Chris Rutkowski, Composer/Pianist

To follow this thread from the beginning, follow this link.

Step 1: Assembling the best takes of the Concerto recording into the best compilation possible. Basically, this involves cutting the takes up into the best performances of any given passage, then gluing them together into a seamless whole. The length of the segments varies greatly, sometimes only a beat long, if an attack point was better in one take than another.

This is one of the most common applications of hard disc recording programs, and easy to do in Logic. For me, I find Logic easier to work in than Pro Tools. Segmenting and trimming audio regions in Logic is intuitive and comfortable, as is finding good places to merge audio files. Cross fading between the audio regions that are selected is essential, and is very elegantly done in the program. Often I’ve had a cross fade rejected by PT, but not once in Logic. A very passable comp of all three movements was accomplished pretty quickly.

Here’s a link to a decent comp of the first movement, “Rage“.
Here’s one to the second, “La Luna D’oro”.
I’ll leave the audio of the third movement for a future post, as I’ve already taken the first steps in enhancing the recording, and like the result better than the original.

As the recording was mixed down to stereo in the recording process, nothing could be done with balance-at least not easily. This will be the subject of the most ambitious element of the project-adding virtual instruments to the audio recording to address dynamic imbalances. The problem occurs when a click track isn’t used in the original recording, therefore there is no bar ruler in the recording file itself. Using a click track was one of the revelations when I returned to the recording studio last year. Playing jazz with a terrific rhythm section and a click seemed counterintuitive and intrusive, but it is extremely useful when editing the recording, and especially so if you want to add sequenced instruments.

Using automated volume allowed me to adjust dynamics between sections, and went a long way to enhance climaxes and movement toward them. But adding a bar and beat structure to the audio was needed in order to correct imbalances between in the audio by adding synthesized instruments. That will be the subject of the next post.