At 11:31 AM 1/18/2005 -0500, you wrote:
A couple of months ago I was at a series of live concerts and I started
wondering if there has been a fundamental flaw in the way we capture
sound -
either analog or digital.
Jim,
I think that you hit on something that some of us have "known" on one
level
or another for a long time. Perhaps the best example of that is my friend
Don Ososke who owns two microphones (a matched pair of B&K/DPA omnis) and
he does some of the most stunning recordings that come close to
re-creating
the live experience (typically from the perspective of the conductor).
One group he records doesn't use his services for their CDs because the
producer wants a more "produced" sound.
I think some of John Eargle's recordings on Delos come close to this, but
he uses outliers, etc. Don uses two mics. Period. He doesn't have a mixer.
I started recording in the 1970s and I'll admit to using a soloist mic,
but
generally my recordings were one pair of mics for the whole thing.
Yes, you have to use a good/great acoustic environment.
Many people don't understand what they're hearing when they hear something
like this, however.
I think there was a comment on this (or another) list about a von Karajan
recording of "Sacre..." with the soloists appearing to move out in front.
This is taken to extremes in the art of someone like Ed Green who mixes
many of the TV "Big Show" specials. If the camera is zooming in on the
oboes, the oboes are boosted. Don't get me wrong, Ed does great stuff. The
producers love his work. It's a different style from what Don does. Both
sound interesting. It appears that this style of "spotlighting" to solo
line was done in the von Karajan recording in question. It's not "wrong"
it's just a different approach to making music.
I wonder what percentage of listeners haven't spent time listening to real
live music--and, today, what is live music? For example, the concert hall
in Fort Worth TX has an augmented "sound" where the reverberation is
electronically enhanced.
I spent much of my 20s (in the 1970s, ok) attending several performances a
month at Lincoln Center (one of the advantages of working within walking
distance of the place) and worshipping and recording at St. Thomas Church
on Fifth Avenue in NYC. I also attended services and concerts at many of
the other grand churches in NYC, including St. John the Divine, St.
Bartholomews, St. George's where CBS recorded E. Power Biggs, etc.
One of the interesting experiences I had was when I attended one of the
early recitals of the beautiful von Beckereth (sp?) tracker organ in Alice
Tully Hall at the Julliard School in Lincoln Center, I was extremely
disappointed. To me, that wasn't how an organ was supposed to sound. I
found it uncomfortable. The room was so dead. Organ's aren't naturally in
dead rooms.
Now, we move on to folk music. I've attended many folk concerts in more
recent years, but, unfortunately, many of them were listening to the
performers over JBL Eon PA speakers or worse (or sometimes better). This
is
the technologically simple end of amplified music--certainly not a "wall
of
sound" just a way for one voice and a guitar to be heard by a hundred or
so
people.
These performers rely on the PA system. While I think they could be heard
in some of the house concerts I attended with perhaps 50 attendees, still,
there was the ubiquitous PA system.
It's rare to hear live music of this (or most other popular) genre(s)
without intervening electronics.
Cindy Mangsen and friends recorded Cindy's first album at WFMT, with Rich
Warren (the other one) engineering. I restored it a couple of years ago
and
it's lovely. Two mics, everyone balanced around it. One (or more) of the
songs done in one take. Cindy and her husband Steve Gillette (one of the
writers of "Darcy Farrow") now work with a computer and still produce
lovely music, but it's different. Not better, not worse, just different.
Perhaps one way of describing the difference is "layered" vs "depth."
Another aside. I went to the Hollywood Bowl precisely once in my 21 years
in Southern California. I heard a symphony orchestra. It was like
listening
to a high-end home entertainment system in a noisy room. It wasn't live
music to me. I was as disappointed there as the organ recital at Alice
Tully Hall.
Of course, if one goes to a Britteny Spears concert, one gets to view the
artist mouthing to a voice track off a sequencer. So, how do people who
like Britteny Spears's music get to hear real live music as calibration?
This whole discussion is societal as much as technical...but I'd better
stop there.
Good thread, Jim! I'm not sure ARSCList is the correct place for it, but
still, a good thread.
Enough rambling for the moment.
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Vignettes
Media web: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
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