Practice Rooms (Build Me Up Buttercup)

The practice rooms were probably the most typical place to play music that I recorded in for this project, and yet I think it's up for debate whether what happens in the practice rooms is performing or not. Musicians come to practice here, but recording myself singing and playing a fully finished song blurs those lines. In fact, I think people who practice here question the boundary between practice and performance quite often. Even though the walls are sound-proofed, I could still hear students rehearsing in the other rooms as I was setting up. Perhaps that was unintentional, but I'd consider it a performance no less.

I played "Build Me Up Buttercup" here mostly because it was the first thing that came to mind when I sat down to record, but it seems fitting looking back because I used to play it as an informal "warm up" sometimes when I came here to rehearse more "serious" music, like a part for the Chamber Singers. Moreover, it's fitting because I've wanted to do a cover of it for a while now, and I found out by playing it here that the practice rooms are a fantastic place for recording if I'm planning on layering things and creating a fully fledged piece of music, mostly because the acoustics don't do much to distort my voice at all. The carpeting on the floor and the rugs hanging on the walls ensure my sound gets absorbed the walls, and doesn't bounce, creating a studio-like environment. I guess I'd consider this the "control" group, if this project is an experiment, considering the whole point of the acoustics here is that they're as undetectable as possible.

As for a performance here, it's pretty clear from the small space that a traditional concert-style performance wouldn't work, but like I've mentioned in other points on this map, concerts aren't the only option for performance. After all, isn't a recording a performance? At one point, it was live. If you wanted to preserve the live aspect of a concert, you could easily livestream from here. Plus, the people in nearby rooms might hear you, even though that's against the point of the practice rooms, as they're meant to be private spaces of just that -- practicing. But if all else fails, are you not performing for yourself?

Image courtesy of the Kenyon Thrill