plug it into a USB power pack velcro'ed onto a tripod leg. It probably has some kind of secret soundguy inside who I can't talk to.

$10 CAD cardioid drum mic, Saramonic SmartRig II mic-phone preamp/interface (cheapest thing I could fine because I didn't know if it would work). I just set the Saramonic thing so I could see no yellow or red peak. The Cinema FV-5 3rd-party camera app has the audio level display that the Google phone camera tool does not, as well as manual exposure and focus controls. Keeping the peaks in the green is the only bit of education learned (never OD digital recorder, unlike analog tape).

Phone clamped on tripod with a spring-loaded phone clip, everything else attached by any means necessary. Parked on top of the bar, wild guess 15-20 feet from various musicians.

The rest was all luck. I know that I don't know what I'm doing but have made new mistakes and repeated old ones for years. The sound gods were good to me this time.

I had just retired the day before & jumped into a project that was kind of like work.

I had 20 GB SSD space left left on laptop and came home with 37.5 GB on the phone. I moved files from phone to external hard drive to Google Drive, then to a microSD card that was faster...anything to keep it off the poor computer.

I also brought a ceiling hanging (conference room or choir application) cardioid electret mic rescued from an e-waste bin. It seems to be much more sensitive (less deaf) than a drum mic, which is understandable. It looked like it would be OK at several feet or more away. The SaraMonic interface even provides 48V phantom power. But we didn't try it. I have never plugged into a sound board yet but there was none there...everyone had their own amp.

I bought a 4 TB NVMe SSD for the 2nd slot but haven't installed it yet.

I might go out this weekend and catch half of 3rd Coast in another city and try the same mic & preamp with a mirrorless camera I've never recorded audio with yet. It was cheap and a gamble because it was modified for an industrial application in a 24-camera gantry and has RCA jacks for shutter and video for all the cameras to be wired to. The eBay seller said the stuff was donated & the artist wasn't allowed to talk about the project other than it was a 360 degree photo project (24 cameras x 15 degrees = 360 degrees). Mine was #21 (meaningless but brings the spooky X-file story a little closer to earth).

I didn't even know if the camera still could record video because the external wiring exited a hole where the 'Movie' button used to be. It did still work. The wired shutter controls will let me start & stop the video religiously for each tune. I do not ever want random video segments every 3.8 GB (12'55") again.

I have a habit of finding the hard way to do things in life.

Not only did I win the lottery by figuring out which RCA jack was shutter and which was video by sticking a resistor across each one (instead of short), I also lucked out that the camera only had 3524 shutters operations...they were done with the project and donated all the cameras. SOMEbody knew what they were doing to perform surgery on two dozen cameras.

I took some uneducated guesses what industry might have used the setup based on the state it came from, but I'll never figure that out.

I should stay home & play a new guitar but time management has never been one of my strengths.

But back to music, I found a gypsy swing group and community in a 60-90 mile radius from my house. I had no idea, living under a rock. I may take some lessons locally in combination with remote Zoom.