December 04,  2020

Today went pretty well though, again, I overestimated how quickly I could record a piece.  It was a shorter session today, and I think probably too short.   I was hoping to get through all four movements of the second violin part of Barbella Sonata and the cello part of the Tango.

I only made it through movements 1,2, and 4 of the Sonata.  I'm wasn't totally surprised, as the second movement of the Sonata is actually fairly difficult. It's not acrobatic or anything, but it's tempo is Presto (i.e. really fast) which I played at 160 bpm.  There are a couple of fast sixteenth note runs which at Presto speeds almost sound like a straight tremelo, but I was militant about making them exact sixteenth notes, as the other violin part is also playing 16th notes there and I was concerned that if I didn't sync really well to the metronome, I wouldn't be able to get the two parts to line up.

We finished the second movement with only about 25 minutes to spare.  I decided to jump to the 4th movement because it's shorter and, while slightly harder than movement 3, still pretty easy and I was having a pretty good day behind the mandolin so far.   Also, the violin 1 part for movement 3 is pretty easy and I wasn't too worried about needing the violin 2 track to practice with.

For movements two and four we did something different for tracking.   Rather than record it all the way through once and then listening back and punching in spots as we came across them, we did something more akin to how places do vocals.  Basically you just play through the entire piece a bunch of times and then just take the best parts from each take.   I'm glad Mike suggested that, as though I wouldn't want to do that on something that was 5 minutes long, both the movements we did it with were short.   I did 4 takes on the movement two Presto, and then some punch-ins [1] on the sixteenth notes, and 3 takes of the movement four Allegro.  

The Presto takes were a mixed bag and the final product is a fairly even mix of all four of them, but the Allegro is mostly take two, which I was probably the best performance of it I'd done, in practice or in the studio.   

I'll obviously have to go back and do movement three.  I'm hoping we can get the sound of the instrument close enough to what we got on the other three movements that on a listen through the whole piece it won't be noticeable.  I had just changed my mandolin's strings, so as long as I do that I should be good.

Not that it matters now, it is going to be what it's going to be.

I wonder if the Tango Cello thinks I am avoiding it....

m

12/04 - 2 hours

Barbella Violin 2   75% Complete

Tango Cello Pushed

[1] A punch-in is when you just play a small part, like a note or a quick run, and insert it instead of what was already there.   So if I played a 14 measure part, and screwed up measure 8, I could just replay measure 8 and punch it in.   Usually you give your self some lead up. So for the earlier example, the Mike would select measure 8 as the punch point, and play the track from, say, measure 4.   I'd play along with the track but it would only record when I got the measure 8.