Christmas CD: Recording Session 5

Day Five - What Child Is This
Friday was our last session for the week. It was a very long session, but very productive. Some thought we our energy wouldn't last five hours, but we actually made about six and a half!

Krista and I. Krista got to record with her new, beautiful, rosewood alto recorder for the first time!

Michael checking Noah's mic set-up.

Noah has done a great job with his guitar part for "What Child Is This?". He really looks good with the guitar, doesn't he?

Here are some "behind the scenes" shots of what we do on our down time during sessions when Michael is working.

Mom and Noah played a couple of games of chess...

...Sarah delighted us every now and again with quotes from Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend...

...Krista journalled when she got a minute and Janna read Lorna Doone...

...I studied for a test I had to take...

...and when we were done with vocals for the day we could enjoy something tasty from the snack table.

We are truely thankful for such a successful week! I hope you've enjoyed a peek into our recording life as much as I've enjoyed sharing.

Your Recording Updater ~ the Fourth Rose

Christmas CD: Recording Session 4

Day Four - Lannigan's Jig

On Thursday we had a fun, enthusiastic, somewhat shorter session. We successfully recorded "Lannigan's Ball", the jig we medley with "Song of the Ship".

Janna's String Story!

In all of the eight years Janna has been playing the harp she has never had a wire string (one of the seven lowest strings) break - that is, until Thursday. We were a little way through a demo take of a song when we were disrupted by a startling bang! One of the seven wire-wrapped strings had broken! Everyone stopped, letting out exclamations of surprise. This was nothing like one of the nylon strings breaking with a ding; this was a forceful detonation! And the funny thing is, its all recorded!! Now we're all wondering what string will break next.....(just kidding;).

...Janna changes the string...

The string is not "as good as new", it IS new!

~the Fourth Rose

Christmas CD: Recording Session 3

Day Three - Let It Snow

This is what Wednesday's music scene looked like for me: A half-hour rehearsal, violin lesson (one hour), vocal warm-ups (half-hour), four hour recording session (at which we recorded the delightful "Let It Snow!"), and another half-hour rehearsal. At the end of this long day, I realized that although I was not playing or singing perpetually for these time frames, I spent six and a half hours doing music!!!

~The Fourth Rose

Christmas CD: Recording Session 2

Day Two - Song of the Ship
Our wonderful music coach Terry joined us today! We wanted to try a "live" approach to this beautiful Renaissance piece by recording it all at once with both vocals and instruments. The idea is to capture the energy and vivid realness that is in the music at a live performance. "Song of the Ship" is difficult to sing and so to get a take with all three verses sounding our best- not to mention the instrumental break that goes through the song twice and a short tag ending - is quite a challenge. After about six takes we listened to them all, narrowing down to the best recordings one by one.

This is a picture of our recording engineer's computer screen. You can see where he pasted in the third verse of the fourth take to the first, second, and instrumental verses of the fifth take, with the harp intro from the third take. Does this make any sense??? I'm not quite sure, but Michael (our recording engineer) knew what it meant and that's what counts. Great job, Michael!

"Song of the Ship" was hard to record and as everyone knows, lots of hard work, concentration, and energy expenditure really gives one an appetite. We brought some very tasty (if I may say so myself) turkey wraps for lunch. Unfortunately, Janna was the last one to record any vocals, and so while waiting to do her harmony part she had to watch the rest of us eat without touching the food herself! (We do not like to eat just before singing.) "It really was cruel," Janna says. Above, Janna, having recorded her part, triumphantly takes a turkey wrap.

I feel like I'm really falling into recording mode now. I'm viewing the rest of the world from that perspective. It might appear glassy-eyed or something to most, but that doesn't matter to me. Besides a recording session and rehearsal for tomorrow I made it through biology class, piano class, and a pleasant visit with Grandmother today, and although I feel spent, I'm happy.

~Your dedicated Recording Session Updater, the Fourth Rose

Christmas CD: Recording Session 1

Yes, its true! We are back in the recording studio to record the rumored Christmas CD! I am going to do my best this week to keep you updated on each session, so expect more posts. Yesterday was the first of five days straight in the studio. As we hauled in our instruments and warmed up, the familiar recording "lingo" flooded back to my mind. I haven't thought about takes, volume envelopes, compression, cross-fades, (I know, this stuff sounds strange), DB's, and "pop" filters in so long! I was excited! Recording requires hard work, focus, and lots of energy, but when you are working with great people and love the music it is fun.

Day One - Pat-A-Pan

We consider getting one full song recorded a reasonably productive session, and Monday was no exception, especially since it included set up time. It took about a half hour for us to adjust to the room and start getting a good vocal blend. We laid down the piano and vocal tracks, later "dubbing" in the other instruments. (This makes it much easier for Krista and I, who in some cases start playing right as we finish singing!) Four hours later "Pat-A-Pan" was recorded! A few snapshots from the afternoon...............

Recording involves listening intently to that which you recorded. Here, Krista is listening to a take of "Pat-A-Pan."

Unfortunately, I must also attempt to keep up with my high school studies............even if it means reading my biology text book while standing at my mic for the next take! :)

If you have any questions at all regarding the recording process just post a comment and we'll happily answer!

~ The Fourth Rose

Music Video!

Everybody, please start clapping and cheering! Never mind why, I'll tell you in a minute. Have you cheered for at least five minutes? Believe me, that is not overly long for the event being celebrated. It has taken me over a year to be able to present the video below to you. Well, not this video of course, but a video.

It all started over a year ago when Sarah and I wanted to upload a video of ourselves playing the 2nd movement of Chopin's Concerto No. 1 onto our blog (hopefully you'll see that yet). We spent several frustrating hours waiting for it to upload, then getting error messages from blogger. We searched blogger help to no avail. When we asked our friend, Keslie, about it she advised getting a YouTube account; however, Dad wasn't to keen on that because it was so public. We figured we didn't need to load it that bad and we'd get it figured out someday.....

All future attempts to load videos continued to be absolutely unsuccessful. Another friend recommended a YouTube account as being the simplest route to go, so I finally secured the necessary permission. With eager anticipation, I opened a YouTube account. After editing together a charming video, I clicked on "produce video". Now please understand, this program was supposed to have a simple and headache-free way to upload my video to YouTube. All one had to do was click on this "YouTube" button and follow the steps! I clicked the YouTube option and I discovered that I had to give my approval for YouTube and my video program communicate with each other. I permitted the conversation and clicked next. Then, to my utter horror, my video editing program froze. YouTube was suppose to fix all my problems!

Not wanting to hit one person with all my computer problems, I contacted Sarah's former piano teacher's husband, who had sent us a few of his YouTube videos for enjoyment. His advice proved most excellent. I carefully saved a very small file as an .avi, then tried to upload via YouTube directly. Every ten minutes, I ran to my computer and jiggled the mouse to prevent the computer from hibernating and ruining everything. (Windows Vista is so complicated I can't seem to find where that setting is!) Two days of headaches, blurry eyes, dead brains and sore shoulders later, I present to you our video!

Am I proud? I think I'm just relieved. Please enjoy! (meanwhile I'm still waiting for support to tell me why that little upload to YouTube option didn't work in the first place.....)

~ The Second Rose

Concert with Highstrung!

Highstrung String Quartet opened the concert in a packed sanctuary!

They started out with some toe-tapping Christmas favorites then moved on to some inspiring classical selections that showcased the quartet's talent.


Huge round of applause for Highstrung String Quartet! This is their last season of performing together. Please consider attending their farewell concert on January 11th. You won't be sorry! Info here.


The Bisceglia family all together! We wore the Renaissance costumes we sewed last summer and performed several Renaissance carols.

Mom and Noah had new percussion jobs this season.

Whispering Roses:

the Bisceglia sisters

Kathrina played her new mandolin on Good King Wenceslas.

Many thanks to Terry P. and Mallory and Elsie D. for the photos.

Highstrung joined us for the last two songs. We played an instrumental version of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. We invited the audience to join us for the final song Oh Come All Ye Faithful. The music was absolutely beautiful. It was such fun to play with Highstrung. They are great musicians, talented, energetic and funny. We'll always remember this joint concert!

Group photo! Thank you, Knopp family, for working so hard to make this concert happen!

We were incredibly blessed by the Devine family, who helped with the CD table, refreshments, video, clean up, loading heavy equipment, and more. Thank you so much! We hope to figure out how to load a short video clip on this blog from the footage filmed by Preston D. So stay tuned!

Successful event! Time to relax and have fun with a funny face photo! And just so you don't doubt our reputations, a crazy photo wasn't the girls idea!

Photo Shoot

Here's a link to our friend Kami's Crooked Stream Photography site for some photos she took of us at Pittock Mansion! Thanks, Kami!

Concert with Highstrung: Preperation

Finally, after myriads of emails and phone calls, we had the joint concert with Highstrung rescheduled and we were ready and rearing to go! We started to get a bit overwhelmed as we tried to plan our decorations, set-up, find time to bake our share of the cookies for the refreshment table, and catch up on errands postponed by the snow storm! We finally decided to ask some friends from church to come the day before and help us. Mallory and Elsie were such a blessing! Thursday afternoon, we all mixed up several batches of cookies, and then Mallory and Elsie spent hours baking them while we practiced.

Janna with a tray of cookies.

Sarah mixing up some chocolate mint cookies.

Yummmmm! White chocolate cranberry cookies and chocolate mint cookies!

Thank you Mallory and Elsie for your help and companionship!

Boxes of cookies ready to go!

As we were all settling down for a good nights sleep, Kathrina discovered that our basement floor was covered with an inch of water and more was pouring in. Although we have had rainy days and leaky basements before, we had never seen anything this bad. Soon the water was coming up to even our storage boxes that were on blocks of wood! Mallory and Elsie stayed up with us until past 1 o'clock in the morning bailing hundreds of gallons of water out of the basement. Fortunately, Dad remembered a pump left in one of our sheds by a previous renter. He hooked it up and it worked. In the morning, after less than five hours sleep, we woke up to a dry basement. Praise the Lord!

Mom, Mallory and Elsie set up the refreshment tables while the rest of us set up the sound system.


When the Knopps arrived, we had a rehearsal for the two songs we planned to perform together. It was only the second time we had ever played together. The music sounded beautiful and we had lots of fun working together. Well, nothing more to do. It's time for the concert to begin!