Creating a rubato layer cake: performing and producing overdubs with expressive timing on a classical recording for 'solo' piano

Abstract

This paper reports on some of the outcomes from a larger UK Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project on Classical Music ‘Hyper-Production’ And Practice As Research – a project that sought to create radical reinterpretations of the classical repertoire through record production. In this example, the two authors of this paper, Emilie Capulet and Simon Zagorski-Thomas, were acting as pianist and producer respectively with a third researcher, Andrew Bourbon, working as engineer. The world of classical music has, in the vast majority of cases, sought to emulate the sound of the concert hall on recordings. In this case study from our project, a pianist and a record producer (both also academics) sought to explore the creative possibilities of transferring techniques from popular music to the production of classical recordings. Through the use of Actor Network Theory (Latour 2005; Law 2007; Callon 1986) as a method of analysis and Practice As Research (see for example Borgdorff 2006) as a mode of experimentation, we examined how both performer and producer explored the conceptualisation and practice of creating recorded music. The pre-production and recording sessions were either filmed or recorded and excerpts from these were used to examine the development of various performance techniques through this process of experimentation and discussion. For example, on pieces involving rubato, we explored a variety of techniques for synchronising multiple overdubbed performances where individual lines or parts from a piece for solo piano were staged or processed differently to others. This involved experiments working ‘by ear’, working with a guide track and with click tracks constructed in a variety of ways, and ‘by sight’, working with a video of the guide performer’s hands. The article begins with a description of the theoretical background to the study, examining the creative possibilities of this approach, discusses the ramifications that this has for performers, discusses the practical problems and then draws some conclusions and suggests some possible future work