I'm not sure where to put this, but maybe some of you "live" players, or... I don't know... whoever has a viewpoint... can give me some pointers.
I've got a choral piece with piano accompaniment that I've been working on learning over the last few months (yes, I said months). Now mind you, this is a WAY ambitious project for me, and it goes something like this:
1.) Get the sheet music (it's and existing piece-- TTBB with piano accompaniment) (DONE)
2.) Learn to play piano
(This is a big one, yes, but I'm working on this--taking lessons and everything!)
3.) Learn to the play the specific piece (it's moderately difficult for a beginner, and in d-flat (ugh!), but after about 3 months I'm very close to "performance" level)
4.) Record the piano part (in sections if I have to) to my DAW. (NOT done yet)
5.) Learn to hack through the pronunciation of the French lyrics. (Oy! What have I gotten myself into!)
6.) Sing all the choral parts, record them, and sync them as necessary. (Ironically, this will be the easiest part for me...)
7.) REPEAT steps 4-6 until I've got a performance worth doing a final mix with.
8.) Mix it.
9.) Unleash it onto the world.
There are many challenges to overcome there, but my current ... delimma concerns how to deal with the metronome. The piece is VERY push-pull in terms of tempo. It speeds up, goes back to tempo, and then molto-ritardandos and a-tempos again and again. It will take me many passes just to create a backing track that I want to sing to that will actually work for the the song, and how I want to express it (and don't get me started on pronouncing it). My question is... do I just ignore the metronome and the tempo setting in my DAW for this piece? What if I want to add some kind of a backing strings track later? How do you deal with this kind of thing O wise Kara-Mooners?
Don't get me wrong. I TOTALLY understand the imoprtance of the metronome and the tempo setting in the DAW. But with this kind of music, I really have NO idea what to do other than... well... ignore it.