Thursday 5 August 2010

After the Release of Mahler 1

A month has now passed after my release of the recording of the complete Symphony No.1. For me this was quite a milestone, and I had to take a musical break for a brief time after completing this rendition. In the meantime I have uploaded two revision: one of the first movement, another one of Blumine. I am still not very convinced about these recordings - something is still lacking: an overarching clear implementation of a musical concept. A real orchestra conductor can do that easily, during a life performance. But I have to stitch, to draw controller values, to listen to short segments... and a lot of my musical intention that I have inside does not come through... there must be a better way to get the right tempo and volume balance.
The last movement needs some attention: it is currently too monolithic, too loud in the beginning part, needs more tempo variations, to be faster in some parts, slower in others. When listening to it in one piece, all this is very evident. But it gets lost once I dissect the piece and micro-edit events, note attacks (velocities), controller values, and tempo curves.

The BBC Proms show great concerts - many performances of Mahler's symphonies are scheduled, and they give great inspiration. Since I already have the 3rd movement from Symphony #4 in a MIDI form (from my earlier recordings in summer 2000), I can focus on this symphony. The first two movements should not be a large problem, and the long and intensive 3rd movement needs just a conversion to the GPO4 samples, plus a reworking of the dynamics. Timing appears already more or less ok. Then the 4th movement would need a soprano. I could use a synth voice replacement for this, and in the initial phase this is probably what I will do. However, if there is any soprano out there who wants to collaborate with me on this - please contact me!

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