It is now September, and my planned relaunch of a revised, more functional website (a project that has been in the works since December of last year) is now happening, nearly ten months later. What has changed? Everything! …Or so it seems. On March 15 of this year, COVID-19 made it necessary to cancel/postpone future live concerts. Because of that, the website changed and my musical life changed. No listing of upcoming concerts on the website: all cancelled. No more planning for a fall tour: travel is risky. It was clear that online media would become the best, and for the near future, the only way to communicate with listeners.
A further complication: at my age (70), face-to-face consultations with recording engineers, website designers and computer experts are a risky undertaking. Learning to mike, mix, edit and master recordings of my piano performances in the studio and put them on a website is my new musical life.
I want to be honest: I’d rather be performing live, in-person concerts. I’d rather be memorizing repertoire, rehearsing with the goal of sharing my music in real time, and preparing observations about the pieces I’m performing that I can share with my audience. The magic of living contact with listeners can never, in my opinion, be replaced by ‘virtual’ technologies. Playing live concerts is something I’ve practiced, polished and brought to a degree of perfection through over half a century of music making. Music expressed in this way has been my lifetime vocation.
Although I’d done some recording in the past (I go back to the ‘ancient times’ of recordings on magnetic tape, edited with a razor blade and scotch tape) – these were always done in the presence of a sound engineer, in a recording studio or suitable hall. With the virus, this has changed.
So…time to learn recording here in the studio. Time to be my own sound engineer, learning to place mikes, set sound levels, transfer the recordings to a DAW program on the computer (DAW means digital-audio-workstation.) Then learning to mix, edit, master and transfer the recording to the website. Becoming semi-fluent in ‘website’ means yet another learning challenge.
Now, 6 months later, the revised website is launched, a means to share with you my latest recordings and writings. Someone once said “To be young is to begin again.” So here is a new beginning.
Please let me know what you think at [email protected].
And never forget that
THE SOUNDS WE MOST ENDURE ARE THOSE WE MAKE FOR EACH OTHER!