Why musicians fear the recording studio
8 June 2009
Most people assume professional musicians are confident people – particularly in the recording studio where there is no live audience and mistakes can be corrected.
But while some performers have little difficulty adjusting to the process, others have struggled. Some have even gone as far as developing 'phonophobia' – a fear of the studio.
Despite recording being a regular part of their work, few musicians ever have any training in it and many classical musicians struggle to adapt to a working environment which can be far removed from that of the concert hall.
Terence Curran, a DPhil music student at Wadham College, Oxford, has made a study of classical musicians in the recording studio and has adapted his research for two radio programmes on BBC Radio 4. The programmes, entitled Performing to the Red Light, allow listeners to go behind the scenes at recording sessions and to hear interviews with musicians and producers about their experience of the recording process.
His findings are far from what people would expect. Musicians he spoke to described a need for stamina as they might have to do 10 takes of the same difficult passage. Others felt a loss of control in having to take instructions from a producer and others struggled without a live audience in front of them. Unlike pop musicians, they have the added pressure of reproducing work that is already composed and in many cases, has been recorded numerous times before.
Terence Curran said: “Performers find recording difficult as their training and experience prepares them for the concert hall where they know they'll be performing to a live audience at a given time. In a recording session they may be recording in the morning or the middle of the night and without an audience or any of the rituals of concert performance. And instead of giving their all in a single performance of a work they may be asked to stop and start to repeat passages of music. It’s very different for pop musicians as they often use recording as a means of composing.”
In the first episode broadcast last week, various musicians talked about the challenges of recording and their early experiences of it as listeners followed a young soprano, Ilona Domnich, making her first recording.
In the second episode, which is broadcast tomorrow (Tuesday 9 June), musicians including Kathryn Stott, Stephen Hough and members of the Takacs Quartet talk about how they work with producers and others when recording.
The second programme is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 13.30 on Tuesday 9 June, with repeats at 15.30 on the following Saturday. The programme will also be available on BBC iPlayer for one week after first broadcast.
For more information or to arrange an interview with Terence Curran, please contact The University of Oxford Press Office on 01865 270046 or press.office@admin.ox.ac.uk