RECORDING AND MIXING

Tonmeister Martha de Francisco directed the recording and mixing. The recording process was complex, from the careful placing of multiple microphone arrays designed to capture the most complete initial sound possible, to the final mixing of each program, in which sound and reverberation had to be carefully balanced.

After preparing the virtual rooms (2004-2007), the actual recording sessions (ten in total, each lasting one full week) took place almost back-to-back during one intense period of six months, from April to October 2007. Then, after months of editing, Prof. De Francisco and her team of graduate student assistants carefully mixed the edited sounds in each of the virtual rooms, adjusting the individual characteristics of each instrument with the acoustical characteristics of each room. This final stage took an additional three full months.

One byproduct is the recording of a short Andante for Musical Clock on each of the seven instruments, mixed according to the acoustics of each of the nine rooms. The format of Blu-ray allows for a matrix of rooms and instruments, whereby the user can freely navigate from one room to the next, or from one instrument to the next, mixing, matching, and comparing, for a total of sixty-three possible combinations.