…and here they are, finally, the first mp3 recordings of the McMaster Concert Band ever made public. Share and enjoy.<ul><li>1. Celebration … composed by Donald Coakley (3:56) </li><li>2. Soliloquy and Dance … composed by Philip Parker (7:28) this is the good one* </li><li>3. The King of Love My Shepherd Is … composed by Alfred Reed (4:50) </li><li>4. The Fisher Who Died in His Bed … composed by John Herberman (11:08) </li></ul>

  • This is the good one … because it features graduate student David Free playing an extensive oboe solo. In fact it’s basically an oboe concerto. Also, my cheap lavalier mic picked up the oboe quite nicely.

Program notes: (1) The Coakley is a fairly obscure Canadian composition. It hasn’t been recorded very much. (2) Parker is a good one in this batch, because David rocks and because of the way I mic’ed the concert. (3) Reed’s piece didn’t come out to well because of the auto mic gain. (4) I like this piece, and I played crotales which you can occasionally hear cutting through.

Recording notes: Basically it’s not a good recording. I did it with a wireless lav mic (Sony WCS-999) and my DV camcorder. It has 16bit 44 stereo but on the other hand, I couldn’t turn off the automatic sound level. So there’s major distortion on sudden loud passages and the dynamics don’t come out at all. Finally, it was recorded in mono. All in all, given all the technical constraints I think it came out OK.