288 Hours

Oh, the doom of May 18!

May 18.  The day is burned in my mind.  It ominously looms over me like a storm cloud, on the verge of raining havoc upon my world.  So what dreadful tribulation shall befall me on this date?

May 18 is my album’s tracking deadline.

No big deal, right?  Wrong—I still have to finish writing one of the pieces (which I’ll refer to as “F Minor” for now) on the album.  That’s a serious problem—really serious.

What went wrong?  How did it get to be a week before recording while I’m in this situation?  Nothing went wrong—it’s just how making an album goes.  I built in “extra” days and weeks, but I’m still running out of time.

The quesiton is, can I write a piece in one week?  Can I learn to play “F Minor” with confidence in this timeframe?  Well, yes—I have to.  Something has to be on track five, and I have every reason to believe that something will be on it.  It’s really just a question of making myself do it, how well it will turn out, and how miserable I’ll be for the next week.  Let’s find out…

How much can I do in 288 hours?

“Equinox” and “Precipice took me four months each to write—or an estimated 100 to 150 hours per piece.  Let’s do some math.  With twelve days to finish “F Minor,” only 288 hours remain.  Subtract a good 50 hours for the time spent setting up and recording all the pieces from the 14th-18th.  And then, to be liberal, factor in 7 hours of sleep each night, 2 hours a day for practicing other pieces on the album, 4 hours daily for eating and other non-music tasks, 13 hours spent at church during the timeframe, 4 hours for giving piano lessons, and 6 hours for other social activities; we end up with 115 available hours to spend writing the new piece—assuming an extremely intense schedule (which probably won’t happen).

I’m aiming for a four and-a-half minute piece—less than half the length of “Precipice,” so with 115 working hours, that means I have around 26 hours to spend on each minute of “F Minor.”  Yes, finishing another piece is possible. 

But still, even if the total number of hours I spend on “F Minor” is similar to what I’ve spent on other pieces, twelve days is still twelve days.  There’s something to be said for spreading out a composition over several months, because sometimes the best ideas come when you’re resting.  On the other hand, I’m finding that having a time limit forces you into creativity (as discussed in my post, “Composer’s Block: Pushing Past the Walls”).

Under pressure, innovation soon bursts out.  There’s no time for waffling around, so I simply must buckle down and write something.  Sometimes, deadlines drag me, along with my ideas, kicking and screaming, until the welcome end, but I console myself with the fact that there is an end in sight.

Until then, I’m racing the clock.  I originally intended to base “F Minor” off a piano pop ballad I wrote last year, called “I Am Free,” which would have made this week much easier.   I was going to adapt the existing piano part to include the vocal melody and to follow the same song structure.  However, I’ve been hearing new ideas in my mind, and now it’s a completely different piece.  I didn’t plan for this.

Trying new methods for composing

In light of my time limit for completing “F Minor,” I’ve been using a new approach that’s helping me compose faster.  I began my work by deciding to follow an ABACA form.  And though I usually write a score simultaneously, for now, I’m only doing a “lead sheet.”  To save even more time, I’m not even notating the melody yet—I’m just naming the different melodic ideas and writing their names above the corresponding chords (not really a lead sheet, but that’s okay, right?).

I never work like this!  It almost feels like I’m cheating.  But when it comes to meeting deadlines, you gotta do what you gotta do.  A new method might be the key to creating something even more original than I could have imagined.

Even with a novel approach, however, a time limit is still a time limit, and the pressure is on.  Indeed, I am greatly encouraged that, in 288 hours, it will all be done.  Well, the composing and tracking will be…  Then I have another 288 hours (twelve days) for editing—which I’m sure will elicit its own post…

So, readers… How do you cope with an impending deadline?  What methods do you use to streamline composition?

Better Than a Silver Lining

In a community college recital hall last Wednesday, I had one of my most incredible, moving, and unusual performances so far.  After four years of being the underaged face of the Music Department, it was my final public appearance.  In a wild ride of a recital, I debuted my two most recent piano compositions, “Equinox” and “Precipice.”

I find that when I perform, I always play my pieces better and with more expression than I do at home, because I’m so in-the-moment.  Does that ever happen to you?

As I began my first piece, “Equinox,” I already felt like I was in another world, but yet, I knew the audience had come with me.  As the piece unfolded, we all stayed right there, together in the moment. But do you think I would write a post without an unexpected twist? 

Suddenly, as I was nearing the final cadence, the power went out.  The room was black, except for some dim, evening sunlight peeping through an open door.  In an instant, I thought to myself, “Funny.  Oh, well—I probably don’t need to see the keyboard, anyway, since I’ve played this so many times.”

View of the recital hall after the outage!

In the darkness, I heard a concerned audience shifting in their chairs, wondering what was going on.  I did my best to keep playing as if nothing had happened.  After I hit the final chord, the power came back—an impossibly well-timed cue!  Some people even asked me later if I had meant for the lights to go out.  Go with whatever comes at you onstage.  If you make it seem like no big deal, the audience just might believe it was part of the show.

After several other performances from my peers, it was time to debut “Precipice” to close out the program.  I was more nervous at this point, because I had just made some changes to the composition a few hours beforehand.  Plus, it was an extremely demanding piece—physically, emotionally, technically, and expressively.  But this was it; I was committed.

Boom—down went the opening, low E minor chord.  No turning back now.  By the time I followed with the heartbreaking, dissonant flat-9 in the right hand, the audience was gripped; perhaps by this point they had come to expect the unexpected…

So much was going through my mind throughout the piece: “Arm weight…  Use your arm weight.  Accent this—no, not quite so much…  Look up—now look at the keyboard…  Left foot on middle pedal—right foot on sustain now…  Slowly release…  1 & 2 & 3 & GO…”  Strangely, it also felt like I wasn’t thinking at all, because I was in the moment.  It seemed like I was “feeling” more than “playing.”

In the moment

“Precipice” came out of a difficult time in my life, but when I’m at home practicing it, I often don’t think about what caused me to write it.  However, at the recital that night, the emotions came back to me, and I played it like I had never played it before.

After eleven minutes of dissonance and resolution, of tension and release, and of despair and hope, I played the final chords and was utterly exhausted—in so many ways.  I had left it all on the stage.  As I got up from the piano bench to take a bow, I looked around and saw much of the audience was in tears.  Several people came up to me aftwards and said the piece had made them cry.  I was stunned.

How often does that happen with a piano composition?  I’ve seen crying a few times at large concerts, but my own solo piece at a community college recital?  Did I really just touch my audience that much?  Did I really write something that powerful?  I still cannot believe it.

As an artist, I dream about writing music that means something to people and touches them.  When something like this happens, or when people simply tell me how much a song means to them, it is extremely gratifying.  This is what artists live for—to make something that matters.  And when music has come out of a tough time in my own life, to have it touch people is better than a silver lining—it’s pure gold.

I will never forget Wednesday night.  What a way to end this four-year chapter of my life—and to start a new one.  I am so greatful for the amazing opportunities I have had during these past four years as a homeschooler at community college.  And I cannot wait to see what will happen next, as I move towards the stage of Nashville…

My First Solo Album: What’s REALLY Involved?

Recently, I’ve decided to release my first-ever solo piano album. In addition to composing and performing every piece on the album, I will be producing and engineering the project myself.  I’m also directing the marketing, promotion, and finances. In other words, I’m doing the whole thing on my own. (Hence, my lack of updates lately.)   I know there are significant advantages to pulling from others’ talents for a project, but at this stage in my career, I’m doing the album by myself to learn.  Am I crazy? Maybe. Am I a control freak? Not exactly. Let me explain…

Composing––all day, every day

I’ve spent the past five years producing and recording other musicians, helping to bring out their best.  I love doing that work and have every intention to continue it,  but I’ve come to realize that I love to compose just as much.

In recent months, I’ve been extremely prolific in composing.  The music never stops coming!  I often compose for several hours a day at my piano.  I compose in my mind at school––while listening to the lectures.  I compose while I drive.  I compose when I’m trying to fall asleep and even in my dreams.  I scribble new melodies on scraps of paper when I’m away from home.  I jot down lyrics at 2 AM in my phone.  I haven’t experienced such productivity in years!  I have to compose.

But why a piano album?  Well, people have been asking me for a long time when I would do one.  I never thought I was good enough, though––neither at playing nor at engineering.  But the eighteen days I spent at GRAMMY Camp in Los Angeles and in New York increased my skills and gave me more confidence in my abilities.  As soon as I got home last August, I sat down at my piano and began composing my first solo album.  I was finally ready.

So far, I’ve finished composing four of the songs, which may seem like nothing, but it brings the album’s running time to half an hour.  I’m aiming for around thirty-five minutes, so I only have to write one more piece.  However, I have to do more than compose the album––I have to learn to play the pieces, too.   My compositions are hard for me to play, yet simplifying them isn’t an option.  When I write hard music, I believe that what I’ve written is the best possible way to express the idea.  (I’m probably wrong about that fairly often, though.)

I can’t imagine recording on any other piano…

But there’s another problem––I have to do all of the engineering for the album, too.  So why not record at someone else’s studio or hire another engineer?  Well, when you’re a pianist, you can’t take your piano with you, so you always have to be sure to find a studio with a piano you’re comfortable with.  I’ve looked at other studios in the area, but I haven’t found any with a piano that fits my playing style.

As for hiring another engineer, I may use a mastering house, but I don’t know any local engineers well enough yet to trust them with editing and recording my own piano album.  But most of all, I need the engineering experience, and since I’m hiring myself, no one can fire me if I do a bad job.

On the contrary, if the album turns out well, the fact that a seventeen-year-old did all of her own audio engineering can possibly be used in my promotional strategies.  In today’s music business, artists have to do whatever they can to stand out from the mediocre multitudes.  Good music unfortunately doesn’t always speak for itself––though it should be a co-requisite to any marketing plan.  While plenty of rookie songwriters and producers release self-engineered albums, I haven’t heard many that sound professional.  My album will have to be extremely well-done for this part of my marketing strategy to work.  Further, I also plan to make available the piano sheet music for every piece, which is another way to help set my album apart.

Making my first solo piano album is going to be a wild ride––it sure has been so far.  (Just check out my post about what happened in my latest tracking session!)  Even so, I’m hoping to finish by the end of June.  I’m ready for the challenge.

This may be a solo album, but I still need your support.  So, readers, What advice do you have for an instrumentalist recording a debut solo album?  What advice do you have in general about recording and editing procedures for a classical/acoustic project?  Have any of you ever made an album entirely on your own?

Pull the Keyboard Out! – Piano Recording Gone Crazy

No recording session should start like this!

There are some recording sessions where whatever can go wrong, does, and none of the problems has a simple fix.  Recently, I had a piano session like that–tracking my composition “Equinox.”  The timing of the session was already a surprise, the setup was a monstrosity, and even the piano itself was having mechanical issues.  But strangely, I walked away from the studio that night sincerely saying, “I can’t wait to do this again!”  The studio is an odd place.

The session’s unexpected twists started when I awoke to the news that the piano tuner was actually coming that day–five days earlier than I had planned.  The Rode NT5 mics that I bought for the session had only arrived the night before, so I had just started experimenting with them.  Also, I wasn’t even sure that I was playing the piece well enough yet to record.  They were less-than-ideal circumstances, but what choice did I have?  The piano would be in tune that day, and besides, I had to go back to school the following week.  It had to be a good time to record.

One of my schematics for the setup

Regardless of when I recorded, I already knew it would be a difficult session (as previously discussed here).  I’d already had to figure out a way to switch between three different metronome settings without disrupting my playing.  The solution was so complicated that I have an entire future blog post dedicated to it.  Basically, it involved putting a MIDI keyboard under the piano and using its three pedals as controllers.  Convoluted, but functional.

My crazy MIDI pedal controller was working great, but the night before, I had noticed that the piano’s middle pedal was making a loud click.  How could I have that in a recording?  So while he was still there, I asked my piano technician if he could do anything about it.  His response was, “I think you and your dad can fix it if you pull the keyboard out.”  Welp.

It just so happened that my dad had gone into work.  We had fixed the problem sostenuto rod before (which is probably why it still wasn’t quite right), but now, I would have to do it on my own.  The recording had to be made today.

Let’s just say my “fix” involved a twist tie and some yarn…

So out came the keyboard.  I peered inside and discovered that the fix would require taking out many screws and doing careful repositioning.  After two hours, I had temporarily solved the problem, but I “fixed” it using some pretty awful methods.  It was silent, however, and that was my mission.

Okay, I was ready to record now.  I set the mics up in the quasi-ORTF configuration that I’d decided to use, and I did a test recording.  But guess what?  There was a bunch of noise coming through one channel. It wasn’t even there the night before!  I swapped out the cable, but it didn’t help.  I ended up switching inputs, which meant I had to change the configuration of all the tracks I had set up ahead of time in my Logic template.  Well, at least it was working now…

ORTF Configuration Miking

Finally, I could begin to lay down my first real takes.  I took a listen, and the recording still sounded fine (even in mono).  Alright.  Let’s just get five more takes… Or six… Or maybe seven…

Every few takes, I like to listen again to be sure there isn’t a problem.  Well, after several takes, sure enough, I heard strange clicks in one of the recordings.  The meters were nowhere near clipping, and it wasn’t the headphones, either.  The noise was coming through on both tracks, and switching mic inputs didn’t help.  It turned out to be the power supply of the pre-amp!  Swapping pre-amps halfway through tracking is less-than-ideal, but it had to be done.

Perhaps my biggest challenge was being “in the moment” when I hit that record button.  I’m always in the moment when I’m producing someone else, but it’s different.  I’m thinking about whether I have the right elements to put the song together, or I’m thinking about what needs to be done differently and how I can diplomatically tell that to the artist.  But in my own session, I found I needed to turn that off to some extent.  I couldn’t be thinking about how I would need to edit out that one note I missed–I simply had to focus on playing musically.  Good editing can’t make up for poor musicianship.

So did this crazy session with seemingly endless problems ever come to a close?  Around midnight, I played the final take.  I was exhausted.  No matter how crazy a session may be, it’s so empowering as a composer to be able to not only put my compositions down on paper, but to record and edit them myself so that the rest of the world can hear them.  What an amazing time it is that this is possible for us!

Anyone who spends time in the studio is bound to have weird sessions, so let’s hear from you all: What was your most challenging or your strangest recording session like?  What happened?  How did you deal with the obstacles?

P.S.  For more crazy pictures from the session, feel free to check out the album on my Facebook page here.

Is This Real? Audio Engineering in Nashville

It’s great to be back!  So much has happened this month.  I’m in shock right now.

Firstly, those crazy music school auditions are over.  They went well, as far as I can tell, but I still don’t know for sure if I got in.  We’ll see in a couple more weeks, I hope.

But that brings me to my main piece of news–I didn’t audition as any kind of composition major like I had thought I would.  I’ve changed my mind again, and now I’m a music minor majoring in Audio Engineering.

For those of you who’ve been following my blog for awhile, you might know that I have felt so torn between majoring in Audio Engineering vs. Classical Composition vs. Contemporary (Commercial) Composition.  But I feel the most at peace about this decision.  I am just as much a producer and an audio engineer as I am a composer.  I couldn’t possibly be satisfied only studying composition for four years without learning more audio engineering.  The demands of music majors might not allow for me to do studio work even in my spare time–what little I might have.

This could be my classroom!

I also recently spent some time in my future hometown of Nashville, TN (where my audition was).  The school I will be attending there has one of the nation’s best audio engineering programs, and Nashville is also one of the biggest music cities in the country.  Their Audio Engineering majors get to learn at legendary studios.  I won’t name drop, but they’re so good that it almost doesn’t seem fair.  And because it’s in Nashville (aka Music City), the connections they have are phenomenal.  If I were to major in Composition in the School of Music, I might not get to be included in that.  I’ve tried to imagine myself spending four years at this school without being in those studios or meeting those people.  I want to make the most out of the school and its location, so majoring in Audio Engineering with a Music minor seems like the best way to go.

The fact that this is in the campus bookstore…

What will it mean that my degree will say “Audio Engineering” instead of “Music Composition”?  Am I giving something up?  I don’t think so.  Since I’m minoring in music, I’ll be able to receive composition lessons and take whatever other music classes I want.  I’m not losing anything–I’ll have the instruction I would’ve had as a music major, but I’ll also make more connections and improve as an engineer and as a producer.  It’s a win-win.

I don’t know why I’ve been blessed with such amazing opportunities. It seems too good to be true, but God-willing, it’s not–this is how it will be in a few more months.  All these years of long hours, sacrifice, and overcoming obstacles have sometimes felt like going nowhere, but now I see that they have actually sent me to Nashville.  I may not know yet what will take place there, but I’m going to serve God with whatever I have.  And I can’t wait to see what will happen!

Is This Piano Recording or a Physics Lesson?

Watch out! I’m using science.

I know, I know–It’s been a few weeks.  I’ve been in the studio a lot.

Since my music school audition is coming up, and since I’m applying as a composition major, I need to send in recordings of my work.  For better or for worse, I don’t separate my work as an engineer from my work as a composer, so the recording quality, as always, is of utmost importance to me.

Both of the songs have piano in them (one of them is only for piano), and we’ve already talked about why piano recording is so challenging.  I’ve recorded piano before, but perfection demanded me to do better.  Unfortunately, this recording has turned out to be an iceberg; I sailed up to it thinking it was trivial, only to discover that the most significant and troubling parts were underwater where I couldn’t see them.

The more I researched piano recording, the bigger the iceberg became.  One day, I stumbled onto a forum thread about the topic, and posters were throwing around all kinds of terms I had never heard in my life, talking about a “reverb radius” and also warning about the dangers of phase problems with near-field mics.  Uh-oh!

The Critical Distance formula

I looked up “reverb radius” and determined that it was referring to an acoustical principal known as Critical Distance.  It’s basically the point in a room where the amplitude of the direct sound source becomes equal to the amplitude of the sound’s reflections.  Of what practical use is it?  For better intelligibility, it’s best to mic at 50% of the Critical Distance or closer (no more than 30% if you’re using an omni mic), because the direct sound source has to be at least 10-12 dB louder than its reflections for your ear to be able to perceive that the direct sound is louder.

I was just going to crunch the numbers to find out the Critical Distance in my studio, but then I realized that the Critical Distance equation required knowing the reverb time in the room (which varies at different frequencies), and calculating the reverb time required knowing the absorbency coefficients of the room’s materials.  I was getting myself into deeper and deeper trouble.  What had started out as a “simple” recording project had turned into a physics lesson.

Thankfully, I found a handy reverb time calculator with the absorbency coefficients already programmed in.  So I broke out the tape measure and found the area of the walls, drapes, rug, glass doors, and other surfaces in order to fill in the chart and make the calculation.  Using the reverb times that I got, I  determined that the critical distance in my room was between 0.9 and 1.2 meters depending on the frequency, so I would need to have the mics no more than about 0.45 meters (~1.5 feet) away from the piano strings for clarity.  Not much latitude for experimenting with miking!

But my science lesson still wasn’t over.  I found out that rooms also have nulls and modes which can greatly affect the sound quality of the room, and thus, the recordings.  We could make a whole other post about nulls and modes, so if you’re curious, check out this article about it.

But how did doing all of this math actually help my recording?  It showed how and why I needed to deaden the room.  I didn’t end up buying any kind of “professional” acoustic treatment.  Instead, I just used thick, absorpent materials from around the house. I especially focused on treating the corners of the room where low frequency energy likes to accumulate, and I covered the wood floor to reduce the resonance of the vertical mode.  When it was said and done, the room was significantly quieter and less reflective, so I could have the flexibility to mic the piano from a little farther away without loosing clarity.

Unfortunately for my family, my homemade treatment took most of our pillows and blankets!

In the end, I don’t think you have to go quite as crazy with calculations as I did if you want to make a quality recording.  Knowledge is power, so knowing something about acoustics is important if you’re an audio engineer, but you always have to trust your ears first.  If something sounds good, it probably is good!  And while it’s certainly better to have a “treated” room to work in, I might say that the mics you use and your mic techniques make the biggest difference in recording quality.  Next time, we’ll talk about the controversial subject of piano miking techniques, and we’ll find out how I ended up miking the piano after all of this…

Until then, let’s hear from you all: What do you do when you have to record in an “untreated” room?  What home remedies do you use to fix acoustical problems? 

P.S.  Oh, and if I’ve made a technical error in explaining these concepts or there’s some other mistake in here, please point it out!  I’m still new to acoustics…

Does Practice Make Perfect? Why Methods Matter

Musicians always seem to wonder how much practice is “enough.”  An hour a day?  Two?  Three?  As many as you can physically tolerate?

Well, there’s no simple answer.  I’ve heard some experts say no more than two, and others have said four is just right.  And then there’s the 10,000-hour rule that says it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill.  Break that down, and it comes out to be about three hours a day for ten years.  (Check out Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers for more on the 10,000-hour rule.)

I think the optimal amount of daily practice varies for different musicians.  I’ve met some piano prodigies who say they only practice for forty-five minutes each day, and then I’ve also known people who’ve played for twenty years but are way behind them.  What’s going on here?

Perhaps more important than the number of hours you practice is how you practice.  If your practice consists of only playing through a piece over and over again from start to finish, then you’re not making the most of your practice time.

The best way to get a piece “under control” is to focus on playing small chunks–especially the hardest parts.  It may be a phrase or a measure–or even a couple of beats–depending on the song.  Slow down those sections and work them until you can’t play it wrong.  Don’t worry about speed–think about accuracy.

Another thing that helps is to master your scales and arpeggios.  I know, I know…  Music is bits and pieces of scales and arpeggios, so once you master those, your technique and accuracy will probably get better, too.  You’ll be able to learn new pieces more quickly.

And practice the dreaded sight-reading.  You won’t get better at it unless you practice.  If you practice your scales and arpeggios a lot, that should help with sight-reading, and if you practice sight-reading, too, that’s even better.

And for jazz musicians, don’t forget to practice your ii-V-I’s, too.

With music school auditions approaching, I’ve had to figure out how to make the most out of the limited amount of time I have.  I’ve realized that after four to five hours, depending on the day, practice is no longer productive for me.  You reach a point where practicing is actually hurting you because you are fatigued.  It’s not even about the pain–it’s the fact that if you ignore it, you can get injuries over time.  Been there, done that.  Playing injuries are an awful road to go down as a musician, so don’t go there.  If it hurts, stop.

Keep notes about sections you’re struggling with.

So with at most five hours a day with four pieces to prepare for auditions, there’s a lot to keep track of.  Another helpful practice tactic is to keep notes about the problem sections of each piece.  I keep notes about my mixes when I’m in the studio–problem measure numbers/markers (and/or SMPTE position), plugin notes, what I did to the mix that day, etc.  (More on studio documentation later…)  I figured that maybe I should apply my studio documentation strategies to piano practice.  You may think you’ll remember to go back the next day and work on something, but you probably won’t–especially if you’re working on multiple pieces.  So I made a “practice pad” file for taking notes.  Just for you, readers, I’m going to let you download the template.

When you start keeping track of what is most challenging for you, you may start to notice a pattern.  For me, it’s usually rhythm and tempo.  We all have weaknesses, so whatever your weakness is, make a special effort to strengthen it.  I have to do a lot of work with a metronome.  If #11 chord voicings throw you off, then spend extra time working on them.  If you always forget that B major has five sharps, then study it more.

I’m also finding that having a plan for practicing helps a lot.  Decide how long to spend on each thing.  If you can, set aside a consistent time when you can practice undisturbed by your pets, siblings, and that rowdy neighbor next door.

Finally, taking breaks and staying hydrated is important, as well.  Think of yourself as an athlete.  And don’t forget to eat.  You can get so focused on the task at hand that you don’t even realize that you’re terribly hungry, and you haven’t eaten in ten hours.  And then you wonder why you’re becoming so irritable and unfocused.  That’s why I take breaks, because in the end, it makes you more productive.

Well, that’s what I’ve been learning about practice lately.  A lot of the strategies we use in the studio translate well to practicing an instrument.

So what are your approaches for practicing?  How do you make the most out of limited time?

 

Why Piano Recording Is So Challenging

Previous piano session miking using a matched pair of small-diaphragm condensers

In my last post, I mentioned in passing that I wrote a new piano composition. Well, now I’m getting ready to take it to the studio.  It’s called “Equinox,” and it’s eight minutes long, in the key of Db (also modulating to Ab and Gb/Ebm), has lots of tempo changes, uses nearly the entire keyboard, and requires all three pedals (yes, even the middle one).  Recording it, to say the least, is going to be challenging.

While one might think it would be easy to record one acoustic instrument, personally, I find it much harder to do well.  It’s so much more exposed; you can’t hide your problems.  There’s no covering up bad edits or poor tone-quality by burying it among other tracks.  With this kind of recording, you hear it all––the good and the bad.

Piano might be the hardest acoustic intrument to record.  The sheer frequency-range from the lowest to the highest key on the piano already eliminates certain mic choices, but capturing the nuances with the piano’s dynamic range is the real challenge.  You can get away with a lot when you’re working with a band that just “happens” to use some piano in a song.  But when the song is the piano––well…  You can’t get away with anything but the best recording and editing techniques.

But the technicalities of the engineering aren’t always the hardest part.  The mechanics of the piano itself can be problematic and delay schedules. If something goes wrong with a piano, it usually doesn’t have a simple fix.  In the process of learning to play “Equinox,” I already broke the sostenuto pedal.  The soste-what?  Not the right sustain pedal––the middle one (sostenuto).  I did fix it, but it involved a machinist, some glue, an engineer, and partial disassembly.

All Because of the Middle Pedal

The middle pedal is fine now, but tuning?  Don’t get me started on that.  There are some “flat” strings on the piano despite a tuning two weeks ago (dramatic temperature changes where I live).  I’d really rather not record a piano composition with an out-of-tune piano, so I need to do something about that, too.  Perhaps we’ll here more on fixing that problem in a future post…

Another reason why “Equinox” will be such a challenge is that I’m not just recording and mixing––I’m playing.  So what, right?  Am I not a musician?  Well, even though I pretty much live in the studio, when it’s my turn to be on the other side of the glass (or, in my case, the other side of the room), suddenly the studio seems intimidating.  Part of the problem is that if I make any mistakes, I know I’m going to be the one who will have to edit it out later, so then I get even more nervous about playing a perfect take.  I think it would be a lot better if I knew my errors were someone else’s problem…

Click or no click?

And then there’s the click track.  With “Airborne,” there were no tempo changes, so I just set the metronome to 130 BPM and played.  Not so with “Equinox.”  There are at least three different tempo markings throughout the piece, so it would seem I need three metronome settings.  Could I just record one section at a time?  Absolutely not––it’s a very “sustained” piece with hardly a split-second of silence.  Editing would be a pain.  Could I do without a click?  Well, that seems somewhat reasonable for this type of hybrid romantic-jazz-pop music, but even my more “classical” recordings sound way better when I play to a click (I guess I’m too used to having a drummer).

I know it won’t be easy to do this recording well, but I’m ready for the challenge.  I didn’t think I would be able to pull off producing and mixing My Heart Beats in such a short time, but I did.  And I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull off those ten days in the studio this summer in Los Angeles, 3000 miles from home, but I sure did.
“What is impossible with man is possible with God.”  -Jesus
Have any of you done much solo-piano recording?  What tips do you have for dealing with the unique challenges of the piano?

Composer’s Block: Pushing Past the Walls

We’ve all been there–staring at the screen not knowing what to do next.

Too many composers and songwriters just sit around and wait for creativity to happen.  But the truth is that, most of the time, by making yourself write, you inherently have to be more creative to be able to put something on the paper in the first place.

I used to be the kind of composer that just waited around, and I often moved onto new pieces whenever I hit the “barrier.”  I used to think that forcing yourself to be creative stifled creativity, but now I see otherwise.

We talked about this idea of compelling yourself to be creative during GRAMMY Camp, and since then, I have been making myself push past the blockades.  Three months later, I can say I’ve been more productive musically than ever.  I produced, mixed, and mastered an entire album in this time in addition to writing and notating my longest and most complex piano composition so far (more on this piece later).  I also started several new electronic productions of my own and re-did the mixes of some older ones.  In three months, I’ve done what I used to do in a year.  The quality of my work has not worsened because I’m taking less time and making myself do it.  Conversely, it has significantly improved.

It’s not like it’s always easy to push through the walls, though.  Sometimes, it’s really painful because I’m a perfectionist, and I feel like what I’m making myself come up with isn’t any good.  Even so, I make myself keep going anyway, and eventually, I’m satisfied with how my productions and compositions turn out.

To get past the creative block, it often means trying things that you might consider ridiculous.  Don’t give up on a possibility just because it’s weird or unconventional.  Even if the crazy thing you try doesn’t work, it can lead to something that does work, and doing something outside of your norm can help you think of something new.

Ultimately, making yourself write or mix or produce is a matter of practicing.  You won’t get better at what you do by waiting around all the time.  If you want to get better, you need to push past the walls.

So let’s hear from my readers.  How do you get past your creative blocks?  What do you do when a song just doesn’t seem to be working at all?

I Got the Phone Call…

People are always talking about getting discovered and waiting for a record label to find them.  Well, I got that call…  Maybe… 

Last night, my cell phone rang, displaying a call from a blocked number.  I figured I should pick it up just in case it was something important.

Me:  “Hello?”

Caller: “Yes, this is __ from ___ Records.  We are looking for Shelby Lock.”

I was totally caught off guard.  I’ve had “record companies” contact me before, and they turned out to be scams, but no one had ever called me on my phone like this.

The man at the other end went on to tell me about how he’d heard my tracks, and he even mentioned reading my blog.  He talked about maybe “doing some business.”  I really wanted it to be for real.

Just when we were starting to get a good conversation going, the call began to break up.  (That’s the bad part about living in the woods…)  I tried to move to another room where there was better service, but then the call ended.

Could a bad cell phone connection really be standing in the way of this opportunity?

I’ve contacted the record company by email and on SoundCloud, explaining the situation.  I guess all I can do now is just wait and see if they email or call me back.  I don’t want them to think I wasn’t interested because the call got dropped.  If it was really a call from the label they said they were from, then it was a really big deal, and I am honored to have them interested in my work.  Time will tell if it really was them, I hope…

I don’t know what to think.  I might not ever know if it was for real.  Either way, though, I’m going to keep producing and practicing so that this won’t be the last call I get from a record label.  If one label liked my music, then surely another one will, too.  And, hey, even if it was a prank call, then I’ve still put my name out there in front of the label by emailing them.  Can’t hurt.

I know some of my readers have more experience in the music industry than I do, so I’m going to ask you all if you have any insights about this.  Does this sound like a typical thing for a label to do?  Do you think it was real, and if so, do you have any advice for moving forward?  Have you ever had anything like this happen to you?