We were fortunate enough to attend the first Waukegan Band Festival on June 16, 2007. This event was held at the Stiner Pavillion, right on the shore of Lake Michigan. The day was beautiful and warm, with a little wind.

With the permission of the organizers, I took the opportunity to record all five of the bands that performed. I'm still in the process of turning the recordings into CDs. This was only the second live performance that I recorded using my Zoom H4 Handy Recorder with Audio-Technica PRO 37 microphones. The recording quality, IMHO, is generally extremely good-when the wind wasn't blowing. I'm finding that eliminating wind noise is very difficult and has to be done "before the microphone." On this day the only windshields that I had available were the small foam screens that came with the microphones; they weren't up to the task. Nevertheless, I think you'll enjoy the recordings.

You're probably more interested in listening to some of the recordings than reading my ramblings. So, here are the recordings, presented in order of appearance. Some technical notes follow.

U.S. Navy Band Great Lakes conducted by their Director, Lieutenant Joseph E. Dolsak:

1. Introduction
2. Star Spangled Banner
3. Hands Across the Sea
4. Folk Song Suite
5. Country Gardens
6. Irish Tune from County Derry and Shepards Hey
7. Sabre and Spurs
8. America The Beautiful
9. Heave Ho, My Lads, Heave Ho
10. Armed Forces Tribute
11. Stars and Stripes Forever

Illinois Brass Band conducted by their Music Director, Dr. Ryan T. Nelson:

1. Trailblaze
2. Dunlap's Creek
3. Appalachain Folk Song Suite
4. Shenandoah
5. Beautiful Colorado featuring Tom Runty
6. Hoedown
7. Mountain Song
8. River City Serenade
9. Barn Dance and Cowboy Hymn
10. American Civil War Fantasy
11. Hail to the Spirit of Liberty

Chicago Brass Band conducted by their Director, Dr. Colin Holman:

1. The Wizard
2. Overture to Peter Schmoll
3. Holiday Samba
4. Legends in Brass
5. All I Ask of You
6. Confection for Brass
7. Theme from Mission Impossible
8. God Bless the USA

Waukegan Municipal Band conducted by their Director, Tom Gillette:

1. Star Spangled Banner
2. March Op. 99 - Prokofiev
3. Festive Overture - Shostakovitch
4. Armenian Dances - Alfred Reed
5. Concert Etude Op. 49 - Goedicke featuring Kay Crowley
6. March from Symphonic Metamorphosis - Hindemith
7. Amazing Grace - arr. Frank Tichelli
8. As Time Goes By - arr. Warren Barker featuring Beth Marshall, Vocals
9. Noisy Wheels of Joy - Eric Whitacre
10. Finale from Symphony # 1 - Kalinikov

Northshore Concert Band under the direction of their guest conductor, Daniel J. Farris:

1. American Salute
2. Second Suite in F - Holtz
3. Canterbury Chorale
4. Gershwin Medley
5. Freelance March
6. Selected movements from Carmina Burana
7. America the Beautiful
8. The Stars and Stripes Forever (unavailable)

Please note that these are now all MP3 (320Kbs) format files and are therefore only somewhat large (between 3 and 24 MEGAbytes each). You may want to simply save a copy on your computer and play them locally.

While the recordings are generally good, I did have a few technical difficulties, all hardware and attributable to "the loose nut at the controls," and unwanted environmental noise. These included:

• A recording level problem on the right channel during the US Navy Band Great Lakes' performance. I was able to overcome most of this problem with Audacity and I think the recording is quite listenable.
• My batteries died during the last song played by the last band, Northshore Concert Band's performance of Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever, just before the piccolo solo. Therefore that song does not appear in the collection.
• There are quite a few seagulls that call the Waukegan harbor their home. Their "singing" is present throughout the recordings.
• The gentle breezes that we enjoyed sound like gales in the microphones. Since it is virtually impossible to eliminate this noise/effect in post-processing I didn't even try.
• Audience applause generally recorded at very low levels. I think most of the people there thought they were in a church and filled in the back of the park first. I had the microphones reasonably close, probably about 25 feet in front of the bands. Thus the audience was quite far behind the directional mics and their applause sounds quite thin. Trust me, they were much more enthustiastic than they appear. Also, since I, personally, don't like to listen to a lot of applause on recordings I've generally faded it out to a length of about 4-5 seconds, generally about a third to half the length of the original applause.
• Inter-service rivalry is evident from the US Coast Guard hellicopter's appearance while the US Navy Band Great Lakes was performing.

I'd appreciate your comments. Please feel free to use the Contact Me link above.