Making videos for the church was fun, but it was when I discovered the Acapella app for my phone that my creative imagination really took off! Acapella [sic] allows you to record several performances at once and superimpose them one on the other. It also allows you to begin a session (which the app calls a “collaboration”) and then send it to someone else to add their part. As long as they have an iPad or iPhone, everything’s pretty straight forward. You just plug in an earbud or put on headphones to hear the metronome and the other track playing, and do your thing.
Here are a few of the collaborations I did for my own amusement (they’re pretty well all me performing with me), along with some miscellaneous personal stuff.
Villano (Gaspar Sanz) — Sam Milligan loved this piece, he included it in Medieval to Modern Volume III, and for the wedding of my friends Claude and Daniel, Sam arranged it for two harps.
Fanfarinette (Jean-Philippe Rameau) — Canadian music lovers will recognize this as the theme song from Jurgen Gothe’s CBC programme “Disc Drive”. I made this arrangement years ago, and just found it the other day. Fun piece 🙂
O Vierge tutélaire is my husband’s favourite song. When I had this Hallelujah Harp in the house for a few days and wanted to have a record of its sound, that was the perfect demo piece.
Mikel 38 review – I purchased a new harp in the fall of 2020, and decided to make a short video showing the process of getting the harp from the airport, unwrapping it, bringing it up to tune, and talking a bit about its particular features.
Bach G major Concerto, BWV 592 This has got to be one of my favorite pieces of organ music – along with the G major Prelude and Fugue BWV 542 (hmmmm, maybe there’s a theme here). It’s so cheerful and happy, I love playing it. It’s a challenge for me because I’m losing the feeling in my hands and in my feet, so I can’t play nearly as quickly as I used to. This performance was recorded in two slices: manuals on Monday, then pedals on Tuesday, then glued the whole audio into one on Wednesday. It’s frustrating to not be able to play as accurately as when I was young, but I’m determined to keep on playing as much as possible. The wonders of modern technology help keep me happy.