It's the 10 year anniversary of the premiere of my Arabian themed concert piece, "Ancient Dreams"! I learned so much through the experience of composing and performing in this performance. It was an 18 minute tone poem for orchestra. The recording of the concert premiere was if I recall just stereo microphones with a high end preamp. I also recall that I had microphones at the back of the hall which I mixed in for reverb because the acoustics were nice.
Here is an except:
https://clyp.it/atz2sy3i
Some things I learned:
1. If you perform in the premiere of your own composition, you might want to make your part easier to play because you are extremely distracted on everyone else's parts/mistakes and end up screwing up the very part you wrote for you!
2. It's not as bad as you remember it was.
3. I would do it very differently today but it's not worth changing it. It's part of your record.
4. Be very careful of the dynamics you give to the glockenspiel. They smashed the hell out of the part and were constantly way too loud resulting in me always under playing them afterwords. I HATE how loud they played!
5. It's very important to understand the words of John Adams who said in his blog "Do not be surprised if at the first rehearsal of your music you don't recognize the work as being your own piece". Very, very true. A composer needs to have an out of body experience for the first few rehearsals because it sounds nothing like what you spent the past year writing! Eventually it will surprise you and coalesce. With a great orchestra, it will surprise you! You'll hear things you never imagined!
The composition sounds very good and the orchestration sounds sophisticated and totally professional.
The chromatic passages sound cool. I think I understand the point 5).
