Is it possible to hear your own playing the way the audience does - in real time? And if so, how might this affect the way you play, and the way you practice?
My San Diego Symphony colleague Aaron Blick wondered about this during his graduate studies at USC, as it always bothered him to constantly need to ask others for clarification on how things were coming across at a distance. With the encouragement of his teacher, David Allen Moore, he starting testing a monitoring setup so he could hear this himself.
After some trial and error, he came up with a very compact monitoring “rig” that allowed him to do what he wanted. With this extremely portable setup, he was able to hear his playing from a distance in a variety of rooms, and to learn how to make use of that information.
In this video, Aaron gives some background on how he developed the setup and how it changed his playing. We then try it out and allow you to hear both the player’s perspective and the audience perspective in a rehearsal hall at SDSU. This is a long form “bass hangout” video - Aaron and I try things out, chat, geek out-as many of us bassists love to do. You can skip to the highlights, or just hang out with us the whole ride.
0:16 Introduction to "The Blick Method"
8:32 Quick rundown of Aaron's setup
9:37 Jeremy tests the setup
14:39 Initial impressions & discussion
17:10 Aaron tests the setup (with Jeremy's bass)
18:47 Aaron's impressions & discussion
24:37 Mozart 35 (Aaron)
26:14 Mozart 35 (Jeremy)
31:05 Discussion on Mozart tests
32:37 Bottesini Concerto #2 test (Aaron, with his own bass)
39:29 Concluding discussion on Bottesini tests and distance monitoring
41:37 Quick summary