All Updates Performance Schedule Music {& Podcast Feed}
The May issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine includes not one, but two cover stories that caught my attention:
51 Tips for Making Better Recordings includes a number of brief ideas to improve your recordings. The other article I read with interest is titled Play Out Now; you can guess why it caught my attention. It may seem like these same ideas show up over and over again…but I know for me, it’s taken a fair bit of repetition for some of them to sink in.
In my day job, I work in IT. So when I came across an article about giving presentations for technical professionals, I read on, eager to see how the ideas might relate to my own thoughts about musical performance.
Oh…the title probably caught my attention too: How Not To Throw Up. Somehow it resonated with much of my own performance experience. I’ve never actually gotten to the throw-up stage, but I can still encounter the queasy, nervous energy that has taught me to eat light before playing.
Rands captures many performance issue really well. Here’s the key ideas I took away from his post:
It’s been a few decades since I started this journey with the guitar. As I look at my schedule, my bookshelf, and my list of goals, I realize that classical guitar has become a significant anchor in my life. This site is a place for me to share some of what I’ve learned along the way (and maybe do a little shameless self-promotion as well.)
As you visit over time, you can expect to find thoughts and updates about:
I hope you’ll find something of use and/or something you enjoy here. I’d welcome folks to share their thoughts, opinions, and reactions: this is still all very much a learning process for me and I’m happy for all the insight and perspective I can find!
- Mark
In Fall of 2002, my friend Eric was kind enough to invite me to play a concert at the church where he was music director. I set up some basic recording equipment and was able to capture the concert live. I’d tried to read up on recording technique as much as I could on the internet, but in 2002 there still wasn’t the wealth of cool info available there is today. There are probably probably smarter people out there with better ideas about recording, but here’s what I came up with at the time:
Recording (involving managing electronic gear, buttons, wires, etc.) and performing (involving communicating complex musicals idea through subtle and complex physical motion) are not exactly compatible processes in my head. I’d discovered that it’s really good to give myself extra time to switch gears between the two. As a first step for the day, I made sure I’d done a dry run of both the recording process and of the performance program at home the week before. This gave me a chance to practice setting up the equipment, get rough estimates for program times, practice my patter, and make any notes I needed so I wouldn’t have to think very hard the day of the performance.
The afternoon of the actual performance, I arrived about 90 minutes before the concert to get equipment set up, do a sound check, warm up, and leave some time to relax before the audience arrived. Although the recorder can run on rechargeable batteries, I chose to use the AC adapter so I wouldn’t have to worry about batteries running out partway through the performance. I brought a number of extra blank mini-discs with me so I wouldn’t have to worry about erasing tracks to make enough room for the actual concert. I planned to capture the concert on two minidiscs: one for each half of the program, which were about 25 minutes each. I also planned to use one disc for the soundcheck which I could be erased and re-used back home afterwards. (I follow a similar strategy using solid state recording media in my more recent Boss MicroBR).
I set up the recording equipment; this went relatively smoothly since I’d worked out all the connection and configuration issues during my dry-run. I put a disc in the recorder, made a guess about levels, and hit record. I then went through program piece by piece giving any introduction I planned to say and playing the first phrase or two. In addition to checking levels, this gave me a chance to get used to the sound of the church. It also made me practice talking out loud, which is something I don’t think to practice nearly as I could.
After spending about 15 minutes going through the program this way, I stopped the recorder and spot checked the recorded levels at various points. I’d set the initial levels a little high and had clipping on loud passages, so I dialed the levels down. I set them a little lower than absolutely required: it’s easier to increase the output levels later than to remove clipping if you’ve recorded with levels set too high – this is especially true of digital recording where clipping is usually obvious and unpleasant. Through this process I also realized that my spoken introductions were much quieter than the guitar; I wasn’t planning on needing these in the final recording, but it was a good reminder that I’d need to speak up for the audience to hear me.
With the new levels set, I started recording again, went back to my seat and played through a piece that I’d slected earlier for having the greatest dynamic range of the pieces I was planning to play. After listening through this piece on the recorder and validating that I had reasonable levels set, I felt ready to go. I put a blank disc in the recorder, hit record and stopped thinking about equipment until intermission. Since each MD could hold 74 minutes of audio, I was comfortable that I would have enough room that I could just edit out this lead-in later and still capture the entire 25 minute first half.
With everything set and ready, I went offstage, waited for the audience to arrive, took some deep breaths and did my best to switch gears and center myself for the performance itself. This is a whole other topic for some other post, but suffice it to say that I find centering myself and dealing with nerves that can come before a performance to be an even more complex process than setting up recording gear.
When the time arrived, I played the first half of my concert. During intermission, I quietly snuck over to the recorder, stopped the recording, swapped in a blank disc and hit record. (In retrospect, having slightly longer XLR cables would have allowed me to put the recorder itself in a location I could access less conspicuously from off-stage.) I finished the second half, took my bows, and joined everyone at a very nice reception that had been set up for me. I just let the recorder run out since the digital recorder would just stop when the disc filled. After most folks had left, I packed my guitar and recording equipment and headed home after an exhausting but positive experience.
A few days later I transferred the recordings to my computer at home and edited them down into individual tracks. This was a cool way to get to re-live the experience without the nerves and pressure that come with live performance. Overall, I was very happy with how things turned out. There were small performance glitches here and there, to be improved on the next time, whenever that would come. Overall though, I’d managed to communicate a sense of musical flow and present the pieces at a level that honsetly reflected my musical development at the time.
In an ideal world, I’d ask a knowledgeable friend or hire a recording engineer to handle all of the recording part of the process. Neither of these were options at the time and I’m pretty happy with the final tracks, so here’s a few samples:
Prelude XXIV by Manuel Ponce
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Prelude No. 4 by Heitor Villa-Lobos
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Star of the County Down arranged by Phillip de Fremery
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Ana Maria Dali from Music After Lorca by Phillip de Fremery
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
You’ll probably find this same advice in a number of places, but here’s a summary of what I learned:
