A stroll in the English countryside

[bloeff]

Hi everybody,

Thanks to encouragement from many of you, Ipersevered and finished the project. Here it is - all 5,784 tracks!! I wonder what Tallis would have thought had heheard this. He was such a creative genius that he probably imagined the daywhen man would develop the technology to enable a single human being to singall 40 parts of his motet Spem in alium "at the same time"! Enjoy and let me know what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzDty7CNk6Y

P.S. I would really like to promote my music and get it"into the right ears". Any suggestions in this area would be greatlyappreciated.



Thanks again,
Bruce

[teddy]

Thank you. I throughly enjoyed that, especially on a quiet Sunday evening. I wish you every success

teddy

[wljmrbill]

Another nice job. very soothing beautiful work. Must be a long hard process to accomplish it.

[Krummhorn]

Bruce,

Nicely done ... beautiful sonorous sound. Tallis would be proud.
This represents lots of work on your part. And the English countryside is just as beautiful .

[bloeff]

Hi all,

Thank you all for such kind words! It means so much to me to get this kind of feedback from people who love classical music and have listened so many great works. This truly inspires me to continue recording this kind of music.
It's hard to put in words the effect this music is having on me, but it seems in some small way I have been allowed to experience the beauty of it in a way that I couldn't get from just listening.

Thanks again,
Bruce

[Soubasse]

This is a significant improvement on your earlier attempt (new recording software by any chance?) and reflects a lot of care and thoughtfulness toward this most magnificent choral masterpiece. I've always loved Spem and IMO, a good recording is one that can still send tingles down my spine - I'm glad to say this one-man version did.

Just a couple of things about the mastering. I noticed some clipping in the some of the louder tutti sections and during the final chord. Admittedly this could be due to the conversion to youtube, but maybe check levels in those sections.

Perhaps consider (and I appreciate this takes time, have done it more times than I care to recall for longer than I care to recall as well!) panning the vocal parts around a bit more. I once sat in on a studio mix of Spem (after having sung in it) which was partially multitracked in that there was one mic covering 2 choirs. The guy mixing it ended up with 4 tracks but he initially had no idea that the work was arranged as 8 5-voice choirs. After knowing about that, he quite sensibly panned the tracks a little bit apart from one another, achieving a very pleasant spread across the stereo L-R, and gave the work more impact

Could I ask what you're using for pitch-shifting? I'm hearing less digital artifacts (and no "chipmunk" effect!) than on your earlier recordings.

This was an ambitious project and you've brought it off impressively well - really nice work.

Kind regards,
Matt

[bloeff]

Thank you all so much for your positive feedback!! This truly inspires me to continue recording this kind of music.

The recording software is still ntrack studio. I'm using 64-bit mixing now, which I'm not sure if I used before. But I think the main reason my falsetto is souding better is that I'm simply singing more and developing my range and quality. To be honest, I have no idea what I'm doing because I've never had any voice training. I simply go with what sounds good to me.

As far as pitch shifting on soprano - I'm singing a step below the score and pushing it up electronically. I initially recorded the song a bit slow and quite by accident discovered a slightly brighter sound by mixing down at 1.05x original speed. This also had the effect of slightly shifting up the overall pitch.

My initial goal was to produce a full choral sound. Judging from responses, I'm making progress in that area. The next phase is to start introducing some dynamics. I appreciate your comments on clipping and panning.

I'm sorry this was a bit long-winded, but I wanted to share with you where I'm at. I look forward to sharing the continued development of this and future projects.

Thanks again,
Bruce

[Contratrombone64]

Bruce - wonderful stuff. I really enjoyed listening to it. You set yourself a step challenge with that work, in particular. Polyphonic music of the bygone days is very difficult to pull off successfully. Very hard to remain in pitch. Well done. David.