Live recordings....

[tfarney]

"For the opposite extreme of Village Vanguard's messy low-tech glory

 

Tim, I learned about your sarcasm (as you told yourself), but may you be serious about this one, of course this is not true. I think at least one respectable Blue Note record was taken there, and it does sound good to me.

No audience ambiance to be heard though. :-))

(although the audience was there; 26 this time hehe)

 

Peter

 

PS: And I own some more albums taken there. They sure are ok."

 

-- No sarcasm intended. I was referring to the Bill Evans Trio album being discussed in this thread, "Sunday At The Village Vanguard," not the venue or every recording ever made there, when I said "Village Vanguard's messy low-tech glory." I shortened the title of the album to "Village Vanguard." Sorry if that was confusing.

 

Of course, relatively speaking, everything recorded in 1961 was somewhat low tech, though I suspect, as I explained in my earlier post, that the ride cymbal that bothers you in "Alice In Wonderland" is just a mic placement issue. Regarding your opinions that this record is one of the "lousiest recordings," that the cymbals and audience are "fake" and that the drumming is not "intelligently" played, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. In fact, I guess you'll have to disagree with 30 years' worth of jazz musicians, critics and fans. We are all, of course, entitled to our own opinions. In this instance, yours is pretty unique.

 

Tim

 

[ldolse]

I saw someone mention one Mapleshade release, but really any of Mapleshade's catalog fits this bill, though there isn't an audience in any recordings I know. All of their recordings are single take with two microphones feeding into a heavily modified two track tape rig. They go into detail on the website on their recording philosophy.

 

I believe they've got some MP3's you can download, which they recommend converting to WAV/AIFF to check out.

 

[ldolse]

I guess they do have a bunch of live stuff:

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/main/live_main.php

 

Pretty much every album has a full song download, so it's easy enough to see if it's something worthwhile.

 

[PeterSt]

I did not check the other albums people kindly mentioned in this thread (but I guess I will), but I actually only know abouth this Bill Evans and Pawnshop recordings that make the audience explicit.

 

If course the latter is subjective already, but it is exactly what I mean to say : it could be that those records of which we tend to say "wow, you can even hear the glasses and talking and all --> what a good recording that is !" ... is just about explicitly taking the audience.

 

But let's think about this somewhat more;

 

Imagine yourself being in something that looks like a somewhat larger bar. There are your guys. They play their heart out for you. The drums determine the (SPL) level when amplification is in order, or otherwise play softer in order to let the other guys hear what they do. Anyway, this is not so soft at all.

 

Personally I never saw audience people trying to shout to eachother to overvoice the musicians, already because it is no nice thing to do towards the musicians.

I said shout, but these recordings showing the audience talking is not about shouting. This is talking at normal levels.

 

To compare we could look at a dinner restaurant with live music. Only when this is about a piano (wing) which allows itself to be played softly, this allows people to talk to eachother at reasonable levels.

 

In the latter case I can imagine talking people being on the recording like that from Bill Evans, and even somewhat louder I guess. But in the case where drums are involved this cannot be so I think. They should be shouting. In fact, they should not be talking at all.

 

Call it paranoia, but it may explain why I (and us all) have many live recordings, but only the applause is heard on (nearly) all of them. The others, and let's have The Pawnshop as the better example, are not explicitly good recordings because of "being able to even hear the audience", but that just something has been done about that explicitly. And why not, because it indeed creates the ambience this thread started about, and whether that is fake or not is not important to the listener as long as the listener digs it and thus enjoys.

 

Peter

PS: Sorry for my poor english, which somehow seems to express here largely. Must be the subject somehow.

 

[PeterSt]

MP3's you can download, which they recommend converting to WAV/AIFF

 

This must be the most special advise of the week !

:-)

 

[shenzi]

Returning to the more general theme of the thread ...

 

A live recording I enjoy is one by Ofra Haza, live at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Lots of audience ambience, a good recording and a knockout voice. I think it is on one of the German labels but here's the Amazon link:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Montreux-Jazz-Festival-Ofra-Haza/dp/B00028F7X0/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1234522118&sr=1-10

 

[tfarney]

Peter,

 

You have roughly dissected a butterfly's wings and, completely missing her beauty, are only happy to shout that her symmetry is an illusion. I hope someday you find a hobby that better suits your personality.

 

Tim

 

[Ashley James]

As a general rule I dislike live recordings, though I agree they often produce the best performances because of the interaction with an audience. The problems are that they are often made with mike splits from "presence peak" PA mikes that ruin the sound and worse than that, solos last for ever and the audience encouraged to join in!

 

Having said that, I do really enjoy recordings that have been made to sound real. I used to visit Crescent Studios in Bath that was run by David Lord. He was an MA in Music and one of the first to really understand the Fairlight synthesiser and he's produced albums for Jen Michelle Jarre, Peter Gabriel and INXS to name a few. He'd been asked by the BBC to provide a sound track for Chaucer's Tales, that there were dramatising and that required Medieval Instruments. David did his research, created appropriate samples and composed suitable music. He played it to me and it was astonishing because it was as though there was a row of musicians in front of me. Id defy anyone to tell that it was entirely electronic.

 

Experiences like this have convinced me that a good stereo image is most of the battle and some ambience helps, that most records achieve this and than most comments about bad records may apply to replays systems. It's all to easy to assume that what we have is as good as it gets, simply because you're used to it.

 

[jcbrum]

That's a good post Ashley.

 

IMO......

The best live recordings are made in "studio style" with the main information coming from a very high quality stereo pair of mics. With a large room or sound stage, it is necessary to use "fill in" and "spotlight solo" mics as well, leading to a multi channel master with perhaps eight or sixteen tracks.

 

These must be sensitively mixed down to two tracks in post production, without losing sound-stage focus or ambience. Therein lies the recording engineers "art". The "skill" is in placing the mics correctly in the first place so as to allow the resources to become available for the final mix.

 

This fine combination of "skill" and "art" is rare, and many never achieve it despite best efforts.

 

JC.

 

[tfarney]

But in 1961, that technology was not available. Everything went straight to two channel, if not mono.

 

Tim

 

[cfmsp]

 

 

Tim,

 

you're probably aware of these, but just on the off chance that you haven't, definitely check out Cowboy Junkies Trinity Sessions and Trinity Sessions Revisited.

For the later, buy the versions WITH DVD for a video treat as well.

 

Both are well recorded, although without actual audience.

 

For audience included, they have another called 200 More Miles, which is NOT as well recorded if I remember correctly.

 

clay

 

 

 

 

 

[zettelsm]

Seems like some folks are listening to the technical aspects of the recordings, some to the music. . . I prefer the music, personally.

 

If you want live, and lots of it, check out any of the thousands of free flac and shn downloads of the Grateful Dead's concerts. Some stunning live sound and great music to be had for the downloading.

 

Audience recordings in the '73-74 time-frame in particular capture the energy of the crowd interacting with the band, the Dead's famous "Wall Of Sound" PA system, and of course, the music.

 

Steve Z

 

[Ashley James]

Although some people are obsessed by their equipment and seek "audiophile recordings" to show it at its best, I don't get the impression that is the case on this thread because contributors are talking primarily about recordings they love that they think give the impression of being "Live".

 

I also think that certain types of recording can be unpleasant enough to spoil good music that you might otherwise enjoy. By this I mean negligible, dynamic range, harsh confused/congested sound, washing line style stereo image and periodic cessation of music to give the impression of high volume. I wish I could remember some of the tracks people have brought here that are in this category, but I know from U72 who sometimes posts on here that even Fans who are not into hi fi don't like them and are complaining.

 

However the point I was making was that we enjoy and recorded music more if it gives the illusion of being real by being three dimensional and giving a sense of being performed in a reverberant space. An example is a track that I've had to dem today by Kosheen called Overkill. It's electronic music and a voice that could have been done entirely from software on a laptop, but it is high quality and it satisfies this criteria. I mention this because 79 pence (or US equivalent) will buy it and hopefully illustrate my point.

 

[jb8312]

Dianee Reeves "In the Moment" is one of the best "live" recordings I own or have heard...the twist is that she had a live audience brought into the recording studio. So the engineers had the control they love and the artist had the audience to feed off, which you can hear Dianee loves!

 

A must have recording....which I have used as a reference for at least 5-7 years

 

John

 

[Ashley James]

Tim - was the chap who recorded and produced Buddy Holley's records using a three or five track Ampex or did they appear later. I only ask because Jazzers tended to take recorded sound quality rather seriously and used the latest and best they could get, so may have been using the same by '61.

 

[tfarney]

You might no better than I, Ash. I thought the first commercial multi-track recorders were introduced in the mid-60s, though pioneers like Les Paul were layering tracks much earlier, of course. It certainly wasn't common in '61, and it certainly is not the issue on Sunday at the Village Vanguard.

 

Tim

 

[PeterSt]

Can you share some recordings that you do like?

 

Well Chris, it took me 5 months to run into an album -regarding the subject of this thread- which I think is very genuin : Jimmy Smith - The Boss.

 

The 1968 (Atlanta) audience is annoying as h*ll throuhgout, but at least the mikes seem to be on stage here.

Jimmy Smith is as good as ever (as is Geore Benson on this one).

 

Peter (always good at raining on one's parade when he plainly disagrees ;-)

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks Peter.