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This web log is about recording a hammered dulcimer Christmas album. There's an entry for each studio session, discussing anything from the technical to the emotional aspects of making this CD.
What Child Is This? is done! There will be a release party and concert at the Moosewood on November 21.
1. June 24: First Day!
Today was the first recording session for my latest CD project, an as yet untitled Christmas album.
Ideas for a Christmas recording had been floating around for quite a while, but serious planning began this spring. Initially, I knew I wanted it to be an instrumental album, centered on the hammered dulcimer with support from my other instruments (recorder, bowed psaltery, and guitar), from my trio (fiddle and guitar), and possibly from some other local musicians. I also knew I wanted to focus on music that reflects the spiritual meanings of Christmas. Right now, for example, I plan to open the album with an original piece called "Fallen." I wrote it one day after viewing the finalists' entries in the competition for the September 11 memorial. Its theme of mourning the fallen also looks beyond that tragedy to the first and greatest fall of humanity in Eden. It's because of that Fall that we have Christmas and the Savior it celebrates. Near the end, I hope to include a piece called "Easter Thursday" along with one verse of "O Sacred Head Now Wounded"; again as a reminder of what God came to earth to do. In between, there will be carols both familiar and less well-known, from "The Lord at First Did Adam Make" to "Silent Night" and "O Come O Come Emmanuel."
When I arrived at the studio this morning, I found that the dulcimer wasn't as in tune as it was last night after I spent most of yesterday tuning it. Some of you reading this may know how frustrated I've been with tuning. It takes me much longer than it should (believe it or not, most dulcimer players can tune in an hour or less), despite an excellent dulcimer and good tools and techniques. Must be me. Anyway, I was quite upset to find I'd have to do all that work again, and under the pressure of being in the studio and supposedly ready to start recording. Fortunately, the good folks at Electric Wilburland (a great studio housed in an old church in Newfield, just south of Ithaca) don't charge for tuning time, and Matt was very patient as I did my best to get it ready. Once the dulcimer was in tune, we decided which microphones to use and where to position them, then did the same with my soprano recorder. For the dulcimer, we decided on a matched pair of Earthworks QTC1 mics. You can see in the photograph how they are set up like ears, with a foam disc in between to simulate a head's effects on how sound reaches the ears. Notice also the bits of white tape on the dulcimer, which helped us position the dulcimer in the same place each session to avoid changes in the stereo image.
The first tune we worked on was "The Lord at First Did Adam Make," a carol from the 1800s that tells the Christmas story beginning with Genesis. My arrangement opens with solo recorder and includes sections with multiple recorders, multiple dulcimer parts, and a dulcimer accompaniment. Today I recorded the first recorder verse and all but one of the dulcimer sections; tomorrow Stuart and Robin Milliken will join me to add the other recorder parts, and then I'll do that last dulcimer section.
Today I also recorded almost half of a dulcimer solo medley of "What Child is This?" and a Quantz "Menuet." After one time through "What Child is This?" with the familiar chords, I change key (a blend of A minor and dorian) and introduce more major chords (F, D, C...) -- thanks to Keith Bryant for some of these chording ideas.
It's exciting to be in the studio again. I would have loved to record with Henry Smith at Outback Studio again, but since Mechanicsville VA is a little too far away now, Wilburland is a good second choice. Actually it's great so far and I think I'm really going to enjoy working there. The tuning thing is a huge source of anxiety; knowing how awful some tuning days have been, I hate the thought of having to tune in the studio. This will either force me to quit altogether, or else learn to metabolize some of that anxiety and patiently do whatever it takes to get in tune. Maybe necessity will even help me learn to tune a little more quickly. Meanwhile, I have plenty of wonderful musical work to do, selecting and arranging and practicing pieces for this recording as well as continuing to teach and perform.
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2. June 25: Drawing the Line
First, the details. Stuart and Robin and I met at our friend Jolie's house (close to the studio) to practice with the recording of "The Lord at First Did Adam Make" that I made yesterday. Then we headed to the studio, practiced some more, worked on adjusting our tuning, and recorded the parts. After the Millikens left, I finished the rest of "What Child is This? / Menuet." What to do next was a difficult decision. If I started a new piece and didn't finish it, chances are it would be difficult or impossible to have the tuning so exactly the same that the later sections would match. I almost went home early, but then decided to risk it. Amazingly enough, we managed to record all the dulcimer parts for "Fallen": the melody throughout, a drone in the beginning, and some arpeggio sections. This means I have a CD to practice with for the guitar and bowed psaltery parts, which I'll try to record next week along with another medley, "Noel Nouvelet / Wexford Carol."
Working at Wilburland is changing my approach to recording. At Outback Studio, where I recorded No Loose Threads, our approach was to record a section in one pair of tracks, allowing the last notes to fade out naturally. Then with headphones on, I'd listen to this section and then record the next section in a second pair of tracks. The rest of the piece would go the same way, switching back and forth between the two pairs of tracks. If I made a mistake in one section, I could do another take of just that section. I assumed I would use the same approach here, but Wilburland's computer system makes it easy to splice together smaller bits of different takes. One way to respond to this possibility is to record lots of small bits, and that has been my first temptation. Instead, I think it would be better to record longer sections, which I tried today. Playing a longer section is more natural, which makes it easier to be more musical and expressive. Then if one take has a mistake near the beginning and another has a problem in the middle, we can use the best part of each one.
The whole process of recording brings up the question of where to draw the line between natural and artificial. There are folks who think the best kind of recording is live; some require an audience while others don't mind a live studio recording. Live captures energy and flow, as well as synergy with ensemble members (and with the audience if one is present). On the other hand, mistakes that seem unnoticeable in a concert setting (they go by so quickly) can become increasingly distracting or annoying each time one listens to them on a CD. There are all sorts of tricks to minimize mistakes. The Outback Studio approach, for example, helped by minimizing stress: if I only have to play one section without messing up, that is psychologically less threatening than having to play the entire piece flawlessly. The kind of splicing we're doing at Wilburland is a little more artificial, but I'm still actually playing each of the parts. Where I draw the line is at looping and recycling tracks. Looping is where you'd record maybe a short rhythm section and repeat the recording instead of actually playing the section over and over. Looping obviously gives consistent results, but to me it's too artificial; I want to play the section every time. For example, I have a hard time playing the low D drone consistently in "Fallen"; to even it out a little, I was willing to record it twice (as if there were two dulcimer players droning simultaneously) and to play with the equalizers some, but I didn't want to just loop a nice section of it. Recycling is similar; maybe you'd record the chorus of a song and instead of singing it again after the next verse, you repeat the first recording. I'd rather not do that for the same reason I'd rather not do looping.
(By the way, right now I'm listening to what I recorded today. I noticed that in some places, it sounds like the music has shifted to the left, and then it shifts back. And I realized that those places are where I move from playing on the right side of the dulcimer to the left side. I just think that's interesting. Oh, and have I mentioned how exciting this is? I love to play the dulcimer, and of course I can hear it when I'm playing, but it's entirely different to hear it when I'm NOT playing; I can hear it more when I'm not busy attending to where my hands are going next.)
A final thought. As I look over what I've written so far, I'm thinking about audience interaction. I remember hearing a quotation about how some musician played for an audience of one, no matter what size the audience actually was. (Anyone know the musician or the source of the quotation?) I like that idea; I think music is at its best when it's intimate, up close and personal. I've been trying to take that approach in the studio. In one sense I'm playing for myself and Matt, the engineer, whose observations I already value pretty highly. In another sense -- and I don't mean this to sound particularly holy or anything -- I'm playing for me and God: me and the one who knows and loves me better than anyone else, me and the one who knows and loves music better than anyone else; an intimate little tete-a-tete. I hope other folks will enjoy listening in.
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3. July 1: In the Mix
After a few days of almost frantic practicing, I returned to the studio today to add guitar and psaltery parts to "Fallen" and to record dulcimer, psaltery, and recorder parts for "Noel Nouvelet." (Why frantic? Well, for most of my gigs I'm just playing dulcimer, so that's what I practice most. Then, when something like this does come up where I need another instrument, I end up cramming in practice like a student at exam time. Also, just in case I managed to do all I'd planned on and still had time left over, I was trying to prepare "He Shall Feed His Flock," although I wasn't sure I'd be able to finalize the arrangement and be able to play it well enough in such a short time.)The day began with tuning the dulcimer. That took about two hours. So far, necessity is not reducing tuning time. But it could have been much worse.
Then we worked on "Fallen." The guitar part was a little tough, but the psaltery part was really tough. I don't have the steadiest hand when it comes to bowing long notes, and I don't always start notes very smoothly either. Everything just sounded scratchy and wobbly to me. Even after we'd selected and spliced the best parts of various takes, I was wondering about writing an entirely different part or even asking my trio partner Jerry to play the part on violin instead.
Moving on to "Noel Nouvelet," we recorded the dulcimer parts, where the main issue was trying to articulate the ornaments nicely without getting off tempo. The recorder parts went pretty smoothly. Then back to the psaltery. The harmony parts weren't bad -- no really long notes requiring that especially steady hand. Last, the hardest part: in one section the psaltery has the melody. Because the tune is in A dorian, I have to reach across the psaltery for an F#. Moving the bow that far that quickly and still getting the note nicely is tough for me. By this point I was feeling pretty beat, so we called it a day a couple hours early.
Before I left, the final task was to put the day's work on CD to take home and evaluate. I asked Matt to burn one "Fallen" with the psaltery and one without, so I could try some alternative ideas. We usually check the mix before burning, adjusting relative volumes of the various tracks to get a decent blend. While we were doing that, much to my relief, we found that at its proper background volume, the psaltery actually sounded quite nice. No more scratchies and wobblies, just that edgy but sweet psaltery sound. Whew!
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4. July 2: No Such Thing as Objective
This fourth day we began with "The Wexford Carol," the second half of the medley beginning with "Noel Nouvelet." I've been practicing these parts a lot, and all that hard work at home translated into less difficulty in the studio. The arrangement begins with both hands playing melody an octave apart, followed by an ornamented version. Next is a section with echoes, and the final section has a mostly sixths harmony and a bass part.All that was done before lunch. So the next question was whether to go home really early or to try "He Shall Feed His Flock," which until this week I hadn't played since last Christmas season. I did work pretty hard on it Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, making arrangement decisions and practicing them, but I wasn't entirely sure it was ready to record. Still, I decided to stay and give it a try. I like the intro, using my yarn-wrapped hammers for a soft, mellow effect. At the closing chord, I repeat the intro part as a conclusion. In between, I did the main part with separated hands; the left plays melody while the right plays three-note chords. The form is AAB twice through, and I vary the ornamentation a bit on the repeated sections. Still, I'm not sure there's enough difference between the first AAB and the second, and I'm not convinced I played the right-hand chords as well as I'd have liked... I'd prefer them to be less heavy on the downbeats.
As we listened to the whole thing, after recording that last section, both of us seemed unconvinced. Matt said he was still too much "in" it, thinking of all the editing and the various short sections. I felt that it didn't seem to flow, and it didn't even seem very pretty. Maybe that's because I'd had to record sections too short to feel natural and expressive, and maybe also because I hadn't practiced enough to play both accurately and expressively.
It's hard to listen objectively right after recording. It's hard to listen objectively when you're feeling uncertain and discouraged to begin with. Actually I think it's impossible to listen objectively at all. There's so much to influence how something will sound to you, from external or physical factors like recent events, temperature, or your state of health, to internal factors like your current self-image or level of anxiety. So I think I'll plan to listen to "He Shall Feed His Flock" several times over the next week or two before making a final evaluation of it. Meanwhile, I can also be thinking of alternatives: practice more; add guitar, psaltery, or recorder to part(s) of it; record the left and right hands separately, maybe even with a softer hammer in the right hand...
My next session is scheduled for July 29 and 30; besides finalizing "He Shall Feed His Flock," I'd like to prepare two or three other pieces. My trio, newly renamed the Hanshaw Trio and featuring Jerry Drumheller on fiddle and Craig Higgins on guitar, is also preparing two medleys; we plan to record them late in August.
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5. July 29: A Sunny Day in Summer?!
It's been a strangely rainy summer thus far. Rainy and on the cool side; my lettuce is happy, but the tomatoes have yet to feel any desire to turn red. Today, however, my return to the studio was heralded by a gloriously warm and sunny day. Mmmmmm.Last time I talked about how discouraged I was when I left the studio after recording "He Shall Feed His Flock." And yet the more I listened to it in the following week or so, the more I liked it. In fact, I think I may have played more expressively and cleanly on this piece than on anything else I've recorded thus far. Maybe it's my version of end-of-recording-session syndrome -- getting more and more into it, more perfectionistic with each new piece over the four-day session. Anyway, I decided what "Flock" needs is Tom Abernethy's classical guitar. Tom, Carolyn Huff, and I used to play together as the WoodSong trio in Richmond VA; you can hear us in "Carolan's Draught / Sleepers Awake" on No Loose Threads. So Matt will transfer the dulcimer tracks from Wilburland to Outback Studio, where Henry Smith will record Tom's new part and transfer the results back up here. Yesterday, Tom played the part for me over the phone; it's going to be wonderful.
Today's studio session started with tuning. Truly awful: three and a half hours. After talking with Bob Wey at the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering this past weekend, I'm going to look for a strobe tuner and try a gooseneck wrench, and see if those tools help me tune more efficiently. Anyone got a used strobe lying around? Or one of Peterson's Virtual Strobe tuners?
After lunch, we started on the first piece of the day, "Gesł Bambino." For the most part, this went fine. (After that grueling tuning session, recording felt like cake. See? I knew there was an advantage to being terrible at tuning.) The main issues were a tough vertical passage on the bass bridge, some timing difficulties where two parts come in simultaneously after a pause, and a tuning problem. The high A - D course on my treble bridge is nearly impossible to get perfectly in tune. Fortunately, there's a duplicate of that A on the right side of the treble bridge, and I managed to adjust my hammering to use that A instead. At some point I'll add psaltery and recorder to the "O come let us adore him" parts in the intro and end.
The rest of the day we worked on "Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus / Planxty Irwin." As an interesting variation, each time I come back to the beginning of the tune, I start it at the same time as the last note of the previous time. Another interesting variation is that I got through the really hard part in just a few takes, but had a really hard time recording the easy part. Odd. Then again, I'd practiced the hard part more. It was also interesting to make final hammer choices. I have five pairs of hammers, ranging from a very soft and mellow pair wrapped with yarn, through various leathers, to bright bare woods. Sometimes it's pretty clear which hammer will be best for a particular part, but sometimes it's necessary to experiment with several, listen to each, and then choose.
Overall, except for the first three and a half hours, I enjoyed today's session. I felt more settled in the rhythm of the recording process, with a better idea of when to edit, when to just go for another take, etc. Maybe next time I'll remember to turn on the volume of all the tracks in the headphones... at one point today I recorded a section without being able to hear it, because that track's volume was off. Even so, I think we actually used part of that take.
Tomorrow? Finish "Long-Expected," do "Christ Child Lullaby," and maybe "Three Ships Medley." I got to workshop the last one at the Cranberry Dulcimer Gathering in Bob Wey's class on "Playing With Your Blocks." So the last few days I've been experimenting with different ways to implement suggestions from Bob, other students in that class, and Marya Katz of Blacksburg VA's
Next, we recorded psaltery and recorder parts for "Gesł Bambino." Matt thought the psaltery parts for both tunes went better this time, but I still found them difficult to play smoothly, especially certain notes like the low F#. I saw someone play with two bows last weekend, and it was very smooth -- maybe I should try that sometime. The recorder parts were a little easier.
Then I actually did try "Three Ships Medley," and got a nice melody skeleton to play with. At the time I thought the new transition ideas worked well; we'll see if I still think so when I've had more time to listen to it and experiment with it. Most likely it will have additional dulcimer and guitar parts, maybe some other things, too.
After that, we started working on "Christ Child Lullaby." I wanted play it as low on the recorder as possible, which put it in Bb Mixolydian. That's three flats, same key signature as Eb Major, but centered around Bb instead of Eb; the Mixolydian mode has a sort of wildness to it that I love. I really like the way the tune sounds in this low key, but it's a real challenge for my recorder and dulcimer skills. It's hard for me to play certain notes well on the recorder, especially the lowest F and the Ab. And the dulcimer parts are difficult because I have to reach across the instrument for various Ebs and Abs -- it's hard to do that accurately and expressively and rhythmically. So far, we've only managed to get a good take of the solo recorder intro. We must have done over a dozen takes (twenty?) of the next dulcimer part, but each one had at least one mistake in it, and the part is too quiet for good seamless editing.
So we stopped there. Burned the end-of-session CD, put the "He Shall Feed His Flock" files on a CD to send to Henry, settled the bill, and homeward went.
Now, about the joys of editing. I just thought this was sort of amazing and fun. First of all, consider just one psaltery section on "Long-Expected." This section has eleven different pieces edited together from seven different takes. Isn't that cool? And the rest of the piece is, oh, four or five dulcimer sections, two psaltery sections, and two guitar sections, each with various amounts of editing from various numbers of takes. Then, just the melody of "Three Ships" has fifteen pieces edited together from four different takes. Wow. The amazing thing is that, more often than not, Matt can make these edits absolutely seamless. When it doesn't work, we just do some more takes.
Final thoughts. Today just felt better. Being able to start right away without dealing with tuning was refreshing. And knowing that husband Mark would be home in the evening, after being at a research conference all week, also helped. And I now have five pieces finished, and four in progress. That's about half done!
Speaking of tuning, I'm anticipating the arrival of a new tool that I hope will help reduce my tuning time: I won an Ebay auction for a Conn Strobotuner ST-11. Its grey face sports a spinning patterned disc with flashing lights behind it... when the note I'm plucking is in tune, the pattern will appear to be stationary; when it's sharp the pattern will seem to be moving to the right, and when it's flat the pattern will look like it's going left. I'd tried a Peterson VSAM virtual strobe in a store, and found it confusing to read. At another store I got to see how a mechanical strobe works with a guitar, and to me it seemed easier to read, so when I saw the Conn on Ebay I decided to bid on it. I'm hoping that its continuous reading will cut the time I usually lose to my needle tuner's sometimes delayed and inconsistent responses. I'm also hoping that it's in working condition when it gets here!
Tomorrow evening, the Hanshaw Trio will be recording two medleys, so today I recorded my parts. We started with "Easter Thursday / O Sacred Head Now Wounded," a medley I'm including on this album as a reminder of what the babe in the manger accomplished when he'd grown up. "Easter Thursday" has two especially tricky parts: one separated hands moment where I kept hitting the note just above the one I was aiming for, and several places where, reaching for the Bb on my extra bass bridge, I instead hit the wrong side of a course coming off the regular bass bridge. It's like the sound you'd get if you plucked a guitar string between the top of the fretboard and the tuning pins. So it took a while to get it right.
"Hewlett / Silent Night" went more smoothly, probably because it's in D, one of the most playable keys on the dulcimer. We did it in just four takes. Because this one starts with the guitar alone, I first recorded a count and then plucked the notes the guitar will play, then on another track I recorded the dulcimer parts. Likewise, where there's a pause near the end, I recorded another count so that all three of us will come back in at the same time.
After listening to the "Three Ships Medley" I'd recorded last time, I'd decided I should fix two little errors. To do that, I figured I'd have to record the two larger sections containing the errors. It turned out I had to re-record the entire thing because the mic placement today was a little different than it was last time. However, it wasn't that bad... only four takes; and just five edits, compared to fifteen last time.
We also recorded the dulcimer harmony parts for "Three Ships." One of the harmony sections had three notes that weren't timed exactly right, leading to a technique that, for me, falls in a grey area between what's too artificial and what's acceptable: Matt moved those three notes slightly to correct the timing. I said in an earlier entry that I draw the line at looping or recycling -- that I want to really play every note each time. Well, I did play those three notes... but not with exactly the right timing. Hmmm.
The end is in sight. I've scheduled the rest of the sessions, at least what I think I'll need, and if all goes well I should be done by mid-October. That should mean I'll have the CDs by mid-November. So, this year I expect I'll make my anniversary concert a release party, although it'll probably be a few weeks late. What's left? Finishing the trio medleys, finishing three other pieces in progress, and three new pieces, plus, if time allows, a few fix-its. (Hopefully these other fix-its won't require as much re-recording as "Three Ships" did!) I'm starting to work on the liner notes and graphics, too. This time I'll make sure the web address is correct! (On No Loose Threads, I missed a typo in the URL, and I also didn't realize that you can't include the usual "www." with addresses at Tripod, my former hosting service.)
So, second, I corrected an error in a harmony part in "Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus / Planxty Irwin," then added guitar to the medley. I'm not very good at finger-picking stuff, so this part was difficult to learn and took a lot of takes to record.
Third, I added guitar to "Three Ships Medley." This part was mostly strumming, so it wasn't as difficult as the other. There's one section played with a capo -- Matt suggested I retune with the capo on, which I'd ignorantly never done before; it makes a big difference. I wonder if that says something about the intonation on my guitar... Anyway, my back and left shoulder were really stiff after recording these two guitar parts, because I'm one of those "guitarists" that has to look at the left hand all the time. That's when I decided to give up on those "Lullaby" recorder parts until next session; too stiff, and extra practice would probably help a lot, too.
The last thing I did that afternoon was a preparation for the evening session. We'd decided to record Craig's guitar part first, so that Jerry, the fiddler, would have both dulcimer and guitar tracks to follow. But on one of the tunes, "Easter Thursday," Craig needed to hear Jerry's part, too. So I recorded a dulcimer version of Jerry's part as a reference track.
Home to rest a little and make and eat an early dinner. And my in-laws arrived just in time for me to let them in and then head back to the studio for the trio's evening session.
The trio convened at 6 p.m. Jerry headed downstairs to warm up, and Matt got Craig set up to record. We started with "Hewlett / Silent Night," which turned out to be more interesting than I thought it would be: I'd unintentionally slowed down in places, which made it difficult to keep tempo with my tracks. We figured out that recording section by section made it a lot easier. Once the guitar tracks were finished, Jerry recorded his parts.
Next we tackled Craig's parts for "Easter Thursday"; Jerry joined me in the control room to watch and listen. This tune is difficult because it's in an unusual meter -- it's a 3/2 hornpipe -- and because there's a syncopated section at the end of the B part. Having that reference track helped a little. But I ended up standing in the window sort of conducting -- keeping track of the first beat of each measure, and indicating when to play during the syncopated part. Lots of fun... when we were off from each other we'd be shaking our heads and laughing silently, and when we got it right my index finger "batons" would become thumbs up. Meanwhile Jerry sits on the couch fascinated by all the technology and the whole recording process.
Once we thought we had Craig's part down, Jerry went out to do his part. But the middle section was problematic. I realized that my decision to have Craig play this section syncopated was not only making things difficult for Jerry, but also just didn't sound good. So I wanted to have Craig redo that section. Matt was unconvinced about being able to position him the same way so that the part would blend seamlessly with the previous parts -- both of them suggested instead that we just copy the part from a previous section and recycle it for this section too. I'm not comfortable with that idea, so they agreed to try re-recording the section... fortunately, we did manage to get the positioning essentially the same. Whew. Now it was Jerry's turn again. He'd never recorded before, but he did his parts for the first tune in four takes, and just three takes for this one. Impressive!
After doing some editing and checking the other takes to make sure they didn't all have the same mistakes in the same places, I offered everyone cucumbers (Craig actually accepted) and sent Craig and Jerry home. Matt burned the end-of-session CD for me, I wrote a check, and, at about 10 p.m., headed home myself.
After lunch, we started on "Emmanuel." My version starts with an adaptation of the Episcopal Hymnal's setting, continues with another verse in the standard 4/4 meter, then goes into a sort of two-over-three rhythm. Recording the middle verse was interesting because it involved a set of softer responses between melody phrases. What we ended up doing is recording one melody phrase, switching tracks, recording the response, switching back to melody, and so on. The last verse was challenging, too, because of the syncopation, timing, and accents. I'm not entirely sure of the editing yet... I'll have to listen to it a lot and see what I think.
Tomorrow may well be my last day of recording. I just have two more new pieces to do, plus fix one part of another tune. The end is near, but not here yet. Besides those last bits of recording, I need to do the mixing and mastering and finish the text and graphics. Writing the liner notes is proving to be difficult -- there's only so much room, and it's hard to decide exactly what I have to say about each piece and then figure out how to say it in the space allotted. A college friend, artist Andrea Seavers, is working on the cover art and text. She does marvelous Christmas cards: collages mixed with original drawing, painting, and lettering. So far she's sent me one rough sketch of a Madonna and Child collage based on a Fra Angelico painting, and I think it will be a perfect cover for this album. Another couple of friends (who happen to also be dulcimer students), Keith and Marty Bryant, took photos of me with the instruments for the traycard, and I've also taken some studio shots of guest musicians for the back of the booklet. The last step, besides sending off the CD and graphics to the manufacturers, is planning a release party and concert. I have some ideas, but I'll wait until it's finalized before I announce it.
We started with "Emmanuel." I wasn't sure that slowing down at the end of the first section was a good idea after all. I had no idea how we might fix that without having to re-record the following sections, but it turned out to not be that difficult. I just punched in that last part of the first section plus the first note of the next section, then Matt moved the previously recorded next section up to match. Then I re-recorded the melody line of the third section to clean up some of the timing and expression things I hadn't done so well yesterday.
Next, we worked on "O Little Town of Bethlehem." My version starts with an old English tune called "Forest Green," then two verses of the familiar "St. Louis" tune, and a final verse of "Forest Green." The first "St. Louis" verse I recorded in four-part harmony. By the time I got to the tenor part, the sun through the stained-glass window behind me was casting my shadow on the soundboard and creating a glare on the strings -- that's a little disorienting. Matt came in and set up one of those tall wooden baffles behind me to block the sun... "Is that better, Princess?"
After lunch, we finished "Bethlehem," and started working on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Christmas Star." "Twinkle" is a tune I often play when people comment about how difficult the dulcimer looks; I show them that it's simple to play simple tunes like "Twinkle," because all the notes are in a nice vertical row with nothing to skip in between. I add more chords and ornaments as I go, then talk about the visual shapes I improvise with and how those shapes and patterns make writing, arranging, and improvising so much easier on this instrument than on the other instruments I've tried. Gradually my arrangement started incorporating some unusual chords and acquired an air of mystery and wonder; I thought it would be cool to include it on this album in honor of the amazing journey of the Magi, those mysterious people from the East who read Jesus' arrival in the heavens and made their way to Israel to see him.
While we were working on these two tunes, I was increasingly anxious and stubborn. I really wanted to be done. But I was also trying to be careful not to settle for less than my best just for the sake of being done. That kind of tension makes it difficult to evaluate things and make choices. (Perhaps it also tries Matt's nearly infinite patience.) So even though we "finished" recording the dulcimer for this album, I'll have to listen to the results a lot before deciding if I'm really done or not.
Matt's teasing got me thinking about princesses and extreme sensitivity; "The Princess and the Pea," for example. I suppose you can't have sensitivity without irritability; you can't be sensitive only to positive things. On the flip side, one might take a second look at the irritable people in one's life and find out that they are not sensitive only to negative things. Anyway, I hope Matt and Will and my husband and everyone else around me have not been too bothered by my irritability while working on this project, and I hope that the plus side of that sensitivity will show in the finished CD.
...Today we finished recording!
Woo-hoo! I added one dulcimer note to "Gesł Bambino" (I'm so glad I only had to tune that one note and a few neighbors). Then I redid one recorder section of the same tune so that the breathing would be the same as if one were singing the words, and I also did the recorder parts for "O Little Town of Bethlehem." I decided I liked my arrangement just fine.
Once the recording was done, we started on the mixing. First, we tackled "He Shall Feed His Flock," after loading the tracks Henry Smith sent from his Outback Studio in Virginia, where Tom Abernethy recorded a guitar part for me. Then we finished editing "Hewlett / Silent Night," and mixed that and "Easter Thursday / O Sacred Head Now Wounded," the two Hanshaw Trio medleys. Finally, we worked on "Twinkle, Twinkle, Christmas Star."
So what is mixing, anyway? I'm not an engineer... but as far as I understand it, mixing is about setting relative volume levels among multiple instruments or parts, panning different parts so they sound like they come from the left, right, or center, adjusting equalizers so things have the proper amounts of high, mid, and low sounds, and adding effects like reverb, which provides a little echo as if one were playing in a cathedral or something.
As a general mixing philosophy, I prefer to leave sounds pretty natural. I'd like to control the sound through performance as much as possible -- i.e. playing loudly or quietly, using different kinds of hammers, etc. Sometimes, though, judicious use of equalization or effects can smooth or clarify a sound, or occasionally adjust a performance choice that perhaps wasn't what I wanted after all. I especially like to use a little reverb on the recorder, psaltery, and fiddle, because I love the sense of soaring or floating it provides. Matt has also used just a hint of reverb to add a sense of space to the dulcimer.
One of the challenges I face in the mixing process is deciding whether I want a different volume level or an effect or equalization adjustment. It's partly a communication challenge. If I express dissatisfaction with the character of the sound, Matt expects to deal with it by equalization rather than by volume. He knows that changing the volume doesn't change the character of the sound. Sometimes, though, changing the volume changes the way I perceive the sound. For example, when I recorded the first psaltery parts for this album, I thought they sounded too scratchy and wobbly. But when we lowered their volume, I discovered that the sound only bothered me when it was too loud compared to the other parts. I had to deal with this challenge with the first melody line of "Twinkle" and some of the other things we mixed today. Some of them we adjusted with volume, some with equalization; in the case of "Twinkle," I ended up asking for a lower volume and an equalization adjustment.
This morning I was thinking about nearing the end of this project. As glad as I am to be almost done, I'll miss the studio work. I enjoy recording (in spite of the stresses), and I find the engineering part fascinating. It's cool to watch Matt position mics, splice different takes together, and set up all the mixing adjustments. The board at Wilburland is even automated, so that once we decide what should happen to what tracks and when, we can sit back and listen while the board moves all the sliders and such. That's just cool.
Today we mixed six more tunes, beginning with "Christ Child Lullaby," which only needed a few volume adjustments so that the change between recorder and dulcimer sections would not be too drastic. Then we worked on "Noel Nouvelet / Wexford Carol" and "What Child Is This?" -- there were a couple of noises on these two that I wanted to look at, to see if we had better takes of those spots. Once that was taken care of, "Noel" just needed a little volume adjusting of a pair of psaltery parts and a pair of dulcimer parts. "Three Ships Medley" didn't present any problems, and I think the only things that concerned me about "The Lord at First Did Adam Make" were a pair of dulcimer parts that I thought were panned too far apart and a recorder section that had too much of a volume jump at one point. On "Fallen," there was a timing issue I hadn't noticed before. It turns out that it was an effect of some processing Matt was doing on the melody track, so all we needed to do was move the whole accompaniment track to match.
Generally, my job now has been to occupy myself while Matt does most of the mixing, so that when it's done, I can listen with fresh ears. If both of us were listening equally carefully throughout the process, it would be a lot harder to really hear the results... the trees would overwhelm the forest.
So, I started out reading a library book I'd brought. When that got tedious, I read some of another book picked from a pile of reading material in the control room. Then I got tired of reading, and I started to feel a little left out. I wanted to observe all the cool things Matt was doing and find out why and how he did them, but of course that would defeat the purpose of keeping my ears fresh. Sigh. Fortunately Will was downstairs mixing recordings from the Newfield Fiddle Festival, and he let me watch and listen.
Tomorrow, four more tunes to mix.
Today we mixed the four remaining tunes. Only one presented any challenges: "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus / Planxty Irwin." This is one where I made some arrangement decisions after recording some of the parts, so the different parts were not entirely aligned with the various tracks. Dealing with that sort of thing wasn't even really challenging, it was just a matter of finding where a part switched tracks and adjusting the levels accordingly. We were done by lunchtime.
I'm definitely experiencing some strong symptoms of Wilburland Withdrawal. Making a recording with any engineer is a very intense process, and Matt (and Will) are such great guys -- patient, kind, and really good at what they do. And I've been working at Wilburland for the past four months -- it's the most sustained intense thing I've done this year. Sigh. I think this is one of the reasons why I don't think I would enjoy home recording, even though with today's technology you can get great results and save money. I love being in a studio and working with a good engineer -- music is best when it's shared.
It wasn't until I was sitting in my car at 9:00am about to turn on the ignition that I realized how anxious I was about this final day in the studio. See, it only takes me a half hour to get there, and we start at 10:00. Yeah. I made myself go back in the house and read for thirty minutes, but even so I was still shaking when I got to the studio. Matt suggested a cup of tea (tea! I didn't even know they had any), and soon I was sipping a lovely herbal brew with chamomile and some other stuff, aptly named Tension Tamer.
Since Thursday's session, my task had been to listen to the mixes and make sure everything was as I wanted it. I listened to it all day Friday as I worked on the graphic design, and thought it sounded great -- but my attention was almost entirely on the computer and I only heard the CD as background and occasional snatches that grabbed my attention. Saturday and Sunday I listened more attentively, and came up with a list of places I wanted to double-check. Some were simple mix concerns -- wanting various instruments' or parts' volumes adjusted here and there. Some were performance concerns -- a knock on the bridge or a weak note; perhaps I had a better take we could edit from. Some were editing concerns -- I thought I could hear some of the edit points and I worried that they were blatant noises that everyone else would notice, too. As I listened, though, I reminded myself that I have a tendency to look not just at trees (instead of the forest), but their leaves, even the cells of the leaves, even the little bits floating around in the cells, etc.
So, I decided that today would be "Trust the Engineer" Day. It's the engineer's job to make the edits work. If they didn't work he would have told me so -- at the time they were made, so that I could have done another set of takes if necessary. Therefore, as we reviewed each of the things on my list, whenever I was in doubt, I chose whatever Matt suggested.
Someday I hope to be a good enough musician that I won't need to rely on edits in order to record an album on a reasonable budget. I would love to be able to play both precisely and expressively. Then I wouldn't be sitting here with a sinking feeling in my stomach, wondering if, by attending too much to precision (in the form of edits), I might have taken the life out of my performance.
Conclusions... obviously I'm still "in the hole," like I was after recording "He Shall Feed His Flock." Anxiety is surely making me focus on tiny negatives instead of being able to enjoy any overall beauty. But it's "Trust the Engineer" Day still, and I'm fairly confident that I've done my best and made a good record. So, I take a deep breath, put aside my stomach-sinking fears, and say, "Woo-hoo! It's done and I love it!"
This morning I went to Fed Ex to ship the CD master, another CD with the graphics files, color proofs, and a deposit check to National Tape and Disc. It's amazing to me, but not really surprising, how all that stress and overly-focused anxiety has just melted away, and how I've regained perspective, remembering that the important thing is that this album show the beauty of the coming of Christ. I slept well last night.
Doing the graphics was a pretty amazing experience. I wish I'd allotted more time to it, especially considering I had no experience with PhotoShop. The stripped-down program that came with my scanner is also an Adobe product, and I'd just assumed PhotoShop would do all the same things the same way, just with extra features and tools I wouldn't need to worry about. Oh no. Very different products, so a lot of my design time was figuring out how to do things. I learned how to use some of the cool features PhotoShop has that PhotoDeluxe doesn't, like writing text on a curved path for the CD imprint, adjusting kerning and leading to space text horizontally and vertically the exact way I wanted it in the booklet, using "Curves" to adjust the color of a photo more precisely than I could with other color adjustment tools, and modifying a selection to make it smoother or smaller. Eric Hause helped me learn my way around, and Christi Sobel helped me with a lot of the scanning and image work. One particular challenge was that the original artwork, a beautiful collage by my college friend Andrea Seavers, uses a textured paper for Mary's and Jesus' skin. That paper didn't scan well, so Christi used various tools to smooth out the texture and even out the color. I made the final adjustments last night and had color proofs made at Kinko's, so everything would be ready to ship this morning. Whew!
I can't say enough about the folks at Electric Wilburland. Calm and assured, kind and patient and generous, easygoing and humorous, not to mention highly skilled, Matt and Will have made this project a fantastic experience. Matt's engineering has been thoughtful, sensitive, attentive both to details and to context; he's also given helpful feedback and suggestions throughout the process. And both of them have given me confidence when I was too far gone to think anymore. Thanks, guys; you're the best.
I expect the CDs will arrive in mid-November. There will be a release party and concert on Sunday, November 21, at the Moosewood, featuring The Hanshaw Trio. More details at my schedule page.
This page:
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6. July 30: The Joys of Editing
Today we started by fixing some edits in yesterday's work. One was a timing issue, in "Gesł Bambino," which I fixed by just re-recording one section. The other was something weird about going from the intro of "Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus / Planxty Irwin" into the tune. We ended up deciding that it was mostly because the intro is in two octaves, but when the melody begins it was just in the upper octave. Adding another track with the melody in the lower octave sounded better. Then, after I recorded the remaining dulcimer and psaltery parts, I decided the last section would be better if I added one more dulcimer line and had the psaltery come in later. Having NoteWorthy Composer notation software helps me plan out arrangements pretty well, so that usually only minor alterations, if any, are needed.
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7. August 25: A Touch of Grey
As always, this recording session began with tuning. I took the dulcimer to the studio yesterday and did an hour's worth of tuning, then finished this morning. It took a long time again, but was relatively straightforward and nonproblematic. Whew.
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8. August 26: Semi-Conductor
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. I worked on four pieces. First, I wanted to finish "Christ Child Lullaby." I did the dulcimer parts without too much trouble, thanks to practicing each of them ten times daily since my last attempt. Then I tried the recorder -- but after maybe half a dozen takes on one recorder part, my fingers were stiff enough that I needed to do something else for a while.
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9. September 21: Not Yet
Today I worked on two tunes: the remaining recorder parts for "Christ Child Lullaby," and a new piece, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." I'd been practicing those recorder parts several times a day, so they didn't take too long this morning. In fact, the timing was really nice: I had from 11 to 12:30 to tune, then took a break for lunch, and finished tuning afterwards. Taking a break in the middle of tuning helps keep my ear from getting overly sensitive with concentration.
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10. September 22: Princess
Even on an ordinary day I'm a pretty anxious and strong-willed person. Today, I was even more so. For one thing, I wasn't entirely happy with what I'd recorded yesterday and uncertain what to do about it. I also really wanted to finish recording the dulcimer today, but I wanted to do it well and not rush, and I was concerned that the remaining two pieces might not be ready yet. That's a lot of stuff to be anxious and stubborn about.
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11. October 5: The Effects (and Limits) of Volume
So tired... thinking about graphic design, editing and mixing, and whether or not I liked my arrangement of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" kept me up late last night, and then I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. "Above thy deep and dreamless streets..." -- in my case dreamless because sleepless! Not the best way to prepare for a week in the studio. However, there is good news... (No, I didn't switch to Geico.)
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12. October 6: Fidgets
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13. October 7: Wilburland Withdrawal
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14. October 11: "Trust the Engineer" Day
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Coda. October 14: Final Thoughts
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