Putting it together for Craig Westendorf

Today Dan spent a little time with Arizona School for the Arts director, Craig Westendorf assembling tracks on to CD's for submission to the Arizona Music Educators Conference.

Craigs ensemble is sure to impress and we wish them luck in recieving an invitation to perform.

Arizona School for the Arts

This afternoon Dan was on-location at the Arizona School for the Arts recording their girls choir for their end of year CD. Once again Craig Westendorf has out done himself and exceded our expectations for what a high school choir can acomplish.

Editing Arizona School for the Arts

Today Dan spent a couple of hours editing with Craig Westendorf from the Arizona School for the Arts. In all, 8 tracks were edited and 2 were able to be used without any modification for a total of 10 tracks for the Mixed Choirs Upcomming CD.

Today’s material came from last Fridays session where Mike captured their Mixed choir.

Editing with Craig Westendorf

This evening Dan spent some time with Dr. Craig Westendorf, choral director for Arizona School for the Arts editing material from last fridays recordign session.

The editing went about as smooth as it could go. Craig was well prepared, and his accompanist Sue Westendorf is extremely consistent.

We edited 5 tracks for an upcoming CD.

All Saints Recording

This morning Dan was on-locationa at All Saints capturing a few short works for their upcomming CD project. Dan will meet with Scott youngs this next week to edit and get tracks ready for mastering.

Scott Youngs

Today Dan was in the studio with Scott Youngs, music director for the All Saints Episcopal church in Phoenix, Arizona.

Scott had some material he recorded a few years back that we transfered to our workstation so we could listen to the material for an upcomming CD project.

We will be at the church with the All Saints group next month to record some new tracks to add to the CD.

Mastering All Saints

This afternoon Dan met with Scott and Mastering Engineer Dave Shirk at Sonorous Mastering to put the finishing touches on the project.

As usual, Dave did a wonderful job and gave the project a nice final polish before being sent for duplication.

Editing with Scott Youngs

Today Dan and and the All Saints Choir Director Scott Youngs spent a couple of hours editing the recording sessions from the past 2 weekends.

Fortunatly, Scott is a pro when it comes to recording. He knows what he needs to get, when he needs to get it and how to get it. By the end of the sessions, we were as confused as anyone as to how it would come out. Today, Scotts talents shined through as everything fell neatly in to place.

We edited 9 tracks, with a 10th track that required no editing.

Tomorrow, Scott will take the editing tracks to Dave Shirk as Sonorous Mastering, and from there it will go to duplication for a holiday release.

All Saints Session Two, the world gets smaller

Today Dan was back with Scott Youngs and the All Saints Choir for the second and final recording session for their upcoming holiday CD.

Before the session began, I had the opportunity to chat with the musicians Amy and Ben. Turns out that the percussionist Ben, was a roommate with our good friends Joe Goglia and Aaron Morales. Both Joe and Aaron have been on staff with Dobson High School for several years. Ironic that of all the years and parties, our paths have not yet met.

Another familiar face at the session was our good friend Erik, also known as Conan from the Conan Musical we have been working on for the past several months. Erik was one of 4 soloists that lend their wonderful voices to the choir from time to time.

The choir performed well. This group made up more of the seasoned members of the All Saints Groups.

This project will resume tomorrow for an editing session with Scott to finish it up.

All Saints, Session One

This afternoon, Dan and Mike were on-location at All Saints Episcopal church for a recording session with Scott Youngs and his children’s choir. The cathedral at All Saints is a wonderful room to record in. In fact, the parish has spent about one million dollars to make the room sound as it does.

Today’s choir consisted of 50 children, along with piano, organ, flute and percussion accompaniment.

This is the first of a 2 part recording. The next session will take place a week from today, where we will add sections from the adult choir.

Karl Schindler's Ghost Voices & Kendra D'Ercole's Wie Die Blatter des Herbstes Herabfallen

Tuesday Mike and Dan were at Paradise Community College to record works by composers Karl Schindler's & Kendra D'Ercole's.

The evening did have some interesting challenges to it, the first work, Schindler’s Ghost Voices: Songs from a Cemetery, used a choir in costume and a chamber ensemble in the orchestra pit. Unfortunately, the Paradise Community College Theater was not designed with me in mind so we had to get creative. Since there was a live audience, we were not able to place microphones in more traditional locations. Instead, we used the bi-directional ribbon microphones and had one side facing the choir, while the other was facing the chamber ensemble.

For D'Ercole's work, Wie Die Blatter des Herbstes Herabfallen, we had to reset, and accommodate a larger ensemble that was placed entirely on the stage.

Both works were enjoyable and received well by the audience.