Stay tuned for the solo performances from SPAH 1997!

Got the live cassette tape recording of my solo performance at SPAH 1997 (among other things) from Randy Singer, and I’ve started to converting the tape to 16 bit WAV files. The set I played there was about 30 minutes long and included 10 or so individual pieces from my CDs The Act of Being Free in One Act and The Second Act of Free Being.

This is the first time I’ve listened to a field cassette recording in a while, and it’s a reminder of how good we have it now with inexpensive digital recorders. The frequency response and noise floor of cassettes are both much worse compared to the $100 Zoom H2 I use now for field recordings, and the H2 is much smaller and lighter than a top of the line cassette recorder from 1997, with a lot more onboard recording time and operation time on battery. Better is better.

Recording quality aside, the performances are strong. I played a lot faster than I remembered, and there’s a lot of power and precision in the performances. The sound of the room is big and reverb-y, but that’s not a problem for this kind of music. I haven’t figured out yet whether to post the entire performance as a single mp3, or put up individual songs. Maybe both with the first on Youtube and the singles on my website. Stay tuned!