Christian Succo and Dr. Will Kimball, Music
As a Music Education Major at BYU and a competent trombone player, I recognize the value and importance of experiencing things first hand. In my experience theory and practice are different. The first lacks a certain depth of understanding and often carries with it false realizations and implications. Due to this, it becomes essential to discover ways of bringing real life experiences to our school and provide ways for students to engage themselves in these experiences. The Vienna Recording Project is a work in progress that will ultimately tap into the need that students have to experience things without ever having to leave BYU campus. I had to travel all the way to Vienna, Austria, the home of music and art, but for the students at BYU, they need only take a trip down to the Eyring Science Center. As a result of this project, trombone students will have the opportunity to play in a setting that imitates the experience of playing in a cathedral or concert hall in Vienna which are places where trombonists played historically (dating back to the 15th century) and where they continue to play today. This will provide these students with a greater depth of understanding in regards to performing on their instrument while honing in on its historical background.
After collaborating with a faculty member and a student in the physics department at BYU, this project has been broken down into five phases and should take up to 2 years to complete.
The first phase involves gathering crucial information that will help us determine how to approach the project. We wouldn’t want to transport equipment all the way to Vienna unprepared.
The second phase requires the gathering, building, and testing of our recording materials. We intend to do a trial run here in Utah with local cathedrals so we can make sure the equipment is working properly. This will ensure that we won’t have any problems when we take it to Vienna to complete the project.
Third, we will send a few people to Vienna, including one or two physics/acoustics students, one trombone player, and possibly a physics professor. While there we will take some binaural recordings and impulse responses in select cathedrals and concert halls; essentially we will capture the reverberations the buildings produce.
Fourth, we will take the gathered information back to BYU and apply it to an anechoic chamber. An anechoic chamber is a room that is specifically designed to cancel out reverberations. When this information is applied, a student may bring his trombone into the room, put on some headphones, and play his instrument into a microphone. The sound he hears will be the sound he would produce if he were in one of these venues in Vienna.
For the fifth and final phase of the project we will present our project to the trombone studio. We will advertise the opportunity for them to come to the Eyring Science Center and have this experience. Along with reaching out to the trombone studio, the physics department will also begin to reach out to other studios in the BYU School of Music so they can find students to help them gather this sound data for other instruments. Because each instrument is different, a different recording apparatus would be required for each individual instrument; we begin with the trombone because it is the simplest and has the least number of variables.
The first phase was to send someone to Vienna to gather some crucial information. For example, how possible is it to schedule appointments with these cathedrals and concert halls? Would they even let us in to do our research? It was also important for someone to go and gain an understanding of the land and the people. How much would we have to travel? Or how do we travel there for that matter? Would the people be tolerant of our research? We also needed to take a dry recording in a cathedral so those working the physics side could get an idea of what they would be working with. These are the things we needed to discover, and I was fortunate to be able to travel to Vienna to gather this data.
While I was in Vienna this past summer, I discovered that it is possible to get into these venues, but not without some difficulty. The difficulties lie within the language barrier and their email response time. When we were searching for a place to get a dry recording most of the cathedrals didn’t get back to us. We realized this was either because of the language barrier, or it was because they were just slow to respond to email. It turns out that one did get back to us eventually. However, the man emailing us didn’t do too well with English. We were lucky though because he did his best to communicate with us, and we eventually made it happen. Because of this experience, I realized it would be good for us to schedule our appointments well in advance. It would also be good to try and collaborate with the German Department for help with the language. While there, I also gained two solid contacts that live in Vienna that would be able to help us if we needed it. These advantages will help us get into a lot more venues and will help us to get everything done in whatever our allotted time may be. While in Vienna, I learned the transportation system very well, and I learned where all of the places are that we would want to record. We also got our dry recording; we were able to perform and record from the organ loft in Peterskircke (Peter’s Church) near the heart of Vienna right underneath some very old trombone iconography (old paintings of trombones). With these things in place, phase one has been completed.
As I contemplate on the potential that this project has, I realize more and more the good that it will do for the School of Music. First, gaining experience in these unique acoustical environments is invaluable to the development of a growing musician. I will never forget the first note we played in Peterskircke. I remember stopping my air and expecting the sound to stop, but it didn’t! It continued to sound as if I had never stopped playing. I was caught completely off guard. It would have been valuable for me to have had some experience with these reverberations before going into that performance. I also think of the historical value of the trombone in particular. Trombones were originally played exclusively in religious settings and were considered to be sacred instruments. As a trombone player, I would love to know how the trombone solo in the third movement of Mozart’s Requiem would have sounded when it was performed in St. Michael in honor of Mozart after his death. This would help me gain a deeper understanding of how to approach the solo which happens to be required on most professional auditions for major symphonies throughout the world today.
Now that I have returned to Provo, we are hoping to soon move into phase two. The project will move forward as soon as we find a new physics student who is interested in continuing with the project (the original student decided not to continue with us). However, the professor over at the physics department, Dr. Tim Leishman, will have the information I gathered and will be able to continue it at any time with my support and with the support of the trombone studio. We are very excited for this project, and we are grateful for the help and contributions which have been provided by ORCA.