You may have noticed an acoustic piano in the background of my recordings. A couple years ago I bought what’s called a “studio upright” from the Clearwater Steinway Gallery. It’s a Boston, which is made in Asia but designed by Steinway, and a model with no plastic parts. The entire action is wood. I’m very happy with it.
I mention this because people may wonder why I don’t use that for my videos. Aside from not being a good enough pianist to record flawless videos head to tail without needing to splice together different video takes (keyboard recording permits occasional error correction…more on that in a moment), recording an acoustic piano is to my ear one of the hardest things to do well, especially for a classical sound.
The best of that I’ve ever experience was the audio engineer, John Stephan, when I recorded some of my pieces at his studio, Springs Theatre Arts & Recording, before he retired. I’ve worked in a lot of studios across the US, none compared to his technique, microphone placement, and audio environment. There’s no way I could duplicate that sound at home. I’ve got a few things I’m snobish about: authentic key lime pie, New York style cheesecake, fried fish, banana pudding, grits, and recorded piano sound.
As I mentioned above, recording tracks from a keyboard allows for a certain amount of editing without having to edit the video itself. If you look at about 00:42 from the beginning of the track, you’ll see my right hand momentarily “panic!” I had a momentary lapse of concentration. I mention this because non-musicians (unfortunately some musicians LOL) don’t know what’s going on in a performer’s head when performing.
When a musician (singers especially, but also brass instruments, pianists, conductor, everyone actually) plays/sings a note s/he must literally, mentally hear–in advance of actually playing the note–the note they’re going to play a moment later.
And if it’s a polyphonic instrumentalist like a pianist or organist or conductor all the notes being player together at that moment must be “pre-heard.” This is true even for solo instrumentalists in an orchestra. My favorite trumpet player, Don Own, talked to me once about playing in an orchestra, how an orchestra player hears their part as if they were in the audience, not from just their chair.
As you might imagine. That’s all quite a task. More than anything as I’ve aged, it’s the momentary lapses of concentration that get to me as a performer. I do silent meditation a lot. The focus required for performing music is like that. It’s why being a musician is so addictive. Few things match the rush.
Throughout March, Hilton is playing music during the service exclusively from the rich tradition of Irish folk songs. If you click on the arrow in the player below, you can hear 15 of the pieces he’s playing this month. This streaming music is for free and with no need to download anything.