Both of these were played on the Neupert Harpsichord tuned to a modified dual harmonic scale tuning. Click here for more information about this tuning.
It is a bit of a problem to mic this instrument particularly with what I had available at the time these recordings were made, namely the Edirol R-1 MP3/WAV recorder and its internal stereo mics. The R-1 records to a Compact Flash card and can be connected to the computer via USB. I generally record to 24-bit wav files and later convert to MP3 on the Mac using the "lame" freeware utility in "extreme" mode. This does a pretty good job of variable-rate encoding that achieves roughtly a factor of 10 compression relative to the 24-bit 44.1Khz stereo file, with little audible degredation.
The first recording was made with the Edirol hung inside the instrument fairly close over the strings, near the jacks. This produced less hiss but suffers from too much pluck clicking.
The second recording was made with the Edirol placed to the side of the instrument. Still the mechanism of the instrument is too noisy but the clicking is not a problem.
2/13/05 Short Harpsichord Improv (25 MB)
5/4/06 Harpsichord Improvs (43 MB)