James and Family

i've been playing around with GarageBand -- the software that comes with my little Mac (see previous post 'mini me'), and the same software that I use to create our church podcasts. I am enjoying my discovery of multi-track recording. so I thought I'd share a recording of Non nobis Domine that I did today that took me just about 30 minutes to complete.

Non nobis Domine


some things I noted as I recorded and listened to the end result:

• this piece was taught to me using ATB (alto-tenor-bass) voicing with the optional fugue (tenor), which is how I performed it in the recording. I believe this piece is usually SAB voicing.
• i'm not a bass, so my bass part is consistently off key, and I kept running out of breath.
• i caught a tenor part off key
• because this was a multi-track recording, with each voice recorded separately, it was difficult to blend with the other voices (because, of course, I couldn't hear them while singing). The nice thing about singing with others is the ability to hear and match the other voices in the group. It's also hard to match crescendo-decrescendo parts.
• you can hear my breaths
• i found the tenor part most difficult to sing today -- surprising to me, since i've always been a tenor
• as I was just going by memory (no music in front of me), I couldn't figure out how to end the piece. so the parts don't end at the same time.