Over the last week bought a copy of Bill Evans "Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard" and Tomasz Stanko's "Suspended Night", both great records with a similar chamber jazz mood, but the Evans sounds sooo much better, like it's playing in the room. On the Stanko the drums sound like they're in the room next door. Is it just live v studio, or have modern productions techniques taken some of the immediacy our of jazz.
Any thoughts on why this may be or examples of stuff that buck this trend?
Kevin
Posted on: 14 March 2004 by Thomas K
Kevin,
have modern productions techniques taken some of the immediacy our of jazz
I think technically the opposite may be true: Close- ("immediate") and multi-miking make it more or less impossible to present the ensemble of instruments as it would be heard at any one location in a room. AFAIK, the further back you go in recording history the less microphones were used, which often leads to a volume imbalance (and other problems) that can no longer be corrected "in the mix", but a wonderful sense of space -- the spatial cues on the recording are much closer to what you would experience if you were in the room with the band.
Now if you're attending a live rock concert, it won't sound very natural in terms of spatial cures either, but at jazz concerts in small venues you often get "sonic spillage" from the actual instruments (or at least from the backline amps). I went to see the Robben Ford trio in London once and at one point they were playing so quietly you could no longer hear them through the PA, only directly off the stage. Simple recording techniques come much closer to that experience IMO.
Thomas
