Posting with a monkey on my back (AKA the little one). Part of my soon to fail strategy to keep the kids up an extra hour, so when the time change comes tonight, they will wake tomorrow at 6 am instead of 5 am new time.
I listened to the sound check (Day 2 recording) from yesterday. Dennis was right, the hall made the instruments sound tinny, particularly the viola and the upper register of the piano. Though I liked performing in the space, since it was easy to hear everyone else. In the concert I tried to adjust my sound by using my bow closer to the fingerboard in legato passages to smooth the sound out. I'm very curious to hear how that concert sounds. In time...
So for today I decided to play one of my favourite Campagnoli caprices (no. 17). It's a theme and variations in e minor. Quite fun. I hadn't looked at it for probably four months. It didn't matter because there was/is no reason to play it in a concert. Good thing because I was making a few mistakes in every section and it sometimes felt like sight reading. When I made a mistake I knew that it will be on the recording and then a strange thing happened. I started to play to the silly voice recorder and enjoyed playing the mistake. Then I just started playing random things. And it really didn't sound so bad on the playback.
For some reason in the past when a tape recorder was on, I would become incredibly self conscious and try to do and play the right thing. And a lot of the time I would feel very boxed in and not be as expressive. After a few years of this, I coped by playing for the tape recorder and waiting one or two days to have some emotional distance to finally analyze the result. Now I'm getting rid of the distance and treating the recorder as a friend and something to play with.
Went back to the caprice and just imagined it like an audience. Much better.
Very happy that this is happening after only three days.
1 comment:
Oooh, it's good that you're getting to accept the recorder as a friend. I must admit that I became rather dependent on my MD players over the years, but in a good way. I find that I can do session work now without worrying too much about the mics as well, whereas they used to freak me out.
It's nice to get to a point where you feel that you can envision ahead of time exactly what the recording will sound like, so it almost becomes unnecessary. And though it initially seems like an enemy, it will likely become the hugest confidence builder, when you realize that you, your own worst critic, are happy with what you're hearing from day to day. If you know what I mean.
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