Recorded more today. It's cringe-inducing to listen to, but gives me a really good idea what I need to work on - everything. Sound. Dynamics. Hitting the right notes. Hitting the right notes at the right time.

I downloaded audacity today so I hope to play around with that and see what I can do with what I've recorded.

Prelude 1: Worked on getting placing cleaner and faster. Basically playing 2 and 3 groups of notes over and over. Yay. I want to record this thing, darnit.

Prelude 2: Seems like it will be easy technically, but I'm not sure I "get" it.

Passacaille: meh. And that "meh" means I just didn't feel like working on it. It actually sounded pretty good.

Experimented with recording again today. I'm borrowing a Zoom H2 microphone recorder from a friend. It's a really good tool for me to see/hear how much more work I need to do. I'm not sure, though, how accurate it is at capturing the sound I'm getting. The mid-range in my harp comes across incredibly loudly - louder than the bass and high ranges - even when I think I'm playing them p. I've experimented playing the same piece (Bochsa) with different mic configurations and the mid-range is always loud. The best set-up I've found though, is having the mic about a foot away on the right from the base strings with only the back mics on (the 120° setting), and either med or high gain.

I played (I use that term very loosely) the first couple pages of Zarabanda today and I could hear some of the dynamics I was trying to get across, despite the louder mid-range tones (and the slips and fumbles and clangy pedal changes).

I think the conclusion is that I need to practice playing to get a good sound on the recorder, and see if that translates into a good sound for performance.

Then I just played a whole bunch of stuff because I didn't feel like working. :)