Re: [ARSCLIST] How could anybody ever have thought this was acceptable? Rant

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 25/04/07, David Lennick wrote:

> I've just been listening to a recording of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Concerto
> which keeps shifting between the piano present and the orchestra a
> mile away and the orchestra up close and the piano sounding as if it's
> at the wrong end of a flooded subway tunnel. At no point is there
> anything remotely resembling "balance".
> 
> And no it's not the Horowitz atrocity from the 70s..it's Gilels from
> 1955.
> 
> I mean we occasionally make allowances for historical documents and
> legendary performances that could only be captured on the fly, but
> this was 1955 for cryin' out loud! Did anybody at the time think this
> was a "good" recording? I would have fired the producer, or at least
> demoted him to recording oompah bands.
> 
There are so many recordings with disastrous balance or microphone
placing.

My "favorite" example is the Art Tatum - Lionel Hampton - Buddy Rich
session produced by Grantz. A mic was placed at the same distance from
each musician, and the three sources mixed to mono. Result - the three
musicians are exactly superimposed, making the music very hard to
disentangle mentally.

It would have been so much simpler and so much better to just set up one
mic for the whole group, as would have been done in 1929. That would
give a natural perspective, with each player in a different place.

Practically every mono jazz recording from the 1950s is spoiled in the
same way, but this is one of the worst.

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx