Spring is coming to my part of the world! I know this should go a bit faster, and with cleaner trills, but what the heck, spring is here!

(A special thanks to Chris for pointing me to Scarlatti, and to my daughter who bought me the urtext for Christmas!)

Joachim

Scarlatti - Sonata in C Major, K159

Joachim,

Overall I quite enjoyed this and thought your rhythm generally seemed crisp and consistent. For me, your tempo, according to your conception, was perfectly fast enough, or at least it convinced me (I think tempo can partly be an illusion, a tempo that's held sounding faster than a faster tempo that's vacillating). So anyway, I think you captured the relentless, razor-sharp edge of Scarlatti's music well.

I did note a few points that could be evened out -- for example the fast, climactic scale passage was uneven/missing some notes. Also, you seemed to drop a couple of the notes in the downward broken triad at the end of the exposition and its repeat. As you suggested, some of your trills maybe weren't optimally clear, although many actually seemed quite good to me as well. Certainly no big deal at all about these. They are just suggestions that could IMO improve the polish.

But again, the rhythm and musical direction in your playing are very nice to hear. Thanks for posting this.

Joe

Hi,
This piece sure does sound like spring. Where I live we are having a bit of summer already (very unusual!). Anyway, I was going to put this up, but then I saw the bit-rate. 320kbps is way too high and we request that recordings stay under 192kbps. Can you please convert this file and re-submit? Also, we use the Kirkpatrick numbering system with our Scarlatti recordings. So this one would be K159. One more thing - your tags. The file name should be: scarlatti-k159-parrow and the title should be: Scarlatti - Sonata in C Major, K159. Genre should be: classical

Thank you and I'll put the file up once these changes are made to the file.

A good recording of this well-known Sonata. Like Joe I noticed a couple of tiny issues that could be improved but nothing really important. I could
imagine a little more playfulness, it's just a little relentless. The only thing that really bothered me is the ugly break (cut?) between the first and second parts. If you can hear that yourself, maybe you could fix that, if you still have the original waves ?

Thanks all! I'll fix the tags and bitrate and see what I can do about the splice (there are two but only one is ugly) in a few days. Yes there are a few details that could be evened out but I'm not sure I'll re-record it - no matter how much work I put into this there will always be details. I guess I rely on you guys to tell if it is good enough. It's true I opt for relentlessness rather than playfulness. This sonata can go either way but to me it is rock-n-roll!

I'd also appreciate your opinion on the sound since I'm now recording in a new way. I find it a bit thin in the bass, but that may not matter very much in this particular piece - what do you think?

Here is my resubmission:
The ugly cut between A and B is no longer there.
I changed bitrate, filename and tags as requested.

I'd still appreciate comments on the sound - it will affect how I do recordings. The mic is about 1m from the back end of the piano - perhaps that is too close?

Joachim

Ok, thank you - those are beautiful tags! This is on the site now.
Regarding your sound - I think it is fine, although it sounds like you did not apply any reverb and perhaps a little may sound nice.

Hello Joachim,

Nice pacing. Why not do a bit more with the dynamics, i.e. shading some of the repeated phrases.
I would also suggest a bit more staccato off the keys and if I am hearing it as pedaling, a bit less pedaling.
I think the piece is coming along nicely.

Kaila

Very competent playing! Enjoyed the music a lot and also, I tweeted to advertise the recording.

Thanks!

Agreed I could do more with dynamics, in fact I tried to but it came out more in my head than on the recording, I was carried away and lost some control. I use no pedal at all except at the downward cascade in LH at the end of the sections.

About reverb, I am a complete newbie in audio processing and use audacity - is there some simple way to do it there?

Joachim

Sorry, I just saw this....

I used to use Audacity when I first started recording and yes, there is a simple way to add reverb in that program. You do have to be careful that you don't overdo it, though, which can result in getting a strange sound. I think I have a list of Audacity settings given by several members a long time ago, but I don't have access to that document right now. However, I'd be happy to look for it if you are interested in that information. Just let me know....

Thanks Monica, any help would be appreciated. I tried to look for reverb in audacity but found nothing. I tried google and found a million hits and don't know where to begin If you have pointers that would be great.

Also, is there any way to change the title of the post? I guess it should be K159 rather than L104.

Joachim

Well, I thought I had saved my old Audacity settings information. I know I had them as recently as two months ago, but I did some house-cleaning in my files and figured I didn't need that information anymore, so I deleted it. Argh!! I'm very sorry, Joachim. And since it's been a long time since I've played with Audacity, I don't remember that much about it, except now that I looked around the Internet, I found information about that you need to download a 'reverb' plugin and the one that is recommended is called GVerb. Here is some information about it and also some nice settings that are similar to ones I (once) had from some of our members.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=GVerb

Again, I'm sorry I could not be more helpful, but hopefully this will provide some assistance.

it depends, Monica: the newer Audacity comes already with the GVerb. At least I have it on my home computer, where I have the Beta version of Audacity (the other one will not work with Windows 7.

Oh, that's interesting!

@So, Joachim, you may already be able to add some reverb. And the settings that the Wiki link offers should steer you in the right direction.

@Richard - do you use similar settings in your recordings (providing you do add reverb...)?