August 7, 2021 - Recording - La Lune & Awaken
July 2021. We needed to break out of Zoom. None of us were into it any more. We were all tired of listening to Note Performer mock-ups.
Bradley's composition brain moves fast, at least twice the speed of mine. He is an avant-garde composer. And my only contribution to his music was helping to shape the story and making the music appeal to the audience. Ok, I also advised him to not just introduce a motif and leave it -- come back to it a few times for the audience to 1) go what was that? 2) To hear it and recognize it. 3) To appreciate it.
We executed with Bradley what the intention of Inception was. Our Leadership Team would mentor the students. And as they were ready, we passed them to various outside musician/composition mentors. Bradley was ready pretty quickly and got to work with Brad Dutz, Hee Jin Yoon, Karen Elaine, MB Gordy, and Chuck Fernandez.
We decided to go back into the studio to record. Bradley had departed a few months prior, but we wanted to take a shot at recording his piece, at least partially. We hired a brilliant clarinetist who remotely recorded both bass and Bb clarinet. And in the studio, Karen tackled the violin part. Other instruments (except the water glass which I made Bradley write in) are mock-ups.
Click on the video below to see Bradley's journey and hear his piece.
Christopher Lee was also a part of the recording session where we experimented with sounds made by various ethnic winds and drums. A second session saw all of his percussion parts recorded live. A third session saw Karen play first & second violin and viola. Maksim Velichkin joined her in studio.
It was here that we really began to think about hybrid. Oddly it worked. A laptop zooming from the studio, a laptop zooming from the control room, and everyone else looking in. Audio was crystal clear because of the studio audio, and we were able to field questions from those watching remotely.
In a fourth session, Karen played the bass... kinda. It was a little bit of a comedy of errors... (or like recording sessions I became known for)... where the engineer records you at half speed or note by note because you're way off playing to the existing track. At the first playback with audience, Karen challenged Christopher to play the difficult bass line at tempo. He did. Zoom erupts in laughter.
Despite this, "La Lune" was born and remains Karen's tour de force! Bravo, Karen!
Christopher's recording session is also where we would meet Lucas Fehring, GRAMMY-winning engineer who became the official Inception engineer and Board member. Much more on him to follow.
Please email me for a google link to all the music discussed in this journey.
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