Maybe it depends on where you are hearing the lute from. If you are
in the audience, a lute sounds one way. When you are sitting behind
the lute, playing it yourself, you hear it another way. Perhaps the
question in the engineer's mind is, do I record some distance away,
the way the person in the audience hears it, or do I record it inches
from the body and soundboard, the way the player him/herself hears it.
Brad
Quoting Edward Mast <[email protected]>:
I think my point about lutes being 'enlarged' in the recording
process could best be made by referring to specific lute
recordings. Comparing Jakob Lindberg's recordings of Dowland
(reissued on Brilliant ) with Hopkinson Smiths recording "Dowland: A
Dream" on Naive, I hear considerably more reverberation on the
Smith recording than on the one of Lindberg. At the same
approximate volume, Smith's instrument sounds much larger (to me)
than Lindberg's. More importantly, Lindberg's instrument sounds
more natural to me than Smith's; more like what I'm accustomed to
hearing from a lute played live. To be sure, the recordings of
both instruments underwent some electronic processing before being
transferred to CD. My subjective impression is that Smith's
received more added reverb than Lindberg's. That's what I hear in
the Vice Nisee video/audio and - perhaps(?) - what Suzanne also heard.
Ned
On Jul 22, 2010, at 6:37 PM, howard posner wrote:
The lute would necessarily be amplified and there would necessarily
be microphones; that's the nature of electronic transmission of
sound. If it sounds too loud for you, turn down the volume on your
computer. If it then doesn't sound loud enough, turn the volume
up. Repeat process until it sounds just right.
On Jul 22, 2010, at 3:05 PM, Edward Mast wrote:
I agree with Suzanne, both about the sound and the playing. I've
made this observation here before; the tendency of recording
engineers today seems to be to make lutes sound as large as
concert grand pianos.
Ned
On Jul 22, 2010, at 11:36 AM, Suzanne Angevine wrote:
Was it the acoustic that was lush? I almost had the feeling that
it was an amplified instrument and was looking for the cord or
tiny mike somewhere. But it was nice playing.
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