Issue 141

I installed a new cartridge on my record player about a month ago. I bought my previous cartridge about six years ago during a visit to Japan, when the yen/dollar exchange rate just happened to have hit bottom. It was my first Ikeda cartridge. Isamu Ikeda is a grand master phono cartridge builder, and some consider him the father of moving coil cartridges in Japan, having founded Fidelity Research in 1964. The Fidelity Research FR64 tonearm, and the FR1 and FR7 cartridges were iconic products, but these were rare birds outside Japan in that era.

Ikeda Sound Labs was established in 2011 and continues to manufacture tonearms and cartridges. The original FR1 and FR7 were cantilever-less designs, similar to the Decca cartridges. This design excels at lifelike dynamics, but the cartridges are very difficult to align and can only be used with well-damped tonearms. The modern Ikeda cartridges all employ a cantilever, and can be matched with many different tonearm models. The orange-colored 9TT is in the middle of the range, with the blue-colored 9TP (called Kai in the export market) at the top, and the green-colored 9TS at the entry level. You should be aware of several issues with these cartridges. They are very heavy, and have a very low output of 0.17mV. (The FET/tube cascode input of my phono preamplifier has no problem coping with the low signal voltage without the need for a transformer.)

During the past six years, I have transferred over 600 LPs to DSD using the 9TT cartridge, as well as enjoying it for day-to-day listening. I recently detected more background noise and distortion when playing LPs, and so I decided to replace it with a new one. I love the sound of the 9TT and I have no desire to change. But it brings up the question: how does one decide on which cartridge to buy, other than by reading reviews or consulting with experts? I doubt many dealers are willing to let customers home-audition cartridges, and the performance of a cartridge very much depends on how it matches with the rest of the record player as well as the phono preamplifier. Rather than take the risk of ending up with something I wouldn’t like, I went and bought another 9TT.

To be honest, I have been listening to tapes more than anything else nowadays, having accumulated more than 200 titles. Most of my tapes are copies of production masters, made for me by mastering engineers who operate or used to operate mastering facilities, and I have also bought commercial titles from The Tape Project, Analogue Productions, Horch House and Reel to Reel Tapes Russia. It is always interesting to compare the LPs and tapes of the same recordings. Having installed the new cartridge, I decided to look through my LP collection and re-evaluate the more interesting titles, some of which I have not heard for years or even decades.

I would like to share my findings with Copper readers as I go through my collection. This is not a “Best LPs” list in the vein of “The Super Disc List” that Harry Pearson began publishing in The Absolute Sound magazine (and which is still published today at various intervals). I find such lists useful in helping me discover new music, but I certainly do not confine myself to “audiophile” recordings. In fact, I almost never buy records unless the music interests me. Some of the recordings on my list rarely appear on the radar screen of audiophiles, but nevertheless have astonished me with their technical excellence. I have chosen the recordings for their sonic merit; I do not feel I am qualified to judge the merit of the musical performances and will therefore only make some passing comments on this aspect.

Why confine the scope of this survey to just analog recordings? One of my previous articles touched on the merits of analog and digital recordings. I was most actively buying records and learning about music at a time when digital recording was still in its infancy, and I have been too busy with the responsibilities of being a working adult and a parent in the past two decades to keep up with new recordings. However, I genuinely believe that most of the great recordings (in the classical repertoire anyway) were made between the early 1950s and the late 1970s. Classical music labels at that time had the financial resources to devote to recording projects, whereas nowadays, music has become a commodity with limited profit potential. During the analog age, recording engineers had to rely on getting everything right during the sessions, whereas it is all too easy nowadays to correct mistakes during post-production, but the result is never optimal. I also find the sonic results of the simple microphone techniques of yesteryear more desirable than that of employing multiple microphones, typical of modern digital recordings. Furthermore, most music nowadays is consumed on headphones, earbuds, car audio systems and computer speakers. There is just not much incentive for record producers to prioritize sound quality.

Readers need to understand that the sound quality of an LP does not necessarily reflect that of the recording itself. It is useful to reiterate the process of making an LP in order to understand the factors that can affect the sound quality. Before the widespread use of multi-track, sessions were recorded onto two-track or three-track tapes. Decca engineers typically used eight to 12 microphones, and mixed the inputs in real time onto two-track tape. At RCA and Mercury, three-track tape was used, and this was mixed into stereo during post-production. This is more desirable, because every extra track adds 3 dB of noise, hence the need to use noise reduction systems in multi-track setups, which are another potential source of signal degradation. If multi-track tape was used, this was usually mixed into stereo before editing.

Some companies might edit the session tapes directly, or make a copy for editing. The edited tape with all the splices is called an edited work part, and will then be transferred with the necessary corrections (frequency response adjustments, added reverb etc.) to create a master. Multiple masters, called safety masters, are often created for backup purposes. Again, 3 dB of additional tape hiss is added every time the tape is copied. A copy made using high-quality, well-maintained and properly aligned professional tape machines has barely-discernible differences from the original.

The studio master is then copied to make production masters, which are sent to mastering facilities in the different markets for LP and cassette production. The lacquer for producing LPs is usually cut directly from this master. The necessary compression, RIAA equalization and so on are usually applied during transfer from the tape to the cutting lathe, although another tape copy incorporating these changes is occasionally made. This is a crucial stage for ensuring the sound quality of the final product, but the engineer is sometimes constrained by commercial and practical considerations. For example, the length of the program might necessitate the use of compression in order to fit onto one side of an LP. While it makes no difference whether a reel of tape has 20 or 30 minutes of music, or even longer if one uses larger flanges, it makes a great deal of difference to an LP. The closer the groove is cut towards the center of the record, the higher the distortion. Groove width needs to be reduced, which means lower dynamic headroom. When faced with these constrains, the skill and experience of the mastering engineer come into play.

Once the lacquer is cut, it is sent to be electroplated with nickel to produce a negative image called the father. The father can be used to stamp records, with a limit of only 1,500 disks, but the sound quality starts to deteriorate long before reaching this number. In order to produce a larger quantity of records, the father is electroplated to create a mother, which in turn is used to create a number of stampers. Each step will result in a little loss in sound quality, which is why some audiophile labels release limited edition LPs (usually 300 to 500 copies) stamped directly from the father.

The quality of an LP therefore depends on the skill of the mastering engineer and the care he took to cut the lacquer. It depends on the quality of the work to create the stampers. It depends on the quality control process and rejecting substandard disks. It depends on the vinyl formulation used, and the age of the stamper used to produce that particular disk. On the second hand market, Decca LPs originally sold in the UK often command a higher price than their London-branded (the Decca trademark belonged to another company in the US) LP counterparts originally sold in the US. However, the Decca and London LPs have the same dead wax markings, meaning the same lacquer was used and the LPs were pressed in the same plants in England. Decca later moved their record production to Holland. Once again, for the same title, the Made in England LPs are usually more valuable, but I find some of the Made in Holland LPs can actually be sonically superior, probably because they were manufactured at a later date with a more advanced process.

On the other hand, to name another example, the Angel LPs sold in the US were made in the US, and are generally inferior to the equivalent Made in England EMI LPs.

For a long time, I had the impression that Decca recordings are far superior overall to EMI recordings. However, after having listened to some EMI master tapes and contemporary reissues, I have to revise my opinion. Decca recordings are still superior, but the margin is not so wide. I can only come to the conclusion that the LP production part of EMI was letting this side of the manufacturing process down.

In general, I find the recent audiophile reissues generally more consistent and are of higher quality than the original issues, since each production run is likely to be far smaller and more care is taken to preserve the best-possible sound quality.

Malcolm Arnold, London Philharmonic Orchestra – English, Scottish and Cornish Dances
Lyrita Recorded Edition SRCS 109

Since Harry Pearson’s Super Disc List has already been mentioned, we might as well start with one of his favorite LPs. I have to thank HP for helping me discover this record label. Lyrita was an independent English music label with a mission to promote British composers. It had released about 100 LPs before closing its doors, reemerging again several years later to market CDs of their catalog. The company did not have its own recording team, and outsourced its projects to Decca.  The LPs were initially pressed by Decca, later by Nimbus, and finally by EMI. Many experts consider the Decca and Nimbus pressings superior to those by EMI. The sound quality of these LPs is consistently excellent. Most music lovers are probably familiar with British composers such as Holst, Britten, Elgar, Walton, Vaughan Williams and Arnold, but the Lyrita catalog also contains lesser-known works of these composers, as well as works of more obscure composers not found elsewhere. I bought a bunch of these LPs when the company held a stock clearance before ceasing business activities in the late 1980s.

The music on this LP is very accessible, perhaps a bit lightweight but quite endearing. You might have heard snippets of it on the radio or even on TV adverts if you live in the UK. Hearing it is one of those, “Ahhh, this is where it comes from!” moments. The sound is vintage Decca, with a wide soundstage, good separation, beautiful string tone and great dynamics. Is it “Best of the Bunch” as HP claimed? In my opinion, this LP is not amongst Decca’s highest achievements, and not even the best of the Lyritas. The low end can sometimes sound a bit bloated, which muddles the sound during the more complex passages. The string tone can also sound a bit homogenized at times. It is nevertheless an excellent recording overall. Being awarded “Best of the Bunch” by HP, one would expect this LP to have been reissued a million times. Strangely, it has never been reissued since its initial release. As it remains on the Super LP list, expect to pay three figures for a good copy. Chad, are you paying attention?

Header image: Greg Reierson of Rare Form Mastering. Photo courtesy of Greg Reierson.

Art Dudley's personal, well-worn copy of The Tube Amp Book, Volume 3 by Aspen Pittman, 1991. The page with the schematic for the Fender Bassman Model 5F6-A (introduced in 1958 and considered by many to be the ultimate guitar amp) is bookmarked.

Blurring the line between art and commerce: Andy Warhol shilling for Pioneer in 1975.

A magnificent McIntosh C8 monaural preamplifier, circa 1955-1959. List price $88.50! Photo by Howard Kneller, courtesy of The Audio Classics Collection.

Whoever signed off on this 1950s General Electric ad didn't lead a double life as a copy editor. Very cool radios, though!

Octave Records latest release is a landmark: The Complete Bach Cello Suites by world-renowned cellist Zuill Bailey. Recorded in pure DSD high-resolution audio in stereo and multichannel sound, the six unaccompanied cello suites are a cornerstone of the classical cello repertoire. Bailey offers a compelling new interpretation of Bach’s masterworks informed by decades of immersion in the suites, and the personal and emotional impact Bailey felt from the pandemic. 

Mr. Bailey is widely considered to be one of the world’s premier cellists. He is a Grammy award-winning performer, artistic director and teacher. Bailey has collaborated with such conductors and artists as Itzhak Perlman, Stanislav Skrowaczewski, Jaime Laredo, János Starker, the Moscow Chamber Orchestra and others.

Because Bach left no musical annotations in the scores, the interpretive skill of the performer is vital to making the music come alive. Bailey noted, “the difficulty in playing them is that they’re so revealing – there’s nothing to hide behind if you’re a musician. There are no markings in the score, so everything that is played is where we as musicians are. You can feel very fragile when playing them in public.”

Bailey first recorded the suites in 2008 on the Telarc label. More than a decade later, these Octave Records performances reflect Bailey’s mature yet more daring approach, captured in stunning high-resolution sound.

“When I was a kid, the Bach Cello Suites were not played in public – they were so difficult that people were afraid of them,” said Bailey.

“After attending Juilliard, about five months after being out of school I felt very alone in the world, and I was trying to find myself. I opened up the Bach Cello Suites and just started at the very beginning. In my 20s and 30s they became my guide and have remained so.” As Bailey approached age 50 he started feeling burned out – and then the pandemic hit.

“Like so many others, I found myself in a strange place, alone and vulnerable. I had been on the road for 315 days a year, and now was cut off from performing.”

Bailey didn’t touch his cello for weeks. “On the other hand, in isolation I rediscovered what ‘home’ was.” When he resumed playing, he once again turned to the Bach Cello Suites. “I began playing Bach very differently – simpler. I found it purifying.” He stated, “the less I tried to ‘interpret’ the music, the better it sounded. It was more symbolic of the solitary feeling I was going through. I began playing it very differently.”

The Complete Bach Cello Suites was recorded at the Ikeda Theater in the Mesa Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona for Octave Records by Robert Friedrich of Five/Four Productions, Ltd. with co-engineer Gus Skinas, and produced for Octave Records by Five/Four’s Thomas Moore, a Grammy award winner. It was recorded, mastered and mixed using Five/Four REVEAL SDM™ pure DSD technology. The REVEAL SDM process is optimized to present superlative musical nuance, dynamics and depth.

Click here for a video about the making of The Complete Bach Cello Suites.

This was of particular importance in capturing all the subtleties and tonal shadings of Zuill Bailey’s distinctive 1693 Italian Mateo Goffriller Ex Mischa Schneider “Rosette” cello, an instrument that is bigger and of a different construction than most cellos, not cut down in size like many surviving vintage instruments. This gives it a more robust voice, with a deeper tonality and rich harmonics. “This cello was made when Bach was eight years old,” notes Bailey, “so it was the sound he would have heard when composing the Suites. It sounds more like a ‘baritone’ than a ‘tenor.’ It has this extra ‘air’ and texture.”

The Complete Bach Cello Suites is available in three versions: as a complete set of all six Suites, or a set with Suites 1, 3 and 5, or as a set with Suites 2, 4 and 6. The sets will include hybrid SACD discs with the master stereo and multichannel DSD layer and a CD layer, plus a DVD data disk with high-res PCM and DSD files. In addition, the album is available as a download bundle including DSD64, 192kHz/24-bit, 96kHz/24-bit and 44.1kHz/24-bit PCM.

The Ikeda Theater at the Mesa Arts Center, where The Complete Bach Cello Suites was recorded.

The Complete Bach Cello Suites was recorded using the Merging Technologies Pyramix digital audio workstation and Hapi A/D and D/A converters. The mics used were an AEA R88, Royer SF-24 and Sennheiser MKH 800. The microphones were fed to Integer Audio RMP-1 and Forssell Technologies SMP-2b mic preamps. The feeds from the mics were mixed through a custom, modified Studer 962 analog console. ATC SCM50 and SCM 25 loudspeakers were employed for monitoring.

Zuill Bailey noted, “this is not just about a new recording of the Bach Cello Suites. This is a marker in time that evolved because of the time we’ve been living in.”

Click here to order The Complete Bach Cello Suites. 

In Issues 138, 139 and 140, this series covered Cal Tjader’s early years at Fantasy Records, the Verve Records period from 1961 – 1968, and his following stints at Skye Records, Savoy records and others. The series continues here.

Skye Records began with the best of intentions, but Cal Tjader, Gary McFarland and Gabor Szabo, the artists who were among the label’s co-founders, became wise to the record industry and realized that they didn’t have as much freedom as they had counted on. As Skye’s fortunes dwindled and the company teetered towards bankruptcy, co-owner Norman Schwartz and his partners sold an interest in Skye Records to Filmways, an entertainment company. The idea was that Filmways would use Skye Records to release soundtrack albums. Despite the influx of cash, it was not enough to save Skye. Tjader figured it best to cut his losses, and not record his next album for a label headed for bankruptcy.

Skye would continue under McFarland’s direction briefly after Tjader left the label, until McFarland passed away in 1971. It would eventually be absorbed by Buddah Records, then punted to other label groups over the years.

In mid-1970, Tjader was secure in his feeling about the “new” Fantasy Records, now under the direction of Saul Zaentz, and signed a new contract with the label. The fortunes from Creedence Clearwater Revival’s hit albums on the label were enough to move Fantasy to a new studio facility. In short, the label was more professionally run than it had been under Max and Sol Weiss who, at heart, were manufacturers of plastics and chemicals, not record industry executives.

When Tjader rejoined Fantasy, his adventurous spirit followed. He would record with many different combos and explore various Latin music styles during his tenure.

One of his first recordings was Tjader, which included a handful of popular tunes from the day, recorded with a big band brass ensemble backing him. Selections would range from Santana’s “Evil Ways” and the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” to a pair of Donovan tunes, a Beatles album cut, and an expanded version of “Fresh Air,” a tune penned by Julius Wechter for his Baja Marimba Band on A&M Records. (Cal’s youngest brother Curry Tjader played marimba and drums in the Baja Marimba Band for a few years.) Cal penned the tune “I Showed Them,” a tongue-in-cheek response to a tune by The Byrds entitled “They Showed Us.”

The album Agua Dulce found Tjader in full-tilt Latin mode, working again with Al Zulaica and the Escovedo brothers, Coke and Pete. It featured an updating of tunes he had recorded in the past, such as “Curacao,” “Descarga” (as “Descarga Cubana” on the Soul Burst album), “Invitation” and Clare Fischer’s “Morning.” Note that this album can also be found as yet another two-on-one CD called Descarga, which also includes the album Live at the Funky Quarters. Here is the album’s title track, “Agua Dulce (Cool-Ade).”

Tjader connected with legendary keyboardist Charlie Palmieri and his band for the Primo album. (Charlie was Eddie Palmieri’s older brother.) With arrangements by Palmieri and Tito Puente, Tjader recorded yet another classic. Tito Puente makes an appearance on timbales on the track “Tanga.”

Teaming again with Clare Fischer, Tjader recorded the album Guarabe. (You can find this album in its entirety on a two-for-one CD called Here and There, which also includes his Here album for Fantasy’s Galaxy sub-label). The title track of this album has two sections – one in 6/8, the other in 4/4 – and both allow the band to groove throughout. The album would feature another updated version of his classic tune “Black Orchid,” along with a remake of “El Muchacho” which originally appeared on his Verve album Sona Libre and a tune by Brazilian composer Edu Lobo, “Reza.” “Guarabe” leads off this excellent album.

Tambu paired Tjader with guitarist Charlie Byrd, leading up an album of contemporary Brazilian-themed jazz featuring tunes by Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, Antonio Carlos Jobim (his beautiful tune “Tereza My Love”), Stevie Wonder, and Joe Henderson. Tjader is somewhat restrained in this recording, playing timbales rather than vibes on some of the tracks. But the Airto Moreira-penned album opener “Tombo in 7/4” (retitled “Tambu” for this album) is a real barn-burner. (Airto’s own version appears on his acclaimed CTi album Fingers.)

The Amazonas album is another highlight of his catalog, notable for the Brazilian personnel. Bandleader and producer Airto Moreira join forces with Robertinho Silva, Egberto Gismonti, Raul de Souza and Hermeto Pascoal. If the keyboards sound a little familiar, you’re hearing Dawilli Gonga, more commonly known as George Duke. (Duke was no stranger to Brazilian music himself – one of his best-loved albums was A Brazilian Love Affair from the late ’70s, recorded in Rio de Janeiro with a Brazilian cast of musicians and composers.) On the album’s hopping title track “Amazonas,” penned by João Donato and Lysias Enio, Tjader takes a rare lead on marimba.

As Tjader was a popular live performer, Fantasy found many opportunities to release live albums of his gigs. One such performance was captured on the album The Grace Cathedral Concert. This was originally scheduled to be a Vince Guaraldi gig, but Guaraldi had passed away from a heart attack shortly before the date. Tjader took over and made it a tribute to his friend Guaraldi by performing a medley of two tunes from Guaraldi’s breakthrough album Music from Black Orpheus–“Manha de Carnaval/Samba de Orfeu.” The gig was to be recorded and saved for the church archives, but thankfully Fantasy was able to release it as an album.

In 2003, Fantasy pulled recordings out of the vaults from Tjader’s two 1977 concerts at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The disc opens with a very enthusiastic take on Ray Bryant’s “Cuban Fantasy” (for which the album is named), featuring Tjader switching from vibes to timbales as the excitement builds. Supporting Tjader are Clare Fischer (piano), Poncho Sanchez (congas), Bob Redfield (guitar), Rob Fisher (bass) and Pete Riso (drums).

Tjader’s final album for Fantasy was released on the Galaxy sub-label. Breathe Easy is an easygoing standards album featuring Shelly Manne, Monte Budwig, Allen Smith and Hank Jones. This album appears on the CD Extremes, paired with Tjader’s first recordings for Fantasy (covered in our first installment in the Tjader series).  While I can’t locate a clean copy of this particular version on YouTube (there is a somewhat distorted needle drop of the entire album), here is a similar live version featuring Shelly Manne, Eddie Gomez and Cedar Walton that is equally nice.

A handful of the albums Tjader recorded in his second Fantasy era have not appeared on streaming services as of yet. Many, though, are still available on CD. Here is a playlist featuring some of the highlights of the later Fantasy/Galaxy era on Qobuz:

https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/6508244

As usual, I’ve also compiled a YouTube playlist, substituting a couple of tracks that were available on YouTube but not on Qobuz:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqXkJPkOFzFlHKAgVmA8CywxdJOgw7KDP

The next installment wraps up our exploration of Cal Tjader’s catalog of recordings.

It was the late summer of 1966, and I was still a teenager when the Army rotated me back into the world (stateside), specifically, the Whitehall Street Induction Center at 39 Whitehall Street on the lower tip of Manhattan. What I did not fully appreciate at the time was that in being in the Army, you were really isolated from the outside world, especially when stationed overseas. The only news available to us was the Stars and Stripes newspaper, a readable but biased periodical published by the US military. Usually on the front page was a picture of a disheveled longhaired bearded hippie violently trying to tear down the American flag. To say we were removed from the true American experience was an understatement. In that sense it was like being in prison without the TV room.

There are no military bases in Manhattan, so the few troops stationed here lived off base. I moved in with an old roommate who had a fifth floor studio apartment in a walk up on East 25^th Street. I was a sergeant E-5 with over two years in service and with a housing allowance. Essentially, I was making enough money to cover my expenses. I only worked Monday through Friday from 7 am to early afternoon. It was good duty considering I was still in the Army. It was almost like a regular job. The only weird aspect was in the morning when I had to walk up the stairs into the Whitehall Street Induction Center I had to maneuver through a crowd of antiwar protesters. It was disconcerting.

Ken Sander, 1966.

I started going with my new Army buddies to the Peppermint Lounge. It was located on the eastern fringe of Times Square. It was kind of a halfway house for me. Not really hip anymore, with a straight crowd and danceable music. This was my initial Friday night hangout for my first months back stateside. As my time grew short for my Army stint, my re-education began as I picked up on the threads of my previous civilian life.

I had missed many of the cultural changes, I mean, who were the Rolling Stones, and that Mick Jagger sure looked weird the way he danced on stage. Overseas, thanks to my little red transistor radio, I was able to tune into Armed Forces Radio. It was a limited, edited Top 40 format, but it made me aware of some of the new music. I never was into folk music and to me the beatniks were an older generation. This new music, the Mamas & the Papas, the Byrds, Vanilla Fudge, Sam and Dave, Van Morrison, and Buffalo Springfield; that resonated with me.

May of 1967, I received my honorable discharge and started job hunting. I quickly landed a job at Olivetti-Underwood at One Park Avenue, between 32^nd and 33^rd Street. Now making more money, I moved into a small one-bedroom apartment with a nice-sized kitchen at 233 Lexington Avenue, just south of 34^th Street and around the corner from my job. The apartment was on the sixth floor and the elevator was a French-style with an accordion-like collapsing gate with an inner gate on the elevator and an outer gate on each floor. It was a very cool elevator, watching floor after floor from inside while I went up or down. The apartment cost $100, which had to be paid in cash every month, and considering the apartment itself and the location it was a fairly good deal.

As distance grew between my military service and my new life, I started to see world politics and culture in a different perspective. It was becoming apparent to me that I had been served up some very biased bullsh*t.

The Peppermint Lounge had become passé. I upgrade to the Cheetah on 53^rd Street and Broadway, where the diverse clientele was truly spectacular. The 2,000-person-capacity hall had fur on the walls and a few thousand colored lightbulbs flashing into an array of light patterns that reflected off shiny aluminum sheets. The Cheetah booked bands such as Pink Floyd, the Velvet Underground, Tiny Tim, Richie Havens, and Curtis Knight and the Squires, featuring a pre-fame Jimi Hendrix. The show Hair was performed at the Cheetah before becoming a major production on Broadway.

Little Richard was an employer of Jimi’s in the earlier days. Little Richard and Jimi appeared in a show starring Soupy Sales at the Paramount in Brooklyn New York. Jimi and Richard clashed over the spotlight, lateness, and other issues. In early July 1965, Richard’s brother Robert Penniman “fired” Jimi. Jimi’s story was that he had not been paid “for five-and-a-half weeks” and was owed $1,000. Hendrix then rejoined the Isley Brothers’ band (he had played with them previously). The Isleys really appreciated Jimi and even bought him an expensive guitar because Jimi was always broke and hocked his guitar many times. To Hendrix, these gigs were just jobs. He disliked the chitlin’ circuit R&B acts and the sameness of their matching suits, constant onstage smiles and choreographed dance routines.

Later in Jimi’s career he was doing a show that also had Little Richard on the bill. He asked Richard for his back pay and Little Richard just said, “you missed the bus.” Jimi did miss more than his share of tour buses.

 

All this is in hindsight, as I was unaware of Jimi Hendrix at that time. I liked the Cheetah and my insertion into this new culture was almost seamless. I meet a cool sexy hippie chick and she drew a beautiful psychedelic design on the back of my Army fatigue jacket. That turned my Army-issue field jacket into a fashion statement. Another girl, Sandy, introduced me to weed, but I have to say I did not feel a thing until the third occasion.

On Saint Marks Place (on Eighth Street between Third and Second Avenue) I discovered the Electric Circus. Wow, what a cool concert and hangout place. That was my first taste of black light; everything white was neon-like under the lighting. White sneakers, bra straps, even the elastic on my underpants. Teeth looked funny too. The place smelled like patchouli oil.

Now I was having fun going to concerts, buying albums, and listening to FM radio. Arthur Brown’s “Fire” (“I am the god of hell fire!”) was on the radio. He was on a US tour when I got to see him with his burning helmet. He looked like his hair was on fire. it was amazing, but also it looked dangerous. Unfortunately, his tour had to be cut short because of burn injuries. No surprise there, but still, it was The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

In the spring of 1968, I began to dislike my job at Olivetti-Underwood. It was boring and routine, and that was not me anymore. My immediate supervisor, Frank, an older guy, started to share too much information about his lifestyle. He told me about his boyfriend, who was about to get out of jail, and mentioned how much I would like him. I told him that was not my scene. A few weeks later, late one Saturday afternoon around four-ish, the lobby intercom rang, and it was Frank and his friend. He said, “come down and have a drink with us at the bar next door.” I felt I had to join them.

Frank’s friend was in his thirties and a very hard-looking dude. After a few minutes of small talk, he said, “let’s go back to Frank’s place.” I said, “no, I have other plans,” and this guy replied, “Do you think you are better than us?” “No,” I answered, “it is just not my thing.” He leaned over close to me and said quietly, “get the fu*k off that bar stool before I knock your ass off it.” I was stunned and it took a moment for me to realize what had just happened, but I knew I was out of my depth. I got up and silently walked out of the bar, relieved to step into the afternoon sunlight.

The next Monday Frank was still angry with me, but I told him I meant no harm and it was just not my scene, and he seemed to calm down. I did not read it well. I had made an enemy. A couple of weeks later gay porn advertising arrived in my mailbox. I thought it was some kind of mistake. But then the junk mail increased more and more till my mailbox was stuffed, overflowing daily. The sheer volume was unbelievable. I wondered what my mail carrier thought of me. Of course, I figured out that it was Frank’s doing. I do not say anything to him, and I left Olivetti.

Around this time my sister Ellen broke through and became a famous rock writer. One Sunday afternoon she got invited to Laura Nyro’s penthouse apartment on West 79^th Street. David Geffen, her manager, was there. She had a patio/balcony with a wonderful view, and served us Bloody Marys and shrimp cocktails. It was a lovely, sunny warm afternoon and Laura was charming.

Ellen and I started to talk about us moving to Los Angeles and getting a place. I was game; why not? A change of address is always a new adventure and certainly a way to end the barrage of porn advertising. Junk mail would not follow me.

Two weeks later I answered an ad in the Village Voice to share gas expenses for a cross-country drive to San Francisco. My late friend Jonny Lane drove me to the meeting spot in New Jersey and when I got there, I found out that I was one of five people stuffed into this old Rambler station wagon. It was a horrible nonstop crowded and uncomfortable slow drive across country. As we drove just south of Chicago on I-80 we heard there are violent protests at the Democratic National Convention. Relegated to the center of the back seat with my feet elevated on the hump, the ride did not get better. I comforted myself with the thought that this would pass, and to just hang on, this won’t be forever, it will end. The Army taught me that. I was happy to arrive in San Francisco and leave that experience behind. My share for the ride was $41.

The next day I hopped a Greyhound bus to Los Angeles. On the way, Customs stopped us and boarded the bus. They walked up the aisle, stopped by me, and asked me where I was from. I was surprised and told them, New York, and they nodded and moved on. Never had that happen to me before or since.

I arrived in LA and called Ellen from the bus station downtown. “When are you coming?” I asked, and she replied that she didn’t know yet. I asked, “Where should I stay?” She said to call her back in five minutes. I did, and she said a friend of hers would pick me up in a few minutes. Her friend was Pete Johnson and he was the Los Angeles Times’ rock critic.

To be continued.

Header image: The Whitehall Street Induction Center, New York, built in 1884.

In Part One (Issue 140), Guy Michelmore revealed many insights into what it takes to be a successful composer for TV and for film. Here he tells us more about what contributes to the success of a well-oiled creative machine and the work required to get the best possible results.

Russ Welton: Could you give an example of where imposed restraints on the creative process are both beneficial and conversely, disadvantageous to productivity?

Guy Michelmore: You are always working within somebody else’s creative universe. You are coming on board to serve a creative project that has been produced or directed by somebody else. Whether you [are] working in film or television, that is always the job of the media composer [someone who composes for various media such as film, TV, animation and video games – Ed.]. So, there are constantly constraints.

The problem normally comes when directors try to micromanage the music and give you specific instructions as to what to do. At that point they are failing to manage and starting to do, in which case they have to take total responsibility for the music, as you are no longer completely in charge. The best creative relationships involve a conversation and involve a certain degree of freedom. Equally, just being told to go and do your thing isn’t always the most helpful approach either. You need creative input from directors and producers to do your best work. The life of the [music] composer is [in] producing something you think is perfect and brilliant, and then being told by the director that [it] is not. With hindsight you usually realize that they were right, and that is why your best work often comes from working on professional projects [where you collaborate with others].

RW: What have been some of your most challenging or involved projects and how so?

GM: Without naming any particular name, the most professionally challenging projects are often those which have significant problems within them. In the world of animation, a lot of the time there are multiple co-producers in different countries. Many [TV and streaming] networks in many different parts of the world have different expectations of the music and they may all have the right within the contract to give you notes [directions for making changes in the music – Ed]. That can of course be a recipe for disaster. The best scenario is if you have a good executive producer who effectively negotiates with all the stakeholders [and] who comes up with one agreed [upon] set of notes. If that doesn’t happen then it’s carnage.

RW: You are such an entertaining educator through YouTube. Can you tell us about who your greatest inspirations are for your own creativity?

GM: I suppose it is the logical meeting of my background as a television broadcaster and my background as a musician. But the real motivation was that I found it very difficult to engage with traditional music education when I was young and I think that was a terrible shame. There was only one form of music education [for me] and that involved barcaroles (songs sung by or in the tradition of Venetian gondoliers). I think the world has changed and I would like to try and share some of my more pragmatic approach to music theory and composition with a wider audience, and that’s what we try to do on the YouTube channel.

RW: Do you have a different approach to recording music for TV, and for cinema reproduction?

GM: Surround sound is becoming an increasingly important part of the picture. But there is a limited amount of point in delivering a 5.1 [surround-sound] mix when all the instruments [in the score] are sampled, as most sampled instruments are only in stereo and even with multiple microphone positions what you’re going to end up with is 4.0, not 5.1. So normally in television we deliver multiple stereo stems [groups of audio tracks], then a 5.1 mix. With cinema you are always working in 5.1 and often 5.1 stems. The difference – [in movie production] there is of course [a bigger] budget as well.

If you are recording [a] live orchestra or live musicians, then working in surround is an absolute joy, but it does increase the budget and normally means you need to mix in an outside studio.

RW: Does the listening environment influence the scoring from a stereo to a surround mix?

GM: It doesn’t influence the scoring, but it does make mixing a very different experience. To mix properly in 5.1 you need a studio which has been set up acoustically to work in 5.1 and most composer’s studios are not that. Therefore, it is almost always a good idea to go to an outside studio to mix [for surround]. It also means getting an extra pair of ears involved, which is never a bad thing.

RW: What is your next musical project and who would you love to score for?

GM: We live in a world of NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and so it is almost impossible to tell you what I’m going to be working on next. I have a Netflix show in the pipeline, plus add to that, wildlife films for the United States, but unfortunately, I can’t tell you any more about either of those projects just yet.

The person I would most like to [write a] score for is the person who is open to new ideas. A lot of the time a director has hired someone because they sound different, but then [they’re] asked to sound the same as everyone [else]. To work with a director who is open to new ideas and does not have a specific idea in mind when they start the project is an absolute joy. Collaboration is a great thing.

RW: When you listen to music for your own pleasure, what hi-fi equipment do you enjoy?

GM: I mainly listen in the car but when I do listen at home it tends to be a Sonos set up in my sitting room and kitchen.

RW: What is your personal favorite music format to listen to and why so?

GM: I almost always listen on Spotify just because it is so simple. What I’m listening for in a new piece of music is just something different, challenging and interesting. Like finding a new cuisine or a new ingredient or a new flavor. So, I rely on friends and family, particularly my 16-year-old daughter who has very eclectic musical taste, to guide me to new ideas I have not yet encountered.

RW: What do you wish you had been asked but never have been?

GM: To be honest there is not much that I haven’t been asked, and the answer to the question which I’ve never been asked in an interview is: beans on toast with one slice of bacon and a little brown sauce.

As a result of COVID-19, AES (Audio Engineering Society) Show Spring 2021, named “Global Resonance,” was conducted online from Europe. This afforded me the rare opportunity to view a number of the presentations, which would have been otherwise impossible.

This show leaned more heavily on the academic side of audio technology than the New York-based AES Show Fall 2020. In Part One of Copper’s AES Show Spring 2021 coverage (Issue 139), I looked at presentations on binaural audio, audio mixing for residential television viewing environments, and an analysis of differences between Western and Chinese hip-hop music. Part Two (Issue 140) focused on psychoacoustics and studies on emotional responses to sounds. Part Three will delve into the technology side of audio transmission, and achieving realism using sampled orchestras.

The Technology of Streaming

David Bialik (Chairman of the Broadcast and Online Technical Committee at AES) hosted a symposium about streaming technology with Tim Carroll (CTO, Dolby Labs), John Schaab (marketing director of Stream Index), Robert Minnix (product manager, StreamGuys), Robert Marshall (co-founder of Source Elements), and Scott Kramer (sound technology manager, Netflix). They discussed the different audio codecs currently in use and explained some helpful tips for compliance with audio specification requirements.

Scott Kramer pointed out that Netflix’s primary codecs are Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Digital Plus JOC (Joint Object Coding), and xHE-AAC. Netflix’s policy is to adopt market-proven and successful codecs that support the widest audience of device users, rather than trying to do R&D on its own.

Netflix uses a Dolby Professional loudness meter with Dolby Dialog Intelligence to measure all audio for its cloud encoding platform. All audio delivered to Netflix is aligned to -27 DRC (Dynamic Range Control) with a +/- 2 leeway for dialog. This was chosen to give the vast majority of Netflix library content compliance with the EBU R128 loudness normalization standard, and has given audio consistency to Netflix programming from title to title, whether a feature film, documentary, sitcom series or any other genre.

With the advent of new codecs like xHE-AAC, Kramer noted that Netflix was doing some tests with metadata-based dynamic range control, setting a dialog level of -16 DRF for mobile devices only. The primary goal is to offer volume consistency across the board using different Bluetooth devices.

Audio mixers have embraced the 2018 Netflix shift to its focus on DRC rather than being measurement-based, as DRC allows them the freedom to set music and effects levels to taste while referencing a dialog level standard to minimize inconsistencies.

Dolby also has new adaptive streaming engine processes that allow bit-rate changes in the codecs in Dolby Digital Plus (from 192 kHz to 640kHz), but it is still in the development stage with an eye towards wide scale integration by Netflix.

Tim Carroll from Dolby cited the huge challenges over handling metadata back in 1995 and the genesis of HDTV, when audio only needed to hit a single set of metadata at the time. The innovations created in the subsequent 25 years use metadata in a multiplicity of ways that would be inconceivable before 2000. Parameters for delivering metadata have expanded since then, and a great percentage of the process is now on autopilot and fed to the encoder. Support in next-generation audio system codecs, like Dolby AC-4, is vastly improved. As long as metadata can separate the content from the metadata delivery so that the decoder can properly apply the metadata, this will be the key for new developments.

Metadata gives a predictable endpoint for content, but is not going to fix anything on its own. It allows for better device control of a mix so that the mixer can tailor the sounds to the final destination.

John Schaab was enthusiastic about the proliferation of 5G and how it will aid in streaming reliability, which has been a persistent problem. Content delivery systems need to develop improved efficiencies and reliability, as the pandemic has caused a greater strain on broadband resources, with more people working at home, more use of Zoom meetings, and increased demands on streamed home entertainment and Internet Of Things (IOT) use.

The explosion of podcast radio is the only area of significant growth in the broadcast arena, and Schaab believes that while audio quality is important, technology has already achieved that to a fairly high degree, while delivery reliability is still lagging behind. This is because back in 1998, nobody envisioned the extent of enterprise use that the internet would be tasked to deliver. He credits Dolby Labs with taking the plunge to support xHE-AAC, which has led to a bunch of other players getting involved for further R&D, and noted that RTMP and Flash, once popular formats, are no longer supported due to their high error rates.

Schaab also praised Apple’s HLS, and DASH streaming using segmented audio, which breaks the data into timecode “bitbucket” packs, so that if there are dropouts, the playback can be recreated with sync intact if there is a large enough buffer. He noted that Netflix’s video streaming was what really established HLS as a format, and its reputation for reliability as the main attraction for podcasters. HLS’ handling of metadata also allows for titles, artist details, album graphics and other information that can accompany audio. Additionally, HLS and DASH lower costs, since the user no longer has to pay for a media server.

Schaab is very optimistic about the future, and believes that platforms like xHE-AAC hold the key to real-time streaming with only milliseconds of latency, a next level of advancement over bitbuckets.

Robert Marshall commented on streaming in peer-to-peer workflows, where each computer can act as a server for the others. In his work, the primary balancing act is in stability vs. latency. Wi-Fi vs. Ethernet connectivity can make a big difference from a transmission perspective (with Ethernet typically being more stable). Firewall problems add latency because of detouring servers used in peer-to-peer streaming.

Marshall finds that consistency is more of an issue than bandwidth. Another crucial consideration is mismatched uploading and downloading hardware capabilities, so sometimes streaming to a central location hub that then routes the lowest common denominator rate that works for all stakeholders involved is the solution, especially in audio productions involving ADR (automatic dialog replacement) sessions with multiple users.

Consumer systems can prioritize intelligibility over audio quality, so applying a fixed bit rate and other parameters with a bigger buffer can help with quality. Removal of echo cancellation, which also taxes CPU power, can also improve workflow.

Robert Minnix elaborated further on the incorporation of metadata into the workflow and the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) video transport protocol and how it adapts an encoder to whatever conversion format it encounters.

David Bialik commented on his committee’s work in trying to set standards for loudness in both audio/video and audio-only streaming, with recommendations to be codified this summer. He stated that AES standard audio-only streams will be at -18 LUFS (Loudness Unit Full Scale) and -24 LUFS for video.

In the roundtable discussion, there was a consensus that most clients prefer to stream in both a 128K bitrate AAC LC and a 64K bitrate in ATAC. This covers both PC and mobile devices. For video production, Netflix asks pro streaming partners for an ability to go higher. The bit rate for Netflix will go down to 32K for limited-bandwidth situations, and go to 512K if possible..

Most agreed that below 96K, compression was noticeable at times, but definitely in a video production environment. A push for “lossless” video has increased, but it’s important to still be cognizant of limits on the part of many streaming viewers’ hardware.

Scott Kramer summed it up, referencing the fact that most people who may even have streamed in 5.1 in the past “were unaware of what they might have been missing,” so the goal at present is to treat every potential listener as an audiophile and for content providers to stream material with the maximum quality audio possible. The ones who can appreciate it now certainly will, and the ones who can’t at present may be able to do so in the future.

Advances in Realism in Sampled Orchestra Performance

Composer Claudios Bruese presented a look at the strides made with digital samples of orchestral instruments in performance in his presentation, Advances in Realism in Sampled Orchestra Performance.

Bruese noted that the term “orchestra” is a loose one and can apply to anything from a 10-member chamber music ensemble to a 200-piece full Western music symphony orchestra, replete with strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, and other instruments. In each case, the musicians are all playing in the same space, often recorded with multiple microphones that not only capture each instrument group, but the sound of the room and its reverberations as well.

When trying to realistically recreate the sound from these types of performances with digital samples, there are a number of challenges, among them:

• Getting the samples – a task in itself, a complicated process that involves recordings of each individual instrument over the full range of that instrument. The recordings also have to include different dynamics, articulations, and other nuances and techniques unique to that particular instrument.
• Once the musical composition is chosen, each instrument has to be recorded in its entirety in accordance with the score, as opposed to when multiple players perform concurrently. This process is akin to multi-tracking in popular music, when someone like Prince would overdub all of the instruments himself for a recording.
• Once recorded, the project needs to be mixed, again, similarly to the way a multi-tracked recording would need to be mixed down to the chosen listening format(s) for release to the public.

Overall, the process is significantly more time consuming and labor-intensive than real-time recording a live orchestra. However, due to budgets and the grossly reduced number of recording studios that can accommodate recording live orchestras in a professional manner, sampled orchestras have become more and more prevalent, particularly in the film and TV media worlds, where music may be just another post-production budgetary line item with a hard deliverables deadline.

Bruese compared a 1986 composition he recorded with a Sequential Circuits Prophet 2000 synthesizer, with a maximum of 8 seconds per note memory capacity, playing factory samples as a basis of comparison to currently-available sounds. He pointed out how the Prophet 2000 sounds were static due to the memory limitations on the range of note articulation, and how the overall quality of the recorded performance was somewhat mechanical-sounding as a result. Real-time dynamic control was non-existent, so brass instruments, for example, sounded very much like they were being played on a synthesizer, as the sample did not contain the additional note nuances the way an actual horn player’s breath would have shaped them.

These limitations were characteristic of 1980s low- and-medium budget TV and film soundtracks, stated Bruese. The technology would improve over the next decade, as EMU’s Emulator and other sampler instruments would emerge on the market with greater memory storage and better features. The ability to have minutes’ worth of sampling time to capture a greater range of note colors, as well as improvements in sequencing and digital recording such as Pro Tools software, led to great strides of improvement for sampled orchestral performance recording.

Sequencing (the ability of a synthesizer, device or program to generate a sequence of notes), in particular, once it was improved to include MIDI velocity, pitch bend, portamento, vibrato, and timing quantization, provided much greater flexibility in giving performances more of a “live” feel. Minor tweaks could be made to individual notes without committing them to tape and not requiring multiple playback devices running simultaneously.

A subsequent example from one of Bruese’s film scores circa late 1990s-2000 displayed the ability to overlap and cross-fade additional (synthesized) instruments in a more realistic context within the sequencer. The woodwinds section still had a trace of digital sampling artifacts but was otherwise vastly superior to the woodwind sounds in his 1986 piece. Most importantly, brass instruments could now play legato sampled phrases, something that limited sample memory previously made prohibitive. Bruese noted that in order to approximate legato notes on brass before legato samples could be obtained, he would have to painstakingly add MIDI vibrato and pitch bend commands to simulate breath articulations that were unique to the horn tracks for each instrument.

In his third composition, Bruese actually recorded his own instrument samples to his personal satisfaction. Using a computer-based DAW (digital audio workstation) instead of separate hardware devices also enhanced workflow flexibility. This allowed Bruese to fine-tune strings, for example, so that distinctions and nuances between alternating pizzicato and staccato notes could be performed and recorded the way they would be done in real time by actual string players.

As the technology developed, Bruese’s ability to re-create a genuine Western symphonic orchestra was enhanced accordingly. The use of the now-industry-standard Pro Tools platform and a setup featuring samples of the individual strings of each virtual string instrument enables him to create unique and more realistic string-instrument sounds instead of relying on prerecorded ones. This allowed him to use pitch bends, portamento, and other techniques to emulate string players’ finger slides for each stringed instrument.

Bruese’s presentation gave both a good historical overview as well as the work involved in the creation of sampled orchestral performances, something that is routinely overlooked by film and video producers, especially those for whom music is an afterthought.

Next issue, the final installment of coverage of AES Show Spring 2021 will focus on sound design for video games, and a tribute to the late Rupert Neve, one of the most brilliant engineers the audio world has ever known.

I’ve talked a lot in recent articles about ditching the digital disc playback model and moving towards a strictly streaming-based setup for all my digital playback. I haven’t gotten rid of any of my discs (CD, SACD, DVD-Audio, Blu-ray), but I have ripped them all to either lossless FLAC (CD/DVD/BD) or DSF (SACD) files – which means that I’ve eliminated the need for any suboptimal playback from my disc player’s internal DAC. I simply stream them now via a USB connection from my music player/streamer directly to my DAC, using Roon as my library organizer, and the sound quality is outstanding, to say the least.

But a recent, out-of-the-blue occurrence had me rethinking my setup, when I was contacted by an artist rep with an offer to review an upcoming new album that was being released in a multitude of high-resolution formats. No physical media was yet currently available, but I was given a variety of download formats to choose from, and I chose the DXD (Digital Extreme Definition) 352.8 kHz, 32-bit PCM digital file. Which was a monstrous download (7.5 gigabytes!) that took freaking forever – and of course, this would be my very first experience with DXD files. I never gave the first thought as to whether my system would (or could) provide playback for the files.

Of course, the answer was “no,” found out immediately when I contacted PS Audio to confirm my Stellar GainCell DAC’s capabilities via the USB interface. It was limited to 24-bit via USB; the USB connection also restricted my DSD playback to DOP (DSD-over-PCM). The DOP part didn’t bother me too much, as it’s very commonplace. That is, until Dalibor Kasac, my contact at my music player/streamer manufacturer Euphony Audio informed me that they really didn’t care for DOP, and that any file conversion had losses. Native DSD was always preferable to DOP. On the positive side, he reassured me that the Euphony equipment was perfectly capable of handling the 32-bit DXD files. He also told me they were working with another European company on an outboard USB-to-I²S interface to add I²S functionality to the Euphony Summus and Endpoint equipment, but that it was still in the developmental stage and somewhere down the road.

The saving grace for me in the whole album review bit was that the release date wasn’t until mid-August, so I had some time to regroup and figure things out. I started digging around on the internet, and found several different Chinese-made USB-to-I²S converters available, but some of them looked really flimsy at best. I ended up settling on this model, the Douk Audio U2 Pro USB Digital Interface; they apparently rebadge their products for a number of Chinese resellers, and I’ve seen this same product under about at least a half-dozen different brand names online (and at a wide range of price points!). Douk Audio calls the device a USB Digital interface, and that is technically correct. There is no digital conversion going on, the device simply extracts and re-clocks the digital signal from the USB input, then presents the signal to your choice of I²S, coax, or toslink digital outputs. The I²S output  is essentially an HDMI connector, though there are varying viewpoints on the oversimplification of the differences between I²S and HDMI. HDMI seems to not really have anything to do with I²S, it just offers a really useful connection interface for the signal.

The Douk Audio U2 Pro isn’t a converter, it’s an interface that simply re-clocks the digital signal.

I²S apparently has been around for decades; I’ve included a link to a really informative video from PS Audio’s own Paul McGowan that talks at length about the I²S interface and why PS Audio has chosen it for all their DACs and transports. Paul’s explanation really helps to demystify the whole I²S connection thing.

The Douk Audio Digital Interface is actually a very useful device; it extracts and re-clocks the digital signal using a pretty impressive selection of high-end parts that you wouldn’t expect in a product that retails for just over $50 USD. And you have a choice of outputs available; you can use the interface for not only I²S, but also for coaxial and optical digital connections. All outputs are simultaneously active, so you can feed several different digital devices at the same time with no problems. The I²S output delivers a signal that is capable of PCM replay up to 384 kHz and 32-bit, and offers DSD playback natively in both DSD 64 and DSD 128. In my internet searches, I frequently came across an Italian-made device for this kind of interface that was more than double the price, but had frequent complaints from users. The Douk Audio unit actually had information on the site concerning the Italian device, and it appears to me that they probably reverse-engineered it to create their own. There’s also verbiage explaining how they improved upon the Italian model with better parts selection and implementation. For $56 and free shipping, I didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger; at the very worst, I’d just box it back up and return it to Amazon; no big deal, right?

It actually turns out that the Douk Audio device is a very big deal; upon its arrival, I unboxed it and marveled that it actually appeared to be very well made. However, expecting nothing but trouble right out of the gate, I took it downstairs anyway and inserted it into my system. The I²S interface requires power from either a 5V wall wart power supply (not included), or it can draw power from a USB connection (I wouldn’t recommend that setup). I have several linear power supplies in my system, and one of them, a Keces P8, has an available 5V USB power port, which has worked perfectly for my needs.

I had recently contacted Stephen Mejias at AudioQuest to ask him about HDMI cables and how they related to the I²S connection in various digital devices. While helping me wade through the technical details, he also essentially told me that virtually every HDMI cable made would work with I²S, but of course, you want to get a decent-quality HDMI cable. Stephen very generously sent me a couple of the latest AudioQuest 48G HDMI cables, a Cinnamon and a Carbon; I chose the Carbon because of its higher silver content. I connected everything to the Douk Audio interface, and then to the Stellar GainCell DAC, and to my great surprise, it immediately worked perfectly!

AudioQuest offers a huge selection of well-made cables; I’m currently using the Carbon 48 HDMI in my system.

I’ve read for years that the USB connection is an inferior one, and tends to really muck things up, but in general, it’s a good compromise for digital audio. And there are many recent advances in USB-related technology, and many ancillary devices are available to help remove noise from USB connections. I have USB isolators and a galvanic isolation device in my USB signal chain, but with the Douk Audio interface in place, those devices no longer offer any benefit. And are completely unnecessary; the sound quality without them in place is unaffected by their absence. The Douk Audio interface has actually simplified my playback significantly, by allowing me to eliminate extraneous devices, and by simultaneously eliminating unnecessary signal conversions.

I’ve only experienced one hiccup during the process. When playing through the Douk Audio interface to my Stellar GCD’s I²S input, the GCD doesn’t display any signal information. Again I contacted PS Audio about this, and they told me that it’s a quirk of the GCD; in certain circumstances, it won’t display the correct (or any) bit or sample rate information. Well, that’s unfortunate! As a fail safe, I contacted Euphony Audio in Croatia; my streaming system is network connected, and they can remote into my system at any time to observe playback protocols. Zeljko Vranic at Euphony was able to confirm for me that the throughput from my setup was presenting both 24-to-32 bit PCM and native DSD signals to the Gain Cell DAC, and that they were playing as delivered. Sweet!

PS Audio Stellar GainCell DAC.

So how does it sound? In a word, astonishing! If I had any doubts about the street cred of my PS Audio Stellar GainCell DAC, they’ve been completely eliminated by this experience, and the sound quality of the GCD has been totally legitimized. I’m now experiencing the cleanest, clearest, least-gimmicked and most musical digital sound my system has ever delivered; the addition of a $56 gadget from Amazon and China has been nothing short of transformational. All the DSD files I recently ripped from my SACD collection sound more impressive than ever, and that DXD file I mentioned earlier – it’s easily the best sounding digital file to ever play across my system. It takes the illusion of reality to an entirely new level of believability– it’s really that good. DXD was developed to allow for easy editing of SACDs as the one-bit DSD format wasn’t easily editable. As good as DSD is, DXD is on another level altogether. And believe it or not, my FLAC rips of 16-bit/44.1 kHz CD’s have taken on an improved level of clarity and transparency– via the I²S interface, they sound better than ever.

The I²S interface has its detractors, one of the principals being a guy named Amir who runs the Audio Science Review website. Trust me, you don’t want to get me started about what I consider the pseudo-science employed at ASR. I encourage you to make up your own mind. I²S connections are rapidly becoming the standard, especially in the excellent new crop of affordable DACS from the likes of Topping and Gustard. As far as I’m concerned, I²S is the ultimate connection for digital audio.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/wdwd. Other images courtesy of the author and PS Audio.

In issue 140, I told the story of Carter, a Texan who seems to have beat cancer by means of changing his environment. The reason it had such an impact on me is because I’ve been fighting my own health challenges.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the greatest killer in society today is stress. It is at the root of many maladies including cardiac disease, obesity, and cancer. Too many people wake up stressed and go to bed stressed (especially those who watch the news before retiring). They may not feel stressed, but their blood pressure is sky high. I was one of those people. Twice last year the blood bank refused to take my donation because my blood pressure exceeded 185/100. That was scary because all the men in my lineage died before the age of 50 – from heart ailments.

My doctor loaded me up on the usual medications. They dropped my resting BP, but it still averaged 150/90. They also made me dizzy, hyper-susceptible to sunburn, and played havoc with my digestive system. That prompted him to change medications – with similar results.

I decided to change my diet. My breakfast is eggs and vegetables now rather than carbs. Lunch is a piece of chicken or beef. My dinner is a salad of some type. I snack on homemade cookies made without flour or sugar. Not only that (those who know me, please hold on to your armrests), I stopped drinking beer, at least habitually (switched to single malt – no carbs). I continued to do the same exercises I’d been doing previously, alternating between aerobic and stretching/strength training on successive days. After a month, my weight dropped a dozen pounds (5.443 kilos, to keep it simple) but my blood pressure stayed the same at around 150/90. That was confusing.

it looked like if this was going to get this fixed, I’d have to take control myself. Ultimately, everyone is responsible for their own health. Western doctors know surgery and chemistry (pills and drugs), but they’re not taught many other means of dealing with disease, so I decided to embark on a journey of discovery.

After weeks of scouring the web for state-of-the-science information, I came across Dr. Andrew Huberman. He’s a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University who (unlike most cutting-edge scientists) is able to express complicated discoveries in layman’s terms. He was fascinated with the control Eastern mystics displayed over “involuntary” functions like heart rate, digestion, and body temperature. He decided to study those phenomena in a laboratory setting. To make a long story short, he discovered that you can’t control stress with your mind. It’s controlled by the heart rate, which in turn is controlled by breath. To drop your heart rate, you must control your breathing.

He advocates quick, deep, nasal inhales followed by slow oral exhales. This signals the heart to slow down and the brain to relax. If the inhale is split into two shorter, consecutive inhales (as a child does when she’s crying), its effectiveness is multiplied. Furthermore, his lab tests revealed that slowly moving the eyes back and forth, as if scanning a horizon, also lowers blood pressure. That result astonished him. Currently, I employ these two techniques concurrently probably 10 times per day; every time I sit down, every time I go to bed, every time I wake at night, and upon rising. It has become a habit (don’t practice if you’re driving or need to be alert!). As a result, I’ve been able to reduce the number of my blood pressure medications from four to two, and the prescribed doses to 1/4 and 1/2, with no more perceptible side effects.

At my physician’s office yesterday morning, his nurse read my blood pressure at 118/72. (I’d practiced Huberman’s techniques in the waiting room.)

Of course, it fluctuates with activity, as it should. I learned that what matters is the resting heart rate, which is generally the lowest rate of the day. Apparently, anything below 140/85 is fine for people over 50.

Some people think their resting heart rate will appear first thing in the morning when they rise. Huberman explains that’s not true. The particular combination of yellow/blue light that the sun manifests in the morning triggers the brain to increase the heart rate. (Early man needed to be alert when he first stepped out of the cave.)

My resting heart rate usually appears in the late afternoon before supper. If I haven’t been doing the breathing/eye exercises, it’s normally 130 something over 80 (plus or minus 4). It’ll drop after Huberman’s exercises.

Anyone concerned with stress/ blood pressure problems may want to watch Dr. Andrew Huberman’s lectures on YouTube.

Dr. Bruce Lipton (also on YouTube) is another cutting-edge scientist who believes that the mind determines health to a far greater degree than conventional medicine has acknowledged. He’s a retired University of Wisconsin medical school professor and former Stanford researcher. He wrote The Biology of Belief, one of the most empowering books I’ve ever studied.

When he went to medical school, he was taught that “genes are destiny”; they determine the health and lifespan of patients – who are just victims of their genes. Little can be done to ameliorate that except surgery and pills.

But when he started his cell research, he observed that cloned, genetically identical cells expressed differently depending on the culture medium into which they were placed. The environment determined which genes were activated – they were not self-directed.

Studies of identical twins separated at birth showed that they expressed differently as well. Some were healthy and long-lived, others not. Clearly, genes are not destiny?

Dr. Lipton found that a person’s mindset plays a major role in determining the gene’s environment: “Brain cells translate the mind’s perceptions (beliefs) of the world into…chemical profiles that, when secreted into the blood, control the fate of the body’s 50 trillion cells.”

In other words, the mind plays a large part in triggering the chemicals and proteins that end up in the blood (the culture medium) which controls the activity of genes.  Negativity in – disease out.

“You are more a victim of your consciousness than your genes,” he asserts, “Your belief carries more power than your reality.”

As evidence, he cites that 30 to 50 percent of the time, placebos are as effective as drugs in clinical trials. If patients believe they’ve taken the cure, they get better, whether the pills are effective or not. He’s astonished that the “placebo effect” isn’t more closely studied by mainstream medicine.

Dr. Lipton contends that the pharmaceutical industry, which largely controls medical education worldwide, will continue to suppress the healing power of the mind until it can devise a way to bottle and sell it.

Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/Gerd Altmann.

This is an attempt to describe how I experience one of life’s greatest sensory pleasures – music.

I don’t listen to songs. By that, I mean I don’t really give a (trying to keep it clean here, Frank) rat’s patootie about lyrics, or the meaning of what the artist is trying to convey verbally. When a record review focuses on what the songs are about, rather than what the music is like, it’s pretty much guaranteed that I won’t be interested. My thought is, if the lyrics are that damn important, why not put them in a book and be done with it? From that, you might correctly guess that I’m not big on singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan (in his case, the voice is a factor, as well). I do appreciate cleverness or depth in lyrics when they really jump out at me, but most of the time, I am listening to the tone of the voice, the phrasing, and the rhythm of the words. I could sing along with a number of my favorite tracks, but if you asked me what the piece was about, I’d probably shrug my shoulders and say, “beats me.”

This cavalier attitude about lyrics can really pay off, for example, with a group like R.E.M. Most of the time, I can’t even decipher what words singer Michael Stipe is using, and when I can, they leave me with a “what the – is he trying to say?” Therefore, I choose to ignore them and pay attention to the music. I think that’s a solid approach, in keeping with this quote from guitarist Peter Buck in a 1984 interview: “To me, having a lyric sheet just trivializes the music. Words can acquire a kind of magic meaning from the music that surrounds them; people should listen and find ideas of their own in there.” Unless Fables of the Reconstruction came with a lyric sheet (that album represents a hole in my collection – I need a good vinyl copy), the band never even included a full one until their twelfth studio album, 1998’s Up. By that time, Stipe’s lyrics had become somewhat coherent, but here’s an example from the track, “Lotus” (all punctuation, spelling, and lack of capitalization verbatim from the lyric sheet): “hey hey. I was hell. sarcastic silver swell. that day it rained tough spun. hard won. no ocean flower aquarium badlands. give a hand. honey dipt. flim flam hey hey. hey hey. that cat can walk like a big bad man.”

If you can make sense of that, don’t tell me, I don’t care.

All of that said, one example of an exceptional lyric, in my opinion, is this line from “Warm Wet Circles,” on the Marillion album Clutching at Straws:

“It was a wedding ring, destined to be found in a cheap hotel,
lost in a kitchen sink, or thrown in a wishing well”

Now that is a story in itself!

What I do appreciate is great engineering and production. It’s the overall sound that does it for me. That doesn’t mean I’m one of those audiophiles who only listens to the finest recordings – I enjoy a wide variety of genres, my favorite being progressive rock. (I can hear you now – “well, that explains a lot about not caring about lyrics.”) I also have large sections in my collection for blues, jazz, new age, even classical (although I don’t often pull from that latter category for my listening).

I have a fondness for odd time signatures, especially sevens and fives. I played percussion instruments in high school and college, but never really got sevens until I heard the track “Lucky Seven,” from Yes bassist Chris Squire’s solo album, Fish Out of Water. It was so easy to follow the beat.

Another great example of that is the instrumental second half (starting at 5:55) of “The Cinema Show,” from the Genesis album Selling England by the Pound.

I’m a sucker for soaring guitar solos played over slow, majestic chords and drums (think of the ending of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb”). If that went on for an hour, I’d be there, all the way. Progressive rock seems to feature quite a number of such elements.

I also appreciate fine vocal harmonies. Bellybutton, the debut album by Jellyfish, is a treasure trove of beautifully arranged backing vocals. Someone once told me that they used to practice up to eight hours a day on their harmonies, and I believe it. Check out “That is Why”:

(The track that follows that one, “The King is Half-Undressed,” has a very amusing video and more great harmonies.)

Here are my thoughts on a number of musical genres:

Opera

Sorry, but no. I just can’t appreciate an art form that includes people singing at each other (see also: Musicals), especially in the classical or operatic style. I would rather hear Tom Waits singing the phone book. I was probably poisoned against opera at an early age. For some unknown reason, my sixth-grade instructors thought it would be a great idea to take the class to a matinee performance of Verdi’s Falstaff in San Francisco on halloween! We didn’t get back home in time to trick-or-treat. I was scarred for life. Just don’t tell Satan when I get to Hell – he’ll use that.

Blues

Back when I was in my full-on prog snob phase, I dismissed the blues as too repetitive, rhythmically simplistic and borrrring. Since then, I have seen the error of my ways and now enjoy the many styles within the genre, from simple voice and acoustic guitar, to all-out electric blues. For the former, here’s Cephas & Wiggins, and for the latter, Tinsley Ellis and the Heartfixers:

Jazz

It’s got to be melodic. I have to be able to discern intent, which means I run screaming from “free jazz.” No Ornette Coleman for me – Coleman Hawkins, on the other hand, gets my vote. I am especially fond of piano/bass/drums trios from the likes of Ray Bryant, George Shearing, Gerry Wiggins, and Gene Harris.

New Age

True, a lot of it is weak, but I was listening to Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze in the 1970s, so I didn’t have an aversion to synthesizers. Admittedly, New Age is primarily a background music genre. If you’re discriminating, there are a lot of quality recordings out there.

Soul/R&B

I like Motown and classic soul (James Brown, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, etc.), but in the last few decades, overly slick pop/soul leaves me cold. There are still some great voices out there, but the final product doesn’t do it for me.

Classical/Orchestral

On the rare instances when I choose to listen, my preferences in this category tend toward more well-known, popular pieces, such as Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Ravel’s orchestration of Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, some Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, and even some of Stravinsky’s works (challenging as they may be).

Country and Western

C&W songs are usually stories, which requires paying attention to the lyrics. Guess what? I’m not buyin’. However, I did get a big kick out of Luke Bryan’s “Drinkin’ Beer and Wastin’ Bullets,” which I heard one time over the PA at a local baseball game:

Musicals

I do enjoy plays, but as I said about opera, the idea of people singing at each other is not my cup of tea. Lyrics are very important in musicals, so, again, not my style. There are a few songs from popular musicals that I can appreciate, but precious few.

Rap/Hip-Hop

While I acknowledge the skill required to deliver rapid-fire wordplay, this is a form of music to which I am utterly unable to relate. The musical emphasis on heavy bass and beats, combined with repetitive, often-annoying sounds turns me off. I wasn’t a fan of disco, either, for the same reasons.

Well, now you know where I’m coming from. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

Header image: the band Jellyfish.

Art Farmer was unusual for his time for loving swing and bebop equally. His work as a small-group innovator – in particular, with his Jazztet – was no less important to him than the time he spent soloing with big bands. He was one of the 20th century’s most important jazz trumpeters and flugelhornists. Oh, and he also invented the flumpet, a hybrid of those two instruments.

Arthur and his twin brother Addison were born in Iowa in 1928 and raised in Phoenix, where the boys taught themselves to read music. By the time their family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1940s, America was involved in World War II. This worked to the twins’ advantage. With Art on trumpet and Addison on bass, the teens had access to gigging and jamming opportunities that young, inexperienced players would have been shut out of had so many men not gone off to war.

After blowing out his lip by over-playing nightly in Johnny Otis’ big band, Farmer went to New York for a couple of years to take some lessons and audition for one of his heroes, Dizzy Gillespie. But Gillespie turned him down, so he went back west to earn his stripes. In 1952 he crossed paths with one of the biggest career-makers in jazz history, Lionel Hampton, who had turned touring into an industry that employed scores of musicians. That was exactly what Farmer needed. After a few years on the road surrounded by pros, he was ready to hit the New York jazz scene for real.

But, like many Black jazz musicians, Farmer ended up relocating to Europe, where he felt racism was less likely to curtail his career. Over the next four decades, Farmer was one of the most sought-after collaborators in jazz, both in the studio and live, valued for his warm, lyrical sound, his comfort in multiple styles, and his intelligence. He died in 1999 at the age of 71.

Enjoy these eight great tracks by Art Farmer.

1. Track:
   Album: Farmer’s Market
   Label: New Jazz
   Year: 1956

This album was made in New York City, before Farmer moved his base of operations to Europe. With his brother Addison on bass, Farmer is also joined on Farmer’s Market by tenor saxophone player Hank Mobley, pianist Kenny Drew, and drummer Elvin Jones.

The tune “With Prestige” was composed by Drew. It is solidly in the bebop style, with unpredictable pauses and jagged rhythmic phrases. Farmer’s solo after the opening chorus is a good introduction to his ability to sound relaxed while playing wild and virtuosic improvisation. It’s like a magic trick.

2. Track:
   Album: Portrait of Art Farmer
   Label: Contemporary
   Year: 1958

The quartet on Portrait of Art Farmer includes Farmer’s trumpet with brother Addison on bass with Hank Jones on piano and Roy Haynes on drums. The tracks are mostly covers, except for three tunes written by Farmer. He displays a range of techniques and timbres from tune to tune, making this record a particularly valuable pedagogical tool as well as a snapshot of how the trumpet was used in jazz at the time.

One such technique is the use of a cup mute, which can be heard on the Dietz and Schwartz standard “By Myself.” The opening gives a thrilling peek at how the twins worked together musically.

3. Track: “The Aztec Suite”
   Album: The Aztec Suite
   Label: United Artists
   Year: 1959

Chico O’Farrill was an interesting character in the jazz scene of the 1950s and ’60s. A Cuban born to Irish and German parents, he composed and arranged for some of the biggest bebop musicians to give them a Latin sound. One such collaborator was Farmer, who commissioned O’Farrill to arrange music for this album as well as write the title number, “The Aztec Suite.”

Alvin Cohn conducts the eight-man Art Farmer Orchestra in this 16-minute exploration of various Latin sounds and classical techniques. There are moments when the densely arranged writing comes across as self-conscious and pretentious, but Farmer’s solo playing has an inspiring clarity and purpose. Another highlight is the saxophone solo by Zoot Sims starting at the 4:45 mark.

4. Track:
   Album: Perception
   Label: Argo
   Year: 1961

With a tendency toward the trumpet’s warmer sounds, it is not surprising that Farmer became enamored of the flugelhorn. That instrument, especially popular in Germany and Austria (where Farmer eventually settled), has a wider, more conical bore than a trumpet; the result is a richer, warmer tone, sometimes described as halfway between a trumpet and a French horn.

On Perception, Farmer plays flugelhorn as part of his quartet du jour: Harold Mabern on piano, Tommy Williams on bass, and Roy McCurdy on drums. “Tonk” is cool, laid-back bebop number by pianist Ray Bryant.

5. Track: “Sonny’s Back”
   Album: Here and Now
   Label: Mercury
   Year: 1962
   Album by the Jazztet

Farmer co-founded the Jazztet with tenor saxophonist Benny Golson in 1959. Like many long-term jazz ensembles, it was a revolving door of opportunity for both veteran and up-and-coming musicians. This recording was made at the end of the group’s first stretch; Farmer and Golson reassembled the Jazztet 20 years later, and it continued for another five years.

This album, as well as the last one from later in 1962, included Farmer, Golson, Grachan Monchur III (trombone), Harold Mabern (piano), Herbie Lewis (bass), and Roy McCurdy (drums). Monchur composed “Sonny’s Back,” inspired by the return of saxophonist Sonny Rollins from a two-year sabbatical from performing. The Jazztet’s ensemble work is tight and propulsive.

6. Track: “Fuja XI”
   Album: Baroque Sketches
   Label: Columbia
   Year: 1967

Intrigued by many types of music, Farmer embarked on a project to create jazz versions of works by J.S. Bach. During preparation, however, he widened the scope to include other classical composers such as Chopin and Albeniz. Golson did the arrangements for flugelhorn, tuba, reeds, drums, percussion, and bass.

The album opens with one of Farmer’s initial ideas, which he called “Fuja XI.” It is an arrangement of the 11th fugue from Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II.

7. Track: “Lush Life”
   Album: To Duke with Love
   Label: East Wind
   Year: 1975

One of the great pleasures in the world of jazz recordings is hearing how one master pays tribute to another. To Duke with Love is Farmer’s homage to Duke Ellington. It was released by the Japanese label East Wind and produced by Kiyoshi Itoh, who had recently produced pianist Bill Evans’ Live in Tokyo.

Besides Farmer on flugelhorn, the record features Cedar Walton on piano, Sam Jones on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums. The quartet extracts the deepest melancholy from Billy Strayhorn’s stunningly beautiful melody, “Lush Life.” Notice Higgins interesting use of brushes to give subtle texture.

8. Track: “Sunshine in the Rain”
   Album: The Company I Keep
   Label: Arabesque
   Year: 1994

Made late in Farmer’s life, The Company I Keep was a duo album with trumpeter Tom Harrell. Track by track, Harrell switches from trumpet to flugelhorn, while Farmer plays his custom-designed flumpet, created by David Monette, whose company still makes them. The instrument has the length of a trumpet but the conical bore of a flugelhorn, with two crooks at the bends in its tubing. For its size, it has an extremely rich sound.

Although he was getting up in years, Farmer was still at the top of his game, as you can hear in this rendition of Harrell’s tune “Sunshine in the Rain.”

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/vernon.hyde.

In the previous episode (Issue 140), the Telefunken M15 and M15A machines were introduced. Time to look at them under the microscope.

The M15A transport was available in 1/4-inch, 1/2-inch, 1-inch and 2-inch tape widths, running at a choice of two speeds, which could be 7.5 and 15 ips (inches per second), 15 and 30 ips, or 3.75 and 15 ips. The 1/4-inch model was available in mono and stereo versions, with exchangeable head blocks to convert between mono and the many varieties of stereo configurations, including the standard DIN 0.75 mm track separation stereo, NAB 2 mm track separation stereo, 2 mm track separation stereo with time code, and so on. The standard machine only had CCIR (IEC) equalization, but amplifier boards were available with NAB equalization. There were special versions of the amplifier boards that featured switchable EQ, by means of a coin-operated switch on the head block. This would switch between IEC and NAB eq. The 30 ips versions had AES equalization, although they did not call it as such in their literature.

The 1/2-inch version was available in stereo or 4-track configurations, the 1-inch version was available in an 8-track design and the 2-inch variant could be ordered in either 16-track, 24-track or 32-track configurations, for use as a multitrack studio recorder. A 32-track machine could also come with head blocks equipped with 24-track and 16-track heads (as previously discussed in Issue 135, where such a machine was shown in the control room of the Town House Studio in the UK), to allow the machine to be used in any of the common multitrack tape formats needed.

A Telefunken M15A in use at Town House Studios, London, 1978. Photo courtesy of Philip Newell.

More is not always better and especially in audio, less is usually more. Therefore, given the finite amount of real estate available on 2-inch tape, dividing it into fewer tracks makes each track wider, which translates to less noise and better overall sound quality. If a recording can be accomplished in 16 tracks, then it is better to use a multitrack tape machine configured for 16 tracks rather than 24 or 32. On the other hand, if 32 tracks are absolutely necessary because it is a big band and the members are no longer on speaking terms with each other, with a possible history of violence and pending lawsuits, but contractual obligations render it too costly to not record that one last album stipulated in that contract signed ten years earlier, then neither a 16 nor a 24 track tape machine would suffice.

The M15A was one of the very few analog multitrack tape machines offered in a 32-track configuration. Most others stopped at 24 tracks. Up to the 1960s this was entirely unheard of and during the 1950s, a recording artist or group had to do whatever it was that they were meant to do in a single track, on a monophonic tape machine or disk recording lathe. A group would commonly gather around a single microphone in a room and perform their music in real time, just like they would at a concert. This was already seen as a huge technical leap from earlier decades, when musicians had to crowd together and scream down a horn loud enough to get any usable level on disk, and the studio had to be located at the top of a tall building to provide enough of a drop for the weight attached to a string, which would power the turntable for as long as it took for the weight to reach the bottom!

But, in later decades, with the progressive collapse of social and moral standards, recording equipment manufacturers were called upon to provide technical solutions for modern realities in an ever faster-paced world. Therefore, the number of tracks available for multitrack recording has kept on increasing, with 32 channels being the practical upper limit of the analog world. The digital world then came to the rescue, increasing the number of channels at the same pace as the weakening of moral fibers…

An M15A-Q configured for quadraphonic recording using 1/2-inch tape.

I still remember a brief discussion I had a few years ago with a group of musicians expressing interest in using a 24-track tape machine for their recording.

When I asked them if their plan was to complete their recording entirely in the analog domain, they replied that it would not be possible due to the small number of tracks. Assuming that they must have misunderstood something, I informed them that a typical 2-inch machine offers 24 tracks, to which they replied “yes, that’s only the drums…” It was a three-piece rock band, by the way, just in case you are wondering what kind of large percussion ensemble it would have taken to use up 24 tracks. I don’t actually think I even own 24 microphones, and neither do I have the patience to sit through 24 takes of each song, recording one drum at a time, in case that was the idea. I did not inquire further; this was clearly a job best suited for a digital audio workstation (DAW) and an engineer who understands that sort of workflow. I certainly do not and cannot even imagine what kind of audience would care to listen to the result. I can understand using 24 tracks for the entire production of Queen’s A Night at the Opera, but that is as far as my imagination goes.

Returning to the stereophonic versions of the M15 and M15A and to the sanity of long-established audiophile practices that have passed the test of time, the M15 and M15A, continuing along the same lines as their predecessors, the M5 and M10, were offered in a preview configuration, to be used with disk mastering systems, with a preview head that was used to provide the signal level information needed by the disk mastering lathe’s pitch and groove depth automation systems. Most tape machine manufacturers never made such machines and the few that did usually only introduced one such model, or at best two. Telefunken introduced at least four different preview head tape machine models, becoming a market leader in this sector.

M15A, front view.

The M15 and later the M15A were sold by Neumann together with their disk mastering lathes to those who wanted a complete all-inclusive disk mastering package. They were installed in Neumann cabinets and sold as the MT-75, in playback-only configuration with the preview head block and a sliding bar between the reels, with a single roller, which could be moved up or down to derive the correct preview delay time for each combination of tape speed and disk RPM. This was accomplished by altering the length of the tape path between the two playback heads. The preview head block also offered thumbscrews to adjust head azimuth, a very useful feature which we had previously discussed as applied to the MCI JH-110M preview head tape machine (Issues 138 and 139), there in the form of levers. The purpose of this feature was to allow an engineer to quickly line up the heads to the recorded azimuth of each tape that was sent in for transfer to disk, without requiring any tools, thereby speeding up the setup, provided that the engineer was still young and excited about life (and therefore more likely to still be willing to grossly misalign their tape machine to match what was recorded on a tape sent in by someone who couldn’t be bothered to even calibrate their tape machine).

Unlike the MCI JH-110M, the equalization and level were still adjusted by means of trim pots requiring a screwdriver, as in the standard non-preview-model M15A. A very useful feature of the M15A was that the preview version kept the slots used for inserting the recording amplifier boards, so these could be installed and even permanently kept in the machines along with all four repro amplifier boards (two for normal stereo playback and two additional boards for the preview signal left and right channels). By exchanging head blocks, the same machine could be used as both a recording and reproduction (playback) studio machine, as well as a preview-head mastering deck.

M15A capstan assembly.

The 1/4-inch transport could in theory be converted to 1/2-inch in the field, by exchanging head blocks, rollers and guides. In practice, however, the tape tension would need to be readjusted, so while it was possible, it was a time-consuming process.

The German engineering community was notorious at the time for their efforts to redefine standards, so that they ended up making things that were incompatible with what the rest of the world was doing. As such, their tape machines came with the heads the wrong way around (looking towards the reels rather than away from them) and the tape wound with the oxide facing outwards and threaded above the head block rather than below it. This was the standard used in German broadcasting for the entire duration of the tape era and as this must have been the biggest market for AEG/Telefunken tape machines – most surviving M15 and M15A machines are found in this configuration. The M15A was also available with the tape heads oriented in the usual manner; this model was referred to as the “international version” by Telefunken. The preview-head version could be found in both configurations, and despite the fact that Neumann was marketing this machine as part of their disk mastering lathe packages, there are very few M15 or M15A preview-head tape machines surviving today, even compared to the number of surviving Neumann lathes.

M15A tape head made from Vacodur, an alloy with a high cobalt content. The cores are V-shaped for better crosstalk rejection.

A Telefunken catalog lists two separate part numbers for the preview-version sliding roller assembly, one that was compatible with the VMS-70 and earlier Neumann lathes, and one that was compatible with the VMS-80 and VMS-82/DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) lathes. No support was provided for Scully lathes and the several aftermarket pitch automation systems available for them, despite their popularity in many parts of the world, as these used a different standard of preview delay time.

Sadly, even the big players at the time did not take much of an interest in what was happening across the Atlantic. Just as AEG/Telefunken did not care much about American disk mastering systems, MCI and Ampex did not lose much sleep over European disk mastering systems. Whether it was due to that particular market being deemed too small to be worth pursuing, or because of some form of national pride, this isolationist approach on both sides certainly hindered the development of audio technology on a global scale.

M15A, bottom view.

In the next episode, we will look at the different options available for the M15A.

Images in this article are from a Telefunken M15A product brochure, except where otherwise indicated.

Born Erica Abi Wright 1971 in Dallas, by her teens Erykah Badu was performing hip-hop on live radio shows. She chose the name “Badu” after her favorite syllables in jazz scat. That’s appropriate, since jazz, hip-hop, and R&B have shared equal influence in her music. The 50-year-old is now the inspiration for a new generation, even if a lifelong struggle with writer’s block has curtailed her output.

Badu was heavily involved in a Black experimental music collective called Soulquarian when she signed with Universal Music and recorded her first album, Baduizm (1997). Released on the Universal subsidiary Kedar Records, it debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop chart. Solid sales plus two Grammy awards quickly established Badu as an important voice in the neo-soul movement.

The song “Certainly” was co-written by Madukwu Chinwah, a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer who shares a couple of Grammys with Badu. The arrangement and vocals exemplify the strong jazz underpinning in Badu’s music and how she melds that with R&B. And it’s not the easy side of jazz, no vague “jazzy” harmonies to create a certain mood; Badu is not afraid of the serious harmonic explorations of post-bop, a sound rarely found on the R&B charts.

Her next Grammy win was for the single “You Got Me,” a 1999 collaboration with the Roots. This was followed by her second studio album, Mama’s Gun (2000), the source of her first Top Ten single, “Bag Lady.” The Soulquarians are credited as the producers of this album, Badu’s first on Motown Records. (As is normal in the world of hip-hop and rap, each track has its own production team rather than one person acting as overall producer for the project.)

This autobiographical neo-soul album features some impressive guest artists, such as jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove, whom Badu met as a teenager in Dallas, and soul singer Betty Wright, who cowrote and sings on the track “A.D. 2000.” That song is an extended riff on these lines: “You won’t be naming no buildings after me, to go down, dilapidated.” The philosophical statement is dripping with pride; the narrator is not concerned about being remembered in this temporal world. There’s outstanding work here by bassist Pino Palladino and acoustic guitarist Jef Lee Johnson.

Badu’s chronic fight with her own creativity is evident in the delay between her early albums. The industry certainly prefers that a hot young act pump out a record every year, but Badu would not be rushed. When she managed to finish Worldwide Underground (2003), the big hit was “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)”. This collaboration with rap artist Common (also from the Soulquarians) won Badu her fourth Grammy.

As a member of the hip-hop production group Freakquency, Badu employed the services of those artists for the album. One of them is RC Williams, whose website identifies him as Badu’s “current music director.” Williams co-wrote “Woo,” an intricate and sexy mix of soul and rap. Delicate sonic samples build a crystal dome around lyrics spoken and sung in Badu’s lowest register.

Badu’s singing voice is often compared with that of Billie Holiday; this is partly for its pitch and emotional range, but also for the way she uses it to expose the true experience of being Black in America, as Holiday famously did with songs like “Strange Fruit.” For New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) in 2008, Badu put her thoughts on social justice center-stage, crafting an album of powerful statements on racism and economic inequality as well as the importance of cultural community.

Her vocal work on this record is spectacular; the topic seemed to release every element of her multifaceted voice, every timbre, every style. Nowhere is this more evident than in “Soldier,” an anthem for the oppressed. As a city with a lot of socio-political strife, Detroit was a logical focal point for Badu’s energy in this project. “Soldier” grew out of a beat created by drummer and Detroit native Karriem Riggins, who has said in interviews that he and Badu were inspired by the sound of Detroit hip-hop artist J Dilla, who died in 2006.

In 2010, Badu released a follow-up album, New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh). Despite its title, this record is a very different beast from Part One. First, it is more autobiographical than political, with songs discussing Badu’s personal relationships; critics, wishing for a repeat of Part One’s strident social commentary, were generally disappointed. Beyond the change in content, the album also takes a different approach to production, being more groove-driven and rhythmically regular, with a sonic immediacy to the vocals.

Part Two opens with “20 Feet Tall,” a collaboration with North Carolina-based rap producer Patrick Douthit and bass player Douglas Wimbish, who is best known as a member of Living Colour. The melody may be short and repetitive, but its chromatic twists make it completely original. Producer Mike Chav, who also worked on Part One, provides retro-sounding “electric piano” chords on the synthesizer while other sounds – chimes, a squeaking chair – flit by.

In the past decade, Badu has not been prolific. Half of that time was spent in Africa in an attempt to make new music, but she has not released any of it. When she returned, she was approached by Dallas-based producer Zach Witness about helping her put out a mixtape. That term, which originates in the 1980s trend of copying a unique collection of songs onto a cassette tape, has been appropriated in hip-hip culture to mean any DIY recording project. But You Cain’t Use My Phone (2015) was recorded in Badu’s Dallas studio and mixed in Witness’ home.

Badu took advantage of the low-stakes format to try some experimental pieces. The title of “Dial’Afreaq” is a play on “Dial a Freak,” a single by the 1980s funk crew Uncle Jamm’s Army, which was influential in the early development of hip-hop on the West Coast. Badu’s track (warning: explicit language) uses heavily-altered spoken vocals, each word clipped separately like those sets of magnets for writing poetry on your fridge door. Jazz and soul are left behind. In a way, this is a new side of Badu, but the roots of this purely hip-hop sound are there in her early work for those willing to acknowledge them.

Although she has continued to make occasional appearances onstage, Badu seems to have turned from the creation of music and toward the creation of a retail empire. After doing some modeling, she got involved in the world of fashion and fragrance and opened the online store Badu World Market in 2020. As volatile as the fashion industry is, it surely can’t be harder than songwriting.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/livepict.com.

In the days before streaming; in the days before CDs, cassettes and LPs; back in the days of dance parties and portable phonographs there were 45s – little black records with short playing times and large holes that had an A-side and a B-side. The recording on side A was what listeners wanted to hear. Side B usually had music that was good enough but not as appealing as the music on side A…kind of like a double bill in your local movie theater where the feature was coupled with a film of lesser quality. Collecting some recordings today isn’t very different: LPs and CDs are often purchased for one particular selection that receives all the attention.

Songbird/Somewhere Over the Rainbow/Eva Cassidy, guitar and vocals (Blix Street LP)

I first heard Cassidy’s interpretation of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on ABC’s Nightline in 2001 and had to own a copy. This is not the standard version: it’s an especially touching arrangement and performance, and extremely poignant since Cassidy died at the age of 33 in 1996 – the same year her first solo album (Live at Blues Alley) was released. At that time Cassidy wasn’t well known outside her native Washington, D.C. although she did achieve worldwide recognition after the Nightline broadcast and when her other albums were issued posthumously.

Songbird is a compilation album. While the entire record is appealing, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is exceptional.

Postcards/Geographical Fugue/The Turtle Creek Chorale (Reference Recordings CD)

Ernst Toch wrote compositions including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, operas and film music. But the piece he’s probably best known for is his inventive “Geographical Fugue.” This spoken chorus, a style invented by Toch, is written in strict fugal form for four voices saying the names of various cities, countries and other geographical landmarks. It became a sensation when it was first presented in 1930 and  is now the composer’s most performed choral work.[1]

I was never able to find a recording of the “Fugue” until Reference Recordings issued a series of CDs with compositions sung by the excellent all-male Turtle Creek Chorus. This ensemble performs the piece the way I first heard it: clearly spoken in a tempo that, to borrow a phrase from Goldilocks, is just right.

There are a variety of other interpretations on YouTube employing faster or slower tempos, a larger or smaller number of voices, experimental techniques that work and some that don’t. After listening to the Turtle Creek Chorus, check out the Italian Copernicoro choir, where sounds become more important than words…an approach that obscures the important text but creates a nice noise.[2]

The Turtle Creek Chorale:

The Copernicoro choir:

Bernstein/The Making of West Side Story (Deutsche Grammophon CD and DVD)

Bernstein had never conducted a complete West Side Story on LP. When he finally did record it in 1984 the result wasn’t what fans and reviewers expected. The recording starred opera singers Jose Carreras, Kiri Te Kanawa and Tatiana Troyanos instead of the usual Broadway suspects. It was criticized by many critics for being a Broadway show that was too operatic.

According to Bernstein, “It’s not an opera… It’s a work on its way towards being one….The main thing I have omitted to do in my compositional life is opera. Except for ‘Trouble in Tahiti,’ which is a one‐acter and many years old now, I have never written a real, full length opera. The reason is that I was convinced the true American opera would grow out of the Broadway musical. ‘West Side Story’ is not an opera, though it has strong operatic elements, but I thought of it as a step in the direction of what American opera would finally be. I expected others to take the next step, that’s why I left Broadway and went to the [New York] Philharmonic.” (The New York Times, Dec. 11, 1977)

An LP box set and CD were issued, as well as a DVD documentary that showed backstage glimpses of what went on during rehearsals. After listening and watching, I don’t think bridging the gap between opera and musical theater is successful here and agree with the critical critics. West Side Story is a sensational, exhilarating Broadway show that doesn’t need any help. While the orchestral selections are exciting, the vocal style is all wrong and slows things down. The edges are too soft, the sound too round and smooth, the timing not sharp enough. There’s too much attention paid to making beautiful sounds than sustaining an edgy musical experience.

There’s one exception to the “but it’s not an opera” conclusion: Carreras and Te Kanawa rehearsing “One Hand, One Heart.” These few minutes succeed because of the opera singers. It’s a stunning duet: beautiful voices and a superb performance. In a brief voice-over, Bernstein says that one of his daughters, who was at the rehearsal and never flatters  when it isn’t called for, came to the podium and broke into tears. Bernstein thought it had been a wonderful presentation, too.

Puccini/Chrysanthemums/ Riccardo Chailly, cond. (Decca CD)

Need a Puccini fix? Can’t go out to the opera because your gown or tuxedo is at the cleaners? Don’t have enough time to listen to a complete score at home? Try some Chrysanthemums.

Puccini is famous for his 10 operas but composed chamber music as well. The most well-known of these lesser-known compositions is an early piece originally written for string quartet but almost always heard in its arrangement for string orchestra. It’s as lyrical as music from any Puccini opera and if it sounds familiar, it’s because some of the music was subsequently incorporated into his third opera Manon Lescaut.

In addition to the rare and beautiful Chrysanthemums, the Chailly disc includes other lesser-known pieces plus selections from his earliest operas including the aforementioned Manon.

Vaughan Williams/Serenade to Music/Matthew Best, cond. (Hyperion CD)

There are two versions of the “Serenade to Music”: the original score for orchestra with sixteen soloists (or soloists with chorus and orchestra) and an arrangement that’s purely instrumental. With a text adapted from Act V of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the “Serenade” was premiered in 1938 as a tribute to Sir Henry Wood, who conducted London’s annual promenade concerts (aka The Proms) for about 50 years. The sixteen vocalists who sang at the premiere made the performance unique: The composition was written with the talents of those specific artists in mind, and the soloists’ names or initials were actually inscribed over their parts in the score.

The beauty of the lyrics, where lovers revel in the magic of the night, are reflected in Vaughan Williams’ sensuous sounds…a celebration of music so captivating that Rachmaninoff, who performed at the same concert, was visibly moved. He later wrote to Wood that he had never been affected so much by a piece of music. Perhaps the best description of the Serenade is found in the text’s final words: “…Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony.”

The original version with voices is the one to hear but harder to find. Some years ago the Hyperion label made a recording available: I bought the CD at Tower Records as soon as I could afford it. Unfortunately it isn’t available on YouTube, but the 2019 BBC Proms concert conducted by Martyn Brabbins is just as engaging, and was performed as part of the same series of concerts in the same hall where the work was premiered.

***

[1]  Originally written in German, the “Geographical Fugue” is from the three part suite Gesprochene Musik (Spoken Music). When Toch moved from Germany to the United States in 1935 the suite was translated into English with the support of composers including John Cage.

[2] The composition wasn’t originally intended to be performed by live singers. It was designed to be recorded on shellac discs (78s) then “performed” in concert by playing the discs at a faster speed. As Toch wrote in his original program notes: “increasing the tempo, and the resulting pitch level…created a type of instrumental music, which leads the listener to forget that it originated from speaking.” Caines, C. “Preface to Gesprochene Musik, 1. ‘O-a’ and 2. ‘Ta-tam.’” Current Musicology (97), 2014.

On July 11, 2021 at Brown’s Brewing Company in Troy, New York, a memorial event was held to celebrate the life of Art Dudley, who passed away on April 14, 2020. It was hosted by his wife Janet and daughter Julia.

Art was a friend of mine and so many others. For readers who may not know, Art Dudley was the deputy editor of Stereophile and one of the magazine’s most popular, entertaining and insightful writers. With the emphasis on writer – Art expressed himself beautifully, with a friendly, flowing style that conveyed his enthusiasm for audio and life. (I’d often be more than a little envious of how perfectly he’d express something in a review – then tip my head in admiration.) Whether he wrote about his treasured vintage Altec speakers, a favorite – or detested – recording, or his labors in reviving an old Garrard turntable, you got the sense that you were right there with him in his listening chair or workshop.

Before Stereophile, Art wrote for Listener, the magazine he founded in 1994, and The Absolute Sound, Backpacker, Fretboard Journal, Hi-Fi Heretic and others. He was known as one of the nicest and most equitable guys in the high-end world, yet did not shy away from expressing some strong opinions and could skewer people and things he found pretentious with devastating wit. He was an outstanding guitarist who played in bands ranging from the Mountebank Brothers bluegrass band to his early punk outfit, the Norm. (I believe he was in a band called the Aglets – someone please refresh my memory. And even if not, coming up with a band name like that would be classic Art.) He was a former sixth-grade teacher. I first met Art back in the days when he was managing editor of The Absolute Sound. You can read more about our friendship in my article about Art in Issue 109.

Art at a young age, a book he didn’t brag about, and other photos.

The memorial took place on a drizzly afternoon in downtown Troy. Most people I talked to drove a few hours to get there. For many of us, this was our first public outing since the pandemic hit more than a year ago, making it doubly emotional to not only remember Art, but also reconnect with everyone after being apart for so long. Here, in this celebration of someone no longer with us, it felt like we were starting to get our lives back. I’d bet a pair of 300Bs that Art was smiling at the juxtaposition.

Those also in attendance included Stereophile’s John Atkinson, Laura LoVecchio, Julie Mullins, Herb Reichert, Jim Austin, Sasha Matson and Michael Fremer with his wife Sharon; Walter Schofield (Krell), turntable setup expert Michael Trei, John DeVore (DeVORE Fidelity), Rob Doorack (Listener writer and fellow Blue Õyster Cult fan), Robin Wyatt (Robyatt Audio), Ken Micallef (Stereophile and others), Jeff Joseph (Joseph Audio), Michael Lavorgna (Twittering Machines), Bill Leebens (Leebens Marketing and Management) and Pat Gossard, John Pravel (Luxman) and too many others to list. Ken Micallef posted a YouTube video at this link.

Upon first walking in, the first things I noticed were tables of some of Art Dudley’s possessions. There were boxes of records, one containing only opera LP sets, and another box of books, mostly audio- and music-related. A second table displayed copies of Listener and other publications. (Did you know Art wrote a book on word processing? I didn’t. He thought it stunk.) This table also had drawings by Julia done when she was a child, along with letters and photographs. I could not help but smile at the latter.

Issues of Listener, the magazine Art founded in 1994.

Another table featured more books, records and other items, including a selection of Art’s ties (he was always well-dressed at shows) – and I was surprised to see a note that asked people to take the items as memories. Very touching. I took some items I thought Art would want me to have – a mono promo single of Phil Ochs’ “Kansas City Bomber,” some Donovan albums I never knew existed, a signed and framed page of sheet music from musician/songwriter Lee Feldman, who I’ve met and admire greatly, and other stuff including a well-worn copy of Aspen Pittman’s The Tube Amp Book, Volume 3.

The beer was excellent and the band, the Church Road Rangers, were superb; old-school bluegrass musicians who Art had played with.

I felt extremely sad that we were all getting together (delayed by the pandemic but better late than never) because of the loss of Art, yet heartened that Art had so many friends and had influenced so many lives. At one point, a number of people got up and spoke in tribute to him, and it was profoundly moving.

He will be forever missed and forever remembered.

***

Here are some more photos. I’m no Henri Cartier-Bresson, but wanted to share these.

Michael Fremer, Jim Austin, John DeVore and Julie Mullins.

Michael Trei, Rob Doorack and Jeff Joseph with Art’s mono copy of Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain.

Janet Dudley, Laura LoVecchio and Sharon Fremer.

Some of Art’s books.

Art in his punk rock phase. Yes, that’s him…I checked!

The Church Road Rangers.

A table of Art’s possessions, which people were invited to take home.

Herb Reichert and Robin Wyatt.

Michael Lavorgna and John Atkinson.

For my money, Ted Lasso is the best show on television today. Starring former Saturday Night Live cast member and staff writer Jason Sudeikis, it tells the story of a successful college football coach who is recruited to coach an English football club. What sets it apart is how it marries equal parts of comedic fun with a real sense of the importance and impact that kindness can make in people’s lives.

I found a parallel to Ted Lasso’s best traits in the new music of Will Van Dyke. He has just released an EP of songs that he and writing partner Jeff Talbott created. There you will find music that is fun and approachable, with a general message that speaks to the goodness that people can bring to each other’s lives. The Mayor is a seven song EP that is part power pop, part pop rock, and at times it is quite personal, with ballads that really deliver and hit close to home.

Van Dyke is an established musician in the theatrical world of New York City who grew up in Boston studying classical piano, but who also loved theater and rock and roll. He moved to New York at the age of 18 to study at NYU. While there he met composer Andrew Lippa, who helped him enter the theater industry and encouraged his writing. At 22, Van Dyke hit the road with the first national tour of Wicked, playing the piano. After a brief stint on a national tour of Grease that starred Taylor Hicks, he landed his first Broadway gig, The Addams Family. Jumping from The Addams Family to Rent led him to Kinky Boots, where he was part of the music team with Cyndi Lauper. The relationships built on Kinky Boots led to the musical version of Pretty Woman and working with Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance.

Currently, Van Dyke is the music supervisor of Little Shop of Horrors, for which he also served as orchestrator and arranger. He was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2020 for his work on the Little Shop of Horrors cast recording.

With The Mayor he breaks out on his own. The first single, “You’ll Never Hear The Sound” tells the tale of a chance encounter and properly sets the table for the kind of storytelling style that drives his writing. Van Dyke will bring this music to life for the first time with a full band performance at the end of July at New York’s infamous rock venue, The Bitter End.

We had the opportunity to catch up with Will and talk about the origins and the making of the record. Along the way we were also able to discover what important lessons he had learned working alongside musical legends like Cyndi Lauper and Bryan Adams. Van Dyke’s musical journey has not been a straight line, but its measured pace and unpredictable turns have informed a collection of new music that is all the better for it. So is the message it will leave with you even after only one spin.

Ray Chelstowski: How do you describe your music?

Will Van Dyke: I don’t know. It’s sort of a power pop rock thing. I think it’s an amalgamation of the way that I came up in music and what listened to as a kid, which was classic rock with my dad and singer songwriters with my mom. I really like the kind of storytelling you find in Bernie Taupin’s lyrics and I try to do that in my own music. Everything I write is really filtered through the lens of all of the things I listened to growing up.

RC: The music moves from power pop, to ballads, to rockers like the song “Amy Clayton.” But throughout, there still is a sense of “Broadway” to the music. Was that intended?

WVD: From a writing perspective, Jeff and I really do like to have a beginning, middle and end. But if you listen to what we write for theater it’s much more lyrical with a good amount of specificity. I often wonder if people didn’t know that I work in theater, if they would make that kind of comparison. For me this music doesn’t feel any more theatrical than other pop material I’ve worked on.

RC: The press release for The Mayor says that partnering with Jeff Talbott was like when Elton John met Bernie Taupin. They famously wrote in separate rooms. What was the creative process like for you and Jeff?

WVD: We have only seen each other in person two times since December of 2019. We definitely are never around each other but we write together almost every day. Jeff is also a playwright so he has that going on as well. But we are constantly working on music. I don’t know that there ever is one way we approach writing because there is a lot of back and forth. Sometimes Jeff will have an idea and he’ll just send me a lyric. In those cases I’ll take it and figure out what it makes me feel like musically. That might lead to me wanting to adjust the lyrics and that will prompt a back and forth. Another way is when I write a musical hook and Jeff turns it into something more. And then there are times where I’ll write a whole song and I know that it’s just not there yet and needs Jeff’s touch. Then he will blow it wide open.

RC: Jeff is a playwright by trade, not a known pop hit maker. How did you know he was the right creative partner for you?

WVD: I have been writing musicals and songs for other people for a really long time. Seven or eight years ago I was looking for other people to collaborate with. I was at a place where I had finished a couple of projects and wanted to start something new but I didn’t know exactly what. At that exact moment Jeff sent me an e-mail. We had never met. A mutual friend of ours introduced him to a song sequence that I had put out of other people singing my music. He wasn’t sure if I was looking for collaborators but he wanted to talk. So we went out to brunch at this place in Hell’s Kitchen and got to know each other. It was there that he told me about this idea he had for a musical. We began talking about it and literally started writing that week. It was really organic and felt so good. Six months later we had the first draft of a full length musical that was the beginning of our songwriting partnership. Over time that shifted to writing songs with other people, for other people. Then at the beginning of the pandemic I had this idea of writing an album where I sing the songs. What would that look like? How would that feel?

RC: Did you always approach this as an EP versus an LP?

WVD: Yes and no. We wrote a lot of songs and then whittled it down to thirteen or fourteen. As we listened it all just felt like too big of an arc. It was too dense and didn’t make sense. So we decided to release these seven songs as an EP and I think we genuinely will release the other seven separately. These other seven songs also fit together thematically and musically as a real arc.

RC: What drove your decision-making regarding the track sequence?

WVD: Once that we had decided that we wanted this to be an EP we began to understand how it should start and end. From the moment we wrote “You’ll Never Hear The Sound” I knew that I wanted to start the EP with this smaller, folksier idea. I wanted the first four tracks to build where you sense the record getting bigger and bigger. Then it lands on the song “Amy Clayton” where the drums are being hit real hard and there are multiple layers. That’s how the record builds. Then we have the release that comes in the form of the song “Grab A Slice.”

RC: The first song and first single, “You’ll Never Hear The Sound” is really terrific. Is it based on a true story?

WVD: Jeff and I have both been ghosted by people before. It’s a really interesting thing, especially friend-wise. It just sort of happens sometimes and it’s such a particular feeling. This was more of an exploration of that feeling and then the growth that comes from it. I actually didn’t know that it would be the single. The band sounds great on the song “Amy Clayton” and I also really liked “Grab A Slice.” So I was very conflicted. Then it dawned on me that this was the first track of the whole thing, so why not start at the beginning by releasing track one as the first single]? Ultimately, I think that I was the right decision.

RC: What do you want to achieve with this record?

WVD: It’s two-fold. In one sense it’s about my own artistic journey. There’s something very empowering about finally having written music for myself. That’s a win. It’s also about taking myself out of this world of theater and saying, “hey I’m also this singer songwriter guy.” Ultimately that’s success for me.

RC: You have worked with some big names like Cyndi Lauper and Bryan Adams. What did you learn from them?

WVD: Cyndi Lauper is her own breed of creative spirit. While working with her and the team on Kinky Boots she would constantly say that she didn’t want to make “fake music.” It can’t be fake. It has to be real. We understood what she was saying because she didn’t want to make “pop Broadway.” She instead wanted to make pop music that was on Broadway, which is a really hard thing to do. I think she did it quite successfully. She once said something to everyone at a party that I consider to be one of the wisest things I have ever heard anyone say. She said, “music without heart sucks.” I’ve taken that with me ever since, because if you can’t be vulnerable and “go there,” then the work isn’t going to be good. When people listen to your music they can tell if your heart isn’t in it.

Working with Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance on Pretty Woman was an eye-opening experience on the craft of writing hit songs. They were both so incredibly kind to me. They also taught me a lot about what revenue streams were like before Napster. Learning from them about the business of music was fascinating.

Once in talking to Bryan he told me about his relationship with Tina Turner. He produced the song “It’s Only Love” [with Tina Turner on vocals] for his album Reckless when she was having her “post Ike” resurgence. She was nervous about it but it led to her inviting him to open for her on the European leg of her tour. That helped Bryan to just explode in Europe. It was something that you can’t map out; it just kind of happens, and like that, your career launches.

RC: You and your band are performing at The Bitter End at the end of the month. Any surprises planned for that show that you can share?

WVD: I’ll play the songs from my other EP as well and we’ll do a couple of covers. It should be fun. I’m just excited to be playing at The Bitter End because I had a gig booked there for March 22^nd of last year. Obviously, it got cancelled. It’s just nice go back there and be doing it all again.

Photo of header image of Will Van Dyke by Marc J. Franklin.

I bought a new radio last week. I did not need a new radio, but here’s the thing: I like to buy radios. They were my first fetish objects.

I have very few memories that go back further than my first radio, a fits-in-the-hand six transistor object about the size of an iPhone, that I would huddle with next to the heating vent on cold weekend mornings in our living room, listening to early rock and roll. It’s a social history given that the portability and affordability of the transistor radio went hand-in-hand with the growth of rock and roll. I remember as late as eighth grade, in the summer of 1963, I would go over to my friend Kenny’s house across the street with my transistor, moving the dial from station to station until one played the song I could not wait for him to hear: “Fingertips (Part 2)” by a kid our age from Detroit: Little Stevie Wonder.

I also became infatuated with shortwave, and the idea that you could listen to stations in a myriad of languages from all over the world. In ninth grade, in a new high school with few new friends, I convinced my parents to buy me a shortwave radio, a Hallicrafters S-108 receiver. Not as posh as the classic S-110, but the S-108, which I still have (though the tubes died long ago and the dials need overhaul) remains a classic of form and function: it looks like a shortwave radio is supposed to look, with two dials for calibration, an objet d’art that was capable in its day of hauling in signals from all over the globe with just a piece of wire as an antenna: I’m talking all over, Australia, China, Japan, every country in Europe and many in Africa and South America.

You could also listen to the chatter of amateur radio operators, known as hams for those too young to remember. There was a store called Arrow Electronics where you could buy ham equipment, and which kept a good stock of magazines, along with guidebooks from the Amateur Radio Relay League, (ARRL), the official governing body, with ham operators listed by their call letters (say, W1AAA through K9ZZZ) and addresses, worldwide. The idea was for the shortwave listener (SWL-er) to send hams and broadcast stations alike a postcard with your name, or if a ham, your call letters, and confirm hearing them, at a certain day, time, and radio frequency, along with a report of the quality of the reception. Then they’d send you their card, known as a QSL card, verifying your card, and hams and SWLers (shortwave listeners) prided themselves on the individuality and quality of their QSL cards. People would post these cards on their walls, making for many a decorative den or radio room for these hobbyists.

The author’s Hallicrafters S-108 shortwave radio. Photo by Wayne Robins.

There was burgeoning interest in ham radio around 1964. To the world, Barry Goldwater was the Republican Senator from Arizona running for president against incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. To hams, he was K7UGA, neither Republican nor Democrat, just another amateur radio operator from Arizona. I was almost inconsolable when my friends from my previous school were in the newspaper because their radio club had contacted and conversed with the popular K7UGA.

I joined the radio club at my new school. There was only one other member, a pimply kid named Alex, and no ham radio station. We went to his house one day because he had a Citizen’s band (CB) radio years before it became a fad in trucker and Burt Reynolds movies. You didn’t need a license, and could talk to anyone, in their own kooky jargon. Unfortunately, CB radio signals did not travel much beyond the neighborhood. It was not exactly a thrill to hear the local Entenmann’s bakery delivery guy on the CB radio telling his dispatcher that he had delivered his crullers to King Kullen and was about to drop his load at the A&P.

That same year, the New York World’s Fair opened in Queens with a ham radio station inside the Coca-Cola pavilion: K2USA, a call letter uniquely designed for the World’s Fair. Radio stations east of the Mississippi River, ham or otherwise, were designated by international convention to begin with “W,” while “K” stations indicated west. (WABC, New York, KABC Los Angeles; WOR, New York, KHJ, Los Angeles). Some early stations were “grandfathered” in, so even now, the CBS radio station in Pittsburgh retains KDKA.

So K2USA was a unicorn station name, and as soon as I got my novice ham license, I would spend up to an hour every World’s Fair visit to use their state of the art set-up. My home e-mail address begins with a W2, as a tribute to what a ham station’s call letters would start with in New York state.

My ham license, a beginner’s or “novice” license, allowed me to use the lowest end of the shortwave spectrum, the 2-meter and 6-meter bands, but only in Morse code. I studied my Morse code, passed the test, and went to Arrow Electronics to buy an inexpensive transmitter and Morse code key, just a slightly modernized version of what you see in old Westerns where someone needs to send a telegraph message from a railroad station. (Kind of like a computer mouse, come to think of it.) The transmitter was not as copasetic as the Hallicrafters receiver. In fact, after a few minutes it would overheat, start to smoke, and nearly catch fire before I could shut it down and unplug it. This happened with two or three of these transmitters in a row. My great accomplishment one morning was having a Morse code conversation with a ham in Sweden. I did not think the conversation lasted long enough to send him my QSL card, but about a week later his came for me in the mail, so I guess it counted as my longest distance ham connection ever, especially considering that the 2-meter band rarely had the atmospheric bounce to cross oceans.

Then I got interested in girls, and shortwave became a little less groovy.

But I do remember in 1968, when there was breaking news that Russian tanks invaded Czechoslovakia to put an end to that country’s flirtation with the youth and freedom movement in the rest of the world. I was smoking pot with some friends and I said, hey, let’s hear what Radio Prague is saying about it. We fired up a joint, I fired up the Hallicrafters S-108, and it was pretty exciting: As we listened, the English language service of Radio Prague went from declaring independence and freedom of speech, defiant of the incursion, to another voice reading statements welcoming the Russians as comrades in solidarity with the goals of international Communism.

But some things you never forget. I was on a freelance travel junket to a small Caribbean island 20 years ago. I sat alone on the beach watching a spectacular sunset and cloud formations above the nearby island of Guadeloupe. And what came to mind was: “Guadeloupe, home of FG7XL,” a ham radio operator who had been very busy in the 1960s, since Guadeloupe was a great catch for any long distance listener or operator. The call of “CQ DX, CQ DX, (CQ, calling anyone, DX, long distance) this is FG7XL, Jean-Pierre from Pont-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe,” would result in a mad convergence of hams from all over the world who needed to add this small island nation to their countries list.

So, last week I bought this Chinese-made radio, a Supersonic SC-3201BT, an impulse buy from one of those pop-up ads on social media. And it was under $40. It’s a real throwback: a boom box and cassette tape player, with four radio bands: AM, FM, and two shortwave. It’s got Bluetooth, which works pretty well. The speakers are loud; in fact, once you dial up the volume, there is no progression from soft to louder to very loud. You turn the sound up a millimeter from zero and it is almost too loud to listen. I also noticed that despite two decent boombox speakers that put out this loud sound, they appear to be mono, not stereo. In truth, this doesn’t bother me much, but it does seem weird: Who makes a radio with two speakers that are not stereo?

Supersonic SC-3201BT radio.

The selling point to me wasn’t the playing of tapes or radio, although I will always check out shortwave, even though the internet has made it almost obsolete. You want to listen to radio in Uzbekistan, there are dozens of apps offering thousands of stations, both internet radio and broadcast radio, from around the globe. You can find the clear signal of a dozen radio stations in Uzbekistan, some of which play authentic Uzbek disco music.

The shortwave bands are pretty dead, anyway, mostly background noise, as they often used to be during humid summers. And I have no idea where we are in the sunspot cycle that determines propagation conditions. I do know that this is supposed to be a year when the cicadas come back. Whatever I come across seems to be Spanish, French, or English-language Bible stations. Back in the day, there was one religious station that was unavoidable, HCJB, a Christian missionary station in Quito, Ecuador. It had huge antennas, and a potent signal, broadcast from 8,600 feet in the Andes Mountains. It stopped broadcasting in 2009; I have read that a new airport for Quito was built on the site. But HCJB was useful, since it was the best way for SWL-ers to get a QSL card from Ecuador.

Governments all over the world have stopped subsidizing their national shortwave channels, although the United States is still in the propaganda business. One of the few stations that break through the static is the US-based Cuban expatriate station, Radio Marti. I randomly looked up a former favorite government shortwave station, Radio Netherlands, broadcasting from Hilversum. It ceased transmission in 2013.

The Voice of America is still out there. I once appeared on the VOA to discuss whether rock and roll was good or bad; bad, according to philosopher Allan Bloom, author of the then-best seller The Closing of the American Mind. My old friend Bernie Barnard of Long Island’s rock station WBAB was working for VOA, so she booked me to debate Bloom. Since Bloom knew about a lot of things, but nothing about rock music, I crushed him.

You need a much more sensitive tuner than Supersonic’s to hear any detail on shortwave, and hams now universally communicate via single-side-band (SSB), which uses less bandwidth but requires an extra-fine tuner. You could do it manually with the Hallicrafters S-108 by gradually moving the Pitch Control knob so the garbled voices would gradually become audible.

Also, the dial calibration on the so-called Supersonic leaves so much to be desired that I have to guess where my favorite FM stations are by scrolling through nearby stations whose frequencies I know because of the touch buttons in my car. (There are no digital tools at all.) And the AM dial is so tightly packed with identical syndicated talk shows that there is no thrill in late night scavenging for stations in faraway places across the US mainland and Canada. Even my last car radio with an AM dial could easily find Canadian stations on cold, clear nights, the best time to hear long distances on the AM dial.

But what I wanted really was the promised ability to record cassette tapes to mp3 via USB slot or SD Card. Not only do I have quite a lot of musical cassettes: I’ve been enjoying tape two of The History of the Dave Clark Five which makes the case that the DC5 catalogue is among the most underrated of the British Invasion. (I have no idea where tape one is.) But I also have dozens of interviews on cassette (Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Little Richard, and my Voice of America appearance), which I would love to have on mp3 so I can embed them on my Substack newsletter, https://waynerobins49.substack.com/.

So far, that does not work at all. I downloaded a new copy of Audacity for my Mac, and will probably buy a cheap cassette player that will plug directly into my desktop’s USB slot. I don’t exactly feel cheated by my $40 Supersonic radio, but it is not the kind of acquisition of which radio dreams are made.

Header image: Zenith Trans-Oceanic shortwave radio. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Ryan A. Jairam.