Week 15c - The Recording Session

Today was the big day... PA11 was booked from 6pm-11pm on Sunday 30th May. If there was any chance to get it completed in time on Friday, we really only had today to get it all recorded, otherwise we loose out on some potentially outstanding video. I was feeling nervous... despite doing a run through of the second movement a few days ago - it still felt like the improvisation methodology wasn't entirely clear and I had to think on the spot with a piece of technology that I've only used for 4 months.

From past experiences, I knew who was going to be slowest to setup... and for once it wasn't Peer A with his millions of guitar pedals! It was going to be the videographers. We did exchange Facebook messages a few days ago where my lack of knowledge in the field of video did lead to some initial confusions (one thing to avoid in future collaborations). Perhaps one thing that I did do right, that was very useful to them, was take a photograph of our setup from last session and send it to them with my descriptions. That way, they were then able to visualise and comment on where it would be best to place the cameras and lights and they could book out suitable equipment with confidence.

It was a really smart move from Peer A last session to suggest creating our initial setup. It meant that going in to the recording session, we knew exactly where to be and the whole process took only an hour. This meant that whilst the videographers were setting up cameras and lighting around us we could watch the sun fade in the distance as we waited for the darkness outside to light-up our stage.... I wish.

We didn't waste any time practicing the second movement around the videographers. We had confidence that the first movement was going to run smoothly (perhaps it was useful that we did practice a full run through here, even if we thought it was a bad use of our time back then). Each time we ran through the second movement, it got better and better with the flow and the synergy improving. This gave me confidence that nothing was going to go wrong in that movement ... famous last words.

At 9:30pm - 3 hours 30 minutes after we entered the room, we were ready.

Movement 1 - This movement usually lasts between 8-10 minutes so with the clock getting closer to 11pm we figured we could only do at most 3 takes. This did make me feel a bit anxious, but with this movement taking place on my violin I did have a feeling of comfort and homeliness with my primary instrument. The first take was average - it had a selection of small errors from all of us and at times there were some communication slips between Peer B and myself. The videographer was surprisingly positive about it "That's exactly how a first take should go - get your mistakes out now and mess up, then in the next takes you will be alert to fix them". He was absolutely right - within past experiences of classical performances, I've always been more alert in sections of works where there is a high chance of error. The good thing about recording, (which in hindsight was a much better option than to do a live performance as discussed many weeks ago) is no one will ever know what your first recording was... *presses delete*

Second take... beautifully played by all... any errors were not noticeable and with it being an improvised free score, we had more room for error (mistakes can be beautiful!). We all agreed to move onto the second.

Movement 2 - It was all going so swimmingly until... my Push decided to give up recording... anything. We spent around an hour trying to diagnose the problem - reinstalling Ableton, disconnecting and connecting Push wires and even starting up a new blank set.

I was distraught... the fact that we were so close to completing this project with all the exciting visuals in place was heart-breaking. It felt like my whole musical world was collapsing around me. I didn't want to be the one who, due to a lack of experience in my push controller, was responsible for our final product to potentially be half video, half audio. 

Peer B could see I was upset and his introvert characteristics (From the MBTI assessment here) truly showed here. He seemed calm on the outside and really helped me when I was panicking and even feeling angry at myself.  Despite it being a rather s*itty situation, he was able to come up with a potential solution. It would mean that his computer would be recording the direct input from my Push into his Ableton. I was concerned about the CPU on his computer and it also came with a consequence - the output would be mono rather than stereo, making it much harder to edit. 

We had a dilemma - sacrifice audio quality for a full video or sacrifice video for full stereo audio. It was a unanimous group decision to go for the first. And to our surprise, it worked first time - not only that but we performed the 2nd movement the best we have every played it. Every other component that might have failed, like the marble-run and CPU, worked like a charm and it was a success. 

I honestly owe it to my group for getting me through that, Peer A's extroverted characteristics to see positive light in a dark situation and to keep the videographics energised at a time when they could only watch the drama unfold compared with Peer B's introverted, calm and steady approach to the problem lead us out of PA11 to freedom! ... provided that we tidied it all away and left it how we found it.

Panic over - although I will certainly be feeling this mental pain over the next few days...