Re: GG: Tabasco, Noise, etc.

[Tim Conway <timcon@comswest.net.au>]

John P. Hill wrote:

>I think that it *will* become possible to do what you've eluded to above,
>but then the aesthetic question becomes *should* we?  Another list member
>made the (quite valid) point that he would like to hear *all* of what was
>on the original recording, tape noise, HVAC, door slams, etc.

Sorry to be a boor (and boring -- this email goes on a bit so quit now if 
you're not interested in cleaning up recordings) but I still disagree for 
the most part. 

If it were an outside recording or live broadcast then I agree it should 
be warts and all, no matter how distracting (eg, the marvellous Casals et 
al Schubert Quintet at Prades many years ago complete with coughs and 
other audience noises); but if the recording were a studio recording 
where it was everybody's express intent to remove as far as possible all 
noises unconnected with the musical instruments and their players, then 
other noises like subway-train rumbles would be an unnecessary addition, 
ditto HVAC, doors, engineers' coughs, etc -- and most certainly any tape 
hiss or similar noise (but not chair-scrapes, mis-bowings, cello-body 
strikes, heavy breathing, etc)

Of course, if GG waltzed into the studio and said "OK, guys, for this one 
I'd like a bit of fake atmosphere so I've arranged for a friend to call 
my mobile at 137 bars into the Brahms, so please don't move it from just 
outside the door where I've carefully placed it in the hope that it will 
be subliminally audible", perhaps one might accept the telephone noise as 
being part of GG's creative intent. But did he -- or does any artiste -- 
ever consciously allow, or agree to, or purposely include such noises and 
effects as part of a serious recording, Hoffnung and the Goons aside?

Mary Jo mentioned the 'improved' Vertigo but I think that was a false 
analogy with respect to my original query. In the new Vertigo the 
amenders have become improvers and adders-to. They have deigned to assume 
that they knew what Hitchcock would have included had he thought of it or 
had the technical ability. That, with respect (legalese for no respect at 
all), has little to do with cleaning a recording. I agree it would be 
dishonest to cover a fluffed note by inserting the 'true' note, whether 
played by the original artiste or not (although GG seems to have done 
that with some of his recordings before publication, but then he was the 
artiste so he had the right to do so), but I see nothing wrong with 
improving the clarity of all notes, even if that means that the fluffed 
note becomes more noticeable.

What I think it all boils down to is: What was the intention of the 
artiste at the time of the recording? If the recording disguises or foils 
that intention because it includes noises that the artiste had no 
intention of including or no knowledge of, it surely must be not just 
allowable but also desirable to remove those unwanted noises. And, WRT 
Mary Jo's reference to the _time_ of the recording, I don't think that 
matters. After all, if singers still thought it best to sing into a 
mechanical mic with a brass band thundering behind them, they'd still be 
doing it. I'm fairly sure that all recording artistes of all times past 
always wanted the best possible recording to be made, even if they didn't 
know anything about how recordings were made or what improvements the 
future would bring. I'm sure if you said to Caruso [we're in 1910 or 
thereabouts], "Look, Henry, I was there in the studio and I'm afraid that 
what you sounded like then and what you sound like on the 78 are two 
different things, but I have a cunning plan to improve the 78 involving a 
touch of DAT and a bit of Dolby -- shall we go for it?", it's London to a 
brick that Caruso would have said, "Right on, my son".

All right, you say, perhaps you're right. But how do we know what the 
intention of an artiste was when he or she has been dead for 50 years? 
And, you continue, Bruce says that:

>... it is _impossible_ to give
>someone the exact illusion that they are in the room, or hall where the
>recording took place for a number of reasons...

and therefore it is impossible to record -- in the first place -- in such 
a manner that you will comply fully with the artiste's wishes, and 
therefore you are starting from a flawed basis. To which I say 
fiddle-faddle.

As far as intentions go, there are only two things most artistes want: 
clarity and balance. (Well, they probably want a thousand other things as 
well, including large and regular cheques (checks), but I suggest that 
clarity and balance are in the top three.) Every note must be recorded 
faithfully (ie, not be left out) and truly (ie, even if it is wrong), and 
if there is to be a brass band it should not obliterate the singer. (GG 
was unusual in that he placed mics all over the shop in order to obtain 
certain effects -- but that was in the studio, and Gould was doing it 
only -- I think -- because it could be done. He was being a 
perfectionist.) 

As far as intentions go, the CBC recordings were not strictly studio 
recordings. They were live broadcasts where the recordings were ancillary 
and were made using relatively second-rate equipment. The important 
thing, I assume, was that each broadcast was good; the recording was a 
secondary consideration. Nonetheless, if GG knew about the recording 
machinery I'm sure he would have wanted a faithful, true and clear 
recording of the broadcast, not a wavery mish-mash that sounded as though 
the piano and player were going gracefully over a noisy Niagara in slow 
motion.

And as far as Bruce's statement is concerned, yes, he's right -- but who 
cares? There may be, let's say, a thousand 'sounds', each slightly 
different, that one can record by placing one's mics in different 
positions in the studio or hall. As far as pianists are concerned, 
though, isn't the only sound they want to record the one that they hear 
when they play? A pianist cannot play for the front-row listener because 
he isn't there: he's at the piano. The only sound that matters is the one 
that goes into the pianists ears, so we can forget about the other 999 
(or 9 million) hypothetical sounds. So all those sounds are, to use an 
Australian expression, a furphy. The fact that there are many of them 
doesn't matter. Any one of them will do, although of course the best one 
is the one the pianist hears.

And talking of hearing, I suspect all of us on this list assume that our 
hearing is first-rate. That's what I thought about my own hearing until 
20 years ago when I took my kids to the Science Museum in London and, for 
fun, checked my frequency range on a machine that played a continuously 
variable note (pitch) starting at something like 15Hz and ending at 
25kHz. My low-range hearing was OK but the top end vanished at 10kHz, 
much to my chagrin as the 'normal' top end is said to be nearer 20kHz. I 
was missing a complete octave. I stopped seeking the ultimate in hi-fi 
systems from then on. Have other list members had their hearing range 
checked recently?

Gilles's posting was very interesting. I take the point about starting 
from an imperfect original (GG's "storage" sounds like my filing system). 
What depresses me a little is that Gilles makes no mention of removing 
low-frequency noise, or of correcting pitch variations introduced by 
variable-speed recording mechanisms. Clearly there's still a long way to 
go.

[ASIDE: While we're on this subject (although this should perhaps be a 
separate thread), a number of people, not just John, have mentioned jazz 
recordings. Miles Davis's name has come up more than once. I know little 
about Miles Davis because I classify him mentally and emotionally under 
'modern jazz', a genre I cannot come to terms with. For years the only 
people I knew who liked modern jazz -- or at least professed to -- were 
those with tin ears: men and women who were unable to sing three 
consecutive notes in key, or recognise their own national anthem, or who 
thought Waltzing Matilda was a waltz. Play them conventional music and 
they would be unmoved, but put on Mr Davis and his brethren, or anybody 
playing in different keys with some band members in 5/16 and the rest in 
7/4, and these men and women would start singing along and bopping and 
clicking their fingers. I assumed they did this because they knew they 
couldn't go wrong no matter what notes they sang or beat they chose. They 
would similarly spring alive when listening to the most discordant of 
modern serious music, opera in particular. Now, it appears, John and 
Bradley and many other worthies on this list, all of whom have 
considerable musical ability and conventional musical taste most of the 
time, are jazz afficionados to a man, so my theory is shot down in 
flames. Blast. End of aside.]

I suppose the real answers to my original questions are that (1) sound is 
a subjective thing and what pleases one listener displeases another, and 
(2) you cannot improve upon the original recording. WRT (1), with the 
advent of DVD it would be nice if Sony and others would issue 
multi-versions of restored/improved recordings so that one could choose 
(and perhaps vote for) certain styles or technicians; and WRT (2), 
perhaps that ability will come with time.

And now I'll shut up.



Tim
<timcon@comswest.net.au>
Broome, Western Australia