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Thanks, Julietta, for your comment on the piece. It’s taken me a while to get back here, but I can report that “Terrestrial Mirror” is now available on the CD “Music for Small Groups” by blumlein records. Anyone wishing to order it can take advantage of the free postage and packaging offer by selecting the “kiwi special” button on the blumlein records page.
Since you would have listened to the recording on my site we redid the mixing so the harp is now more present in the mix. The mp3 files will stay on my site for as long as possible and I’m organizing a streaming version too. The CD offers a different listening experience of course.
Thanks Andrew. It’s hard to say exactly how much that work cost to record because it’s part of a larger project to record five of my works for a CD. It’s a rather special and unique set of circumstances; it’s funded for the most part by the France/New Zealand Friendship Fund, and the idea behind that was to put (younger) musicians from both countries together to work on this project, getting to know each other through music. Here is the link to see the overall picture: CD of chamber music. Thirteen musicians participated.
The two works that I’m playing in were recorded by Andrew Levine of blumlein records (Hamburg) and the other three I recorded myself. I did the editing for all five works and Andrew is doing all the mixing and mastering for the entire CD. In terms of the soundtake for Terrestrial Mirror, that was done in a single session with Andrew’s mobile studio here in Paris.
My work for flute, viola & harp trio was recorded using multiple takes and fragments that were then stitched together using audio editing software, in my case Digital Performer. It was also recorded in a space that was not free of extraneous noises.
In an ideal world I’d have a regular group of that combination, and would only contemplate putting a recording on a CD after we’d played it live in forty concerts, however that is very far from the actual case. I’ve been able to use technological facility to go some way in making up for the absence of perfomance history.
If Adam is suggesting that it’s necessary to record while constantly listening to a click track, I think it’s arguable that one needs to go quite that far to achieve a successfully edited recording, nevertheless it’s an important point that close attention needs to be paid to keeping the tempo exactly as it should be. In our case we constantly referred to a metronome from the very start to the very end of the session.
I’d also add that rhythm or tempo is not the only thing that needs to be consistent, really no aspect is exempt. The interpretation needs to be cast in stone for an edited recording to work, at least for the duration of the recording session. As I’ve been doing the editing on this work I’ve appreciated just how much resonance can build up in a harp. I’ve found that this can complicate life in the audio editing process; in some start and stopping points the material needed for overlapping was too minimal for comfort.
So, I believe it is possible to record in a space that is not necessarily soundproof, but where one might want to because the acoustic is exceptionally good. This was the case for my work, recorded in an old ballroom of a grand residence, high ceiling, wooded surfaces, perfect for chamber music etc. Noise can enter that particular room, mostly from heavy vehicules from time to time on a typical day – it’s on a fairly quiet street. I’ve recorded other works there; a duo for violin and viola, where the final edits had some of this low frequency rumble, but we’ll be able to take that out with automated equalisation. With a bit of luck and good management during the sound takes (ensuring sufficient of them especially for quiet passages), then work in final mixing, it’s been possible to use that space as a recording venue.
That brings up the issue of reverb; more natural ambiance can be incorporated into the original recording, or, in a small studio there’s likely to be an absence of it, however, that needn’t be problematic with a good reverb pluging such as Altiverb using impulse responses.
For my flute, viola harp trio I had a sound engineer do the soundtakes. Immediately the session was finished we transferred the raw audio (6 tracks) to a hard drive that I brought home with me to do the editing. I did all the auditioning and crossfades on the six unmixed tracks then sent them back as completed movements to the sound engineer for the mixing to stereo and final mastering. There’s certainly been a revolution in recording technology that allows that type of arrangement.
For the CD artwork I’ve just bought software to do that and have found a CD replicating factory that has templates that can be downloaded with everything laid out, so seems I’ll be able to manage that aspect. This’ll be the first time I’ve been involved in the graphics, for a previous CD we had a specialist do that part.
Since I made the post above the recording has been used as a sound example for an audio plugin called Harpex. This has nothing to do with harps – for the technically-minded it stands for high angular resolution planewave expansion! Also, I’ve replaced the mp3 recordings on my own webpage with something much closer to the final mix, everything should sound much more realistic, and generally nicer to listen to. The only thing that could be altered now is the balance between the two microphone sets to make it all drier; I think there’s an adequate amount of natural reverb in the recording, but it could be reduced slightly, perhaps?
I’ve now got a complete recording of my work Terrestrial Mirror on my webpage. We recorded it at the beginning of this month, but it’s not the final mix – that’s being worked at the moment. The trio was recorded using a main couple of large diaphragm mics in front as well as a Core Sound TetraMic placed in the middle of the group feeding into a Metric Halo ULN-8 audio interface. The sound engineer put a long table on its end just behind the harpist (sitting on the right) to reflect out sound. We recorded in a largish salon, and old dance room, with about a 6 metre high ceiling, great acoustic for chamber music. Harpist uses a Camac harp. I’ll let you know when I’ve posted the finished version of the recording.
2 or 3 years ago I needed to find a harp for a young player visiting from NZ as I was organizer of the concert in which she was going to be playing. I eventually had success by putting a request on http://www.harpebudin.com/forum/ There was a budget of 150 euros to work to, so a (well-known) harpist happened to be free that evening and brought one along. Prior to that I did ring the other companies mentioned but seem to remember it would have cost several hundred euros minimum rental had there been something available to rent.
Don’t overlook variable bitrate (VBR) for mp3 files. It seems that they’re much less used than fixed bitrate mp3, and there’s even a bit of prejudice against them from engineers but that seems mostly theoretical. In any case I think they give the best quality/file size ratio. I use a LAME encoder where the best quality VBR mp3 come out averaging 220Kb/s – a bit higher than 160. If you wanted smaller files then go down the VBR scale a bit.
I think the main difference between mp3 and original CD is mainly the lack of depth in the sound even if plenty claim that higher rates are indistinguishable. Personally I don’t really like mp3 at all, the ogg vorbis format is a much better sound for the same file size, but mp3, the early starter, is ubiquitous so I stick with them too on my site.
My work for flute, viola and harp (Terrestrial Mirror) is using variable bitrate mp3 at the highest quality (220Kb/s), and was recorded professionally. The harpist was employed as a sound engineer for French TV, and she got a colleague to record us.
