A few words on recording

I am currently deep into the application process for the next steps in my education. As a soprano, and really as female voice, I have to submit recordings for prescreening purposes to almost every school I am applying too. I was looking into recording studios in the past I have regretted it because of the dead acoustics. The thing that I found really interesting and comical was how much the recording engineers are able to manipulate. I suppose I always knew about certain things like pitch correction and reverb. If I want to sound like I was singing at the Met, they could easily do that for me. If I wanted something a little bit more intimate, they could make me sound like I was singing in the Kammermusiksaal in Berlin. Of course, these things are a little bit uninteresting to me because at this point, not only do I find that aspect of recording a kind of odd, it’s really not allowed in an audition CD. It makes me wonder how much manipulation goes on in a classical recording. Certainly, editing is an essential part of the process. I don’t judge it in a professional CD but it could be seen as less “authentic.” In the August 2008 edition of Classical Singer magazine Eric Cutler talks a little bit about his experiences with recording. He said that it was a place where he felt like he could present the best parts of his voice because of editing. Glenn Gould used to say similar things. Perhaps it is just a different way of thinking about music.