Being able to adjust the recording volume level of a microphone, or instrument that’s directly connected to your video recording device is key to insuring that you are recording with adequate volume and without distortion. (If you’re using a USB audio interface or USB mixer, they already have level control built in.)

Here are 2 important things to understand in order to get really good instrumental or vocal recordings.

1) Most smart phones and tablets default to using automatic gain control (AGC) to squash louder audio and turn up softer audio. They also may introduce some filters in an attempt to reduce background noise even further. This may enhance the legibility of the spoken words, but at the expense of full frequency recording and wide dynamic range. This seems to work for speech recording where legibility is more important then quality, especially in noisy locations, but it can destroy an otherwise perfect music recording. You should turn off this automatic control your audio any time you're going to film.

The on-off switch(s) might be in your device settings, or in the recording application that you end up using, or both. Sorry, you'll have to depend on Google for information on how to do that on your specific device/video recording app combination.

2) All of the apps below have some sort of audio level metering system built into them to indicate when your audio signal is either too low or too loud. (low means more background noise when the low signal is turned up to a normal level, and too loud can mean an extremely distorted recording which can't be fixed.

Some meters only use the two colors green, and red, others add a third, yellow color to the mix. Think of these like the corresponding traffic light colors. Try to keep your loudest audio levels bouncing in the upper end of of the green area, or just entering the lower part of the yellow area. If they enter the red area, that indicates distortion.

That's where ability to adjust the recording level comes in. You can adjust your audio levels so that they never enter the red part of the meter, without compromising your musical style.

There are only a few video recording apps available that allow you to see and adjust audio levels, and you may already be using one.

** If you’re using one that you’re happy (or unhappy) with, or you have issues with one of our suggestions below, please let us know at streamteam@jazzonjstreet.com and we’ll add your thoughts to the list.

If not, here are a some that we found so far:

FILMic Pro is a $14.99 video recording app that allows you to adjust audio recording levels along with many video parameters as well. It’s available for both iPhone, iPad and Android devices, but may not be compatible with older Androids.

MAVIS (Free to $17.99) is another really good camera app for the iPhone with easy audio controls.

And thanks to some testing by Pianist Mari Mennel-Bell we can now include the free ShurePlus Motiv Video Recording App for iPhone and Android devices. It was created by the same company that has been making professional microphones for decades and can be found on the App store and Google play.