After a longer period of inactivity I had a look at my main website www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk, only to notice that many of my music streams did not work anymore. Some settings on the Indaba website where I am currently hosting most of my music, had changed, and as a consequence, several of my music recordings were not playing anymore.
I fixed this now: each of the tracks which are listed here have now a full length streaming widget from the Indaba site. I got rid of the "partial play" which only played a random 30 sec clip, even though many of these tracks can also be purchased on iTunes / Amazon.
I think that it is more valuable that people have the opportunity to listen to what I am creating (or trying to create), than "enforcing" the purchase of my music on commercial sites. Therefore, all my music is from now on available for free on my site.
These Indaba streaming widgets appear to use Flash. Unfortunately they do not seem to run on any mobile phone... There is the "additional MP3 player" which uses HTML5, but that appears to work somewhat unreliable, as the files are on my very slow server.
In the future I may not use Indaba anymore and instead use my site on BandCamp. They offer widgets which work greatly on any mobile platform, and I like their model of voluntary payment. On this site I already have placed the complete "Ma Mere L'Oye" by Ravel, and my very latest rendition: From Mahler's Symphony #6 the "Andante Moderato". I have just posted that one also on my main site, as the first one that only links to the player on BandCamp.
Showing posts with label Mahler. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mahler. Show all posts
Monday, 17 June 2013
Friday, 18 May 2012
Mahler: "Resurrection", 1st Movement
The image to the left is a painting by artist Paula Arciniega. She has created a whole series of paintings, inspired by Mahler's symphonies, and I find that these express his music very well. The one shown here is the painting which relates to Symphony #2.
My recording if the first movement is on my website, but for direct access it can be also played through the player below. I plan to continue working on this symphony, but it will take a while until I have it completed.
Monday, 30 January 2012
Plans for 2012
But there are also plans for new renditions, and this weekend I started working on one: although the Mahler year is over, I have begun to record the first movement of Symphony #2. Got already the first minute or so. Now this is a big one, and I am already dreading how to work on the huge final movement (which requires a choir and two orchestras...). Also the first movement requires quite an orchestral setup. In Sonar, I did create 4 sets of ARIA players, with a total of 64 different orchestra instrument samples. This appears to reach the limit of my PC: the audio play is a bit choppy, although only few instruments are playing during this first minute. However, the off-line "bounce-to-track" seemed to work without glitches, so I will carry on. In the 2nd minute there is a large "unisono" which will use most of the instruments simultaneously - if I get this working ok, then the rest should be fine.
You may wonder what this image to the top left is: this is a glimpse into results of my recent work on automatic music visualization. The algorithm takes into account periodicities in music and is based on a 2D Fourier Transform. More will be in a paper which I am currently preparing. This snapshot is a visualization of a moment in Smetana's Moldau.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
New Renditions of Mahler: 2nd and 3rd Movement from Symphony No.1
These past few days (evenings) I have been busy revising my recordings of Mahler's Symphony No.1. I want to finalise that recording and create a separate album for it, as a special edition for the Mahler Year. I have started with the 3rd movement, "Hunter's Funeral". There had been some technical problems with my PC MAESTRO-2: this particular file of the 3rd movement caused some stutter, due to some memory problems. I had to copy track by track into a new Sonar file in order to get rid of the problem. Then I still encountered problems: Sonar would suddenly crash at particular locations in the file - when a lot of instruments were simultaneously playing. I did then upgrade to the latest version of Asio4All, and after a while of tinkering I finally got everything working again properly.
The new version of the 3rd movement has only slight changes: some instrument attacks have been adjusted, to properly differentiate between marcato/staccato/legato, a few tempo changes to correct tiny imbalances within measures, and some new expression curves for selected instruments in a few locations.
The same overhaul was done with the 2nd movement. This movement has the inherent problem that I had recorded in in free-style and only later added the tempo quantisation. This has still the effect that not all instrument tracks appear properly synchronised: some quantisation that I did in some tracks in order to properly adhere to tempo and metric had the effect of slightly disrupting the consistent structure, and I will still have to fix that. I corrected a few errors and added some instruments which I had missed in the earlier rendition.
When I compared now the final audio recordings of the new with the previous versions, I hardly can note the difference - it is very subtle.
Here are the new versions, together with all the previous renditions of these movements:
2nd movement
3rd movement
Maybe you can hear the differences to the previous versions?
The new version of the 3rd movement has only slight changes: some instrument attacks have been adjusted, to properly differentiate between marcato/staccato/legato, a few tempo changes to correct tiny imbalances within measures, and some new expression curves for selected instruments in a few locations.
The same overhaul was done with the 2nd movement. This movement has the inherent problem that I had recorded in in free-style and only later added the tempo quantisation. This has still the effect that not all instrument tracks appear properly synchronised: some quantisation that I did in some tracks in order to properly adhere to tempo and metric had the effect of slightly disrupting the consistent structure, and I will still have to fix that. I corrected a few errors and added some instruments which I had missed in the earlier rendition.
When I compared now the final audio recordings of the new with the previous versions, I hardly can note the difference - it is very subtle.
Here are the new versions, together with all the previous renditions of these movements:
2nd movement
3rd movement
Maybe you can hear the differences to the previous versions?
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
New version of Mahler 1, 4th movement
Yesterday evening I decided to give my recording of Mahler's 4th movement an overhaul. The initial recording from 6.July had been done in quite a rush, trying to finish it before the anniversary on 7.July. Hence there were a few details that were not perfect. Especially the tempo had its problems: in my opinion now it was too slow.
So I revised the tempo and accelerated in many parts. There could still be some more acceleration, to keep the tempo more consistent in pace.
I also reduced the violin attack in a quiet passage between bars 166 and 220. Now the melody sounds much smoother.
Overall I think that I improved this recording. It is accessible on its web page in two versions: as MP3 and WMA. It also is automatically inserted into the streaming of the complete symphony which is accessible through this page.
Some pages on this web site do not load very quickly, due to the scripts for creating the links to the music files. I will have to switch this eventually to a database-oriented version.
So I revised the tempo and accelerated in many parts. There could still be some more acceleration, to keep the tempo more consistent in pace.
I also reduced the violin attack in a quiet passage between bars 166 and 220. Now the melody sounds much smoother.
Overall I think that I improved this recording. It is accessible on its web page in two versions: as MP3 and WMA. It also is automatically inserted into the streaming of the complete symphony which is accessible through this page.
Some pages on this web site do not load very quickly, due to the scripts for creating the links to the music files. I will have to switch this eventually to a database-oriented version.
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!
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!
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Cover Graphics for Mahler's Symphony No.1
I plan to release my rendition of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1 as an "album" online. For this I need of course a cover graphic. When looking at many of the classical music CD, many of the covers are quite unimaginitive: often a painting by Gustav Klimt, representing the fin-de-siecle in Vienna, or some alpine mountains. But Mahler's Symphony No.1 contains so much more... and I wanted to express this.
Especially I wanted to express the personal background which contributed to Gustav Mahler's emotional state while writing this music. And of strong predominance were the two unhappy love affairs he had in 1884 (Johanna Richter) and 1888 (Marion von Weber) - there is a lot of source material about this in the literature.
First I selected van Gogh's painting "The Harvest" as a main background image. This painting was created in 1888 and therefore fits right into the timely context. It shows a rural countryside in harmony, with sunny fields, and I found this represents well the mood of "Ging heut morgen uebers Feld" (went this morning over the field), which is a theme in the first movement. Also the Laendler movement with its bucolic dances fit in my opinion well to the sunny and optimistic mood of this picture.
Then I used the wood cut by Moritz Schwind "Hunter's Funeral" which was a direct inspiration for the 3rd movement "Stranded".
In order to represent the personal unhappy love stories, I put two faint profiles of women there, and overlaid the whole picture with a pair of blue eyes. This represented the reference to "die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" (the two blue eyes of my darling) which is part of the lyrical middle section of the 3rd movement.
I basically had a nice graphics representing movement 1-3, but then I worked on the rendition of movement 4, and this overall sunny mood was no longer representative for the symphony as a whole. So I added a dark thunderstorm background with lightning and added some fire flames in the foreground. This seemed to work well now. In addition I added a cuckoo bird, a trumpet and a French horn. Finally, with the inclusion of "Blumine", I added a bunch of blue flowers. And of course, a Gustav from a photo from about 1888 in the foreground.
In my initial draft the two women shapes were facing each other, but then I realised it would be better if they faced away from Gustav, representing the rejection of his affection.
Especially I wanted to express the personal background which contributed to Gustav Mahler's emotional state while writing this music. And of strong predominance were the two unhappy love affairs he had in 1884 (Johanna Richter) and 1888 (Marion von Weber) - there is a lot of source material about this in the literature.
First I selected van Gogh's painting "The Harvest" as a main background image. This painting was created in 1888 and therefore fits right into the timely context. It shows a rural countryside in harmony, with sunny fields, and I found this represents well the mood of "Ging heut morgen uebers Feld" (went this morning over the field), which is a theme in the first movement. Also the Laendler movement with its bucolic dances fit in my opinion well to the sunny and optimistic mood of this picture.
Then I used the wood cut by Moritz Schwind "Hunter's Funeral" which was a direct inspiration for the 3rd movement "Stranded".
In order to represent the personal unhappy love stories, I put two faint profiles of women there, and overlaid the whole picture with a pair of blue eyes. This represented the reference to "die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz" (the two blue eyes of my darling) which is part of the lyrical middle section of the 3rd movement.
I basically had a nice graphics representing movement 1-3, but then I worked on the rendition of movement 4, and this overall sunny mood was no longer representative for the symphony as a whole. So I added a dark thunderstorm background with lightning and added some fire flames in the foreground. This seemed to work well now. In addition I added a cuckoo bird, a trumpet and a French horn. Finally, with the inclusion of "Blumine", I added a bunch of blue flowers. And of course, a Gustav from a photo from about 1888 in the foreground.
In my initial draft the two women shapes were facing each other, but then I realised it would be better if they faced away from Gustav, representing the rejection of his affection.
Happy 150th Birthday, Gustav!
Today 150 years ago, Gustav Mahler was born in the small town of Kalitsch (with is today located in Czechia, but at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire). On my VPO website I have tried to give reasons why I like his music so much. So this anniversary today was for me the opportunity to express gratitude for the music he has written and given to the world.
A few years ago I thought about how to commemorate this 150th anniversary of his birth, and I decided that I would create a rendition of one of his symphonies. Time passed by, and suddenly it was March 2010 - the Mahler-year had already begun. In the meantime I had revived the VPO website and had upgraded my music creation setup. So it was time to pick up that thought of creating a rendition of a whole symphony. Since I already had a rough recording of the 3rd movement of Symphony No.1, it would be this one.
Symphony No.1 is - after the "Songs of a Wayfarer" the first large-scale public musical expression by the young composer Gustav. I personally find this music is the very first music of the 20th century. Just compare what kind of music other composers wrote around the same time... and then you can see the radicality of this composition. In my view, Mahler goes further than Wagner in his musical approach and language, going beyond the musical borders of the 19th century. Wagner pointed the way - with his complete filling out of these borders and the Tristan chord as an indication of what to come. But Mahler went beyond, exploring the area behind these borders where musical certainty is suddenly put into question. Where Wagner dominates, Mahler questions. In Mahler's music is irony and sometimes a little "twinkle in the eyes", something that is completely absent in Wagner's music.
Symphony No.1 was a start of all this. Feeding and literally quoting from the earlier work "Songs of a Wayfarer", the emotional event through which Gustav went during 1884 and 1888 have shaped this symphony. It is a very varied work: a homage to nature ("wie ein Naturlaut", the cuckoo motif throughout the symphony), to bucolic simple life, then also irony and sarcasm, and thundering emotions, tearing the soul apart, but finally being resolved in a triumphant Finale.
I have heard this symphony many times, by various conductors and orchestras. For creating my own rendition, I wanted to keep my mind free of any other explicit influences and did not listen to any other recordings of this work for quite a while. In March 2010 I used the rendition of the 3rd movement which I had done in the years 1995/1998/2003 and began adapting it for the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 samples. This was done in a relatively short time, so I moved on to the 2nd movement. This was straight-forward and took a few weeks to complete. The first movement took about a month: it was relatively complex, and it was not easy to determine the right pace. But the most challenging movement was the last one: a plethora of instruments, 7 horns, 4 trombones, two timpany... I often hesitated to work on it, because of the many difficulties I had to overcome each time I did some work on the rendition. Needed to add more and more tracks, to accommodate all the different instruments. In the end it took about 3 weeks - I had started on 17.June, and completed the rendition just in time for the birthday anniversary - on 5.July.
Now I had a rendition of the symphony as it was usually being performed - with just 4 movements. However, in a forum a musician and Mahler-fan mentioned the movement "Blumine" - about which I did not know anything before. When I did some background research, I uncovered the story of this movement, which originally had been a part of this symphony but was then removed by Gustav, as he received strong criticism about this Symphony 1. Since then this "Blumine" movement which had originally been the 2nd movement of a 5-movement work was not included anymore and was lost, before it was rediscovered in 1966.
Many orchestras and conductors do not include this movement in their performances and recordings of this symphony, out of respect for Mahler's decision to remove it. But I was thinking, why one only should respect "the old Mahler" and not the young Mahler? Gustav had good reasons for setting up this work as a 2-part work in 5 movements; there was a program, based loosely on a novel by Jean-Paul; and there was a strong personal attachment, as "Blumine" was the nickname for a woman Gustav was in live with: Johanna Richter. So I became intrigued to include this movement into the symphony and to recreate the original structure as it had been intended by Gustav during 1884-1888.
But time was short: just on the evening of 5.July I had completed the 4-movement symphony, and I already had given up creating a rendition of Blumine in time for the birthday anniversary. But on the evening of 6.July I thought that I would give it a try. I had never before heard this music, and I resisted the temptation of listening to examples on YouTube where a few recordings of this music are available: I was curious how the result would be if I would only have a music score as a source and would then be required to use only this score as a musical reference, without having any pre-conceived sound image in my head.
I started to work on this at 18:30. Sat straight on it, and the whole movement was completed at 2:30 on 7.7.2010. I had done it - the 5-part Symphony No 1 was completed. Now I still had to spend about 2 hours on uploading, changing the website and the mp3 playlists, finalising the cover graphics, and in addition I uncovered a technical problem with the special site I had prepared for this project - it had worked ok from my local computer, but once the page was on the server, it did not load... so after a while of bug-fixing I was able to locate the problem and get everything sorted, and the site for this special project was ready and online.
Got then only 3 hours of sleep... but the effort was well worth it.
A few years ago I thought about how to commemorate this 150th anniversary of his birth, and I decided that I would create a rendition of one of his symphonies. Time passed by, and suddenly it was March 2010 - the Mahler-year had already begun. In the meantime I had revived the VPO website and had upgraded my music creation setup. So it was time to pick up that thought of creating a rendition of a whole symphony. Since I already had a rough recording of the 3rd movement of Symphony No.1, it would be this one.
Symphony No.1 is - after the "Songs of a Wayfarer" the first large-scale public musical expression by the young composer Gustav. I personally find this music is the very first music of the 20th century. Just compare what kind of music other composers wrote around the same time... and then you can see the radicality of this composition. In my view, Mahler goes further than Wagner in his musical approach and language, going beyond the musical borders of the 19th century. Wagner pointed the way - with his complete filling out of these borders and the Tristan chord as an indication of what to come. But Mahler went beyond, exploring the area behind these borders where musical certainty is suddenly put into question. Where Wagner dominates, Mahler questions. In Mahler's music is irony and sometimes a little "twinkle in the eyes", something that is completely absent in Wagner's music.
Symphony No.1 was a start of all this. Feeding and literally quoting from the earlier work "Songs of a Wayfarer", the emotional event through which Gustav went during 1884 and 1888 have shaped this symphony. It is a very varied work: a homage to nature ("wie ein Naturlaut", the cuckoo motif throughout the symphony), to bucolic simple life, then also irony and sarcasm, and thundering emotions, tearing the soul apart, but finally being resolved in a triumphant Finale.
I have heard this symphony many times, by various conductors and orchestras. For creating my own rendition, I wanted to keep my mind free of any other explicit influences and did not listen to any other recordings of this work for quite a while. In March 2010 I used the rendition of the 3rd movement which I had done in the years 1995/1998/2003 and began adapting it for the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4 samples. This was done in a relatively short time, so I moved on to the 2nd movement. This was straight-forward and took a few weeks to complete. The first movement took about a month: it was relatively complex, and it was not easy to determine the right pace. But the most challenging movement was the last one: a plethora of instruments, 7 horns, 4 trombones, two timpany... I often hesitated to work on it, because of the many difficulties I had to overcome each time I did some work on the rendition. Needed to add more and more tracks, to accommodate all the different instruments. In the end it took about 3 weeks - I had started on 17.June, and completed the rendition just in time for the birthday anniversary - on 5.July.
Now I had a rendition of the symphony as it was usually being performed - with just 4 movements. However, in a forum a musician and Mahler-fan mentioned the movement "Blumine" - about which I did not know anything before. When I did some background research, I uncovered the story of this movement, which originally had been a part of this symphony but was then removed by Gustav, as he received strong criticism about this Symphony 1. Since then this "Blumine" movement which had originally been the 2nd movement of a 5-movement work was not included anymore and was lost, before it was rediscovered in 1966.
Many orchestras and conductors do not include this movement in their performances and recordings of this symphony, out of respect for Mahler's decision to remove it. But I was thinking, why one only should respect "the old Mahler" and not the young Mahler? Gustav had good reasons for setting up this work as a 2-part work in 5 movements; there was a program, based loosely on a novel by Jean-Paul; and there was a strong personal attachment, as "Blumine" was the nickname for a woman Gustav was in live with: Johanna Richter. So I became intrigued to include this movement into the symphony and to recreate the original structure as it had been intended by Gustav during 1884-1888.
But time was short: just on the evening of 5.July I had completed the 4-movement symphony, and I already had given up creating a rendition of Blumine in time for the birthday anniversary. But on the evening of 6.July I thought that I would give it a try. I had never before heard this music, and I resisted the temptation of listening to examples on YouTube where a few recordings of this music are available: I was curious how the result would be if I would only have a music score as a source and would then be required to use only this score as a musical reference, without having any pre-conceived sound image in my head.
I started to work on this at 18:30. Sat straight on it, and the whole movement was completed at 2:30 on 7.7.2010. I had done it - the 5-part Symphony No 1 was completed. Now I still had to spend about 2 hours on uploading, changing the website and the mp3 playlists, finalising the cover graphics, and in addition I uncovered a technical problem with the special site I had prepared for this project - it had worked ok from my local computer, but once the page was on the server, it did not load... so after a while of bug-fixing I was able to locate the problem and get everything sorted, and the site for this special project was ready and online.
Got then only 3 hours of sleep... but the effort was well worth it.
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Mahler Symphony No 1 Completed!
Yesterday night I completed the first release of the 4th movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No 1. This movement has been the most challenging rendition I ever did: 731 bars, 70 pages, lots of trills and percussion rolls, many instruments in each group. It took me about 3 weeks to do this. No major technical hurdles were faced, except that the Garritan Personal Orchestra does not include the whole range of instrument notes which are required by Mahler's composition.
This release concludes the recording of the complete Symphony No 1 by Gustav Mahler. All the files are accessible on my VPO website. I have now also created MP3 versions of each of the 4 movements, to be more platform compatible - those MP3 files are longer than the WMA files, at a comparable quality.
I am glad that I managed to complete this symphony in time for Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday tomorrow - I will have a special page dedicated to this event.
A pity that I was not able to complete the "Blumine" movement, the long-lost 2nd movement... I intend to add this one at a later time.
Enjoy Mahler's grandious work!
This release concludes the recording of the complete Symphony No 1 by Gustav Mahler. All the files are accessible on my VPO website. I have now also created MP3 versions of each of the 4 movements, to be more platform compatible - those MP3 files are longer than the WMA files, at a comparable quality.
I am glad that I managed to complete this symphony in time for Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday tomorrow - I will have a special page dedicated to this event.
A pity that I was not able to complete the "Blumine" movement, the long-lost 2nd movement... I intend to add this one at a later time.
Enjoy Mahler's grandious work!
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
The "Blumine" Sheet Music Arrived Today!
A few weeks ago I had learned from Pat O'Keefe on the Garritan Forum about the "Blumine" movement. This movement was a part of the first few performances of Mahler's Symphony No.1 in 1889 until 1894, when it had five movements. These performances were not very well received, and Mahler decided afterwards to drop the formerly 2nd movement which had the title "Blumine".
I had not been aware of this movement, but I soon learned that there is a lot of information out on the web about it. Apparently it was lost for many decades, until it was rediscovered in 1966. Since then it has been occasionally performed, usually not as part of the symphony, but as a separate piece. The performers and conductors respected Mahler's decision to abandon this movement. Pat had "put a request" for this movement, and so I decided to get the score. I first tried to order it through the Sheet Music Exchange here in the UK. However, after 4 weeks I was told that the score is out of print, and it would take a while until it was available again. I found another supplier, Music 44 in the US. After a week I got the note that the item had been shipped, and today, just a few days later, I received the sheet music in my mail.
Now I am still very busy with the 4th movement of the Symphony 1, which I hope to get ready in time for Mahler's 15th birthday on 7.July. But the score of the "Blumine" movement does look very easy, nothing compared to the complex 4th movement. So I think that I could also prepare the "Blumine", to complete the recording.
After doing some more research on this movement I found the following background: this movement, as the other 4 movements of this symphony, do have titles which correspond to titles from the poet Jean Paul's novel "Titan - From the Life of a Lonely One". "Bluminenkapitel" is one of this titles. Mahler appeared to have linked the internal program of this symphony to this novel - but somehow decided later that showing this explicit link was not appropriate. There is also a very personal aspect: when Mahler was in love with soprano Johanna Richter, he appeared to have a nick name for her: "Blumine". This word actually does not exist in German language. There is the word "Blume" = flower. I would translate "Blumine" with "flowerine", to show the meaning and the equivalence. After reading a few very interesting articles I think that I do have an explanation why Mahler decided to remove this movement: it may be that he was embarrassed of this very close connection of this movement to that living person Johanna, and he wanted to remove this connection and memory of that failed relationship.
Well, one of the authors of a paper actually points out how this movement in fact contributes (with its trumpet motif) to the musical narration in the symphony, because this motif appears in later movements. Therefore, it actually makes sense to include the "Blumine" in the symphony as it was originally intended. So I have decided to include in my final release of Mahler's Symphony No.1 to reconstruct the original 5 movement structure, and to put "Blumine" as the 2nd movement. I will call it "Flowerine", to convey some of the meaning and slight weirdness of this title.
Some may argue that one should respect Mahler's decision to take this movement out of the symphony. I would respond: why only follow the older Mahler, and why not follow the younger Mahler? Is one really getting wiser when getting older? Maybe removing this movement was not done for musical reasons, but for personal ones... and since so much time has passed, and everybody is dead, these personal reasons are no longer valid.
One other aspect which is interesting: All other movements I have heard in various interpretations, and I do have a mental acoustic image of them in my mind, which naturally influences my own interpretation. But I never heard the "Flowerine" before. There are recordings on YouTube, but I deliberately avoid listening to them at this stage - I would like to do an experiment and only use the printed score as guidance, trying to extract a performance and interpretation from just the score, the same way as a conductor would do who gets handed score notes from a composer whose work has never been performed. I am curious how my result will sound, without any guidance from a pre-conceived tempo, volume, balance, sound image.
I had not been aware of this movement, but I soon learned that there is a lot of information out on the web about it. Apparently it was lost for many decades, until it was rediscovered in 1966. Since then it has been occasionally performed, usually not as part of the symphony, but as a separate piece. The performers and conductors respected Mahler's decision to abandon this movement. Pat had "put a request" for this movement, and so I decided to get the score. I first tried to order it through the Sheet Music Exchange here in the UK. However, after 4 weeks I was told that the score is out of print, and it would take a while until it was available again. I found another supplier, Music 44 in the US. After a week I got the note that the item had been shipped, and today, just a few days later, I received the sheet music in my mail.
Now I am still very busy with the 4th movement of the Symphony 1, which I hope to get ready in time for Mahler's 15th birthday on 7.July. But the score of the "Blumine" movement does look very easy, nothing compared to the complex 4th movement. So I think that I could also prepare the "Blumine", to complete the recording.
After doing some more research on this movement I found the following background: this movement, as the other 4 movements of this symphony, do have titles which correspond to titles from the poet Jean Paul's novel "Titan - From the Life of a Lonely One". "Bluminenkapitel" is one of this titles. Mahler appeared to have linked the internal program of this symphony to this novel - but somehow decided later that showing this explicit link was not appropriate. There is also a very personal aspect: when Mahler was in love with soprano Johanna Richter, he appeared to have a nick name for her: "Blumine". This word actually does not exist in German language. There is the word "Blume" = flower. I would translate "Blumine" with "flowerine", to show the meaning and the equivalence. After reading a few very interesting articles I think that I do have an explanation why Mahler decided to remove this movement: it may be that he was embarrassed of this very close connection of this movement to that living person Johanna, and he wanted to remove this connection and memory of that failed relationship.
Well, one of the authors of a paper actually points out how this movement in fact contributes (with its trumpet motif) to the musical narration in the symphony, because this motif appears in later movements. Therefore, it actually makes sense to include the "Blumine" in the symphony as it was originally intended. So I have decided to include in my final release of Mahler's Symphony No.1 to reconstruct the original 5 movement structure, and to put "Blumine" as the 2nd movement. I will call it "Flowerine", to convey some of the meaning and slight weirdness of this title.
Some may argue that one should respect Mahler's decision to take this movement out of the symphony. I would respond: why only follow the older Mahler, and why not follow the younger Mahler? Is one really getting wiser when getting older? Maybe removing this movement was not done for musical reasons, but for personal ones... and since so much time has passed, and everybody is dead, these personal reasons are no longer valid.
One other aspect which is interesting: All other movements I have heard in various interpretations, and I do have a mental acoustic image of them in my mind, which naturally influences my own interpretation. But I never heard the "Flowerine" before. There are recordings on YouTube, but I deliberately avoid listening to them at this stage - I would like to do an experiment and only use the printed score as guidance, trying to extract a performance and interpretation from just the score, the same way as a conductor would do who gets handed score notes from a composer whose work has never been performed. I am curious how my result will sound, without any guidance from a pre-conceived tempo, volume, balance, sound image.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
New version of First Mvmnt from Mahler's Symphony No.1
I have slightly revised the first release of the first movement from Mahler's Symphony No.1: taken a few too edgy string attacks out, corrected two wrong notes, and changed the tempo, to make it more consistent. This tempo interpretation is of course very much only based on my personal opinion - I do not claim that this is how this movement is supposed to be played. But I think that this second release is an improvement over the first initial one. As always, I keep the previous files for comparison, if anyone is interested. All recordings, in WMA and MP3, are here on my site.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Mahler: First Movement of Symph1 now Online!
After a few slight revisions regarding tempo and instrumental balance I have now released the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1. The overall site of the First Symphony shows some background information about the symphony and has access to the newest audio files. All recorded versions of the first movement are available on a dedicated page to the first movement. I chose to refer to this movement as "Spring and No End", according to the original program notes of the first performances, which were later discarded.
It took me now a bit more than 2 weeks to create this rendition of the movement - this is a new personal record. A few years ago, a comparable music recording would take me about three months to create. One accelerating factor is the use of the mod wheel as input for expression changes: I now am doing this as a live recording instead of manually drawing the expression curves.
The Symphony No.1 is now to 3/4 completed - but the 4th movement is the most difficult one. Not sure if I can complete it in time for Mahler's 150th birthday on 7.July...
One editing note: I realised that I had made a mistake on the Symphony description: Marion von Weber was the wife of the grandson of Carl Maria von Weber, not the wife of the composer himself.
It took me now a bit more than 2 weeks to create this rendition of the movement - this is a new personal record. A few years ago, a comparable music recording would take me about three months to create. One accelerating factor is the use of the mod wheel as input for expression changes: I now am doing this as a live recording instead of manually drawing the expression curves.
The Symphony No.1 is now to 3/4 completed - but the 4th movement is the most difficult one. Not sure if I can complete it in time for Mahler's 150th birthday on 7.July...
One editing note: I realised that I had made a mistake on the Symphony description: Marion von Weber was the wife of the grandson of Carl Maria von Weber, not the wife of the composer himself.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Mahler: Symph.1, 1st movement - all instruments completed
The rendition of the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1 has reached its first stage: all instrument notes have been recorded. This was a major effort: the overall music is around 13 minutes long (depending on the tempo), many instruments are played in duplicates (woodwinds, brass). What is to do next before the public release is to work on the tempo and the volume balance. It appears that the woodwinds sound too loud in some parts - I will have to revise the balance between the instruments. Also there is some slight volume clipping at the very loud segment towards the end - needs to be adjusted. Still a bit work to do ... but the Symphony No. 1 is now 3/4 completed!
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Progress on Mahler Symphony 1
On 29.May I began to work on the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1. My very first attempt to "midify" this work was actually done on 11.May 2001, more than 9 years ago. However, I got stopped in my tracks right at the beginning, when trying to render those very long sustained notes in the strings, until measure 47 or so: my samples and my synth just stopped looping these notes after about half the time that they were supposed to be played. I would have to record those notes in segments, and then cross-fade between them. Seemed like a bad workaround, with lots of time to be invested, and I never pursued this any further.
When I resumed the rendition two weeks ago, I started a fresh file, with the Garritan Personal Orchestra samples in Sonar 8.5. The long notes were sustained ok this time, and I progressed rapidly.
In Sonar 8.5 the drawing of the controller values is a bit awkward: there is no longer a simple line drawing tool, but instead one has to keep Ctrl and Shift pressed, then left-click the mouse and draw the line. Also one has to catch a gap between existing controllers; if these controllers are too dense, one easily catches one of the existing controllers, and instead of a line being drawn, this controller value is then modified and shifted. So the drawing of controllers has become a bit of a pain, and I have therefore changed my approach for entering controller values and have used the wheel in life play, as suggested by the GPO manual. I first record the track notes in live play, then do some adjustments of note quantisation, length, and attack, then I replay the recorded track and move the wheel. This allows actually a much more intuitive and musical conveyance of the expression as the line drawing method. Interestingly the GPO maps both controller #11 and and controller #1 (wheel) to the same expression (this leads to caution: there can be contradictory simultaneous controller values in control #1 and control #11). Maybe that change of allowing both controllers to map onto expression resulted from a talk I had back at the NAMM 2004 with Tom Hopkins from Garritan? This is actually really great: I could use the foot pedal or the wheel. My first tries with the foot pedal had not been very satisfying - I could excert a better and finer control using the wheel. This method also works much faster than the drawing method - I have used this wheel-recording method now since January 2010, with all recordings done on the new MAESTRO-2 system.
I progressed quite fast, although this first movement is quite a challenge: 550 bars, on 45 pages! measures! On 31.5. I already had completed the first part, up to marker 12, where the repetition is indicated. I had completed all the instrument parts up to then, which allowed an easy copy-and-past of the part to be repeated.
On 3.June I reached the end of the movement with the bass line, on 5.June I had completed cello and viola, the day after I completed the whole string section, then the harp, and yesterday evening I completed percussion, trombone and tuba.
The sound is just incredible: the wonderful melodies and themes in this symphony go around my head all the time, and I can admire the exquisite instrumentation which created that sound colour, as I am building up the orchestral score.
I cannot wait to add the proper tempo, so that I can hear all the progressions in their intended way... but if I would do that now, I would be a bit in trouble when adding the remaining instruments, because I would then have to play them in "real-time", which would undoubtedly lead to inaccuracies and mistakes... so I keep recording it at a slower tempo than indicated.
I hope to be able to complete this movement at the upcoming weekend. This means that by then I have officially 3/4 of the symphony completed: The 2nd and 3rd movements are already online. And then the real challenge will come: the enormous 4th movement, 76 pages - I have not counted the bars yet.
Also I have ordered a score of the Blumine. I never heard this movement before, and I would like to do an experiment: creating the rendition without ever listening to a real recording. All of my past and current recordings are from music which I had heard before - so I do have an acoustic image of that music in my mind, which of course influences how I interpret the printed music score. I would be very curious how the result would be, if I had not heard the music before - just looking at the music score and getting the music out from there. Once I have created the rendition of Blumine, I will then try to compare it with other recordings, to hear the difference in interpretation.
There is this discussion, if Blumine should be part of the symphony or not. Mahler has eliminated it from the score, and most conductors respect this. However, there are also good reasons to put Blumine into the score: the rejection of this movement by Mahler may have nad not necessarily musical reasons, but also personal ones: after all, his love story with "Blumine" Johanna Richter was already over, and maybe he was embarrassed of that personal display of affection... I would not trust the sentiments of an older guy about his youth "errors", as these sentiments are biased too. From what I read, critics at the time did in particular not like this Second movement Blumine, when the symphony was performed. This in turn would be for me a reason to put it in - those critics have been morons anyway, not understanding Mahler's music for a long time.
And from structural point, that 5-movement structure in two parts makes to me more sense than the standard run-of-the-mill symphonic 4-part structure: the Scherzo would be the center part, then would come the turning point with the "Funeral March". So once I get the hands on the Blumine score, I plan to put the symphony in the order as it was intended in the beginning. This will, however, depend on how the Blumine music sounds: I will judge if it makes sense, musically, of if it is indeed too sentimental, as Mahler once remarked.
When I resumed the rendition two weeks ago, I started a fresh file, with the Garritan Personal Orchestra samples in Sonar 8.5. The long notes were sustained ok this time, and I progressed rapidly.
In Sonar 8.5 the drawing of the controller values is a bit awkward: there is no longer a simple line drawing tool, but instead one has to keep Ctrl and Shift pressed, then left-click the mouse and draw the line. Also one has to catch a gap between existing controllers; if these controllers are too dense, one easily catches one of the existing controllers, and instead of a line being drawn, this controller value is then modified and shifted. So the drawing of controllers has become a bit of a pain, and I have therefore changed my approach for entering controller values and have used the wheel in life play, as suggested by the GPO manual. I first record the track notes in live play, then do some adjustments of note quantisation, length, and attack, then I replay the recorded track and move the wheel. This allows actually a much more intuitive and musical conveyance of the expression as the line drawing method. Interestingly the GPO maps both controller #11 and and controller #1 (wheel) to the same expression (this leads to caution: there can be contradictory simultaneous controller values in control #1 and control #11). Maybe that change of allowing both controllers to map onto expression resulted from a talk I had back at the NAMM 2004 with Tom Hopkins from Garritan? This is actually really great: I could use the foot pedal or the wheel. My first tries with the foot pedal had not been very satisfying - I could excert a better and finer control using the wheel. This method also works much faster than the drawing method - I have used this wheel-recording method now since January 2010, with all recordings done on the new MAESTRO-2 system.
I progressed quite fast, although this first movement is quite a challenge: 550 bars, on 45 pages! measures! On 31.5. I already had completed the first part, up to marker 12, where the repetition is indicated. I had completed all the instrument parts up to then, which allowed an easy copy-and-past of the part to be repeated.
On 3.June I reached the end of the movement with the bass line, on 5.June I had completed cello and viola, the day after I completed the whole string section, then the harp, and yesterday evening I completed percussion, trombone and tuba.
The sound is just incredible: the wonderful melodies and themes in this symphony go around my head all the time, and I can admire the exquisite instrumentation which created that sound colour, as I am building up the orchestral score.
I cannot wait to add the proper tempo, so that I can hear all the progressions in their intended way... but if I would do that now, I would be a bit in trouble when adding the remaining instruments, because I would then have to play them in "real-time", which would undoubtedly lead to inaccuracies and mistakes... so I keep recording it at a slower tempo than indicated.
I hope to be able to complete this movement at the upcoming weekend. This means that by then I have officially 3/4 of the symphony completed: The 2nd and 3rd movements are already online. And then the real challenge will come: the enormous 4th movement, 76 pages - I have not counted the bars yet.
Also I have ordered a score of the Blumine. I never heard this movement before, and I would like to do an experiment: creating the rendition without ever listening to a real recording. All of my past and current recordings are from music which I had heard before - so I do have an acoustic image of that music in my mind, which of course influences how I interpret the printed music score. I would be very curious how the result would be, if I had not heard the music before - just looking at the music score and getting the music out from there. Once I have created the rendition of Blumine, I will then try to compare it with other recordings, to hear the difference in interpretation.
There is this discussion, if Blumine should be part of the symphony or not. Mahler has eliminated it from the score, and most conductors respect this. However, there are also good reasons to put Blumine into the score: the rejection of this movement by Mahler may have nad not necessarily musical reasons, but also personal ones: after all, his love story with "Blumine" Johanna Richter was already over, and maybe he was embarrassed of that personal display of affection... I would not trust the sentiments of an older guy about his youth "errors", as these sentiments are biased too. From what I read, critics at the time did in particular not like this Second movement Blumine, when the symphony was performed. This in turn would be for me a reason to put it in - those critics have been morons anyway, not understanding Mahler's music for a long time.
And from structural point, that 5-movement structure in two parts makes to me more sense than the standard run-of-the-mill symphonic 4-part structure: the Scherzo would be the center part, then would come the turning point with the "Funeral March". So once I get the hands on the Blumine score, I plan to put the symphony in the order as it was intended in the beginning. This will, however, depend on how the Blumine music sounds: I will judge if it makes sense, musically, of if it is indeed too sentimental, as Mahler once remarked.
Friday, 28 May 2010
Mahler: Symphony No.1, 2nd Movement
The recording of the second movement of this symphony is now complete. I did not have much opportunity to work on it during the past weeks, but once I started the remaining work, it went quite fast. The recordings - the very latest one plus the earlier partial recordings - are at www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk/Mahler_S1M2.php.
The next tasks are to create recordings of the first and the forth movement - these are gigantic works, and I am quite sure that I will not be able to complete these recordings before 7.July, Mahler's 150th birthday... pity.
I also ordered the score of the lost movement "Blumine", which had originally been a part of this Symphony. That should be a relatively quick task to do, since it is a slow movement; but I never heard it nor have I seen the score... so this has some uncertainty.
On my site about Mahler and his First Symphony I mentioned the programmatic content that was originally handed out as program note for the performance. There were very nice titles, and I am going to adapt them. This second movement will hereby be known as "Set with full sails", indicating an optimistic start into the future. The whole symphony will be entitled as "From the life of a lonely one". That is so much more fitting than "Symphony No.1, D major". I think the classic music community has gotten used over the years to those non-descript titles of orchestra works, which really do not do any justice to the wonderful music they are supposed to describe. Also, I will break with the tradition of using the tempo instructions as titles for symphony movements: why should a work be entitled "Largo" or "Presto"? This is only intended for the conductor and for the orchestra players, so that they know how fast to play. These are completely inappropriate titles... and I intend to use different ones. Fortunately, Mahlers "Song of the Earth" does have very descriptive titles - it appears that at the end of his life he returned to using programmatic titles, which convey at least a glimpse of the context in which the music was envisioned.
The next tasks are to create recordings of the first and the forth movement - these are gigantic works, and I am quite sure that I will not be able to complete these recordings before 7.July, Mahler's 150th birthday... pity.
I also ordered the score of the lost movement "Blumine", which had originally been a part of this Symphony. That should be a relatively quick task to do, since it is a slow movement; but I never heard it nor have I seen the score... so this has some uncertainty.
On my site about Mahler and his First Symphony I mentioned the programmatic content that was originally handed out as program note for the performance. There were very nice titles, and I am going to adapt them. This second movement will hereby be known as "Set with full sails", indicating an optimistic start into the future. The whole symphony will be entitled as "From the life of a lonely one". That is so much more fitting than "Symphony No.1, D major". I think the classic music community has gotten used over the years to those non-descript titles of orchestra works, which really do not do any justice to the wonderful music they are supposed to describe. Also, I will break with the tradition of using the tempo instructions as titles for symphony movements: why should a work be entitled "Largo" or "Presto"? This is only intended for the conductor and for the orchestra players, so that they know how fast to play. These are completely inappropriate titles... and I intend to use different ones. Fortunately, Mahlers "Song of the Earth" does have very descriptive titles - it appears that at the end of his life he returned to using programmatic titles, which convey at least a glimpse of the context in which the music was envisioned.
Thursday, 6 May 2010
Music on Wikipedia
Wikipedia does have a lot of information about composers and music. But there are only very few music files. One reason is that they only accept that strange OGG file format. The other reason may be copyright issues: one cannot just upload a recording ripped from a CD, as the performers do have the copyright; and the performers themselves probably have no idea how to upload files to Wikipedia and edit entries there.
Here is where I see a good opportunity to get some of my music recordings out in the world: ok, once they are on Wikipedia, they are no longer under my control and are basically available for free. But that is fine - I also give them away on my VPO site for free anyway. Through having my music on Wikipedia people would get to know my style, and may later actually buy something.
Sonar does not export OGG files, but I could take the wave file and process it with Audacity.
So far I have uploaded two files and linked them to the appropriate Wikipedia entries:
From Dvorak the 2nd movement from his 9th Symphony,
and from Mahler the Adagietto
Here is where I see a good opportunity to get some of my music recordings out in the world: ok, once they are on Wikipedia, they are no longer under my control and are basically available for free. But that is fine - I also give them away on my VPO site for free anyway. Through having my music on Wikipedia people would get to know my style, and may later actually buy something.
Sonar does not export OGG files, but I could take the wave file and process it with Audacity.
So far I have uploaded two files and linked them to the appropriate Wikipedia entries:
From Dvorak the 2nd movement from his 9th Symphony,
and from Mahler the Adagietto
New Rendition: Mahler's Adagietto
In summer 2000 I completed an MP3 file recording of Gustav Mahler's Adagietto (4th movement from his 5th Symphony). And last week I began taking the Cakewalk sequence for this file and rework it for the Garritan Personal Orchestra 4. The score is only 5 pages long, there are only strings and a harp, so in principle this is quite an easy piece. However, since it is slow, with long lasting notes, it needs a lot of attention to detail, otherwise the recording would sound quite boring, playing back long loops os samples. In the release of July 2000, I had mixed several layers: MU-80 strings as the foundation, then a few soundfonts on top, also a few solo strings; separating fast notes and slow notes into different tracks.
Now with GPO4, I also did some layering: added for each string track a "lush strings" from the section strings. I also added a few solo strings in the lower registers (bass, cello), but did not yet do this for viola and the violins.
Yesterday I uploaded the first version, today I uploaded a slight revision. The music is here on this page.
Now with GPO4, I also did some layering: added for each string track a "lush strings" from the section strings. I also added a few solo strings in the lower registers (bass, cello), but did not yet do this for viola and the violins.
Yesterday I uploaded the first version, today I uploaded a slight revision. The music is here on this page.
Monday, 26 April 2010
Update of Website
In the past days I updated/upgraded the website of the Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra: a consistent set of icons was designed, and several PHP automation scripts were included to read the ID3 tags. For this I found the great getID3().php script, which allows to read the tags in all kinds of media files. In my site the use of this PHP automation required a consistent use of filenames; therefore I had to rename a whole set of WMA files for consistency. I could have used a MySQL database for this task, to achieve a more abstract separation of content description from the file name, but I did not want to go through the hassle of setting this up.
I also added a new partial recording: the first third of the 2nd movement from Mahler's Symphony No.1. It is so far up to the beginning of the Trio. A really marvellous work. Sounding deceivingly simple in the orchestra recordings, but it took quite a while to get these first 4 minutes recorded.
I also added a new partial recording: the first third of the 2nd movement from Mahler's Symphony No.1. It is so far up to the beginning of the Trio. A really marvellous work. Sounding deceivingly simple in the orchestra recordings, but it took quite a while to get these first 4 minutes recorded.
Thursday, 22 April 2010
Progress on next Mahler Symphony rendition
I have started to work on the rendition of the 2nd movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony #1. This time I applied a new method: I first played "live" on piano the whole movement, with excerpts from the part, in order to get the desired tempo that I felt would be right. I also hoped that by this method I would be able to incorporate those slight tempo variations within a theme, a motif, a phrase, and within a bar. So after the recording was completed (it took me about 3 weeks to get this initial recording done, because I often stopped and repeated, as I felt the tempo was not right), I recorded another track, which just had the beat indicators in it. I listened to my recording and just hit a key on the keyboard, linked to a percussion instrument. This track was then the reference track for the tempo, and I used the SONAR tool "Fit to Improvisation" to create the tempo map which creates a list of tempo values at every quarter note. When looking at this tempo map, I saw very interesting artefacts: there appeared some patterns in the tempo within the bars, which were not consistent throughout the piece. In some cases there was a slow-fast-slow bar, and sometimes there was a fast-slow-fast bar. I was not able to determine first if that was just through my own inaccurate playing or tempo mapping, or if there was actually some musical principle behind this. But I noticed overall that I had started quite slow, much less than was noted in the score (score: 3/4=66, mine: 3/4=50), but then the tempo accelerated throughout the movement. Not very good actually - there was no good reason for that other than I had been carried away... I now can admire the conductors' ability to keep the tempo constant.
After having the tempo map I began recording the actual music instrumental tracks. And here it became apparent that this pre-recorded tempo map was pretty useless in many cases: the tempo variations within a bar prevented me to get a constant beat where the rhythm had to be exact and quantised. This was important for instruments which established the base rhythm, for example in percussion parts, or when a set of eighth notes were to be played: these need to be exactly quantised in many cases, otherwise it sounds uneven, as if the player cannot play properly. The varying tempo that I had incorporated into my live recording, came from an interpretation of various instrumental parts which could overlay their own more "free" (rubato) voice onto that fixed and constant tempo. Now, in order to achieve this properly I had to abandon the original tempo variations, and I flattened the tempo map to mostly constant segments. Then I recorded each instrument and applied a slightly different treatment of the tempo: the important rhythm-establishing parts are quantised, whereas other parts I played the instruments freely, not exactly observing the beat times. This added a bit or realistic and more musical flow to the piece. But there I encountered the difficulty that the audio lag (due to buffer requirements) was about 30 ms (this was the lag between me pressing a note on the keyboard and then hearing it). So it was almost impossible to create an appropriate consonant accompaniment with already existing tracks in live recording, as my playing was recorded trailing behind. I could shift this after the recording, but during the play I did not really get the right acoustic feedback from my own playing; therefore I was not able to properly play the instrument tracks live but had to do a lot of manipulation and correction afterwards. I often ended up quantising whole segments, so that they matched the existing rhythm.
What might be done next time: I could set the buffer to a low value, for fast response and short lag, and then record only track by track, muting the other instruments, and pretending I would play a solo instrument. This would prevent the overload of the buffer (which occurred several times while I had 4 ARIA VST instances for all the instruments), but it would also prevent me to hear the other instruments while playing "solo": in the end the coherence may not be very good... I mayjust have to try it out to see if this is feasible.
In the meantime I reached already marker 13 (about 3 minutes) in the 2nd movement of this Symphony, with all instruments so far. It sounds a bit "tinny", more like chamber music, because I did nothing to add more "lushness". But this has also an advantage: the instrumental voices come out quite clearly, more clearly than in the traditional orchestra recordings I know. And someone had made already the same observation in the 3rd movement which I had posted a few weeks ago: the GPO samples as I have applied them do have a chamber-orchestra feel to them. I might have to double the strings and layer them with more players, to populate them and create a kind of "wall of sound" :) .
After having the tempo map I began recording the actual music instrumental tracks. And here it became apparent that this pre-recorded tempo map was pretty useless in many cases: the tempo variations within a bar prevented me to get a constant beat where the rhythm had to be exact and quantised. This was important for instruments which established the base rhythm, for example in percussion parts, or when a set of eighth notes were to be played: these need to be exactly quantised in many cases, otherwise it sounds uneven, as if the player cannot play properly. The varying tempo that I had incorporated into my live recording, came from an interpretation of various instrumental parts which could overlay their own more "free" (rubato) voice onto that fixed and constant tempo. Now, in order to achieve this properly I had to abandon the original tempo variations, and I flattened the tempo map to mostly constant segments. Then I recorded each instrument and applied a slightly different treatment of the tempo: the important rhythm-establishing parts are quantised, whereas other parts I played the instruments freely, not exactly observing the beat times. This added a bit or realistic and more musical flow to the piece. But there I encountered the difficulty that the audio lag (due to buffer requirements) was about 30 ms (this was the lag between me pressing a note on the keyboard and then hearing it). So it was almost impossible to create an appropriate consonant accompaniment with already existing tracks in live recording, as my playing was recorded trailing behind. I could shift this after the recording, but during the play I did not really get the right acoustic feedback from my own playing; therefore I was not able to properly play the instrument tracks live but had to do a lot of manipulation and correction afterwards. I often ended up quantising whole segments, so that they matched the existing rhythm.
What might be done next time: I could set the buffer to a low value, for fast response and short lag, and then record only track by track, muting the other instruments, and pretending I would play a solo instrument. This would prevent the overload of the buffer (which occurred several times while I had 4 ARIA VST instances for all the instruments), but it would also prevent me to hear the other instruments while playing "solo": in the end the coherence may not be very good... I mayjust have to try it out to see if this is feasible.
In the meantime I reached already marker 13 (about 3 minutes) in the 2nd movement of this Symphony, with all instruments so far. It sounds a bit "tinny", more like chamber music, because I did nothing to add more "lushness". But this has also an advantage: the instrumental voices come out quite clearly, more clearly than in the traditional orchestra recordings I know. And someone had made already the same observation in the 3rd movement which I had posted a few weeks ago: the GPO samples as I have applied them do have a chamber-orchestra feel to them. I might have to double the strings and layer them with more players, to populate them and create a kind of "wall of sound" :) .
Friday, 26 March 2010
Gustav Mahler, Symphony No.1, 3rd Movement
The 3rd movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony #1 was inspired by this wood cut by Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871), subtitled "Des Jägers Leichenbegängnis" (The Hunter's Funeral Procession). There is a whole essay written related to this movement, by Francesca Draughon and Raymond Knapp "Gustav Mahler and the Crisis of Jewish Identity", with interesting insight. Not much for me to add here.
I have decided to give my music repository some consistency: the latest version of this music recording of the 3rd movement will be available on the Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra web site under the file name MahlerS1M3.wma. Other recording versions will eventually be collected and made accessible in the rehearsal hall which still is to be created.
The version of the recording that is up to today the most recent one is MahlerS1M3_100324_90vbr.wma.
The same principle I will also apply to the surround recordings: The latest version will always be available under MahlerS1M3_5_1.wma, with the most current one up to date available as MahlerS1M3_100326_5_1.wma.
Next steps to do on my list:
- create the Rehearsal Hall in which all versions of any piece that I am working on will be released,
- create the Dress Rehearsal Hall where recordings will be shown that are "ready for prime time" but are part of larger works (for example single movements of symphonies, with the remaining movements still missing),
- create the Concert Hall where the latest and recordings will be available, which are deemed to be of a release quality,
- change the tempo flow of the Hunter's Funeral. When changing the tempo map, I sometimes felt that a bit of rubato would work well. However, when then listening to the overall work, I often realise that this rubato destroys the consistence and coherence of the musical flow. I have to work on this one still...
- add a consistent and coherent reverb environment for the 5.1 recording.
Lots to do, very little time...
A page devoted just to this music piece has now been set up at www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk/Mahler_S1M3.php. It will contain all recordings that I made, plus it will in the future be expanded to contain more information.
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