Flute Solo Music

Music and more for the flute

TwtrSymphony Presents: The Hawk Goes Hunting!

UPDATE: The second movement will be out Aug. 15, 2012!

 

The first movement is complete! What a wonderful triumph for all the musicians, Chip Michael–composer and Maestro–and our engineers! Please take a few minutes to view the YouTube Video of the Hawk Goes Hunting.

I wonder how many of you reading this blog catch the significance of TwtrSymphony? Here is how I would summarize it, in no particular order of importance:

 

  • Musicians: professionals and amateurs, scattered all over the world. Our only connection to each other is Twitter.
  • Music that is delivered electronically..for the first movement, we had only our own part, so no concept of what the whole movement would sound like.
  • For some of us–learning how to record ourselves, using only a click track, and a computer recording of our part as our guide.
  • Also for some–learning how to use DropBox to transmit and receive our files.
  • Spending hours on this project, with no expectation of pay–just a love of music
  • The technical people: sound techs to sync all these files together. Support techs to keep communication running.
  • Chip Michael: Composer, script supervisor, blogger, moving force to keep the concept alive
  • Multiple tracks of music, multiple video recordings, differences in background sounds and acoustics…all coming together to create a unified musical recording.
  • Coping with dogs barking, gardeners gardening, vehicles roaring and all manner of distractions to spoil a recording.
Yes, this is an incredible accomplishment! Please listen to the music, and appreciate this new and incredible thing: TwtrSymphony.

 

Expanding My Horizons

I am honored to be a small part of something new and exciting: TwtrSymphony! It all started when a composer, Chip Michael, and a group of musicians were talking about collaboration. Chip has been the motivator behind the project and now we are all off and running.

TwtrSymphony is composed of musicians from all over the world who will be performing together and yet alone. Each of us must master our part without hearing the rest of the symphony. We must become skilled at recording ourselves, which for some of us is a new process! The better we can record, the better the final result.

We also must work with a click track..a kind of specialized metronome. Here’s how it works:

  1. We receive our part and two audio tracks; one with music and the clicks, and the other just the clicks.
  2. We listen to the recording to get the feel of the music, which is filled with variable beats. 
  3. Practice, practice, practice!!
  4. We record our part, using the click track on headphones so that our music will fit in with the rest of the symphony, and send it back to Chip.
  5. As all the parts are collected, they are trimmed and fit together to create the complete sound, which will then be published.
I am now doubly grateful for all those hours spent with the hated/loved metronome! My most difficult hurdle with the click track is being able to hear the clicks which often are masked by being in the same frequency range as my flute. 

                 Follow us on Twitter @TwtrSymphony                And follow me, too! @janetbxyz
Click on the links in the article to learn more about Chip Michael and to follow the TwtrSymphony blog.