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#281
07-08-2007, 10:41 PM
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Re: Ask a music scene micro celebrity
[ QUOTE ]
Miserere is phenomenal - I honestly think it is better than Sorrowful Songs, and I am not ever a fan of a capella work in any genre. [/ QUOTE ] Just hit Amazon on your recommendation. I realized I didn't really have an excuse not to have it. [ QUOTE ] As for Glass, I agree there too - have you heard many of the 'new' recordings of his - i.e. the Nonesuch re-recording of Einstein on the Beach? [/ QUOTE ] I have not heard them. Although he took great pains to erase the human element of his pieces, one of the great satisfactions of listening to his more demanding pieces is thinking about the poor bastards who had to play it, and the very rare performance nuance that sneaks in emphasizes the real human accomplishment. Digital recording and editing were probably a godsend in the mind of the "pure" composer, in that they allow literally "perfect" transcriptions to be recorded, but I remain more impressed by music actually performed by people. Raymond Scott used to pine for a machine that could play his compositions, and even made a crude electro-mechanical sequencer to play some backing parts for tape recordings, because he was frustrated by the struggling of his band to play to his exacting standards. As it turns out, the struggle is one of the most engaging parts of a Raymond Scott tune. I shudder to think how awful his music would be if actually performed by samplers in perfect lockstep. Conlon Nancarrow embraced the mechanical player piano for his compositions, but he had to adapt his notation and composition to the quirks of the piano, and this is where the tension between composition and performance displays itself and makes his music worth hearing. Take a look at his scores sometime -- they're like somebody shot two barrels of birdshot at a page of staff rule. If he could just type it into a sequencer and have it come out like water, I doubt he would have come up with any of his little temporal innovations like the constant accelerando, or the simultaneous regressing/accellerating lines. In particular, I wonder at what he called his "X-shape," where two themes played simultaneously; one playing forward accelerating in tempo, while another played in reverse, de-celerating, creating a central eddy motif where the two lines synchronize for some time. This "X-shape" must have resulted from the discovering that he could punch a roll and then re-thread it in reverse to punch a counterpart composition. Perhaps he accidentally threaded a roll without rewinding it one day. These little epiphanies are only possible if your band or performance device once-in-a-while occasions accidents, and I am grateful Nancarrow did his work before midi sequencers and digital pianos were available. 
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#285
07-09-2007, 12:19 AM
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Re: Ask a music scene micro celebrity
You are aware that I'm a tuba player. One thing that I cannot stand is when some sound guy wants to stick a microphone in my bell. The sound of a tuba is the sound it makes as it fills a room. Judging from your comments on recording strings, I'm guessing you appreciate where I'm coming from. Apparently, you've recorded at least one tuba player. How do you mike a tuba?
How do you really feel about Urge Overkill? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]
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#286
07-09-2007, 12:56 AM
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Re: Ask a music scene micro celebrity
[ QUOTE ]
How would you feel about working with Nickelback? What would you do to improve upon their already amazing sound? [/ QUOTE ] Man, don't mess with the formula.
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#287
07-09-2007, 01:10 AM
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Re: Ask a music scene micro celebrity
Any idea why no outtakes from the In Utereo sessions were on the Nirvana box? I was hoping to get at least a few alternate takes from the Pachyderm sessions. Do you know if the alternate takes have vocals?
Thanks in advance.
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#288
07-09-2007, 01:37 AM
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Re: Ask a music scene micro celebrity
[ QUOTE ]
You are aware that I'm a tuba player. One thing that I cannot stand is when some sound guy wants to stick a microphone in my bell. The sound of a tuba is the sound it makes as it fills a room. Judging from your comments on recording strings, I'm guessing you appreciate where I'm coming from. Apparently, you've recorded at least one tuba player. How do you mike a tuba? [/ QUOTE ] Attributes of individual instruments can make them easier or more difficult to record accurately. Tuba has about four bummer characteristics, making it a bigger bitch than almost anything short of a temperemental soprano: 1) Low fundamental frequencies correspond to long acoustic wavelengths. These need a large acoustic space to avoid self-cancellation or booming ("wolf" tones). A low E natural is about 40 feet long, and cannot be properly resolved without either a very good bass trap or a large acoustic space, and both bass traps and empty space require real estate. 2) Extremely wide frequency response. Simultaneous with the low fundamental frequencies are a blistering array of higher partials, harmonics and violent transients typical to horns. Picking this stuff up requires a microphone and signal path that can comfortably pass (phase-linear) components in the 30kHz range. That's where the "fraap!" resides. Appropriate microphones are somewhat esoteric, and don't necessarily have a lot of other utility, so investing in microphones appropriate for horn recording is often a marginally -EV business decision. 3)The instrument is physically large, and sound radiates not just from the bell of the horn, but also from the body, and an isolated pickup pattern is not very accurate, so it needs to be recorded from a distance. A distant mic will by necessity be exposed to every other sound in the room, so it becomes not just a "tuba" mic, and the penalty for trying to record a tuba is losing control of every other sound in the session. 4) Tuba players are weird. So how do I record tuba? In a big room, with a ribbon mic (specifically an STC 4038 or a Royer 122) not too close to the bell, through a wide-bandwidth mic preamp (GML most recently) and a separate distant microphone to pick up the room sound. [ QUOTE ] How do you really feel about Urge Overkill? [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [/ QUOTE ] Pretty much like everybody else.
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#290
07-09-2007, 01:56 AM
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Re: Ask a music scene micro celebrity
[ QUOTE ]
My other question that I forgot to ask is if you've ever seen anyone fry a ribbon mike. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img] [/ QUOTE ] We have a couple hundred budgeted each year for re-ribboning microphones. Accidents (and inexperienced freelance engineers) happen.
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Linear Mode
