Clarinet Trio Project part 1

This is a bit ambitious in terms of recording technique, for someone like me who does this in his spare time :o) The challenge was coordinating the three parts (via headphones and metronome set up) and also keeping a sense of musicianship that made the recording sounds like  3 players performing live, or at least not played by same person on separate tracks.   Also another challenge is keeping the parts in tune ... the clarinet (like many other woodwind instruments) gets sharp in tuning as it warms up and you can imagine playing three times over several takes can cause a lot of challenge in keeping the piece in tune.  

So the music is not classical nor jazzy ... it's the well known Teddy Bears' picnic, which  has been skillfully and humorously arranged into a fugue by Clifton Hughes (father in law to my previous clarinet tutor, Lenny Sayers).  I enjoyed recording it, on my Bb clarinet on 3 separate tracks. As usual via GarageBand app on the iPad.   

Hope you like it

(52 People appreciate this)

Jazz Clarinet: part 3

This is one of my favourite classic songs of all time, made famous by Nina Simone from 1967 onwards,  but most people in the UK will know it as the BBC Film[add year] review program

Hope you enjoy it, It's called "I wish I knew how it would be to feel free" ... a bit of a long title which is why I accidentally abbreviated the title when uploading into SoundCloud ...

You should hopefully notice that the soundstage impression in the recording is slightly improved compared to earlier parts of my clarinet music projects.  This is due to (a) gaining experience and (b) improvement by the developers for the GarageBand app on the iPad.

(56 People appreciate this)

Beethoven duets project

There are some rare pieces of woodwind duets by Beethoven which were attributed to him after his death.I have recorded the first movement of No.3 from 3 duos which were originally written by him for Clarinet and Bassoon and later arranged by a 20th century publisher for two clarinets.As usual and as is for most of my projects, the two clarinet parts were played by me and recorded on my iPad on the Garage Band app.

The pictures are mostly from Manchester. I wanted some styles of buildings in keeping with the music and I always like to show off the varierty of architecture in this great city, as you can see from some of my video clip/photo reels too.

The first two pictures however are related to Beethoven, first him in a portrait as a young man and then his birthplace in Bonn. The two penultimate images are from Amsterdam. Hope you enjoy.

(67 People appreciate this)

Jazz Clarinet part 2: Star Dust

This music clip is self explanatory. It's an arrangement of one of my favourite songs of all time. It's a classic which will be around for ever I think.

(71 People appreciate this)

CLARINET MUSIC PROJECTS

Please scroll down to the bottom of my projects list and start there to scroll (up) the projects in the chronological order I created them.

Put the headphones on and Enjoy!

Click on any of the "play" buttons on video or audio frame images to start up the music clips.  If you click on any others before the previous one has finished playing, make sure you click the "pause" icon on the previous, otherwise you'll have several tracks playing simultaneously.

(50 People appreciate this)

Jazz Clarinet, part 1

This song is one I like a lot. Not only because it was partly written by one of music history legends Billie Holiday it's also one of the first complete tunes I played when I started to learn on the clarinet. It's a very famous song, so it won't need much more to be said about it (you'll see some info references within the slideshow along with the music).

More jazz to come as this project develops (the title gives it away ... slightly ...)

(71 People appreciate this)

Schumann part 3

This is the second movement of Schumann's Op.73 fantasy pieces, it completes the triptych (movements 1 & 3 having been already recorded, and can be found further down the list of my projects on this page). They should be played in the intended order so for those who haven't heard the other two and wish to play them in order, you can follow to my YouTube page http://www.youtube.com/user/maximusmanc and play them from there. If you subscribe and choose alert options you will also be notified of new music clips when they're added)

(75 People appreciate this)

Mozart part 3

This latest edition of the Mozart clarinet project, presents the first movement of the Sonata K.380 - the other (Rondo) movement having been featured in part 2 (see my projects page). So the first video is the new recording I have made, in the same way as the Rondo, and then for your convenience I have added the earlier recording below the new one, so you can hear them in the correct order of performance I've found that as I am making more recording of my clarinet playing, the process of editing and creating finished music tracks (whether as iTunes or YouTube tracks) is becoming quicker and less convoluted. For example it took me two weeks of evenings, learning and playing sections to prepare part2 of this project, whereas part3 was done in 3 evenings even though it is the same technical complexity as the Rondo.

(71 People appreciate this)

Schumann part 2

This is a follow up on the Schumann project. I have already posted the first movement of his "3 Fantasy pieces" Opus 73 I have not recorded them in strict playing order, so although I have already posted the first piece in the work, this follow up has the 3rd (the middle piece to follow later). The reason I did that is because although the middle movement acts as a lighter interlude, the two "bookends" are closely thematically related but quite contrasting moods. Here goes, I hope you enjoy it

(60 People appreciate this)

Mozart part 2

So ... This is is an update on the Mozart clarinet project I started in May 2011 ( see list of my projects by following "maximus" link on this page ) In the first instalment I showed you some of the process that went into recording the performance. I am now demonstrating what you can do on your own without a duet partner at time of recording. In May I recorded a live practice play-through of an entire piece of music. This time I recorded myself in practice while actually learning the new piece. I played clarinet 1 and 2 on separate tracks through GarageBand on iPad and then on the same app I joined up the sections of practice into one whole performance. This is the Rondo from Mozart's sonata K.380 arranged for two clarinets (publisher edition details in the May 2011 project)

(81 People appreciate this)

Clarinet Quartets

This Project is about creating more awareness around the medium of the clarinet quartet.  The name being self explanatory of what it is, the detail behind the name is that clarinets (like their string instrument counterparts) come in different sizes and thus ranges.  The most commonly used in Quartets are combinations of the B-flat (Bb), the E-flat (Eb) and the Bb-Bass Clarinets.  Sometimes you can have 4 Bb clarinets, sometimes 2 of them plus an Eb and a Bb-Bass or 3 Bb's and one Bb-Bass, and in rarer cases you can have A and/or C Clarinets too, depending on the tonality (they "key") of the piece being played, or the sound qualities required and combinations thereof.

I am starting this project by showing you some of clips of recordings by the Fell Quartet. 

My connection and knowledge of them is via my tutor Lenny Sayers (he is the guy sat down on floor in the picture, at the top-right of this project write up).  I have been to a few of their concerts and recitals and they have also released some CDs. You can find out more via

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fell-Clarinet-Quartet/12363695859

http://ind.pn/mTaKe1

(72 People appreciate this)

Clarinet Music - Schumann part 1

This project is the second in the series which started with Mozart (see my projects page)

June 2011 update: I have started to record the Schumann Fantasy Pieces for clarinet and piano, Op.73 .

In these tracks I am playing the Clarinet (in A) "live" with the piano part provided by a "music minus one" accompaniment CD.

I've also created an edited version in which I have spliced in a correction to one small section that I wasn't entirely happy it worked well. I would be interested to know if anyone spots the edit in comparison to the raw file. I've uploaded it on YouTube

For those interested in the process, here is the unedited version

And here is the same unedited track, but adjusted for headphone listening

I will add the 2nd and 3rd movement in the next days/weeks when I get more time to record. 

(93 People appreciate this)

Clarinet Music - Mozart part 1

I'm aiming to have an ongoing project of showcasing clarinet music.  The range will be mostly classical but also some jazz. I would also like to introduce Lenny Sayers who has been instructing me on Clarinet playing and performance and taken me to ABRSM Grade 8 and beyond in standard. [Just in case you are wondering, the picture shows my study, with digital piano (cover down) And on top of it side on, on stands, 2 of my clarinets, the ones in key of Bb and the taller one in A, the mouthpiece isn't on them when I took the photo. It's with a silver cap to the right of them. Some sheet music books, also a violin which I sometimes try to play (badly) for fun, and on the floor stand, under a cover, my viola to the right of the piano].

Check out Lenny's website www.lennysayers.com

Also in the meantime, as you see the project develop, please also check out my blog posts From Mozart to Modern Music, Beethoven vs Mozart, Pop & Classical music fusion and Future of music education.

May 2011 update: This first project is about Mozart. Here is a clip of Lenny and I playing the 3rd movement from Mozart's duet in Bb, K296 [arranged for two clarinets (in Bb) from Sonata in C K296, from the published advanced duets for clarinet edited by H.Voxman]. If you listen to the second and third tracks listed, you can hear some errors. But the first clip (i loaded it onto YouTube) shows my attempted "correction" to a small section of my clumsy fingerwork which came through in the raw file (second music clip) by recording the two duet parts separately on lines 2 and 3 of the GarageBand file for this piece (so in effect for about 5 seconds Lenny is replaced by me, since he wasn't about when I was editing). I then deleted the mistake section, and then adjusted lines 2 and 3 below the deleted section of line 1, and then saved it all as one song. You might be able to spot it, let me know if you do.  I hope you enjoy listening to it

Visually you can see the section zoomed in, in the gallery picture at the end of this page.  The top line of audio waves is the original line. The two lines below with short clips each are my replacements (clarinet 1 and clarinet 2) for the deleted section (you can see the gap in the first line).

It wasn't perfect because I am still learning the conditions of playing to a recording microphone which is even more nerve wracking than playing to a live audience!.

So, here is that final edit along with a stills montage on YouTube

Now for the slightly less polished "raw" file which the edited clips are based on, which was played unrehearsed in my study room at home, using the GarageBand app on my iPad, so it's not perfect (also my first attempt at recording a full track) but I have included it and the one below to show the process of tidying up a digital recording and what you can do with a low cost app and an iPad. 

Then after the raw track (but before the final version, i.e. the 1st one I listed here) I was familiarising myself with the iPad GarageBand app editing functions.  Thus the third audioclip, uses the track above in which I edited out (basically put markers and deleted the "offending" section) the awkward delays caused by the numerous page turns - it's a big problem with music publishers, they don't always realise that we can't memorise every piece we play so 90% of playing is by sight reading in our case!  Some page turns sounds were left in the final version because they didn't take away from the performance and were in time with natural "rubato"* phrases in the score. 

So after the Mozart, I will be adding other clarinet music recordings as I create them (when I get time during evenings and weekends).  

June 2011 update: I am taking a brief detour from Mozart to record other music in the clarinet repertoire.  Please check out my other projects through my Hive space on this website.

  *Glossary: Rubato (for those non musicians amongst listeners) means literally "stolen" in Italian, in the musical context it means you take a bit of time on a particular short phrase in the musical line where it is right and for effect to do so. It's sometimes perceived as a momentary slowing down before the normal speed of the music picks up again.  It's usually at the discretion of the player how obvious the rubato is.

(101 People appreciate this)