This is a recording
My Fancy Band audition is coming due in a couple weeks. I did some preliminary recordings last week, then more this past Sunday. I'm doing three at a time so I can listen to them and choose the best version, then compare them in a form of knockout.
Some of them haven't been too bad. Occasionally I'll have a wrong note, a musical typo if you will, where I know I likely can't used that version, so it's easy to eliminate recordings like that. Sometimes they'll be relatively similar, so I've had to listen back and forth, back and forth, trying to figure out which one overall is better. I listened to all of them the other night, picking the best of the three from last week and this week, though I didn't have the heart to go through the winners of both weeks. I guess that'll happen this coming weekend.
And, of course, sometimes you're picking the best of the worst. Easily the hardest one is the one with the sextuplets--the Lone Ranger theme song solo, how's that. It's not the part the average person would recognize but it takes a lot of technical ability to pull it off. This is where I sort of wish I could cut and paste things, because the beginning is fine, the ending is fine, but my gosh, it can be a train wreck in the middle. The one I saved from this past weekend, the other two recordings were just *so* bad, I couldn't possibly turn them in. And I'm not even at tempo! I'm taking it several tick marks slower than I'm supposed to, but there's no way I could do it cleanly faster. It's bad enough as it is.
I suppose I should be glad this isn't live. An in-person audition would be worse. At least here I get the chance to play through it multiple times to try to get the best version I can. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so long. At roughly two minutes, it takes forever to get through it, and it feels like an eternity when you know you've made a mistake but have to keep going in case the rest of it is the best you'll do that day. I much prefer the shorter excerpts, which are about 30 to 45 seconds. Even if you make a mistake, it's that much faster to get over it and move on and make another recording.
Some of them haven't been too bad. Occasionally I'll have a wrong note, a musical typo if you will, where I know I likely can't used that version, so it's easy to eliminate recordings like that. Sometimes they'll be relatively similar, so I've had to listen back and forth, back and forth, trying to figure out which one overall is better. I listened to all of them the other night, picking the best of the three from last week and this week, though I didn't have the heart to go through the winners of both weeks. I guess that'll happen this coming weekend.
And, of course, sometimes you're picking the best of the worst. Easily the hardest one is the one with the sextuplets--the Lone Ranger theme song solo, how's that. It's not the part the average person would recognize but it takes a lot of technical ability to pull it off. This is where I sort of wish I could cut and paste things, because the beginning is fine, the ending is fine, but my gosh, it can be a train wreck in the middle. The one I saved from this past weekend, the other two recordings were just *so* bad, I couldn't possibly turn them in. And I'm not even at tempo! I'm taking it several tick marks slower than I'm supposed to, but there's no way I could do it cleanly faster. It's bad enough as it is.
I suppose I should be glad this isn't live. An in-person audition would be worse. At least here I get the chance to play through it multiple times to try to get the best version I can. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so long. At roughly two minutes, it takes forever to get through it, and it feels like an eternity when you know you've made a mistake but have to keep going in case the rest of it is the best you'll do that day. I much prefer the shorter excerpts, which are about 30 to 45 seconds. Even if you make a mistake, it's that much faster to get over it and move on and make another recording.