Klarinet Archive - Posting 000369.txt from 2004/07

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Amplification of music (somewhat OT)
Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 19:49:01 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Benjamin Maas [mailto:benmaas@-----.com]
> Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 3:24 PM
>
> I'll start off by saying it is an exceedingly rare thing that jazz
> performances do not need some sort of amplification. Part of the
> reason is
> the arrangement of the charts that are played these days

Why do arrangers write in ways that won't work acoustically? Incompetence,
carelessness, or a wish to create an electronic sound from the start?

> and the other part
> is because most players are used to performing with "help."

I know this is true, but would the advantage of significantly lower hardware
overhead and setup time be attractive to many groups if the arrangements
were acoustically appropriate?

> Probably the best example of a band that
> I've worked with that doesn't need sound- the
> Clayton/Hamilton big band (forgot to turn the
> system on and it still sounded great)...
> Their charts, though, are very "old school" in their
> arrangements
> and the players are good enough to balance themselves.
>
Given that it was a jazz-based group and not a rock-based one, what is
actually different in the arrangements. I ask this because I've only heard
the old ("old school") bands on recordings and I've never actually heard a
modern pro band playing without lots of electronics.

And I still wonder why (we discussed this once before), in the case of
material that was written before the days when ubiquitous miking was
practical or even possible, the same acoustical environment for which it was
written won't still work. Why, for example, are the balances in Broadway
theaters (and theaters that produce Broadway shows in other cities) so
electronically managed (and often mis-managed)? Before wireless mic systems,
they couldn't have had all those wired microphones trailing cords all over
the stage - at best they had fixed apron mics and maybe a couple of booms up
in the fly area. Did they have even that much in the 1930s or 1940s?

Karl Krelove

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