Klarinet Archive - Posting 000350.txt from 2004/07

From: ormondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: RE: [kl] re: clarinet to saxophone
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 13:05:07 -0400

Chuck=A0Currie wrote:

> In my opinion, no acoustical instruments need
> mic's unless playing a hall with very poor
> acoustics, seating over 1500. Audiences are
> brought up with home electronics and live pop
> music that is so loud that they have forgotten
> how to listen.

There no argument that mic'ing can be, and often is, overdone.

But on the other side of the coin, when the likes of Dave Brubeck comes
to town with every instrument mic'd (properly), you have to wonder
whether the audience has forgotten how to listen or whether the music
truly sounds better when it reaches the audience's seats?

Your comment makes me think of the days when I worked in a shop where
almost everything weighed more than 500 lbs per item, and we had neither
a fork lift nor a pallet jack. But we were young then, and we had an
accumulation of heavy-walled pipes and timbers and ropes, and we knew
some tricks about balancing things. Then one day we were offered a
used forklift and a pallet jack, and the boss bought them. Gone were
the days of knowing how to tip a 500-lb barrel of oil on edge
single-handed and roll it at a 45-degree angle across uneven terrain for
500 feet or so.

A few years later, none of us (myself included) could understand why we
had been so foolish for so many years to do without mechanical help.

I feel the same way about mic'ing. Once again, I don't disagree that
mic'ing can be overdone --- just as any instrument or composition that
you chose to name can be played 'wrong' in the first place.

But I also feel that it's 'wrong' to put all of the blame on uneducated
audiences who have "forgotten how to listen". Audiences should not be
condemned because their imagination and/or education doesn't supply the
'missing' elements of sound that didn't actually reach their ears.

...fwiw and ymmv and imo....

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