Recording Session
A Report on the UCSD Winter Quarter 2020 Timbre Etude Recording Process
The Winter Quarter seminar began with the idea that we would proceed in three phases:
Rehearse, record, and edit all 11 graduate student compositions that emerged from the Fall Quarter seminar.
Meet to listen, analyze, and critique these pieces, particularly in regard to the extent to which the pieces did or did not meet the goals of the projects as articulated in the composer's proposals.
Create revisions to some of the pieces, and then record and edit them.
This plan might have worked if there were fewer pieces, but early on it became clear that there was not enough time for the performers to practice, rehearse, and record 11 ambitious pieces, followed by post-production, to enable us to fulfill all of our goals. We decided instead to focus entirely on getting the pieces recorded and edited, and then, time permitting, record some revised passages. The seminar did meet twice to discuss a few of the pieces, but the other recordings were not completed in time to be discussed in seminar. There were however a few remaining sessions at the end of the quarter that allowed us to record revisions. All of the recordings are now complete (with one exception that still needs to be edited) and are included in our documentation. After post-production was completed, all of the composers wrote final reports reflecting on the process and these are surveyed and contextualized in section C of this report.
There are a few additional issues I would like to comment on.
Microphones: during the original sessions in March 2019, an omnidirectional mic (Schoeps MK 2) was used on the violin, while cardioid mics were used on each of the other instruments (including a stereo pair of cardioids on percussion). This became a little problematic later, as balancing violin against other instruments during the mixing (against trombone especially) proved difficult as there was no isolation of violin. It also pushed the balance of the ensemble image to the left in terms of sound energy. Accordingly, we decided to use a cardioid mic on violin for the Winter 2020 sessions.
Mixing: given the goals of this project we decided to establish a standard mix that was used for all recordings. Composers have the option of requesting the stems from their piece to do a custom mix for musical purposes, but we wanted to have an objective standard in the initial recordings to be able to compare and analyze the projects.
Conductor: while normally a quartet would not require a conductor, and in some musical contexts it could be argued that the performance would benefit from chamber-music style performance, we determined that for the sake of efficiency it would be best to have all the pieces conducted so that the performers didn’t have the additional burden of learning how to coordinate with each other without a conductor, and so that rehearsals and recordings could be conducted efficiently.
Concert: in retrospect, I think that rehearsing and performing a concert first before recording would have several benefits, including making the experience more natural and gratifying for the performers, and also producing more “musical” and less “clinical” recordings.
Future Plans
At UC San Diego we plan to have a more limited set of goals for the 20/21 academic year, followed by another round of seminars and recordings in 21/22. This year (assuming our plans aren’t thwarted by Covid-19 restrictions) we would like to work on expanding the ensemble paradigm to include more instruments and developing a standard for the integration of electronics. Last year in Paris we discussed the idea of a scalable ensemble, with the original quartet at the center with the same setup, and then with additional quartet layers that would allow for ensembles of 8 and 12 instruments. We also propose to add an additional layer of microphones expressly for the purpose of applying digital signal processing to the instrumental signals. Rather than try to have a mic plot that works both for recording and signal processing, it will be better to have two layers of mics each optimized for the specific purpose of recording or processing.
- submitted by Rand Steiger