… , at least in things musical, is something that I’ve been doing nearly all of my life. I seem to remember that my first ‘performance’ as it were was on a ukulele at the age of eight, and that was around the time I was crazy enough to answer ‘Yes’ when my mother asked if I wanted to learn the piano.
I’ve come a long way since then of course, my first piano was one which we brought out from England with us because we couldn’t sell it there, and in fact we kept it in our garage of all places because we couldn’t fit it in the house. Now of course I have the Stuart sitting in my music room and certainly I would suggest that that is an improvement over my humble beginnings in this regard – albeit some 50 years or so afterwards.
I have mentioned before that the Stuart piano is so clear and precise that it emphasises everything I do wrong, and I must admit that I do quite a few things wrong when I play. Whilst I can get away with this to an extent when I record my playing, in the sense that I can go back and correct things, strictly speaking I can’t do that when I perform in public. Since I have begun to get back into such performances, it is clear that I need to really focus on that aspect of my playing and that is what I have been doing over the last few days.
I plan another fundraising concert in the beginning of July, and so I have set myself the target of really trying to eliminate as many errors, glitches and uncertainties as I can. This will have an important bearing on my recordings going forward.
In order to really set a standard, I’ve been recording my playing on video. Obviously, in video recording WYSIWYG with a vengeance and any little imperfections, particularly on this piano, become glaringly obvious.
So I’ve been recording myself in glorious high-definition 1080p using my son’s video recorder. At the same time, I’ve recorded the audio on my digital recording setup in CD quality sound. I then replaced the video sound (which is actually quite good from this camera) with this audio. It’s a bit tricky to get the synchronisation right, and when I play the rendered file back on my computer it looks as though the sound is coming out very slightly ahead of the video, but it turns out that this is because my graphics card cannot handle 1080p + the audio that well. I have made a DVD of what I have done so far, and the synchronisation is exactly right. Of course the sound is very good, and overall I must admit I’ve done a good job on the pieces so far.
But I have a long way to go before I’m really happy with the outcomes, but at least I’ve made a start in the right direction and this will only push me harder over the coming weeks, and hopefully higher as well.
It’s beginning to sound as though I really am serious about this, finally. Confidence is good thing to have, and I must admit after many years I’m beginning to get it back again.