Learning to Fall

Oh great. I'm not ready to record, not at all.

Not that I can't play the parts. I can. And not that I'm a stickler for doing things "the right way." And not even because I'm a respecter of idiomatic (if you aren't going to play a line the way a bass plays it, then why aren't you saving time and bother and just doing it on keyboard in the first place?)

Point being, technique does show. And this is a piece where it shows. The bass part, for instance, is just too exposed.

And it informs me just how much of a beginner I really am that I didn't even know how important muting is on the bass. How much it is an essential part of technique. So I'm trying to learn those finger tricks because I can totally hear the difference it makes in how the part sounds.

The trumpet is at a similar crisis. I've been blowing past little warbles in my tone, calling them a lapse of concentration or something that is unlikely to spoil the final take. Except they aren't. They are signals that my slotting is insecure, and basically my embouchure is wrong. And as I'm working on that, I'm more conscious of flaws in my tone.

(What really nailed it is falling exercises; basically, bending a held note up and down my whole range with either the half-valve technique or with the mouthpiece alone, no trumpet. And I've got spots where it burbles and breaks up. Not good.)

Again, this is stuff I didn't hear when practicing. I'd hope I would have heard it when trying to do the final mixdown. I'm pretty sure my listeners would have heard it in any case. So just as well I'm catching it now.

Just means I've got weeks more learning of basic technique before I can roll tape.