Skip to main content

Recording: Doing It!

It's not finished yet.  That's why I haven't talked about it.  But recording my CD at a professional
studio has been AMAZING.

I'll take you through my experience.  I played into a microphone in a room, and it sounded, to me, like me.  I was disappointed.  I had sort of imagined, perhaps unrealistically, that just being in the studio would make me sound better, more like the real oboists on the recordings.  But it was still me.

I heard the first take played back through my headphones, and I was kind of impressed.  Who knew I could play such cool music?  In the moment, as I'm doing it, I'm too focused on doing it to notice the effect, but some of my material is REALLY GREAT! Some of the technique sounds very impressive.  I love the music I am presenting, and I was pleased to have this record of my hard work.  That could have been the end of it for me, and I would have been happy.

But then, I stepped into the control room, where the engineer was sitting, and heard what he was hearing. Paul and I were isolated from each other as we played, and I heard him only through my headphones. Furthermore, I knew full well who I was and thought I knew what I sounded like - but I was blown away by the quality I heard through the speakers. The piano and the oboe were rich and lush.  I sounded just like the great oboists on the great recordings!  It sounded REAL.  It sounded LEGITIMATE.  It sounded GOOD.  WE sounded good. I sounded good.

I don't think this has ever happened before.  I heard my own musical voice on a recording and I liked it. It sounded like the sound I aspire to make, and never think I achieve. The equivalent visual trick, I think, would be to give me a full hair, makeup, and clothing makeover and have me turn out magically looking like Scarlett Johansson, or Michelle Obama, or someone legitimately gorgeous like that. We don't have the technology to make me really look like them - I hope - which makes me kind of sort of believe that the beautiful playing I heard was really me.

Yes,  quality speakers.  Yes, seriously expensive microphones.  Yes, the skill of the engineer.  I couldn't have made a recording like that in my room with my phone.  But in the end the technology can't actually play the oboe, and I can.  It's kind of a heady feeling.

There were disappointing surprises in the process as well.  I had worked so hard and worried so much about the technical parts of the pieces, but for the most part those sections were just fine.  The bulk of our time was spent in going back to the easy stuff and fixing a little muffed attack here, some water in the octave key there, a slur that didn't speak cleanly.  The things that we kept having to repair were the things I'm always not so good at, the tiny details that sometimes I allow to get by in the practice room, the things that the oboe is always out to get me on.  I know that I'm not always perfect, but it was jarring to recognize just how many LITTLE sloppinesses could slip in even as I was striving so hard to be pristine, to get things in one take, to not waste time.

In other words, perhaps I sound better than I think I sound, but I am not as competent as I think I am, and that was a little dismaying to discover.

In all, I was incredibly happy with the first day of recording.  We didn't quite get everything recorded, and we didn't finish the mixing process, so I'm going back tomorrow to complete this stage of the project. And it feels wonderful, and I can't wait.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies.  Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked.  I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel.  If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance.  Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street.  She makes us sing along.  She loves it when we clap at the end.  When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later.  Her immediate interest is in ...
2 comments
Read more

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable.  You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time.  Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, a...
6 comments
Read more

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

We took a vacation this summer.   This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures.   We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon.   We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams.   We hiked.   Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out).   After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio.   This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones.   In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name on...
6 comments
Read more