Behind the music: Editing the WBC anthems

By now, everyone knows that Japan won the first ever World Baseball Classic. What no one knows, is that the music that graced San Diego’s Petco Park sound system as the players entered the field was being played from a CD; the San Diego Symphony Orchestra was on the field performing, but the amplified audio was pre-recorded (and edited by yours truly).

The day before the final game, the orchestra was recording the national anthems for Cuba and Japan (not knowing who would win), the host country (USA) as well as the entrance music for the parade of flags. After recording several takes of each theme, classical music guru Doug Dillon brought the recordings to me and we started editing at about 9pm Sunday night. He layed out the music scores and worked off his notes from the recording session. Taking a few bars from one take, a section from another, we weaved together the best pieces to create the final versions. We finished six hours later, at 3am Monday morning. Only a few hours after that, the sold-out stadium was listening to the CD I burned that morning.

You can hear the Parade of Flags theme in this video montage from the World Baseball Classic website. I’ve worked on a lot of freelance projects in recent years, but this one had by far the widest circulation yet.