Yet Another Recording
Industry Philippic
Listening to Ray Kimber's fabulous recordings of students,
faculty, and guests from Weber State University was one of the high spots of HE2003, as far as I was concerned. I brought the two-disc set home
and have continued to listen to it in the weeks since the show.
What's interesting about this is all the things that the
recordings aren't. They aren't complete works -- or, in many cases, even complete movements.
And, for the most part, the performances aren't by well-known artists -- in fact, I have
no idea who any of them are, since Kimber's notes don't identify them beyond generic
labels ("Guitar & Vocal," "Male Chorus"). After all, Kimber put
the disc together primarily as a demo disc for his IsoMike acoustic-microphone baffle, not
as a commercial release.
But Kimber's demo disc puts most commercial recordings to
shame in its goosebump-raising sense of dynamics and aliveness. The most obvious
reason for that is Kimber's refusal to use compression. It's not that compression is evil,
of course. There's a place for it in recording -- Ringo Starr's cymbal sound owed much of
its distinctive character to more than a touch of it, as engineer Barry Diament has
pointed out.
That's compression as an artistic choice and is no
different from choosing to use a certain microphone, musical instrument, or location
because of its sound. The compression I'm so upset about, far from being a
"choice," seems to be more a ubiquitous mindset within the recording industry.
Prevailing wisdom has it that compressing the audio signal helps it "punch
through" the background noise when recordings are played on the radio. That might
even be true if every other recording being played on the radio weren't similarly treated.
And then, of course, most radio stations use compression on
their signal, so after the dynamic range has been stripped from a song in the
production process, it's further emasculated when broadcast. The result is like making a
copy of a copy after setting the photocopier to LIGHTER. Both times.
In the classical-music world there's a different reason
most commercial recordings sound so dead: the relentless pursuit of perfection. Now, you
may be asking yourself, What's wrong with wanting to be perfect?
Nothing, of course. We all want to be as perfect as
possible when we create art. But I've heard far too much potentially great music neutered
by the artist's obsession with not hitting any wrong notes. In fact, if I wanted to make a
risky generalization, I'd say that more audiophile recordings have been ruined by overly
cautious music making than by bad performances. A musician of my acquaintance who
has made quite a few recordings for audiophile labels told me about a project where the
engineer took three days to set up the microphones, leaving only five hours of actual
recording time. With two major compositions to perform, all my friend could think while
playing was "Don't screw up!"
That's not a mindset conducive to greatness -- in fact, it
all but guarantees a middle-of-the-road performance.
It doesn't take a situation as extreme as the one my friend
found himself in to suck the life out of a recording, however. When I assisted John
Atkinson in recording the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival back in the late '90s, I had a
chance to observe world-class musicians both in performance and in recording sessions.
What was interesting was the gulf that lay between the two -- at least in the minds of the
performers.
When it came to performance -- at least of familiar works
such as the K. 285 Mozart Flute Quartet, say -- the musicians would spend several
hours rehearsing together over a day or two (they'd come in familiar with the score, of
course), then show up on the evening of the concert and play it in public.
Sometimes, we listeners would be privy to fireworks;
sometimes all we'd get would be beautiful music played with tremendous skill. What it
rarely was, however, was boring.
Few audience members would notice if there were missed
entrances, wrong notes, or other small imperfections. The mistakes that were present
tended to be quite minor -- especially compared to the sniffles, rustling, and coughing
emanating from the audience.
After the audience left, we would record the works as
"safeties" for editing purposes, and the whole tenor of the proceedings would
change. The musicians who were so assured in front of the assembled listeners would turn
into self-questioning wrecks. They'd second-guess themselves and magnify inconsequential
imperfections into life-and-death crises.
And this from top-tier musicians who had, scant minutes
before, thrilled sophisticated listeners with their mastery of the works in question.
Some nights, I wouldn't get home until 3 a.m. or later
because we would end up recording so many takes. How much magic do you think you're going
get the 23rd time you record a 90-second passage?
Not much.
Don't think the situation is different at the major labels.
It might be worse. A friend at Sony told me about a top-drawer classical instrumentalist
who regularly records up to 1000 takes per 20-minute composition. Is it because he can't
play? No, it's because he has superhumanly high standards and an almost crippling
awareness of a CD's power as a permanent record of his abilities.
(There's an apocryphal story about a concerto recording
that was "fixed in the mix" by a hard-working engineer. Upon listening to the
playback, the pianist commented, "It sounds wonderful!" The conductor -- having
seen how long it took the engineer to "correct" the piece -- riposted,
"Don't you wish you could play it like that?")
Intensive editing can patch together a performance, but it
rarely makes for a satisfying interpretation. That doesn't prevent labels from attempting
to create interpretations from tapes that contain little more than the right notes. I
suspect this is a major reason people have stopped buying major-label recordings of the
classical "warhorses" -- who needs a new, technically perfect, spiritually
lifeless interpretation of works that have been recorded (many times, probably) with fire
and passion?
So what's the answer -- recording "live,"
complete with flaws?
I can think of worse things, especially when confronted by
the excitement that crackles off the discs of Ray Kimber's nameless music students, their
teachers, and Weber State University's guest performers, but I'm probably not what you'd
call a "representative market sample." On the other hand, I suspect I'm not the
only one tired of music that has a hole in its soul.
There are still performers, engineers, and labels that are
juiced by the music they are making -- and they make it available on recordings that
represent that music as honestly as possible. The discs they release tend to be on
smaller, not terribly well-distributed labels (although there are exceptions!) and
you may have to seek them out.
In my next column, I'll make a few suggestions of
recordings and record labels that get it right.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
|
