Shaker music sung with flute and Celtic harp: recorded live at four New England Shaker Villages.
All proceeds benefit the Community Music School of Santa Cruz. Recorded live at the Shaker village historic meeting houses.
The school received [+]Shaker music sung with flute and Celtic harp: recorded live at four New England Shaker Villages.
All proceeds benefit the Community Music School of Santa Cruz. Recorded live at the Shaker village historic meeting houses.
The school received a grant to do this recording. Here are Debra's impressions of the trip back East:
Shaker Tour, Summer 97, by Debra Spencer
On this recording tour I learned there is no such thing as silence. Even what we call silence is really the sound of air moving against the space we're in. Every room has its own silence. I know this because after each recording session Barry had to tape a few minutes of silence in that meeting house, so that he'd be able to splice it before & after the songs we'd recorded there. No other silence would do except the silence of that room. Silence in these Shaker villages was hard to come by.
We spent from 9 pm to about 3 am taping in Watervliet, our first village. The meeting house is as big & empty as a gymnasium, with wood floor & walls & beautiful paned windows where we could watch first dusk gathering & then night. Barry picked a spot in the center of the meeting house to set up the microphones, & ran the cords through into the hallway so he could close the sliding doors. He likes to be able to hear only through the earphones & not live, so he can make sure that what's getting on tape is good enough. He doesn't want to be distracted by the live performance. Many years ago the Watervliet Shakers sold their adjoining fields to the city of Albany. Now, across the busy highway from the meeting house, lies Albany airport. All day & all night planes take off & fly right over the building. The room had a lot of reverb & at first we couldn't hear each other very well; we followed echoes instead of original sounds; we lagged behind or sped ahead, guessing. Then after awhile (we did some rehearsing when there were too many planes to record) our ears became accustomed to the reverb & it became clearer which was the sound & which the echo & how far apart they were. We started with the solemn song, an unaccompanied solo, easier to tape than a song involving all three of us. I stood in the center of the meeting hall & waited for a quiet count of five to start singing. No sooner would I get
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