3rd recording day ~

 

3rd recording done !!!

 

 

Wanted to start this post with a funny animated gif, hope you will appreciate it :)))

 

 

Anway, let's talk about this great day : the 29th of october !

 

 

As some friends might have noticed it, the recording day changed. It was supposed to happen the 28th & 29th , 2 "half a day" sessions.

But since the Fazioli piano tuner (for i still don't know, or simply don't remember why) could come only the 29th morning.

 

 

I had to change my plan a little bit, manage with some "hardcore" students that "even during the holidays" want to have their lessons :)))

 

Preparation

 

Day started with of course preparation of myself: since conditions were near to perfect, i used this oportunity to make "in a row" the promotion video.

 

At 11.30 am a very nice lunch with my favorite before every marathon:

 

       a nice steak tartare !                             a nice place ^^                      of course a nice dessert

            "italian style"                        alone at this time of the day   chocolat mousse+noisette coffee

 

So meeting in the studio was at 2 pm, and, as everytime, we took some time to set all the microphones. Yes we put 5 of them as Naxos requested a " Hi-Def Surround"master !!!

NB: the "upper microphones" were finally set near the Church Altar, as the reverb and bass were much better there. Also we added a 5th one under the piano.

Also i blurred the microphones as i promised.

 

 

With the tests and everything it took around 45 minutes. Also we were listening on a very "nice" headphones : the Grado !!!

Why do i focus on this little detail ? simply because it drives me back memories of my 16 when i was an Aspen Music Festival Student, and bought this headphone who was my very first "nice Equipment" i ever buy!

 

So we were able to start :

                                                             yes the piano is a Fazioli

The recording

The recording session was very simple. I performed 5 hours in a row, with no break , simply some short blank to make cuts on the recorded files.

Everything went very well, and i was very happy with all the music, and very much inspired with all the wonderful surrounding. In those conditions, why stop ?

what i saw from my piano bench point of view !

not bad isn't it ;)

I must confess that i felt in love with the column shadows,

they repeted in such a pattern that it echoes to

me as a "Philip Glass" repetitive pattern !!

 

Curiously i recorded everything in the "program" way. And to be sure that we would have enough material in case of 'strange noises in the background" , everything is recorded almost 4 times.

Time to time i had some "surprises" like in every recording sessions :

i think 5 or 6 times some pigeons felt that the music was romantic enough to come in couple ^^

And at 7 pm a strange face popped out of the front door ... the guy looked amused and smiled me a lot ... since i was recording i could not stop. Hours after i met him and learnt that he belived that tonight there was a concert . Luckily he did not do any noises !

Also a very funny things :

At 7.34 pm i finished all the "classical Glass music" ( means : Opening, Dreaming Awake & Orphée Suite). The Photograph Crew was supposed to be there at 7.30pm and gave no sign.

So .... since i was very "hot" and "in the mood" i said : let's do the last piece : How Now !! (it is the name of the piece). How Now lasts 15 to 20 minutes and it was the piece i feared the most. it is so dense that (with 600 lines) it can breaks your hand.

I did it, and it turned very well , but .... i could not belive that what i belived to be "mostly' 20 minutes turned to be 45 minutes !!!

But this is not the funniest. This piece is very "avant garde" (really far away from the Philip Glass we all know, he was very young at the time he composed it). As a result : an old lady complained pretty loudly, made a lot of noise, and argue a lot with the recording crew!
On my side, i did not heard anything, but i am very curious to see if it can be listenable on the sound files that i got. Of course it will be taken away, but ... i think i will keep for myself those parts if i can find it !! I might even post it for fun ;)


So at 8.50 pm everything was well recorded ! And so i was very free to rest a little bit when the Crew installed their video and photo material.

I could also enjoy this time to buy some well deserved food and drink, (but not much as i wanted to go to restaurent at the end) :
                                                                     éclair brestois !

 

The Promo Video

So as i was finally able to touch some food and drink, i saw the wonderful team of Jean-Lionel Dias preparing all their Equipment:

 For me everything was simple. I choosed the piece that gives the name of the cd : "Opening to Glassworks" as the promo video music.
This music is very popular and very well known, so i think the choice was not so hard.

To be able to make "enough" footages, i performed in a loop the "Opening" for 3 hours !!!!
i must also confess than time to time it was difficult to stay serious when a huge camera is almost kissing your cheek ^^

 

at 11.30pm everything was done, and it took 10 min to pack everything. With all the crew we found a very nice little bistro opened near le Collège des Bernardins, we enjoyed nice chat and finally a real dinner !!
I was really too much exhausted at this time to take any pictures. . .



PS :

When i came back, guess who was waiting for me ?

Also to end with a very funny thing , the day after a friend of me send me this image on Facebook :

I could not belive my eyes that my name was in the Akinator app !!!!
Thanks Charles you really made my day ;)