Excerpts recording idea
Posted: Sat Jun 13, 2009 12:04 am
Hello, all of TubeNet. I come heavy with an idea regarding the recording of orchestral excerpts compact discs. NOTE: The recordings I am referring to are recordings of excerpts meant to educate their listeners, not for the purpose of auditioning.
I was recently giving a listen to Mr. Gene Pokorny's famous "Orchestral Excerpts for Tuba" CD. A year-and-a-half ago, when I first started getting serious with tuba, this CD was all that I would listen to. Mr. Pokorny has a beautiful sound, great control over the instrument and excellent musicianship. I attribute a lot of my success as a tuba player (though miniscule) to listening to this recording and others like it.
I was thinking, though, about the recording scenario of this particular item. The liner notes indicate that the recording sites for the CD were a couple of churches in Illinois. You can hear in the recording that they are big halls. Big halls like those greatly favor and bolster Mr. Pokorny's already great sound into something even better (Which is what a symphony musician wants, right?).
For all solo recordings (primarily made to entertain the listener) and audition recordings (for employment purposes), that kind of acoustical environment would be perfect. My idea, though, is that recordings meant to educate, like the Orchestral Excerpts discs, be made in acoustically "dead" environments, or, preferably, include both "live" and "dead" versions. A great example of this is the section of the Arnold Jacobs "Portrait of an Artist" CD that includes Mr. Jacobs playing the Carnival, Vaughan-Williams, Czardas and a few others in some small, "dead" area (His studio? I do not know for sure).
My reasoning for this is that the intended audience for this recording, and the one that would probably benefit the most from it, the not-"big time" tuba players, usually don't have access to those types of acoustics, especially to make real musical "work" in. The majority of time, especially for those "job-hunting college students", the real practice is made in a practice room - a small, acoustically "dead" space.
I do not doubt the merit of the "Orchestral Excerpts for Tuba" recording. It can be a terrifically effective learning tool, but I believe that recordings like it can be very much more effective if they were made in an environment that an average listener can emulate (to whatever degree) much more accurately.
So, what say you?
I was recently giving a listen to Mr. Gene Pokorny's famous "Orchestral Excerpts for Tuba" CD. A year-and-a-half ago, when I first started getting serious with tuba, this CD was all that I would listen to. Mr. Pokorny has a beautiful sound, great control over the instrument and excellent musicianship. I attribute a lot of my success as a tuba player (though miniscule) to listening to this recording and others like it.
I was thinking, though, about the recording scenario of this particular item. The liner notes indicate that the recording sites for the CD were a couple of churches in Illinois. You can hear in the recording that they are big halls. Big halls like those greatly favor and bolster Mr. Pokorny's already great sound into something even better (Which is what a symphony musician wants, right?).
For all solo recordings (primarily made to entertain the listener) and audition recordings (for employment purposes), that kind of acoustical environment would be perfect. My idea, though, is that recordings meant to educate, like the Orchestral Excerpts discs, be made in acoustically "dead" environments, or, preferably, include both "live" and "dead" versions. A great example of this is the section of the Arnold Jacobs "Portrait of an Artist" CD that includes Mr. Jacobs playing the Carnival, Vaughan-Williams, Czardas and a few others in some small, "dead" area (His studio? I do not know for sure).
My reasoning for this is that the intended audience for this recording, and the one that would probably benefit the most from it, the not-"big time" tuba players, usually don't have access to those types of acoustics, especially to make real musical "work" in. The majority of time, especially for those "job-hunting college students", the real practice is made in a practice room - a small, acoustically "dead" space.
I do not doubt the merit of the "Orchestral Excerpts for Tuba" recording. It can be a terrifically effective learning tool, but I believe that recordings like it can be very much more effective if they were made in an environment that an average listener can emulate (to whatever degree) much more accurately.
So, what say you?