Chuck Israels wrote:
On Jul 26, 2006, at 1:25 PM, John Howell wrote:
German recording engineers could all read score and instead of saying
something like "something didn't sound right just before the repeat"
they'd say "there was an Ab instead of an A natural on the 3rd beat of
measure 49"!
That has been my experience working in Germany and in Holland, but it
still leaves many questions unresolved vis-a-vis esthetics and balance.
I wrote a short solo for the lead trumpet player in the Metropole
Orchestra, marked it mf, and it was beautifully played and in just the
right proportion in the performance - coming from the back of the band
with a little distance to the sound. It was just as I imagined it would
be. But the recording engineers "corrected" the balance so that the
solo sounds up front and pretty loud, taking away the intended effect.
Stuff like that happens all the time, score reading engineers or not.
All too often, the engineer has the last word, and I find in my own
case, that learning to hear the balance in a mixing session is quite a
different exercise than hearing it from the poduim. It takes me many
times through before I even get close to a recorded balance that
simulates the effect I believe I am getting in a performance, where
there are spatial and visual cues that add a lot to the experience.
I find that all this technical prowess makes recordings worse many times
rather than better.
Instead of 100s of microphones (an exaggeration, I know) I much prefer
the sound of a group recorded live in an auditorium with two microphones
placed about 30 feet in front of the group. If someone wants to give
the engineers something to play with, put two more microphones over the
group and an extra 2 microphones at the rear of the hall and let the
engineers feel important by mixing those three different sources.
Engineers should go back to being what they originally were, which is
technical servants working to achieve what the artists feel is
important, rather than being elevated to the same level of importance as
the conductor or the artists who are being recorded.
The whole recording world is so false these days (and has been for many
years) that it makes no difference whether the engineers know that an Ab
was played instead of an A-natural. They'll put the 3rd clarinet up
front if they feel like it and nobody can tell them otherwise.
A properly recorded musical work should sound no different in the mixing
room than it does from the podium. Engineers have made it so. Rather
than taking a snapshot to share with others, they have made themselves
way too important in the process for perfection, which I think is the
first place that the recording industry went wrong.
I much prefer listening to live recordings because I know that's how the
groups actually sounded. These days, however, even live recordings are
often re-recorded in the studio to perfect flaws and thus save the
artist's fragile egos, but ruining any chance of actually experiencing
that artist as a living, breathing human being who is pouring their
heart out.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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