Re: Recording critique


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Posted by Sean Chisham on May 06, 2003 at 20:01:25:

In Reply to: Recording critique posted by Qizstem on May 06, 2003 at 18:30:00:

I liked the Bach more than the Vaughan Williams.

Vaughan Williams


Ensemble, ensemble, ensemble. Sounded like a piano player playing the accompanyment with a faint sound of tuba in the background practicing the Vaughan Williams. The balance was way off. Piano was bright and the tuba was muffled and distant sounding.

When playing with a piano do your best to fit into the piano's groove. Most decent pianists keep pretty good time. Play off the piano but don't refuse to play with the piano. I have heard many people blame a bad accompanist for not so perfect performances. Unless the piano player is way clueless, which is not the case here, the soloist is usually too inflexible from hours in the practice room. All that practice with the tune the exact same way and tempo should not make you inflexible at performance time.

Intonation was out in several places also. Missed notes.


Bach

I liked the Bach much more. Some good ideas and the sound was pretty good. I liked the acoustics and ambience on the recording. From the very start though their were too many clipped notes. On a tape, there should be zero. No excuses. You have many weeks to make this tape and should be able to piece together a flawless recording. I understand that live performances will have mistakes, and perhaps even one or two on a recording with accompanyment where it gets expensive to spend weeks making a perfect take. Some might call this misleading of ones abilities to the panel, but I say that everyone else is doing it, so in order to keep up with the arms race you need to also send in as nearly perfect a tape as possible.

Intonation was less wonky than the Vaughan Williams, but there were still some issues.

The BIG problem I had with the Bach was no pulse present at all. I had no sense of time at all. Rubato is all well and good, but don't loose the structure. This could have been sooooo much better if it was a bit quicker and held an inner pulse throughout the rubato. The slightly quicker pace would have helped to tie the ideas together for you. Also when you did your ritardandos it seems as though they were not gradual. You suddenly got slower a bar or so from the phrase ending and generally kept that slower tempo to the end of the phrase instead a gradual decay in tempo.

This tune is fairly long and winding and finding high and low points with a drive to the end would help to make it seem less tedious. Apart from a few bars near the end, the entire 4+ minutes sounded identical. I could drop a needle on this record anywhere and not know for sure how far into the tune I was.


I liked the Bach with a quicker tempo. The Vaughan Williams left me a little cold.

As Joe said, you have some balls putting yourself out in for public ridicule. I have several recordings of myself that I never dare put up on my website.




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