MENU

© 2017 Andrew Bove. All rights reserved.
loading

trombone

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.

CD Baby

Amazon

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.”