On Jan 1, 2005, at 11:10 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Even competent ones cannot overcome the basic flaw in this system. I played in the pit of the first B'way show to use this system - "Promises, Promises." Phil Ramone was the sound designer/engineer. Phil is hardly inept but, to my ears, it was a disaster. Those seeking further discussion of this whole "amplification" issue can find the article "Department of Lesser Amplification" on my web site.
Good essay, Chuck. One-sided and polemical, of course, but that's exactly what it was intended to be.
I agree with a lot of what you have to say. We had a good and growing jazz program here, both instrumental and vocal, until a series of incompetent state administrations and idiots in state government trashed the state budget, and universities had to deal with immediate and crippling budget cuts. A good program, as I said, but I had to stop going to any of the performances. Even the vocal recitals, which were done in a 300-seat Recital Salon with an excellent acoustic for classical recitals. With a jazz trio of acoustic grand, bass and drums, every performer was so heavily amplified that it hurt my ears and I had to leave. There's no question but that that was abuse, abuse of the music and of the audience.
Same thing with our jazz band concerts. An ensemble that grew up to balance acoustically in ballrooms was festooned with so much amplification technology that I, again, couldn't stand the sound pressure level.
But I would also argue that there are situations in which sound reinforcement can be considered an improvement, and others in which it is, for better or for worse, necessary. I know, it's easy to argue that performances shouldn't be attempted in such situations, but when there are good reasons to perform in those situations the technology has to be used, and the question becomes how to use it effectively. An extreme situation is one like an Olympics opening ceremony, where the first consideration has to be how to overcome the time lag over long distances. It gets awfully tempting to use studio pre-recording in that kind of situation, because trying to do it live, even with the best amplification equipment, presents problems that in the past simply couldn't be solved.
Personal history: I directed The All American College Singers shows at Disneyland (summer '78) and Walt Disney World (summer '79). Those were the only two shows by that ensemble or by the professional Kids of the Kingdom ensemble that were NOT done with prerecorded vocal tracks. I understand management's reasoning: a guest might see a show only once, or might hear part of it while walking by, so there can never be a bad show. So, prerecord it (and remember that these were movie people, who deal with illusion on a daily basis). But there's always a choice of how much live sound and how much track to use. At Disneyland, where the choreographers basically supervised the shows, they used about 90% tracks for the Kids of the Kingdom. At WDW, where the head of live entertainment was, himself, a former studio singer, they used about 30% tracks, and the singers were choreographed to allow them to sing everything live.
More personal history: When the first (Wurlitzer) electric pianos came out in the late 50s, I hated them. I hated the tinkly sound that came nowhere close to the sound of a "real" piano. (I also hated having to lug one all over the Far East on tour with a small unit of the U.S. Air Force Band!) It wasn't until I heard what Chick Corea was doing with the Rhodes, later in the '60s, that I finally realized that the electric piano wasn't just a poor substitute for an acoustic piano. It was a brand new instrument that produced sounds quite different from those of an acoustic piano. Once I accepted that, I had no problem with them.
The same exact thing is true for the use of amplification by a jazz singer. When it's done simply to make the singer loud, it's wrong. But when it allows the singer to produce sounds and subtleties that are new and different from what an acoustic singer can produce, I can accept that as good music making. And please note that I'm speaking strictly about jazz at this point.
There has never been a singer better at using a mic properly and musically than Sarah Vaughn. I've backed her show, and had a chance to watch her work. She had a mic position for every pitch in her wide range and for every dynamic on every pitch. Her use of the mic was graceful and choreographic, and the sounds produced smooth and unified. Granted, I'm talking about one of the best of the best, but who else should be a role model for young singers?
A mic reproduces what it hears. (And yes, the system is going to introduce distortion, no matter how good it is, but that isn't my point just now.) It is going to hear subtlties in a voice that can't be heard at a distance. That changes (note, changes, not necessarily degrades) the sound of that voice. As I've always put it, a $2,000 mic will make a good singer sound better, because it picks up positive subtleties, but it will also make a poor singer sound worse, because it picks up negative subtleties.
Operatic vocal technique developed to allow the singer to be heard over a full orchestra. A good opera singers is, vocally, a world-class athlete. But it is too often a brute force approach that destroys vocal subtleties. The idea of a jazz, pop, or rock singer using operatic technique in order to sing acoustically is simply too ludicrous to imagine! A good jazz voice is a different instrument from an operatic voice, and jazz singing has used amplification since amplification became available in the 1920s. The mic is part of the vocal production for a good jazz singer, and for a sensitive pop singer as well.
Getting back to electric pianos, during the '80s my touring college show ensemble kept running into pianos that were in sad shape, some of them unusable, so we decided the only way around the problem was to get an electric. We used a good-quality Roland, which may have used sampled sounds from good acoustic pianos, and it gave us the quality and consistency we needed. Later, playing in a backing orchestra for a good jazz trio, I realized that a good electric piano can sound just as good as a good acoustic grand that is amplified through a sound system, even though it can never equal the sound quality of that same acoustic grand played acoustically.
I toured as a member of a pop vocal quartet in the 50s and 60s. We always used mics unless we were in a very, very small situation and singing a cappella. But we used ONE mic. That means that we were self-mixing our blended sound, because that one mic drew us close together. (Actually during the last few years we were together, we carried a dual mic holder that could be screwed onto a regular mic stand, giving us a little better pickup pattern, but we NEVER considered doing what vocal groups do today, each singer having a separate mic and depending on the sound guy to create the balance and blend.)
With my college show ensemble I used different miking for live shows than I did for recording. In the studio, I got my best choral sound with the singers standing in a semicircle facing a pair of excellent condenser mics turned 90 degrees from each other, with the business ends almost touching, and not too close to the singers. Simple, very natural stereo pattern, good blend and balance because they were achieved acoustically.
On stage, we had different goals to meet. With a hot 12-piece showband behind them (literally!), the singers had to be close-miked. We started the season by establishing regular couples, based in part on height (so they could share a mic with the boy not having to slump and the girl not having to stretch up), and in part on voice quality and volume (so that fading their mic didn't have to mean losing one of the voices). I spent lots of time working on vocal balance and blend in rehearsal, but emphasizing what it FELT like when it was right, since they could not hear their own balance and blend over the showband on stage. Soloists used one of two wireless mics kept downstage left and right. Monitors were optimized to let them hear what they needed to while keeping the volume as low as possible. The monitors in the showband, allowing them to hear the singers, were tightly focused spot speakers. And we trained our sound techs to watch the overall volume level. If even one little old lady complained, we weren't doing it right!
Bottom line for me: the available technologies need to be used when they need to be used, they need to be used with good taste and musical goals, and they should never be used as an end in themselves. They can be abused, and often are. But they can also be used to enhance the music, and that's when they should be used.
John
-- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
