Recording Session Notes
December 30, 2011
Recording the Manhattan Brass playing Paquito D’Rivera and Wynton Marsalis
Here are some photos of the Manhattan Brass recording Paquito D’Rivera’s “Four Songs For Brass” and Wynton Marsalis’ “Spiritual and Blues.”
The recording sessions took place in April 2009, at the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village of NYC.
Both of the pieces were commissioned by the Manhattan Brass, and are incredible contributions to the brass quintet literature. It’s not often that composers (and huge stars!) of Marsalis and d’Rivera’s stature write for brass, and I speak for brass players everywhere when I say “Thanks!” to the MBQ for getting some great new music into the world.
If you’d like to take a listen to these awesome performances, I’ve included links to Amazon.com and iTunes where you can buy CDs and downloads.
Manhattan Brass “New York Now” – on Amazon
Manhattan Brass “New York Now” – on iTunes
I worked with them to record just these two pieces. This was a project they had worked on for some time, and the other pieces on the CD were recorded at a different time and location, with a different engineer.
Although you can see many microphones set up around the group, the sound you hear on the album is simply from the main stereo pair of microphones. These two microphones are a matched pair of Schoeps CMC6 MK21. We experimented with a number of different mixes and found that with the group playing so well, and on that day in that room- simpler was better.
August 21, 2011
Recording Manhattan Ramble with Mike Boschen
Bove Audio Recording Session Notes
I followed Mike around Manhattan for two and a half hot summer days to make this recording. We wanted to record trombone improvisations at a wide variety of NYC locations. Mike would be accompanied only by the sounds of the city, and would improvise while inspired by the sounds of his environment at each location. Many of the spots had significance to Mike. Some of them we included because we just thought they would sound cool. All the spots were outside; some secluded, some crowded, some popular, some unknown, but all very “New York”.
Mike’s Description of the Album:
Over the course of a few beautiful days in August 2008, I visited several places in Manhattan that are special to me. From 7 am until 3:45 am I improvised something in each place that was influenced by whatever was happening at that moment. I meditated with cicadas and played fanfares to unsuspecting tourists. I played along with buses, helicopters, jets, dogs, a street cleaner, and my own echoes. I sang the sun to sleep and made music with and over the Hudson River. I grooved with the cacophony that is Times Square, and ended the experience with an exhausted subway ride. My good friend, engineer, and producer Andy Bove joined me to distill over 6 hours of songs, sounds, and noises into one 74 minute sonic illustration of a summer day in Manhattan. I offer it to you with pleasure.
The challenge in doing this recording was to record at a very high quality level, capture the environmental sounds, and capture Mike’s beautiful sound; all while staying portable, easy to set up, and running only off battery power. Many of our setups and locations were so different acoustically, we also had to have the ability to mix it back home. While preserving the sonic uniqueness of each location, I had to make some kind of cohesive record out of all these tracks. I used three microphones and two linked Sound Devices 722 recorders to record three tracks – one spot microphone for Mike and a “main” stereo pair.
It was really interesting for me to watch the people walk by. There was very little trouble, and most people just ignored Mike and I. There were a few weird looks at times, but as you can see, the setup was fairly low profile. In Times Square, a few European girls took their photos in front of him. One tiny dog at the 72nd st boat basin was pretty excited at seeing a trombone, but there was one old lady who showed up at the Belvedere Castle and got the award for most disruptive audience member. She yelled at me, mostly. We were recording track 4 at the time. The area of Central Park around the castle is not a “quiet zone”, and open to all acoustic music, but we packed up and moved on.
We made a bunch of nice pit-stops on our journey around the city. Some expert planning on our part enabled our walk to pass right by Grom for some gelato,and made multiple trips to various Le Pain Quotidien‘s for cookies and brownies. Late one evening, we even found a bar nice enough to let us sit near an electrical outlet- me charging my collection of batteries while Mike charged his own batteries with a pint of something dark and tasty.
There are audio samples on the Manhattan Ramble CDBaby and Amazon page, but it’s totally weird to just hear snippets of these pieces. If you think you’d be into it, I’d recommend picking up a copy. This is a recording to sit and listen to all at once. Go on a 75 min journey with Mike.
Here’s a nice review from CD Baby reviewer mick:
“Astounding. Many years ago, my sister found an audio recording on Folkways records called “Songs of My City.” I think it was recorded in the 40s. A man walked around NYC with a tape recorder and described what he was recording: snow on 57th street…. I can’t remember what all of the things were— but it’s a beautiful audio valentine to New York as it was then. [pullquote_left] this is a CD that will lengthen your attention span. [/pullquote_left]This CD is that: natural recordings of moments in NYC, but with unbelievably beautiful trombone solos…or sketches…or sighs… or dances…. on it and around it and with it. It is a duet- of NYC and this beautiful trombone player. Astounding art does so many things that you can’t describe what it does so it’s a little hard for me to review this accurately. But let’s just say that this is one of the most beautiful records I own. It never gets tired for me. It is as beautiful as wind or as natural sounds- it has so much sensitivity to it… so much character… it is so tuned in… see? I’m ruining it by trying to describe it. People have short attention spans these days—- this is a CD that will lengthen your attention span. I’ve stopped listening to CDs but I listen to this. This CD transports me, makes me cry, makes me happy, makes me feel things I can’t explain or express. There are no words to explain how beautiful this is. But that’s why there’s music.”
August 19, 2011
Recording David Sampson’s Breakaway With Ray Mase and Kevin Cobb
Bove Audio Recording Session Notes
Ray Mase and Kevin Cobb, trumpets
David Sampson: Breakaway for Two Trumpets and Electronics
This challenging piece for two trumpets is performed along with a recording of a pre-recorded synthesizer.
The goal of this session was to produce a recording of the piece that musicians new to the piece could play along with- on either trumpet part. So, in addition to making an awesome recording of the compete piece (which is pretty easy to do with great players such as these), our challenge was that we wanted to be able to remove either of the parts and listen to each trumpet part independently. This took some extra planing and a lot of extra work.
In the end, we have three complete recordings. One is a full version of the complete piece (which will be released on an upcoming album), as well as recordings of each of the trumpet parts with electronics so you can play along with either part separately.
One good way to do this, and the way we used, is to overdub each instrument separately using the previous player’s performance as a reference along with the synth track while recording. Unfortunately, you can’t just have them record their parts along with the pre-recorded track or a click, and expect it to work out. With chamber music such as this, the interplay, balance, and subtle relationships between parts is essential.
It also should be noted that this is no easy piece to play. There are complex rhythms all over the place, and many passages require pinpoint accuracy to pull off the compound relationships between the parts.
What we did first was to soundcheck and position both players and all the microphones in the hall until we were happy with the group sound. We were shooting for a spacious, yet present trumpet tone- a sound that would balance the powerful electronic sounds of the accompaniment. A successful overdubbed recording needs to maintain the spacial cues of the players in the space. These auditory cues are what make good acoustic recordings sound “real” to your brain. It is important to get this right. A project such as this also requires very low noise microphones, because the final mix is going to contain each microphone twice (at full volume).
That soundcheck was the last time they would play together.
Next, we decided which trumpet part was most important for each large section of the piece, and recorded that one first. After this, the next player would listen to what was previously recorded while laying down the next part, matching pitch, rhythm, and sound. Not only did they have to match the synthesizer part, they had to precisely match the other person’s interpretation. It is hard enough to play this well when you have someone right next to you, but they actually had to “mind read” someone who was no longer in the room.
We went back and forth, working on interpretation and balance, figuring out which parts should “lead” each section and crafting a musical and emotional interpretation of the piece that was exactly the way they would do it if they were live in concert. Luckily, these two players perform together full time in the American Brass Quintet, are very comfortable playing together, and were impeccably prepared for our session. When one player was recording, the other sat with me and listened to his colleague on stage performing. We would keep notes together and actually did a lot of editing/mixing right then, in order to get the two performances exactly matched.
During post production, I essentially had two complete recording session projects to mix together, one with a trumpet sitting on the left and one on the right. I layered the two projects on top of each other and mixed it together. After editing and mixing, the end result sounds like two people performing in a room together.
This type of overdub recording is frequently done on film soundtrack sessions. An engineer may want to record percussion, for example, separate from the rest of the orchestra. It gives complete isolation without requiring small isolation booths, and helps provide more flexibility when mixing big or unusual sounds. This is definitely not a typical classical chamber music recording technique.
The project was challenging, fun, and filled with some awesome trumpet playing.
Recording available from David Sampson, with purchase of the sheet music. Email David to pick up your copy.
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