General Asylum

Posted by Inmate51 (A) on November 26, 2012 at 08:41:58

In Reply to: RE: One (and perhaps the only one) exception posted by kavakidd on November 25, 2012 at 23:29:36

You're making Elizabeth's point. Pressure Cooker is 37 years old, and the stature of the music and performance can be debated. Although I generally like the music, it's not particularly interesting nor is it a benchmark performance of jazz vocal performance.

Veering off into the instrumental "audiophile" arena, Teresa cites the Harry James albums. I have The King James Version and Comin' From A Good Place. As a trumpet player, I'm obviously a fan of Harry James. I like both of those albums a lot. Excellent performances of venerable music, even though no new solo performance standards were set. They do have a couple shortcomings, though.

First, and this is just personal preference, I don't especially care for the character of the ambient sound. The chapel had a short reverberation time, which in itself isn't a problem, but when you're trying mic an entire big band with a single stereo mic, which by necessity must be placed some distance from the musicians, that character becomes noticeable on the recording, and so it almost comes across as a studio recording - but with the mic placed further away from the source than usual.

Second, although the overall balance among sections and the piano/bass/drums is very good, the sound itself is a bit "hard". Not as hard as a [now] vintage Neumann KM84, but going in that direction. Harry had one of the smoothest, most mellow yet full sounds of anyone ever. But even on Harry's solo at the beginning of "Corner Pocket" on the King James Version, and his solo on "You'll Never Know" on the Comin' From A Good Place album, the sound is "hard". It becomes almost painfully obvious during ff passages, where the trumpets clearly overpower the electronics.