Saturday, March 21. 2009
I haven’t added anything for a while because there hasn’t really been much to add (now if that is not a circular argument I don’t know what is…). I’ve been working over much of the repertoire I’ve recorded and also added a couple more to the mix that I’ve picked up fairly recently, and I’m beginning to think that another extended recording session to produce the final product is beckoning.
But that won’t be for a while yet, because:
a) There are a number of performances I feel I can improve on, although obviously I have to draw a line somewhere.
b) I don’t know where I will record – either at home or else at the factory, and this will depend of course on Wayne’s good graces and which piano he and I think will be the ‘best’ at the time.
c) In two weeks time, I’m putting on another fundraising event for the Bo Children’s Hospital in Sierra Leone.
I put on the first of these in May last year, and, due to great assistance from many people, it was a great success not only in raising money but also for me personally in the sense that it was the first public recital I’d given for quite some time and naturally I was very nervous as to whether I could pull it off.
As it turns out, I did – even though I was in hospital for the first of my eye operations very, very soon afterwards – I hope that this next recital will not be a precursor to something similar.
I also plan to put on further events in early August and December, so I’m trying to structure the repertoire accordingly to try to have some consistency over the three recitals. I now have three students who are good enough to play in public, and so this will be good experience for them as well.
I’m probably going to look at the repertoire somewhat geographically this time – playing music from France, Spain, England, the Russian Federation and China. This should provide a great range of music to show off the capabilities of the piano, if not the performer.
Saturday, March 7. 2009
After having done all of this recording and having played many pieces from pre-baroque to modern, I think I’m a position to be able to comment, at least from my perspective, on the ‘performance’ of the piano and its ‘suitability’ for various type of music.
I haven’t found any issues at all. I can get the sounds I want and the interpretation I want without any effort now and the piano has proved itself to be able to handle (at least at my level) any style, speed or dynamic range I throw at it.
A somewhat amusing but entirely logical result of many of my recordings is that the piano’s sustain is such that my final chords seem to take an eternity to disappear into the darkness of silence. The bass notes on my piano have a forty second sustain time so it is possible to have a one minute piece and (at least) a twenty second (say) final chord – and this comes out very cleanly on the recording. In practice what I have done in a majority of cases is to get to the stage where the decaying sound is beginning to show signs of being affected by the background noise and then fade it out.
As I have noted previously, the piano’s dynamic range is such that I can easily outdo the dynamic range of the CD. In practice, I didn’t have too much trouble with this since even when the volume meters began to get clipped the sound is still very clean and not distorted in any way. The soft parts are still quite audible and hopefully when people play it back they will able to hear everything, but I suspect the better the speakers the better.
Finally, the clarity of the piano itself comes out very well overall. The real tests of a piano in my view are the high treble and the bass, and in both cases the sounds come out remarkably well. Even when there are a great range of sounds, the bass and the treble are clearly delineated and very clear, and the bass does not interfere either in terms of volume or frequency masking in any way.
The recordings show quite clearly that the ‘hype’ surrounding these pianos is not just ‘hype’. I couldn’t do on any other make of piano what I’ve done here – there really is a different world of sound to be explored and experienced. These pianos are not for the faint hearted as I’ve said many times and you need to have a good deal of musical sensitivity and aural perception to appreciate what these pianos can do, but from all of this there is one point that becomes very clear.
If I can do all of this with my limited abilities, imagine what others of greater ability (and there are many) can do. There is no reason any more to stick with tradition. One has to progress. Piano music has progressed far past the 19th century piano designs. This is the only piano I’ve played that can do justice to any kind or period of music.
Friday, March 6. 2009
After a few days of tinkering around with files and listening to what I have done so far, I’ve re-recorded a few tracks which to me were beginning to sound very laboured in the way I was playing. I must admit that at times during my recording I was playing safe and making sure that at least I was able to play the piece without too many mistakes, but on reflection I felt I wasn’t being nearly positive enough in my approach to some of the pieces, and so I redid them and overall the new performance are much, much better than the old ones. It seems as though I’m getting more confident in my approach –perhaps I didn’t think I could really play them in the way I now can.
I’ve swapped a few pieces from CD to CD to better balance out the individual programmes, but after listening to the tracks I’ve done so far Wayne is of the view that there are a couple of unisons on the piano which are slightly out of tune. I must admit I can’t hear them nearly as well as he can, and that probably means my sense of hearing is perhaps not as good as it once was, but these things become apparent only over time, and whilst they are not serious it does mean that eventually I will have to redo a number of tracks, quite probably at the factory in Newcastle where Wayne can keep a fatherly eye on proceedings and I can get my hands on a 2.9 metre piano…
If I ever think that these recordings can be issued publicly, I am going to need to make sure that everything is spot on and that includes my playing. Whilst I am happy with the achievement so far, it has proved to me that given the right repertoire and environment I can, even at my age, produce something that approaches ‘professional’ quality, whatever that means. Some of the tracks I’ve done so far really do bring out the best qualities of the piano and since I’ve come this far I really think I should give it a go and see how it comes out.
After all, right at the beginning of this blog I did say that the piano was challenging. I’m beginning to understand more fully what that means.
The other learning curve has been in the recording setup. I’ve now got it as optimum as my equipment will allow – and overall the sound is pretty much indistinguishable from a professional CD. This also has the advantage of no equalisation or compression whatsoever, and I’ve also managed to get the noise levels down to -108Db, which is not bad going. It makes we wonder whether I need to perform noise suppression any more – so far the results indicate maybe not. But then again, I’m not in a soundproof room or recording studio, so I’ll need to monitor this fairly carefully for future recordings.
This is fun.
Monday, March 2. 2009
(with apologies to a certain William Shakespeare) … i.e. I have finished forty-eight tracks altogether, and now have two CDs as a result. Now I have to decide what to do with them…
As I mentioned before, one of my aims was to see how much things had changed since my last recording efforts now almost three years ago. Overall, I have to admit that the sound quality is very good. I doubt that many people would be able to work out that the equipment that I used was not exactly what you would find in a professional recording studio, but nonetheless it is the overall sound that matters and not how you got there.
Secondly, I find it much easier to listen to these new recordings than it does to listen to my old ones. That is not to say that my old ones weren’t good – I’ve had some very good comments from people about those – but it is just that I seem to be more at home with the piano (this is not surprising) and that my interpretations are much more consistent over a range of styles.
There is no doubt that you can produce professional sounding results without having to resort to a professional studio, or even expensive ‘professional’ equipment. Whilst it may be argued that ‘professional’ equipment gives better results (and certainly 24bit 96 or 192 kHz recording gives a better quality overall) when the results are distilled onto a CD it is very difficult to tell the difference.
I’ve found out a great deal about how I play the piano these days, and how I’ve needed to adjust to compensate for my eyesight problems. Certainly it has helped that my memory is improving, although I still have a long way to go to really get it back into the kind of shape I would like, and that may not be possible given my advancing years, but if I play music that doesn’t require much jumping around the keyboard then the results normally come out well.
My control of the pedals and dynamics of the piano is fine, and I’m able to bring out many nuances in the music that perhaps the composer did (or even didn’t!) intend to be emphasised.
Now for my next project …
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