Mistakes

I've been recording all day, practicing with my cheap equipment for when the mobile studio engineer shows up with the good gear.

I can't play without mistakes.
Take 2
Take 3
Take 4
Take 5
#!$&*#

I know there are people at all levels submitting.
But what % will be without wrong notes?

I realize the overall feeling is more important than the technical perfection but, sheesh, you should hear some of these wrong notes.

Well my piece is certainly not going to be "perfect" and it's only a minute long.

Don't sweat the small stuff.

Can you play it without mistakes at a slower tempo?

you should hear some of mine before I edit them.


bars 1-3... oops! repeat bar 2... bunk... repeat bar 2 again... flop.... finally get it right, get to bar 16 - oops I just remembered wasn't I going to play bar 4 THAT way instead? go all the way back to bar 4 and play it, jump ahead to bar 16, finally finish song, get onto computer, realize.... oops, I skipped that measure... replay it.. oops.. won't splice properly... replay entire song... through bar 13... flop... etc...

Kenny,

Don't worry. I am going through the same exact thing and I am also putting my daughter through the rigors or recording.

Yesterday was her turn. She looked over at me about an hour into the multi-take session and said, "Can I stop now?"

What I did at that point was to burn her sessions to CD to let her review the performance against the score. I had my turn last night and into today. I spent about 1.5 hours last night and about 45 minutes today. I have posted my results in the member recording section but you can direct link to it here: http://www.pcsincnet.com/music/PreludeCSharpMinorOp28No10_16Bit.mp3

It is not my final but it is getting closer! I am also submitting 3 additional pieces so I have my work cut out for me!

My daughter is doing all three movements of Clementi's Sonatina 3 so I have even more recording and post-processing work in store.

Good luck! And keep at it. I think it is fun to be able to hear yourself on the stereo and it is also a great tool for polishing pieces.

Mark

kenny, Although I'm not sure to what extent I would do it, an engineer should be capable of splicing "fixes" into your recording. You replay the part where the mistake occurs and he inserts it where it belongs. This is how recordings get to be perfect in the first place.

Personally, I like reality.

practice makes perfect

Bernard.
Isn't that cheating?
Piecing fragments together is like Frankenmusic.


How many of us are doing that? Half?
If everyone does this except me, I will have the only non-perfect performance.

And all those people will sound better than they really are.

I am not doing that.

Me neither.

Fortunately, I think the pieces I am submitting are too easy for wrong notes to be a problem. I've had the piano tuned, bought recording gear and made test files so I shall take my time and make as many recordings as it takes for me to be satisfied. I don't think one or two wrong notes will bother me if they are not in prominent places. As I am playing only my own music I don't suppose anybody will know the difference, and half the time I stick in different things on the spur of the moment anyway.

Nonetheless, I am going to be pretty fussy about the results.

Well, I'll admit that FINALLY I did 2 "okay" runs of my Fiocco piece ..... It took 2 days with my cheap equipment ..... I stopped counting at 60 runs. IMHO, what I'm learning from this experience, is that it's best just to start the tape & the play, play, play, instead of starting & stopping repeatedly. Of course, I played until the end of the 30 minute tape a couple of times; but nonetheless, when I finally did get the 1st "okay" recording, I simply took notice of the tape counter & then the husband back tracked & made the MP3 afterwards. A funny (perhaps psychological) thing occurred right after this recording too --- Just for the fun of it (right after the 1st "okay" run) I bashed through the piece at a faster pace & did a 2nd "okay" recording too. Now I have to choose which one to submit .....

Best of Luck to all PW "mortals" who are struggling to record their own submissions.

--Katie (Who personally thinks we all should purposefully submit recordings with mistakes in order to celebrate the beauty of our fallibility as PW pianists).

Wow, the question of mistakes...

Kenny:

I won't be able to submit any of my music for this recording because I won't have time to "get it together". My new grand isn't here yet and then there's the challenge of recording it.

If those 2 obstacles had not existed, I, like you and other PW members, would be striving to record my own music without any mistakes. It's fairly straightforward stuff-not very complex, but every time I play, I make different mistakes. I marvel at those pianists who play flawlessly. Are they superhuman?

Well, if I think about it, I don't really do much "intelligent practice". That is, I spend virtually no time at all, analyzing a piece of music - the parts that might be a bit difficult for me to play, and then practice those measures over and over to get it right. The few times I have done this, it's proven to be a big help.

I just mostly breeze through sight reading the music. My question is, do you do pretty much the same? Just kinda sight reading - or do you intentionally practice?

I'm thinking I need to discipline myself to play better. Since I never took lessons and currently have no music teacher to guide me, I'm on my own. (Total 100% NON-discipline.)

Intelligent practice is hopefully the answer. One other thing that might help, I wonder if I have it so ingrained in my mind now that "I make mistakes" that I'm subconsciously conditioning myself - to make mistakes? Perhaps a change of attitude would also help???

I'm hoping some of what I've posted may help other PW members.

As far as cleaning up mistakes... Yeah, I always thought that is kind of cheating, also. We're amateurs, though, most of us. Not professionals. Maybe it's OK for us amateurs to have a little help? ??? Maybe we're being too hard on ourselves?

Katie: If I was able to do something for this CD, I'm sure I'd be doing just the same thing as you. Yes, it's much better to just let the tape keep running. Otherwise you break the flow.

Jeanne W

P.S. markjps: The Clementi Sonatina your daughter is working on. I enjoy Clementi's music as well. A group of PW members got together recently-we had the opportunity to play Muzio Clementi's piano from the last 1700's at Frederick's Historic Piano Study Center in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. That was a treat.

I seem to do my best recordings after I've done a brief warmup and just get right down to it. I almost always get the best recording (fewest mistakes and, more importantly, I put more feeling into it) the first time. I guess this is because when I start with a fresh mind like that I have the clearest picture of how I want the piece to sound. Playing a piece I'm trying to record more than a couple of times in a session (let alone 10 in a row) is not, for me at least, conducive to getting good results.

Another thing that helps me is to turn on the recorder and say to myself "ok, I'm gonna run through this 10 more times over the next few days/week/whatever, so here's take 1 of 10," that helps take the pressure off of the present attempt.

Sometimes as a warmup I might run thru the piece I'm going to perform in a "technical" manner (e.g. no pedal, playing the notes consistently forte and extremely stacatto or extremely legato). This way I'm warmed up for the piece but I haven't poured the mental energy into actually performing it.

Another important thing is not to stop playing if I make a mistake, I don't want to reinforce it. I go back later and play the section giving me problems over and over again and in as many different ways as possible (separate hands, hands together, very slowly, faster than normal, overemphasize contrasting voices, etc.) This helps it all sink in.

In sum, I would say "don't sweat the petty stuff" as the saying goes (I won't quote the rest of the saying, this being a family board and all...) Overall I think people tend to notice the expression of the music much more than a wrong note here and there.

Oh yeah, and I will definitely *not* be editing anything I play -- "au naturel" is the only way I'll go. I may use my sound editor to boost the volume if needed, but only to compensate for my mic's deficiencies and it will be across the board, not just in one passage or another.

P.S. Mark -- your prelude came out great, nice work!