Audio Recording

I received a lot of request to write a tutorial on how to transfer or copy karaoke/minus-one music from YouTube or other sources like DVD player to computer. This tutorial is very helpful for singers looking for ways to obtain a high quality minus-one/karaoke music of their favorite songs. There are songs in YouTube and in your DVD player karaoke but the problem is that beginners find it hard to obtain a clear minus-one audio of the music.

Bear in mind that the scope of this tutorial is for personal use of karaoke music only. You are not authorized to distribute copyrighted music using the methods below. You should ask for a license from the music publisher and the owner of the sound recording.

For beginners: Using Youtube and other video sites

This is the simplest method, follow the steps below:

Step1.) Go to Youtube.
Step2.) Search a minus one for the songs. You can type it on the search box like this (artist + song title + minus one or karaoke):

“Jim Groce” “Time in a bottle” “karaoke”

You can also remove the quotation marks to get some broader results.

Step3.) The objective is to record the streaming audio from Youtube to a recording software like Audacity (which is free). You can read this very helpful tutorial on how to record minus-one or karaoke music from Youtube in Windows 7 using Audacity:

If you are using Linux, you can read this tutorial. After following all those steps, you should now obtain a clean minus one of your favorite songs.
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Watermark has been used in a variety of copyrightable properties such as images. The purposes of watermark are as follows:

a.) Credit the original work creator in case the work will be shared or distributed by public users.

b.) Protect the copyright owners against unauthorized use. It is because if an object is watermarked (for example images), then another user cannot easily claim they owned that because of the presence of watermark crediting and acknowledging the original creator.

c.) Promote the name of the brand or company creating the work. You have seen this in copyrightable photographs where the watermark bears the presence of the photo studio responsible for the work.

Watermark in MP3 Audio: Some Important Concepts and Background

Similar with photographs and copyrightable images, watermark can also be used with music copyright application and sound recording such as MP3.

Back in the old days, sound recording copyright owners depends on the ID3 tagging system to credit and place the name of the artist, creator, album, etc. Although the ID3 tagging system proved to be a success in identifying the work; it does not provide sufficient protection against unauthorized use.

It is because if an MP3 is re-encoded or re-processed using an audio editing software or mp3 tagging software, the original ID3 information would be lost; thus the MP3 would be re-distributed without proper credits and information to the original creator.

Watermarking is designed to survived even if the audio is re-encoded, re-processed or undergo any means of MP3 tag editing and audio processing. In other words, once the watermarking has been embedded with your MP3 audio; it is now permanent and irreversible.

And there is no other existing technology that could have 100% accuracy in separating the watermark from protected MP3 audio.
What is the best concept of watermarking MP3? I have initially read an article from Michael Borges in License Quote here:

http://www.licensequote.com/blog/index.php/2011/03/audio-watermarking-for-promotion-and-file-sharing-control/

It is about the concept of watermarking MP3. I elaborate the entire process in this post and showing the watermarking process as shown below:

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This is a quick tutorial on how to record and mix classical guitar. Finally you can produce classical guitar recordings at your home. In this tutorial, it will be using the following gears and software:

a.) Focusrite Saffire Pro40 audio interface (although you can use any audio interface provided it has at least two microphone preamp inputs)

b.) Rode NT1A Condenser microphone
c.) Reaper Digital Audio Workstation
d.) Reaper plug-ins (free along with Reaper)
e.) Focusrite bundle plug-ins – this comes free if you buy Focusrite audio interface.

This tutorial assumes your classical guitar includes an active pickup for additional DI recording and that you have a fully working DAW (digital home recording studio).

Step1.) Position the Microphone in the Quite Live Sounding Environment

It is important to put the microphone somewhere in the center of your room(away from walls or corners). It would be much better if you have a fairly large size room so that the microphones can naturally capture the reverberations.

In this tutorial, a sample classical guitar piece will be recorded in a 10ft x 15ft room with tiles but this is also a usual bedroom with furniture. If you want to know if the classical guitar would sound nice during recording; try to play it live in your room without microphones and check the ambiance and feel. If it sounds good, it would also sounds great during recording.

The Rode NT1A condenser microphone is position at this level:
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