GG: Hearing Loss, Critical Listening, Miles, etc.

["John P. Hill" <jphill@frank.mtsu.edu>]

On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Tim Conway wrote:

> 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?

Oh yeah....Peter Sellers, George Martin, et. al.  Don't forget Spike
Jones, of course, who really forged that concept of translating vaudeville
to audio media.  Later there's Firesign Theatre.

> >... 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.

Well, at least you didn't say "fuddle-duddle", but that's another story
that all of the Canucks on the list will remember about PET.

The difficulty here is that, in many cases, artists don't have much of a
clue about either sound quality or the recording process.  I know this
sounds strange and it certainly was *not* the case with GG, but it's not
all that uncommon.  That's why you have an engineer and a producer on
board to help in the realization of the artist's conception.

> 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.)

Depends who the "artist" is.  I could play you any number of pop music CDs
that really sound *awful* and I'm convinced that this was intentional on
the part of those involved.  But for "classical" music recordings, OK...

> 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?

Well, the good news (if you can call it that) on age-related hearing loss
is that one can learn to compensate to some extent for this.  Since most
program material doesn't contain a great deal of information in the top
octave (10k - 20k) anyway, this loss is certainly not as detrimental as
having low frequency losses.  For excellent discussion of these issues,
see articles by Floyd Toole in the Journal of the Audio Engineering
Society.  This should not preclude you, however, from enjoying high
quality sound recordings on good reproduction equipment.  Folks who are
are physically challenged, after all, can and do compete in serious
sporting competitions and they participate fully in that experience.
So, even with some age-related hearing loss, you can still be a good,
critical listener who appreciates good sound and good music.

> [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.]

Since this is the Glenn Gould list, I probably shouldn't enthuse too much
about Miles Davis.  I do feel, however, that he is absolutely one of the
most important figures in 20th C popular music.  Although you may
associate him with "avant-garde" jazz, in fact, he was there playing in
the trumpet section when Parker, Monk, et. al. developed "be-bop" in the
forties.  Davis is unique in that he changed the direction of jazz
(and by extension, popular music) not once, but three or four times.
His autobiography MILES, BTW, is an excellent look into an addicted, but
brilliant musical mind and life.

KIND OF BLUE is a pretty approachable album and probably *not* what you
associate with experimental jazz.  Try it out; I think you might like it.
If you want to revisit the more experimental Miles at some point try
BITCH'S BREW (1967) or any of the subsequent albums up to about 1975, when
he stopped playing for a time.  Then of course, there's Monk...

jh