I found two Granados four-hand piano pieces, which I think are very cute and so I wanted to try my hand at making/editing videos (like what Andreas did) played between myself and other PS members. I am lucky that I got two fine pianists to play with me, George is on the no.1 Marcha Militar, and Chris is on the no. 2 Marcha Militar. (Thanks to you both for putting up with my demands... )

Here are the mp3s:

Granados - 2 Marchas Militares, No. 1: Allegretto

Granados - 2 Marchas Militares, No. 2: Lento marciale

And here are our videos!

Marcha Militar No. 1 (with George) http://www.youtube.com/user/monicapiano ... 763-U1Ryk0

Marcha Militar No. 2 (with Chris) http://www.youtube.com/user/monicapiano ... coRgkU5Qqw

Hi Monica, George and Chris,
first have my congratulations to these funny and nice renditions! (I suppose, that was a great fun to play and to edit.) What a nice surprise to see this here (there wasn´t any topic, in which you have prepared this work, isn´t it?).

To march no. 1: Congratulations also to your edit work, Monica. There are a lot of screen-settings, which are very inventive and good IMHO! Especially I like the collage, in which you see one time the two keyboards once upon the other and one time nearly as if they were one keyboard. So one has the impression of a real four hands playing here one moment.
I think, the video edting and cutting is perfect, not so the music editing: there are many places, in which the two parts are not precisely together. I always do that with the audio montage window of Wave Lab, which is a quite special thing. Do you have something similar, Monica?
The recording level is much to low. I had to put my volume to at least 65 to hear the piece in a normal volume. (My normal setting is about 35-40.)

To march no. 2: Here are very nice screens and camera angles. I like especially the one, which shows the hands (one picture is in the corner up on the right side). I think the two parts are very good together here. Here the only little problem (but it´s quite minor) is sometimes the synchronization of Monicas video-part (the music and the picture are not always properly synchronized), whereas Chris´ part seems always perfectly synchronized.

I also feel inspired to do again such videos. I really would be up to it (though it´s always much editing work).

But first I´m looking forward to our meeting on 27th to 29 th of april here in my home in Germany, Chris, in which we will do a real four hands rendition of Smetanas "Die Moldau" (which also will not mean less editing work, I suppose, because we will have to do many many cuts to avoid page turns, but that seems to be my destiny! ). I also want to make a nice video!

I have put both videos to my favorites on YouTube!

Thank you, Andreas. I used Sony Vegas Pro 10.0. I like it a lot and really only touched on a tiny fraction of all the features it has and can do. I was going to do much more effects but in the end used mostly the pan/crop and masking feature, also video envelopes and audio envelopes and cross-fades. I think I've got both parts synced up pretty well - it was hard because I did have to manipulate some tempos in certain sections and things like that. And every time I changed one thing, another thing down the road also changed. I feel like I could spend all eternity editing these and not ever be completely satisfied. Oh well...life goes on....I haven't touched my piano in over a week because I was working all the time on this project.

But aren't these two sweet little pieces? I just love Granados!! Regarding the volume issue: It sounds fine on my end - I'm quite baffled that it's coming out too low on your end. I hope someone else chimes in on this issue...

Great work on the video editing. I could have done without some of the computer-generated special effects but I liked the overdubbed video parts. Especially with George that came out really well, as if it were a shot of live 4-hand playing. Less convincingly with me, I suppose because of the camera angle. You can see why I don't like making videos, having I have neither the presence/experience or the right equipment, nor the space to move around with the camera.

I better get practicing seriously now for the Moldau session with Andreas. Bit of work to be done there... this does not at all lie easily under the fingers.

Hello Monica, I am amazed how creative and skilled you are with the video effects. The superimposed keyboards was absolutely top notch.... WFMT might be looking for a new Classical Music Video Editor after what you've done here! This was a lot of work for you to put together in such an artistic way. I had no idea what to expect, and I am in awe with great surprise! These are truly great little gems to play for 4 hands. You and Chris look great!

Thank you, Andreas for the praise and helpful comments. You and Monica are masters of video. Any needed audio edits are my fault. I should have made tempo adjustments in the software before sending it to Monica. The truth is that for the past several years, I practice as often as I have my piano tuned - i.e. once a year! It seems the video torch passes to you and Chris for Die Moldau. Good Luck to you both!

Thank you Monica for all your great effort, artistry, and patience throughout the project. It took me long enough to get around, but it was wonderful to get back in the swing of practicing, learning, and recording music once again... I have missed you all in P.S.! I hope you all have a great summer!

Chris and George - I'm glad you like the videos. Sure was a learning experience - for maybe us all! Although I must have listened to these pieces about million times - but you know what? I still like them! And yes, we had our little hiccups along the way, you wouldn't believe some of the hiccups I had to deal with on my end, like my computer doing weird things, my internet going out, my vision getting worse, loosing 'saved' files of our videos that somehow vanished into thin air, etc... Even so, I'm glad you both agreed to help me with my little project here because I enjoyed doing it a lot.

@George - you really should make time for your piano playing again. What about your Asturias/Leyenda? You were so close to having it down last time we heard you play it...

Thank you so much for sharing these! I loved watching them. Monica, I think you did a fantastic job on the editing work - I am very, very impressed! I would have never known it was your first time to try something like this. Particularly fun were the effects where I could see both performers' hands at the same time. Congratulations to everyone involved!

Very entertaining all! How do you do this? Do you use a silent metronome (light pulse)?

I have concentrating on the (for me) essential part, that is, the music. The first march is quite fun, while I find the second one not so. This is not due to the playing, which is to my ears good, but to Granados himself. Correct me if I am wrong: these are works for 4 hands, so there is bound to be some difference, as you are using two pianos, so we have here a "transcription" for 2 pianos. I do not know where George is, but I do know where Monica and Chris are. What a miracle of coordination!

Do continue your project!

Thank you for your interest/comments, Sarah, Eddy, and Richard. I had to read a lot of help guides and watched probably 50 videos on how to do editing stuff. Really, right now would be the best time for me to work on another video project like this, but I don't have any music in mind that I want to pursue (nor any willing participants), so I'll probably forget how to do much of this stuff pretty soon.

@ Eddy - no silent metronome - it was me listening to the guys' recordings in my ear as I recorded my part. We had set a tempo beforehand and planned where we would make some cuts/angle changes.

Do you like Beethoven? He wrote a short and fun four hand sonata which my teacher and I played in the old days. While I have the score for that I will not volunteer to play with you for many reasons.

Or try Debussy's Petite Suite. The above comments apply.

Really well done. It's hard enough playing piano duets when the partner is in the room and you can at least get visual cues. It's impressively synchronised: I don't think it's always absolutely perfect, but I can only imagine how much editing time has been required to put this together. The four-handed shot in the first video worked particularly well, I think. Very entertaining, congrats!

Thank you, Andrew. It did take a lot of time, but would have taken much less time if I weren't working full-time now. If only I could do this recording/editing/site updating stuff while I'm at work....*sigh*.

Oh that is a such good one.... I wish I could play the piano while at work

I know, really!