Recording Stuff - How Not to Beat Yourself Up About It?

[Essyne]

I have been recording and recording and recording the same piece and cannot get it where I want. What do you do when choosing which recording to go w/? I have to send it in for a college thing, so it's a bit important, but all I can hear is "this note missed here, a hair sharp in that measure, but I fixed it, so that should give me points."

Is there such a thing as being too much of a perfectionist? Do the judges really want a "perfect piece?" I know, I know, "there's no such thing" - but it's KILLING me! Have any of you ever judged something like this? (it's for a college summer program).

~A Bewildered Essyne~

[rachfan]

Hi Essyne,

I think we all suffer from this problem when making room recordings.  The problem is that as pianists and musicians, we strive for perfection, but being human we can never attain perfection, as you already know.  So we work hard to get as close to it as we can.

When I make recordings, I usually do a few, then select the two top candidates, compare those finalists, and pick the better one.  Someone else might say this is choosing the lesser of the evils.    There is a lot of agonizing over this though.

Then something odd happens.  Every time I listen to that chosen recording, my brain creates kind of a jamming sound in my ears that obliterates the mistake.  That goes on for several days.  But a day comes when I clearly decide to keep my ears wide open at that moment, no matter how dreadful and terrible it is.  Well... I'm always astonished that the error is very insignificant and barely even noticeable, yet it had been creating all that angst and grief!  From that moment forward, I can listen to the recording with greater confidence that others will enjoy it.

I believe that we tend to magnify our errors until they become disproportionate to reality.  Again, we need to remind ourselves (even though we already realize it) that we cannot be perfect.  Also, one person's perfection might be different from someone else's perfection--it's a relative concept.

If you've narrowed down your selection to the recording that you consider to be the best of the lot, then that's the one you should send to the college.  The fact is, the judges aren't perfect either.  I think they'll be mostly concerned with interpretation, musicality and musicianship--and if there's a bit of personality in the mix too, so much the better.

Good luck on that!