Dear David,
I had a very mixed reaction to your post. I am in no way a professional
musician, though I consider myself a serious, if not a very accomplished,
amateur (at least in the etymological sense of the word). Often times I have
listened to lute recordings and thought, "I might as well just quit. I'll
never play like that." I can get through any given piece without an actual
mistake (i.e., playing a wrong note) only one time in a hundred perhaps and
never without "twangs, splats, and squeaks." So, I was consoled to learn
that even professional musicians may have up to 2,200 edits per CD. Perhaps
if I could edit myself "every 2 seconds," I wouldn't sound so bad after all.
It could well be that commercial CDs set artificially and therefore
unrealistically high standards of performance. On the other hand, your most
recent video (I think), "It's a Wonder to See," has absolutely no "twangs,
splats, and squeaks" or any other imperfections that could be edited out, so
I am back to thinking, "I might as well just quit. I'll never play like
that."
I am not addressing myself now to the Paul O'Dettes, Nigel Norths, or Robert
Bartos among us (or even to the highly accomplished Daniel Shoskes or Valéry
Sauvages among us), but just to the average lute player, whoever you may be.
Do you have similar thoughts and feelings? Do you alternate between "I love
this more than anything" and "I'll never be any good at this"? Maybe we
should form a support group. Please let me hear from you.
Stephen Arndt
--------------------------------------------------
From: "David Tayler" <vidan...@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 2:55 PM
To: "lute-cs.dartmouth.edu" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Subject: [LUTE] Re: OT: Baroque Guitar technique
Live music is great!
A typical classical music CD has 800 edits, a typical solo CD, such
as guitar, lute, harpsichord, etc, varies, but the high and low
numbers for the albums I hvae worked range from 450-2200
Now 2200 edits is a a very large number, that's 2200 twangs splats
and squeeks that have been removed. Basically, a correction has been
applied every 2 seconds.
So, live music is better. By going to a real concert, you hear
something that is real, and support musicians directly.
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