The Great Recording Disaster

April 19th, 2005

Observation: Recording a CD is FRUSTRATING!!

Hypothesis: I spent the entire morning trying to record a CD for an audition I want to take with the West Point Academy Band. Before they invite you to take the audition you have to send them a CD of your playing, a resume, and a full body picture (to make sure you meet the physical requirement). As usual, I procrastinated, and missed the deadline (it was last Friday), but I e-mailed the guy and he gave me an extension, but said it HAD to be in by Wednesday...which is tomorrow.

Data Collected: I don' t have a full body picture of myself, so I had to ask a friend to take one with his digital camera. He took it backstage after a concert we did, and I didn't realize what a dump it is behind all the dazzle and razzle of a concert hall. It looks like I'm in a wearhouse that has just been victim to a tornado. I guess I should have picked my background a little better. No biggie, the important thing was the CD.

So I was doing my recording, and finally played a take of my solo that I was happy with. Really happy with. As soon as I finished it I said, "Yes! That was it! That was the take!" Then I went to check on the recording equipment, and I realized the damn thing had stopped recording a while before!! It only recorded 7 minutes of my playing! Argh!!!!! Anyway, I turned it back on again, and tried to record the rest of the pieces and then my solo again, but they just didn't come off as well as they had earlier. The recording is riddled with me swearing and yelling during the music. I had to edit out things like, "I missed one [bleep] note! One [bleep] note!" and "Damn you, Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!". I'm pretty sure comments like those wouldn't sit well with an audition committee.

Analysis of Results: Now it may not have been the ideal audition CD, but it was still pretty good, so I was gonna send it anyway. My friend helped me out with transferring all the music from mini disc player to real CD. But...he forgot to put in the beginning 7 minutes...which had the best first half of my solo. So I decided to wait for this morning for him to send it to me over the internet. But when I got it the thing kept skipping beats...which is of course not good. I thought it was because he sent it as an mp3 file. So I got it again as a wave file, and the same thing is happening. So at this point I began to realize that the problem doesn't lie with the mode of delivery, but rather with the source...the mini disc player. I was screwed.

Conclusion: I don't have a recording of the first half of my solo. I suck.