Video: Danza de la Moza Donosa

Danza de la Moza Donosa (Dance of the Graceful Young Maiden) is Ginastera's second piece from the Danzas Argentinas. I like playing this piece a lot, but I can't seem to play it at the speed indicated. Every couple of months I force myself to speed it up, but it gradually settles back down to the tempo I'm playing it in the video. For some reason, this is its natural speed in my brain.

The video itself turned out ok, I think. But I really need to find a camera with manual exposure control (or even just fixed exposure). I wore a brighter shirt in this one to fool the camera into making the video darker than the last one. But the automatic adjustments it makes as I'm moving around are really annoying.

All part of the big experiment, I guess.


Ginastera: Danza de la Moza Donosa from Ken Barker on Vimeo.

Video: Laments or The Maiden and the Nightingale

The Maiden and the Nightingale (Quejas ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor) is the fourth piece in Enrique Granados' Goyescas suite for piano. It's not really fair to say that one piece of music is "better" than another, but I think it's probably safe to say that Goyescas is the best music ever written by anybody.

I like to think of Maiden as a battle between a young maiden who is determined to be dark and dramatic and a little bird intent on pulling her out of her funk. You can hear the bird fluttering in and out through most of the piece. But you'll have to listen through to the end to find out who wins.


Granados: Laments or The Maiden and the Nightingale from Ken Barker on Vimeo.

Video: Pathétique Sonata, 2nd Movement

This is the second movement (Adagio Cantabile) of Ludwig van Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata (Sonata No. 8). It's another piece my mother used to play that has always stuck with me. I decided to learn it because it's a (relatively) simple way to add entertainment to the repertoire. Many people recognize and love the piece. Even if you've never heard it, it's recognizable because it's been "quoted" a lot in popular music.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've made some changes to my recording setup. Better lighting makes the video a little clearer. Better mic pres and converters make the audio much better, and I'm recording in stereo. But the biggest improvement is probably due to using a different video hosting service. YouTube is great for quantity and variety, but the video and audio quality are terrible. Google Video was supposed to be better, allowing higher resolution and stereo audio. But after uploading the video I found it was no better than YouTube. I finally settled on Vimeo. I love this site. They actually play the video at the quality of the uploaded file! Brilliant!

So here goes... let's hope the embedding works properly.

Beethoven Pathétique Sonata (2nd Movement) from Ken Barker on Vimeo.

Art Facts Video -- Take 2

I was pretty disappointed with my first attempts at piano video. The audio quality was nasty, the video was iffy, and of course, YouTube does its best to convert mediocre to horrible. So I'm trying again, attempting improvements on all three fronts. Johanne bought me new mic pres and converters for Christmas, so the audio should be much better. I picked up a thousand watts of lighting to improve the video. And I'm going to try streaming off of Google Video instead of YouTube, so I can at least have stereo audio in the video.

I'll post the first new video as soon as Google has finished processing it. In the meanwhile, here's a picture of my recording setup. In the photo, my new lights, my Essex with two AKG mics on it, and on the half-wall, left-to-right: hygrometer, metronome, headphones, Lexicon Omega (mic pres and converters), trackball, keyboard, monitor. Of course, Johanne's paintings hang off the picture rail, with a couple of gaps for the recently sold.

2x: Finding Twice the Usual (P.S.)

Just noticed that Twice the Usual is also available on Amazon.com. You can download the whole album or individual songs. These are mp3 versions, so the sound quality won't be as good as if you buy the physical CD from Thom's website. But it's still pretty cool to see the album on Amazon.

2x: Finding Twice the Usual

What would prompt me to blog about 2x after almost a full year since the last post?

Two things.

First, after the album was manufactured/released, I took down the unmastered recordings linked from this blog. That's because Thom is trying to recoup some of the costs of production (by selling the album instead of giving it away free). It's also because the recordings were unmastered, and considerably inferior to the finished product. But I still get some clicks on those audio links, so I thought I'd make the album a little easier to find. The links now take you to the 404 page at art-facts.com, which itself now has a link to Thom's website, where you can buy the album.

Second, I never blogged about the mastering session. It's definitely blogworthy (a low bar, admittedly), but not today. Short version: I took the recordings to Nick Landis at Terra Nova Mastering. Terra Nova is one of the premier mastering houses anywhere, and Nick has ears the size of satellite dishes. Going to him was kind of like asking Picasso to put some finishing touches on your pencil doodles: he'll probably make some great improvements, but bring a mop and bucket for your self-esteem.

To be continued....

Art Facts Facelift

I'm fooling around with a new look for the blog.

Leave a comment if you like it or if it makes your brain bleed. (And let me know what browser you're using, especially if it looks hinky).

And be sure to check out the new "Labels" menu below the "Blog Archive" on the right. I went back and put labels on all the old blog posts. Now you can jump directly to all posts with audio, or all posts about recitals, etc.

Repertoire and the After-Work Musician

Professional musicians often list their repertoire on their websites. Sometimes I look at these lists and think: how can you have 100 pieces up to performance level? Well, I guess if you practice 8 hours a day you could run through that repertoire beginning-to-end once a week and still have 5 days to really practice.

But what about us working shlubs? Is it possible to build (and maintain) a decent repertoire with 8 hours of practice a week?

Last November I was struggling just to get two pieces up to performance level. When I finally got them, others started to come more easily. I now have 13 pieces at performance level. But I certainly can't run through all of them every day, or even every two days and still hope to work on rough spots or new stuff.

But I'm finding that while some pieces need constant attention, others can go several days without playing. And when I do play them, the trouble spots are immediately obvious, because they're the spots that don't survive several days' neglect. So in a way, my practice is more focused.

To make this work, I keep a one-page chart with all the pieces I know (and new ones I'm learning) listed down the left, and the days of the month along the top. Every day I put codes in the grid for the pieces I worked on. If I simply played through a performance of the piece from memory, I put a "P" in the grid. If I worked on the piece, it gets a "W". If I played through with the music it gets an "M". So when I sit down to practice, I can look at the chart and see which pieces have gone the longest without attention.

Anyway, it seems to be working really well. I'm pretty confident that I could pull a full recital program together with about a week's notice. And I can certainly sit down and play a piece or two if people ask... and probably something different from the last time I played for them. I'm also making progress on 3 or 4 new pieces.

I'm curious to see how far this routine will take me. Will it continue to work with 20 pieces? 25? Or am I already at the limit for the number of hours I put in?

ConcART Review

The party was a great success. In total, we had about 65 people show up over the four hours, and Johanne sold six pieces. 50 people came in time for the recital, almost all of them arriving in a flood between 1:00pm and 1:05pm. They took their seats right away and by 1:15pm we had a packed house and were ready to start on time.

I gave a little introductory spiel and then launched into the program. Luckily, the people who came were interested in hearing a classical piano recital. So we had a very attentive and very appreciative audience of 50 crammed into our living room. And I think their attentiveness rubbed off, because I was able to focus intently on the music and it went great. I'd say it was one of my best performances ever.

A couple of highlights...

• Many people commented that they appreciated the little stories I told before each piece. Instrumental music can sometimes be pretty abstract, so if you know to "listen for the little bird fluttering in and out" or "the right hand is supposed to sound like water cascading over rocks", it adds a more concrete dimension.
• I was most worried about The Maiden and the Nightingale, since it's a difficult piece and this was my first real performance of it. But it went great. I described it as a battle between the maiden trying to be dark and dramatic and the happy little nightingale trying to snap her out of it. I suggested that people listen and decide for themselves who wins the battle. Later, one of the guests wrote in the guestbook: "The nightingale got the last word!"
• The Danzas Argentinas are always a great way to end a program. The big build up to the final, piano-wide up-down glissando and crashing cadence puts an exclamation mark on everything. The audience responded with laughs and shouts and a blast of applause that seemed to go on and on.
  

I should also note that things wouldn't have gone nearly as well without the help of several people. In particular:

• Gary, for tuning and adjusting the piano
• Libby, for handling the art sales
• Laura, for working the back door during the recital
• Melissa and Debie, for keeping the food and drink areas stocked and clean during the party

We're encouraged by the good results to do it again, maybe twice a year. That means I have to go get to work on repertoire!

ConcART!

On Sunday, October 19, Johanne will be having her first solo Art Show at our home here in Austin. The show will feature her latest pastel painting series on Rocher Percé, her new wood burnings and a couple of new wood sculptures.

To kick off the show, I'll be giving a recital on my new piano. We're expecting 40-50 people. (If you're in Austin, or think you could make it and didn't receive an invitation, let me know. I'll get one out to you).

I wanted to give a longish recital. Most other opportunities involve multiple performers where each is limited to one or two pieces. This is an opportunity to stretch out a little and design a nice program with some variety. The problem is that when I laid it out, it was too long. And removing pieces is a sad thing. But after much hair-pulling, I've whittled it down to...

1. El Puerto (Albéniz)
2. Sonetto 104 del Petrarca (Liszt)
3. Sonata No.8 (Pathétique), 2nd movement (Beethoven)
4. Impromptu Op.90, No.4 (Schubert)
5. Quejas, ó la Maja y el Ruiseñor (Granados)
6. Danzas Argentinas (Ginastera)

There are a couple of glaring omissions, but even still, I'm worried it's a little long. I figure it runs about 40 minutes. Make it 45, since I plan to tell a little story to introduce each piece. But I think the flow/variety of the program would suffer if I removed any more. (Not to mention... it would break my heart).

So what do you think? Would you sit through those 45 minutes? Even if you were coming mainly to view the art?