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The New Euphonium - Inaugural Recording Session

recording session

So it's been 23 years.

That's all. A long time.

Last time I played euphonium was in 1987 I think in high school. Well, on May 3th, 2010 this all changed. I fulfilled a life long dream and finally bought a brand new horn of my very own.

Probably foolish to post this so early, but I've only had this horn since May 4th, less than a month of busy weekends and a few hours in the evenings, to get the 23 year old bugs out.....

My senior year of high school, I switched to tuba and actually really loved it. Who knows? Maybe a tuba is in my future too. But you can't deny the beauty of the tenor euphonium sound. The cool thing is, it matches my singing range. Voice was my performance concentration in college, so I have and know a lot of music that sits well with the euphonium.

Here is one of those vocal pieces that translates well. I performed this at a big concert for voice during my sophomore year at UC Davis in 1989. It's Vaughn Williams, Songs of Travel - Whither Must I Wander. Words by Robert Louis Stevenson, however this time, the voice part is played on the horn by me.

Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel - Whither Must I Wander

Euphonium, Hunter Lee Brown

Here I am singing the piece at that very UC Davis Fall 1989 concert I mentioned. I believe I was all of 19 years old.

Vaughan Williams: Songs of Travel - Whither Must I Wander

Baritone, Hunter Lee Brown
Piano, Al McNeil, UC Davis Department of Music, professor emeritus

Another neat alignment of things with the upper video/recording is that I set the piano music with MIDI using samples from a Bosendorfer grand piano. I didn't clean the MIDI up much; I just wanted to get this out fairly quickly but the piano part could use a lot more finese. The audio was recorded with the microphone in frame using Pro Tools LE and a Digidesign 003 audio interface, and the HD video was shot with my Canon 7D SLR camera that does great HD Video. I have Tracey to thank for giving me this camera this past Christmas, and I've only had the new sound samples and Pro Tools/003 since January along with my new computer and office set up. This is the first time all of these elements came together.

I had to manually synch the video with the Pro Tools recorded audio. The Canon camera's audio recording was not used... if you heard it you'd throw it out too. AND as you can hear, I added just a bit of artificial reverberation. So, no, my office/music room doesn't have such a nice, big lofting reverb to it. (The very fact that it doesn't makes it an excellent recording room.) As sound guys know, a little reverb makes anything sound better. At this point, with just about 3 weeks of playing the horn again after 20 years, I'll take all the help I can!

In all, however, I'm happy with this. I have to learn to breath and support my phrasing again, and there are some intonation issues related to breath support and attacks and releases, but I think all of this will come. And, I'll learn the fancy things like vibrato and what-not with time. But I'm amazed that my range so far is coming back. I'm just loving playing this gorgeous horn.

It's a Miraphone M5050, Ambassador Series. Created for and with the direction of Euphonium wiz, Demondrae Thurman. Look him up. He's amazing.