Day Two

I am not going to lie.  Day Two of the recording sessions did not go completely smoothly.  I guess it turned out fine in the end, but I was feeling quite some anxiety when the morning didn't go according to plan.

I was doing a little playing on the St. James' Yamaha before anyone else arrived and I noticed a squeaky noise that was coming from the pedal.  I tried fiddling a bit to see if I could minimize it somehow, but to no avail.  So I gave my trusty piano technician, Brad, a call to see if he could advise me over the phone.  Just as when one takes one's vehicle in to the mechanic, the problem immediately went away once I had Brad on the phone.  I tried again and again to get it to squeak, but the noise was completely gone.  Sheepishly I insisted that there had been a problem moments before and I thanked Brad for his miracle long-distance piano-healing powers and hung up.  

After a few minutes, however, the problem arose again.  I called Brad back from under the piano and tried to describe what I thought might be happening.  With Larry Davis' help once again, the problem was somewhat alleviated by a bit of WD40.  Again the squeak returned. This time it was producer Earl's turn to get under the piano.  After some tinkering he finally isolated the exact source of the squeak and solved the problem for good.   Whew!

Then it was time to go back over some of yesterday's pieces to get some clean and silent WINDLESS beginnings and endings of pieces.  We were yet to start on the list of repertoire for today, but the clock was approaching noon when we would have to stop during Peter Ryde's Chimes Concert which he gives twice weekly on the Bells of St. James'. We went for lunch to the fabulous York Street Kitchen.  As much as I enjoyed the sandwich, I was feeling quite anxious about having accomplished nothing and here it was lunchtime already.

This tension started to interfere with my focus as we finally got started on today's list of repertoire.  I decided to skip ahead to begin with some slightly easier music so that I could feel at least some sort of satisfaction that at least something had been recorded.  This proved to be a wise strategy and the recording session began to flow along quite nicely.  We again ended a little later than planned, but we managed to record all but one of the pieces slated for today.

Provided we start on time, and there is no noise issue left to plague us, tomorrow should prove to be a fun and satisfying time as we complete this phase of the project.