Thoughts on Recording a CD August 26, 2008

Recording – How strange. How artificial. Yet, how fun. Two weeks ago, I was sweating away in an un-air-conditioned but beautiful, quiet performing hall in a small town in Spain, recording 2 triple concerti by Bach. I’ve recorded before, but this was an entirely new experience. I wasn’t doing the recording myself, dealing with cheap microphones and minidiscs; I wasn’t even at school, using an excellent student sound engineer, but battling sound space with percussionists in the next room. No, this sound engineer (perhaps I should say sound artist, even?) was big time, from Berlin. He’s a friend of a (lucky) friend, so I think a special deal was worked out, but still… A sound engineer is part technician, and part therapist. “That’s fine, great job, beautiful take, you’re really swingin’ now, let’s just do one more section again…” Our perception as musicians was of the whole take, the entirety; thus the increasing frantic feelings and frequency of admissions like “I missed a note in measure 39.” The sound engineer told me for him, a recording project is more like a puzzle – he can see the whole and just has to put in missing parts, adjacent pieces. In take 3, I might have missed a note in m.39, but he got my part on take 2. He’ll use the other instruments’ lines from take 3 and mine from take 2. Amazing.

I was actually pretty relaxed throughout the recording. I really enjoyed it, and I felt the entire group was putting forth their best efforts, exhibiting immense concentration and drive those few days. Those mics didn’t bother me at all, either, which is a new recording experience for me. In fact, I felt like I could flirt with them – it was like a different kind of audience. One that you want to show off to, but don’t feel judged by. By now, I’ve also recorded enough times to know that getting nervous just makes you too tired to continue.

However, each project has its drawbacks. I was struck by the realization that in a recording you must know exactly what you want to say with each particular note and phrase, in order to re-create it 4 or 5 times. The tendency is to play something a little different each time in order to vary, highlight, exploit. And now it is all being recorded. A good engineer will be sensitive to that, I think. I hope. I cannot say I was entirely consistent, therefore I wonder how much room there is for spontaneity in a recording? What if your best take 3 was a spontaneous response to something someone else played, but in the mix, for the other voices he uses take 4? Will your inspired response be invalid in the final product?

Further, can a recording also capture the personalities and relationships of me and my colleagues? Can music? How much of this is visual, really? Will this recording even come close to how I felt on that recording stage, in front of those mics? And with my colleagues, barefoot and concentrated, flowing with me?

It was so hot in that room! Almost sweltering. Taking breaks in the cheery Catalonian sun were so refreshing. We had to tune all the instruments again after almost every take. Frustrating that my wooden flute swelled up towards the end of the day and almost refused to tune to itself anymore, no matter what I tried. It made me doubt myself, and I struggled with that self-doubt on the second day of recordings. Again, wondering how much the recording will capture my personality – will it display the self-doubt on the second concerto? I hope not but fear it may. Will I like the recording? Will I recognize myself? What if I end up hating how I played? What if I don’t really like my sound after all? How can one judge one’s own playing?

I look forward to hearing the cd. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with all the edits, just like I didn’t have to set up the mics and adjust the levels. For once, we musicians could concentrate purely on what we do best, which is of course playing the music. With that came tremendous freedom, actually. And I realized I want to do this type of thing forever.

For more photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/amandamarkwick

digging up mental blocks April 11, 2008

for a long time, i have thought that i have an achilles’ heel in my playing: weak articulation. by that i don’t mean that i can’t make a strong sound with articulation – it means that i feel that i cannot play quick and articulated (not slurred) passages very well. i practice, then in performances i panic, i dissociate from myself and the situation, and i mess up. i’m always able to jump back in, but not after losing a few notes along the way. sometimes my body gets tense, too. my fingers become slightly slow or on occasion locked or frozen into place, my lips become inflexible, and my breathing becomes too high.

when i’ve had to play exams, particularly at the conservatory here, i’ve always feared those fast passages. the committee can of course hear that i’m panicking, and finally after 5 years of listening to all i’ve accomplished (which has been a lot!), they decided to tell me that they can see that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with my tongue or fingers or breathing. they think my articulation issue is a mental block.

a mental block?! that’s all???!!! great i’ll work on that! oh, wait…. how does one work on a mental block? doesn’t it become worse if you try to focus on it? hmm… what is a mental block, really? how do you get rid of it?

for the past year, i’ve been going along happily believing what they told me. i don’t have an articulation problem; i have a mental block! just acknowledging that has actually helped quite a lot, but still not in the way i had hoped.

six weeks ago i started a 6-course training (like therapy sessions) in how to deal with stagefright. a flutist here in holland has decided to do a degree in psychology and she needed test subjects for her final project. i love therapy, and i also have varying degrees of stagefright, so i signed up right away. the many things i learned during this course deserve a blog post of their own, but i’ll just get to my discovery of last week. part of the training is to examining how you divide your thoughts – when you are playing, what percentage goes to the task, to yourself, and to your environment. we did all sorts of exercises with each of these 3 things. when we were focusing on the “yourself” part, i realized that as i play, i silently give myself a running commentary. it would be fine if it stopped at “oh, oops you missed that note,” but unfortunately the commentator doesn’t stop there – she says, “oh, oops you missed that note. figures, you are such a fake. you are terrible at articulation! why don’t you just give up the flute altogether?” i’m not kidding! that goes through my mind! of course, by that time, i’m already several measures away, having lost focus on the music during the process. ideally, i could just move on after “oops i missed that note” and not even have the rest of the commentary… i could stay in the moment, for example, and enjoy each new musical idea as it comes. but just in case, the therapist suggested i make a list of all the negative thoughts that i tell myself, and come up with more constructive substitutes. try to catch those negative thoughts after the first 2 words, and substitute in the more constructive thought. (or ideally, just move on.)

so after a few days of remembering and observing my thoughts i began typing up the recurring negative ones, beginning with “you aren’t ever going to be able to play that passage because it’s all articulated and very fast”, whose constructive counterpart is “this is a difficult passage. you will practice it well, you’ll be very prepared for the performance.” as i sat pondering this particular negative thought, i realized that this running commentary is not only a part of my performances, but it is also part of my practice sessions. if i’m starting to learn a piece with these destructive thoughts, of course i’m going to panic in the performance, because i’ve not had anytime in my history with that piece of ever actually feeling good about those few measures! the more i thought about it, and the more comments i typed on my list, the more i realized how self-destructive i can actually be at the most important moments of discovery and experimentation. practice is the time to make mistakes, and to figure out creative solutions. practice is the time to isolate difficult passages, and to give them extra attention. practice is the time to play, to find the emotions in the piece, and to create ways to convey those emotions. then i realized it: this is my mental block.

my mental block. my mental block is my own negative running commentary that occurs every single day during my practice sessions.

excitedly, i shared these observations with the therapist at yesterday’s session (alas, also the last.) as she read them, i was SHOCKED and APPALLED at how terrible they were, especially when read aloud. i would never say anything so destructive and terrible to anyone else. never! why have i developed this bad habit and turned it against myself? i don’t know, nor do i really think the answer matters that much. what is important is that i am now beginning the journey of replacing those thoughts with more realistic and, i hope, encouraging ones. it might be a long journey, and i may not be entirely free of my mental block by my exam in june, but i have to say, this is a very welcome journey.