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You can get that sound live...

Posted by morricab (S) on May 4, 2015 at 04:23:41

In Reply to: Many of us seek to self-medicate with sound rather than music. posted by John Marks on May 3, 2015 at 12:18:33:

if you are sitting close to the musicians in the concert. Try chamber music sometime in a room it was designed for...ie. a chamber rather than a cathedral.

I made some recordings of my ex playing solo violin in my 20 m2 living room (small apartment I had at that time) standing right between my Acoustat 1+1s I had at the time. I had a single condenser mic, a tube mic pre and a TEAC R2R tape deck from the late 70s. It sounds raw but LIVE...just like I heard it in the room...just slightly drier (small room has fast decay times and you are hearing that twice.). That is how a lot of modern instruments will sound in a live setting in a small room.

I also had the opportunity to hear Schubert quintet (2 violins, viola and 2 cellos) played in the home of a rich doctor in London as part of a Schubert festival. It had a similar, ultra present and a bit bright presentation. It was fantastically exciting. We were sitting not more than 3 meters from the performers.

Finally, my ex often played home concerts for her rich benefactor in Zürich. Their main room was pretty large but they had a Bosendorfer concert grand piano in there and she would play violin sonatas with piano accompianment. The sound was slightly softer as the first reflections were pretty far away but still far more present than a moderate sized concert hall or church.

Of course if you attend a string quartet concert at the Barbican and sit near the back it will sound a bit lacking in air and lacking in dynamic punch. But I heard Lang Lang, Vadim Repin and Mishka Maisky in Barbican in the third row and it was plenty dynamic and present...and lit up.

Finally, I heard a concert at Tonhalle in Zürich with Saxaphone and piano (Kenny Barron on piano...can't remember the sax guy he was not as famous). We sat in the 2nd row and the presence of the Sax was stunning and breathing.

I do have one recording where I know how it was made, that doesn't have this close up, Deutsche Grammophone, kind of sound. It was made with a single ribbon stereo microphone (blumlein config) and about 6 meters from the front of the stage. THe performance is Prokovfiev's Romeo and Juliet and it is amazingly accurate for how a concert would sound live at about that distance. I was fortunate enough to hear a performance of it live a couple of years later from nearly the right position in the hall and the overall balance and presence was very similar to this SOTA recording.

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