Recording Bach in the Living Room

It's much easier to move recording gear than it is my 5.0 octave Marimba One. For that reason, I've brought a recording rig, some good mics, and a couple of stands to my living room to record the Bach Cello Suite in G Major. I'm recording straight to CD (not a hard drive) which means I must have clean takes of each movement and wow... there are a lot of notes. I know how I want to play the suite, have my stickings worked out, phrasing of each line, tempi, rubato, dynamics, and so forth, but the art of playing marimba simply means you are using muscle memory to hit bars you sometimes cannot directly see. Just a slight distraction or mental hesitation leads to a clammed note and a recording that's no good. Now, I've done countless recording sessions in my life- from large ensemble to chamber, to solo, to tracking drum parts separate from the other musicians. I know what goes into a recording. Don Richmond's studio has a quote attributed to Bono- something along the lines of albums are like sausage, they're a lot more enjoyable if you don't know what went into them. With this current project, I cannot punch in sections because I'm not using recording software (ProTools, Q-Base, Logic Pro, etc). Ugh.

So, aside from living with salmonella in our water (actually, they are chlorinating the system, so it's not the salmonella that keeps me from showering and drinking the local water, but the high doses of chlorine that will burn if used), and some weird allergic reaction to something I cannot trace, I'm trying to get my mind around perfect takes of entire movements. It took me 35 minutes of recording time to get the prelude... that little tune EVERYONE knows. It's all mental... every last bit of it.

I have a private student who is a biology professor and obviously very, very bright. Our lessons are a joy because she asks brilliant questions and makes drastic improvements from week to week. Recently, we discussed the mental hang-ups so many of us have with live performance. I started pulling book after book off of my shelf dedicated to this issue and was reminded as I explained, it's an on going process. A never ending process, perhaps.

I was at a wedding a fews year back of some musician friends in Palo Alto and as musician weddings go, there was a lot of alcohol and a lot of musicians. I was having a conversation with a trumpet player who retired from a D.C. military band as a principal player and was the first call guy in San Francisco at the time. He and I had gigged together a few times and I knew him well. He asked why I wasn't presently taking auditions and I mentioned the fact I wasn't ready and my nerves would kill me unless I totally had my excerpts together. He laughed and said- beta blockers... everyone takes them. EVERYONE. Of course, I am well aware of beta blockers- I was in college once and on the audition circuit but it's hard to fathom needing medicine to calm one's nerves for an audition or performance. It's just music. Oh well...

Some really bad nerve moments:
1. Every audition I've ever taken
2. Playing a Zivkovic piece on a shared Day of Percussion with She-E Wu sitting 5 feet from me
3. The past hour trying to get the minuets down on tape


The process can only get better with practice. Recording seems to help. Preparation is an even better antidote.

Bach, err, Back to work.

J-

On the road again...

Greetings!

As I lay in my hotel bed in an unremarkable casino in Reno, it occurred to me that I've been on the road for over a week and my mindset has begun to shift back to the old days of touring with the band.

I started this string of gigs in Alamosa, actually. Don Richmond had me track some drums for a singer/songwriter by the name of Chris Coady and I followed it up by tracking percussion and drums for a great friend, Matt Schildt's (the theory/composition professor at the college) next album. Getting into the studio is such an important experience for a musician. Hearing yourself on playback instantaneously and then having to make the determination what you want to re-track versus leave while balancing the amount of time you have (and the artist can afford) is not always easy. It's also interesting to play with other musicians (who already put down their parts) you may never actually meet. In the case of Matt's project, it's fun to interpret his musical ideas into grooves and fills and help him create this album. I'm not sure how to classify the style of the album, but I know I like it.

The next stop was Shreveport, Louisiana where we put the band back together for a gig at the Horseshoe Casino. It's interesting how you just don't forget tunes you've played hundreds of times, regardless of the time between gigs. We did some jazz combo before the actual show and wow can that suck the life out of you when literally no one is listening. The show went off well, the crowd was good, and fun was had.

I then set out for California to play with the old band. Odd how some things never change while the personnel is practically all new. Troy is on his way to Alaska and Matt may or may not stay. The rest of the percussion section is new and I'm not certain what to make of them... It's definitely a different vibe from the good 'ole days of Marshall, Troy, Vince, Matt, and I. Speaking of Vince, we hung out the other night with Holly and he seems to be doing well. WGI stuff with his school seems to be very consuming. Today, we play for a CBDNA convention at the University of Nevada. Tomorrow I return home.

As I said before, my mind has shifted back to being on the road for a living despite the fact I have an entirely new life in Colorado. Although I've found a bit of practice time for my recital, it's disappeared from my daily thought- same is true with the pending percussion ensemble/steel drum band concert. It seems as though time suspends when I'm on the road. It's time to get home and get back to real life.