Klarinet Archive - Posting 000397.txt from 2004/07
From: kurtheisig@-----.net
Subj: RE: [kl] Amplification of music (somewhat OT)
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 07:53:21 -0400
I heard Phantom of the Opera in a theatre in San Francisco about 6 years ago. The music was soooo bad because of the micing---I haven't been back--nor do I intend to.
It is a pretty poor musician that doesn't listen to others and balance himself.
We certainly don't need an orangutan twiddling knobs to make us sound better!!!
One of the worst I have seen is a church that put up plastic barriers around the horn players and then miced them all so the knob twiddler could "balance" the group....HE WAS REMARKABLY POOR AT IT!!!
Sorry --I will decline my services!
We musicians MUST speak up! My students CERTAINLY don't need mics!! True a few of them compromise--unfortunately. Why do we cave in to these IDIOTS that make us sound worse????
I will admit that whoever does the sound at the Monterey Jazz Festival is INCREDIBLE! Other than that one venue.....
Musicians stand up and UNPLUG the things!!!
Even my sax Quartet playing authentic rags (not swinging them) in an outdoor setting at a street fair can be heard fine at over a block away with NO amplification--and that is 4 CLASSICAL musicians playing on classical mouthpieces. To DO that I had to go over and UNPLUG the stupid distorter. When I told the soundman we would not be using mics, he changed mics and put one on without a switch! You should have SEEN the fit he threw when I unplugged it after my announcement!!!! We were heard fine!!
My announcement??? "Ladies and gentlemen! Today you will hear fine acoustical music! This is a party! Talk! We are hear to entertain. Enjoy yourselves! At first you will find yourselves YELLING and then realise you don't have to SHOUT over us! You won't have a headache tom'w. You won't have a sore throat! your EARS WILL NOT be ringing. You will have a great time! You will enjoy an experience you haven't had in a long time. You'll hear us fine---so talk, enjoy yourselves and get ready for a REAL treat---REAL acoustic music the way it used to be and SHOULD be--HAVE FUN!" We were heard throughout the ENTIRE Saratoga Village, and we were playing in the MIDDLE of the parking lot---at LEAST 50 feet from the nearest building!!!!
SHUT THE MISERABLE THINGS OFF!!!!!!!
Kurt
-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Krelove <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Sent: Jul 11, 2004 4:47 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Amplification of music (somewhat OT)
> -----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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