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Jenn[_3_] Jenn[_3_] is offline
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Default Opera: Good acoustics with digital piano or bad acoustics with acoustic piano

In article ,
"Richard Crowley" wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote...
Since the manufacturer of the electronic piano is known, the above seems
to be similar to saying that all Roland electronic pianos have "twinky
cheap plastic keyboards".


Not at all. We don't know the *model number* so we don't know
what kind of keyboard it has. Are you saying that ALL Roland
keyboards have classic piano hammer-action keyboards? If so,
then we already have our answer and don't need to know the model
number. I don't know enough about ALL Roland products to know
whether they ALL have piano hammer keyboard actions? If anyone
does know, they haven't spoken up here yet.

I think the more serious point is that *all* pianos have a different feel.
Obliging a pianist to play on an instrument that he doesn't feel
comfortable with, whether or electronic or acoustical, is cruel and harsh
punishment, not to mention not too smart in situations like this.

That all said, most of the pianists I work with have, in the natural flow
of modern events, spent considerable time playing on a wide variety of
instruments, acoustical, electronic, expensive and cheap.


Yes, and the same is true for *most* of the pianists I work with.
HOWEVER, high-end classical musicians are a different breed
and much more "prima-donna" about things like this. For better
or for worse. They have their reputations to protect and, of course,
their individual quirks. We don't know anything about the musos
in this scenario, and I would NOT just *assume* that the singer's
accompanist would be fine with a cheap plastic keyboard. Been
there, done that, and got burned for my trouble.

In fact, many pride themselves on their ability to wrestle good sound out
of a wide variety of instruments.


Absolutely, and would that we could all work with musicians
like that. But it isn't safe to assume that they are ALL that nice.


It's not just a matter of being "nice". A great many pianists,
including good accompanists, virtually never play electronic keyboards,
and in my opinion, the difference in action between any decent piano and
even an excellent electronic keyboard is far greater than the average
difference between any given two decent pianos.

Favorite quote from the printed program at the last "PDQ Bach"
concert in town...

"Professor Schickele plays whatever piano is available, exclusively."

But Peter Schickele is NOT your typical musician. :-)


That's for sure. He's a far better musician than your typical one! ;-)
(And I'll bet he doesn't do real public performances on plastic
keyboards.)

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Laurence Payne[_2_] Laurence Payne[_2_] is offline
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Default UPDATE

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:29:17 -0500, "David Grant"
wrote:

Turns out it's an audition for a competition. My guess would be the
recording quality expectations for this would be somewhere between the
school program audition and the opera company audition that you mention.
That's a pretty wide range. She's sending me more info on the competition so
I can get a better sense of the caliber we're dealing with.



Actually, we're all fussing far too much. The panel will hear a few
seconds of her singing almost anything, with almost any accompaniment,
recorded on almost anything (all those "almost"s are just to shut up
the resident pedants who delight in reducing any argument to
absurdity:-) and know immediately whether she's a contender or a
wannabee. Anyone who wants to argue, make sure you're based in the
music world rather than the recording world and have real experience
of these things.
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RD Jones RD Jones is offline
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Default Opera: Good acoustics with digital piano or bad acoustics withacoustic piano

"Arny Krueger" wrote...
Since the manufacturer of the electronic piano is known, the above seems
to be similar to saying that all Roland electronic pianos have *"twinky
cheap plastic keyboards".


On Dec 10, 2:26 pm, "Richard Crowley" wrote:
Not at all. We don't know the *model number* so we don't know
what kind of keyboard it has. Are you saying that ALL Roland
keyboards have classic piano hammer-action keyboards? *If so,
then we already have our answer and don't need to know the model
number. *I don't know enough about ALL Roland products to know
whether they ALL have piano hammer keyboard actions? *If anyone
does know, they haven't spoken up here yet.


All _current_ Roland digital pianos have one or another version of
their "Progressive Hammer Action".

Some of the lower line discontinued models had weighted keyboards,
(ie. EP760) but not hammer action. I've heard some models refered to
as "semi-weighted".

rd
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Default Opera: Good acoustics with digital piano or bad acoustics with


Mike wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
You really want to be in a room where you can pull back 30 feet

or so.
Which I doubt can be done in a church if it's empty, unless it's not
much bigger than a living room. It's beginning to sound like he
should do the recording in the church, and if it doesn't work out,
do it again in his living room (for free). If neither work out,
then she needs to come up with enough money to find the right place
to record.

WOuld agree. I know I weighed in on this a day or so ago,
but that sounds to me like the best approach.
I never did like recording singers such as these in small
rooms.

Also factor in what you're going to have to monitor when you
go remote to the church.



Richard webb,
replace anything before at with elspider

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--- Benjamin Franklin, NOvember 1755 from the
Historical review of Pennsylvania


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Keith. Keith. is offline
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"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
...
David Grant wrote:

Turns out it's an audition for a competition.


Sounds to me like it deserves a professional-sounding recording. It's
cheating to make it DAW-professional (edits, punch-ins, pitch tuning, etc)


This sends a chill down my spine.........cheating is possible and highly
probable.....with a competition involving a recording, the competition is
between the best producer with the best DAW.

The auditition should be live in the same theatre with the same judges to
give every performer a fair chance.

Keith.




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Scott Dorsey Scott Dorsey is offline
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Keith. wrote:
"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
David Grant wrote:

Turns out it's an audition for a competition.


Sounds to me like it deserves a professional-sounding recording. It's
cheating to make it DAW-professional (edits, punch-ins, pitch tuning, etc)


This sends a chill down my spine.........cheating is possible and highly
probable.....with a competition involving a recording, the competition is
between the best producer with the best DAW.


This is sadly true.

The auditition should be live in the same theatre with the same judges to
give every performer a fair chance.


The second cut is normally done that way.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
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Richard Crowley Richard Crowley is offline
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"Keith." wrote ...
"Mike Rivers" wrote ...
David Grant wrote:
Turns out it's an audition for a competition.


Sounds to me like it deserves a professional-sounding recording. It's
cheating to make it DAW-professional (edits, punch-ins, pitch tuning,
etc)


This sends a chill down my spine.........cheating is possible and highly
probable.....with a competition involving a recording, the competition is
between the best producer with the best DAW.


Which is why some are now requesting audition recordings on *videotape*
to make it much more difficult to send anything but a genuine, unedited,
live
performance.

The auditition should be live in the same theatre with the same judges to
give every performer a fair chance.


If we were in some smalish European country, that would be practical.
The largest country in Europe (France) is not even as big as Texas.


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Richard Crowley Richard Crowley is offline
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Default Opera: Good acoustics with digital piano or bad acoustics with acoustic piano

"muzician21" wrote ...
Also, when I said digital reverb earlier I meant to say modeled
reverb, which would render a more convincing sound of a church or
theater setting.


Yes, if we were talking about a conventional recording, then
you would have a very good point. But the priority here is to
make the singer comfortable with her performance so that the
recording represents here abilities. The acoustics that the singer
hears from the room while performing are a critical part of
achieving this.

The judges are primarily interested in how the singer performs,
not particularly how nice the recording sounds. That is the nature
of an audition recording vs. a commercial release.


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jtougas[_3_] jtougas[_3_] is offline
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Default UPDATE

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:54:20 +0000, Laurence Payne
trained 100 monkeys to jump on the keyboard
and write:

Actually, we're all fussing far too much. The panel will hear a few
seconds of her singing almost anything, with almost any accompaniment,
recorded on almost anything (all those "almost"s are just to shut up
the resident pedants who delight in reducing any argument to
absurdity:-) and know immediately whether she's a contender or a
wannabee. Anyone who wants to argue, make sure you're based in the
music world rather than the recording world and have real experience
of these things.


Actually, Laurence has a point : those first 30 seconds better sound
amazing... (so should the rest of the recording, but those first 30 in
particular).


--
jtougas

"listen- there's a hell of a good universe next door
let's go" - e.e. cummings
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In article ,
jtougas wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:54:20 +0000, Laurence Payne
trained 100 monkeys to jump on the keyboard
and write:

Actually, we're all fussing far too much. The panel will hear a few
seconds of her singing almost anything, with almost any accompaniment,
recorded on almost anything (all those "almost"s are just to shut up
the resident pedants who delight in reducing any argument to
absurdity:-) and know immediately whether she's a contender or a
wannabee. Anyone who wants to argue, make sure you're based in the
music world rather than the recording world and have real experience
of these things.


Actually, Laurence has a point : those first 30 seconds better sound
amazing... (so should the rest of the recording, but those first 30 in
particular).


That's exactly right. When you have a large stack of recordings to
listen to, you'd better have good stuff up front.
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In article ,
Charlie Olsen wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:41:28 -0800, Jenn wrote:

In article ,
jtougas wrote:

On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:54:20 +0000, Laurence Payne
trained 100 monkeys to jump on the keyboard
and write:

Actually, we're all fussing far too much. The panel will hear a few
seconds of her singing almost anything, with almost any accompaniment,
recorded on almost anything (all those "almost"s are just to shut up
the resident pedants who delight in reducing any argument to
absurdity:-) and know immediately whether she's a contender or a
wannabee. Anyone who wants to argue, make sure you're based in the
music world rather than the recording world and have real experience
of these things.

Actually, Laurence has a point : those first 30 seconds better sound
amazing... (so should the rest of the recording, but those first 30 in
particular).


That's exactly right. When you have a large stack of recordings to
listen to, you'd better have good stuff up front.


You can say that again!!

I once took out an advertisement in the Village Voice musicians section
looking for a female jazz, light pop singer for my lounge lizard act.

My phone did not stop ringing for weeks, and maybe even months later I was
still getting calls.

I requested a tape/CD , a head shot and bio.

I received 100s of submissions out of which 99.9999 percent of the singers
sucked.

This is where I formed the "Sound Bagger Inverse Proportion Theory as it
applies to talent"

The better the head shot.
The more formal education.
The more buzzwords " accompanied Prof Shlotz during the xxxyyyzzz show"
etc

The WORSE the singer....

Getting back to what you said Jenn, you are so correct.

I could tell within 15 seconds who could sing jazz and who sounded like a
screechy trained monkey using all the classic jazz cliché's their
professors taught them.

I kept a few of the tapes just for laughs because they were so absolutely
horrible I couldn't imagine how these people made it to the University
level.
Well, actually I could after hearing their professor accompanying them.....

It reminded me of a bad Partridge Family episode where Keith falls in love
with a beautiful singer who sings way off key.
Her father proudly tells everyone he taught her everything she knows and
then proceeds to sing the same tune even farther off key than the daughter.

Oh yea, the lady that got the gig sent a tape that sounded like it was
recorded on a Radio Shack portable cassette recorder sitting on top of an
out of tune piano.
She had a marvelous voice and we ended up working together for years.

Go figure.


Good story, and quite typical in my experience. Each year I receive a
couple of hundred scholarship audition recordings. Going through that
stack with the knowledge that the decisions can make make real
differences in people's futures is daunting. Realistically, the people
that put their best music at the beginning of the recording have a
better chance at success. Same thing with audition recordings for
"tenure track" positions in orchestras. If the LA Phil, for example,
has an opening, they might well receive several hundred audition
recordings, from which as few as 3 people will be selected for in-person
audition. You'd better sound great on that recording from the get-go!
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Default Opera: Good acoustics with digital piano or bad acoustics with


On 2008-12-11 (DonPearce) said:
WOuld agree. I know I weighed in on this a day or so ago,
but that sounds to me like the best approach.
I never did like recording singers such as these in small
rooms.
Also factor in what you're going to have to monitor when you
go remote to the church.

Richard, is there any chance you could fix your news reader so it
doesn't add spaces before quoted text? It wrecks the threading.
Those "" characters are put at the beginning of the quoted line
for a purpose.

DOn't know why it does that, but that's why we have a text
editor I guess.
tHis newsreader imports the article to be replied to in such
a manner.




Richard webb,
replace anything before at with elspider

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--- Benjamin Franklin, NOvember 1755 from the
Historical review of Pennsylvania


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Eric B Eric B is offline
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Default Opera: Good acoustics with digital piano or bad acoustics withacoustic piano

yep I say it again..

go with whatever allows the singer to give her/his best performance

Mark


It ultimately comes own to where the singer feels most comfortable.
In either case the quality of the room may not be good enough for
operatic voice. You are going to have to control, meaning curtail, the
natural reverb so that you can add it later. At the church you could
in theory get another better piano with weighted keys. You could even
record it seperately from the singer so as to avoid,or reduce leakage.
OTOH most operatic singers can't do it with headphones, nor without
the accompaniment. It is going to come down to the singers comfort.
My recommendation is to put it in their court. The living room may
work, the church may or may not. If not have the client make the
choice to perform in a space worthy of their voice. The best way in
the end might be to stage a performance and record that.
Where are you? What city are you near? The UU in Peterborough NH
would do and they have a good piano. Come on up!
Good luck!
Eric B
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On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:38:57 -0500, Charlie Olsen
wrote:

Good story, and quite typical in my experience. Each year I receive a
couple of hundred scholarship audition recordings. Going through that
stack with the knowledge that the decisions can make make real
differences in people's futures is daunting.


I can't imagine having that much control over a person's life and having to
do it each year.


Yeah, it's frightening. On a theatre audition - someone's good at
dancing and acting so the director looks at me - "Voice OK?" I'm very
concious of my power over whether they're going to be earning for the
next few months.

Actually, it's more when they beat you up after the audition... :-(


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Richard Crowley Richard Crowley is offline
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"Charlie Olsen" wrote ...
I had a million come backs for the idiocy I used to get blasted with.

"I've never heard Tomorrow chanted quite like that before"
"Your daughter has the ability to sing in several keys. All at once"
"Your daughter's singing brings tears to my eyes".
"When your daughter performs I'll bet there isn't a dry eye in the house"


My favorite was a college music professor who was heard frequently
saying to parents: "My, how she sang!" It covers everything. :-)


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On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 10:33:04 -0800, "Richard Crowley"
wrote:

My favorite was a college music professor who was heard frequently
saying to parents: "My, how she sang!" It covers everything. :-)


There's nothing like good singing! And that was.....
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"Laurence Payne" wrote ...
"Richard Crowley" wrote:
My favorite was a college music professor who was heard frequently
saying to parents: "My, how she sang!" It covers everything. :-)


There's nothing like good singing! And that was.....


LOL! :-))


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Jenn[_3_] Jenn[_3_] is offline
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In article ,
Charlie Olsen wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:07:21 +0000, Laurence Payne wrote:

On Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:38:57 -0500, Charlie Olsen
wrote:

Good story, and quite typical in my experience. Each year I receive a
couple of hundred scholarship audition recordings. Going through that
stack with the knowledge that the decisions can make make real
differences in people's futures is daunting.

I can't imagine having that much control over a person's life and having to
do it each year.


Yeah, it's frightening. On a theatre audition - someone's good at
dancing and acting so the director looks at me - "Voice OK?" I'm very
concious of my power over whether they're going to be earning for the
next few months.

Actually, it's more when they beat you up after the audition... :-(


I used to work as a rehearsal/audition pianist so I know exactly the pain
you are feeling.

The worst are the kids with stage mothers.

ie: My little Susie prefers that you play "Tomorrow, from Annie" in the key
of F#.
Yea.......
Key of G please

I had a million come backs for the idiocy I used to get blasted with.

"I've never heard Tomorrow chanted quite like that before"
"Your daughter has the ability to sing in several keys. All at once"
"Your daughter's singing brings tears to my eyes".
"When your daughter performs I'll bet there isn't a dry eye in the house"

etc....




"When hears music like that, one can only think: Salieri!"
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