We tackled Give it What You Can first. Tough tune, somewhat because of my chart (which looked a little complicated when sight-reading), but mostly because of my difficulty with transposing the bari part from concert pitch. Ouch. Things got really bogged down. I sucked real bad. Perhaps I should have practiced these things before I tried to record them? Hmm? Getting all the parts down for this took two and a half hours. Four horn parts (alto, tenor 1, tenor 2, bari) plus some of the alto up an octave.
From there, things accelerated. Sneakin' Sally--easy. Sailing Shoes--yep. I finally got in a groove.
The last tune of the evening was Hey Julia. We decided to replace the female vocal parts with a pair of clarinets. Not a big deal, though I playing something up a whole step but down an octave on clarinet requires some brain power. As we began recording the second voice, all of the sudden my head exploded; I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't remember what I was doing, what the transposition was, how to play. Everything in my head was screaming AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! and I somehow managed to play without directly thinking about anything--sort of the mental equivalent of "hold still for just a second." Whew! With that, the session was over. Made it!
In the final one, we'll do any touch ups and add the solos (2 alto, 1 tenor). No transposing!
