There are times when as an Artist things go, as smooth as silk. Such is the case when I composed “Etude para Usted.”
Besides, in my biased opinion, being a very pretty composition, the thing I find to be the most satisfying is that it was recorded in one pass. It made composing and arranging the piece very fluent. Maybe 4 or 5 takes, at the most, from start to finish.
Inspired by a very personal and moving experience, this composition, performance, and production happened almost simultaneously.
The music tracks (Acoustic Guitar, Contra Bass, Violin, Viola, and Piano) were all recorded together and performed by one person (That being, yours truly).
The separateness of the instruments was achieved primarily by varying the instrument attack times and slight delays. It is most obvious when listening to the attack and swelling of the strings being slightly delayed so as to not wash out the pluckiness of the guitar.
Also, I used slight tuning/detuning of the string voices, from the piano, so they did not mush together.
All of this processing was controlled via a Kawaii MIDI Controller Keyboard via 4 separate MIDI busses.
Aside from lacking some contemporary technical additions, such as multiple position sensors on each individual key, playing this 30+ year old keyboard is still a very pleasing experience. It’s design and flexibility in manipulating MIDI parameters was very much its strength in 1987…
