Issue 140

The Klipschorn Decorator Birch was a less-expensive unfinished version of the loudspeaker. They could be veneered or painted. This one has a Richard Modafferi-modified crossover and it’s next to some Audio Research components. Part of The Audio Classics Collection, photo by Howard Kneller.

 

When His Master’s Voice speaks, people listen! 1960s HMV ad.

 

Some bicentennial double listening pleasure – Spirit of ’76 by rock group Spirit, on Twin-Pak 8-track tape. It’s considered by many to be one of the band’s best albums.

 

Custom installation, 1960s Populäre Mechanik style.

Guy Michelmore is a creative powerhouse. His talents have made him the go-to “Guy” for composing scores for some of the most entertaining TV shows and films of our generation, including major projects for Disney and Marvel. Thor: Tales of Asgard, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, The Commuter, Phoenix, The Woodlies, Tutenstein and Eyewitness are just a small sampling of his work over more than 25 years. He has also been a TV news anchor. Somehow, the British composer also finds time to provide some of YouTube’s most animated and engaging educational music content. Copper interviews him here.

Russ Welton: Your parents (Cliff Michelmore and Jean Metcalfe) were both BBC presenters! Are you also from a musical family background? How did you start out playing music?

Guy Michelmore: My parents were not particularly musical, but they always encouraged music in the house and so my sister and I both took up instruments and started playing and singing from a fairly early age. I was never a very good music student and would always try and play things by ear rather than [by] reading the score, so my musical education was fairly slapdash until I was in my 20s when I started taking music theory a little bit more seriously.

 

RW: How did your background in broadcasting the BBC news influence you in becoming an A-list film composer?

GM: Not sure I would count as A-list, but as a broadcaster it gave me a much better understanding of the whole production process and the ways in which producers and directors think. Working with the BBC, I learned an awful lot about program making, documentary making and all kinds of other things which have proved extremely valuable when dealing with producers and directors in a wide range of genres.

I think I understand more about their perspective on life and the creative process, and came to appreciate fully the way in which the composer is merely one of a large number of moving parts, a cog in somebody else’s greater creative machine. It is a terrible mistake to assume that as the composer, the music is the most important thing [in a film or TV show]. Actually, the project is the most important thing and as a composer you are there to serve the project.

RW: How do you develop a new musical theme for a character, or a game or film score?

GM: That’s a huge question. You have to have an extremely good knowledge of the particular genre in which you are working, both past and present, so you understand the “direction of travel” when it comes to the style of music that directors and producers are looking for in their productions right now. You have to have almost as good an understanding of the narrative arc of the film as the director themselves, so that you can work out exactly what role your music will serve in the project.

 

 

 

When you’re choosing sounds for a particular character or situation, you are essentially choosing which aspect of that character’s personality to highlight, because the role of [the] music a lot of the time is to bring some elements of the film to the foreground. You are not usually attempting to paint a complete cohesive picture of an entire character in music; you are choosing to take an element and bring it to the audience’s attention.

RW: Do some projects still use real orchestras, or is it all made with virtual [digitally-generated] instruments?

GM: [Real orchestras], very much so. I have two projects on the go at the moment which both will require live orchestra. The thing is, live musicians and lead instruments are what give individual composers an advantage. Everybody has access to the same [digitally-produced sound] samples, but no two people have the same musicians creating the same sound. Small groups of musicians, individual soloists, and chamber ensembles are particularly popular right now, and an intimate knowledge of the instruments and the musicians allows you to create a completely different style of music then you would be able to just using samples and electronics. A lot of the time I combine solo instruments with samples and electronics on projects with lower budgets and that [also] works extremely well.

RW: In your workflow for a Marvel project such as Rocket and Groot, does the music or the storyboard or something else come first?

GM: It depends very much at what stage I get involved in the project. Most of the time, by the time the composer comes on board there are at least storyboards or animatics to work with. If that is not the case, there is always a series bible, which gives graphic art and descriptions of the characters, so there is something to start with there. Of course, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe you know a lot about the characters before you even begin the project because most of them have been featured in other media before. You talk to the director and producer and get an idea of where they want the music to come from and what the overall style and ethos of the show is. Even when you do start scoring to picture, [what you’re seeing] is new. It is very unusual for it to be fully-rendered animation when you [first] see it, and a lot of the time you will be working to wireframes or first-pass animation rather than the finished product.

 

 

RW: How does working with Marvel Studios differ from working with Disney? What does your sound design brief consist of?

GM: Well, they have become one and the same of course now [In 2009, Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment – RW] and more so in the last year. The difference is more [like the difference] between working with a large studio and working with small independent companies. When you’re working with a large studio you are part of a much bigger machine. There is a workflow and a way that things have to be done. They have well-established processes, their own media servers, and certain creative structures that you need to fit into.

My experience in working with large studios in Los Angeles is that they are very professional, very easy to get along with and they tend to do what they say they’re going to do when they say they’re going to do it. The flip side of that is they do expect you to stay absolutely on schedule and produce your best-quality work. If you start falling behind schedule then the studio machine can be quite ruthless and get rid of people quickly. The other way to get fired in a hurry is failing to implement notes from the executive producer. Notes are not normally a discussion point, they’re normally an instruction.

In Part Two of his interview Guy discusses some of his greatest challenges faced when composing for big clients and how to overcome them. He’ll also talk about how his approach varies in recording music for TV compared to creating music for cinema.

After trade show after trade show were understandably cancelled due to the pandemic, I wondered, which would be the first show to reopen? Signaling the provable reduction in threat, and the mounting of an effective defense against the COVID-19 virus, the return of trade shows seemed to be the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Shepherded by the exuberant Emiko, along with her staff, she pounded the virtual pavement and marshaled enough vendors to commit to exhibiting at The Home Entertainment (T.H.E.) Show at the Hilton Long Beach Hotel, a surprisingly convenient venue. As June approached, the reality of the show actually happening transitioned from “we hope so” to “bring it on, come on down,” and on a gorgeous sunny Southern California weekend with perfect weather and a lovely ocean breeze, it happened. [See B. Jan Montana’s show report in Issue 139 – Ed.}

To be honest, when Michael O’Neal, founder of the Beginner Audiophile Podcast, who lives in Long Beach, and I planned to attend, he figured one day, tops, and he’d see it all. I figured a day and a half. But, we were both wrong. It “seemed” like a small show, and the exhibitor listings didn’t look that large, but the reality was that there was plenty to fill up all three days. From Mark Waldrep lecturing on his belief of the false promise of high-resolution audio, to the always popular David Solomon, reminding us why so many folks love their Qobuz subscriptions, it was an educational as well as fun event. Sure, all the usual nutty audiophile crankiness was in abundance, from cable believers to non-believers, to arguments about Class A vs. Class D, and if a solid-state amplifier in a glass tube was, well, a tube. It was a fun time. The bar and lounge were filled from opening to closing, and a friendly spirit abounded with people introducing themselves to each other, so no one felt abandoned. I was able to spend time with two legendary cable guys, Lonny Gould of Kimber Kable, and John McDonald of Audience – what a nice way to get wired up!

The gear on display was mostly of the high-bucks variety, although in the show’s Marketplace there was some lower cost, affordable gear for sale. Young people were in attendance, and hanging out in front of folks like Periodic Audio, who showed their popular and reasonably-priced earphones as well as a stunningly good, new, tiny and low-cost USB DAC/headphone amp, demonstrating that one needn’t be wealthy to enjoy this hobby. At the same time, a few feet away were displays of CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and of course, vinyl, lots of vinyl. A lot of it was from audiophile labels, run by folks with possibly a complete and utter disregard for financial common sense, but loads of passion and expertise. And great sound and music as a result.

I think that for many attendees, the fact that they were even able to attend was akin to a miracle in itself. I found some of the smallest systems in the smallest rooms were among my favorites, but visiting the larger rooms, one could still leave feeling breathless. With the enormous variety of science, electronics, physics, and engineering on display, it wasn’t hard to also remember the genius behind the science of the vaccines that made it possible for us to gather with such a high degree of safety. The show staff were diligent in checking for proof of full vaccinations before allowing attendees to register and enter the show. (We might complain, “Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!,” but I for one was delighted to know that everyone with a show badge was also letting us know they were fully vaccinated and sensitive to the needs and safety of fellow attendees. I hope that other shows, like Rocky Mountain Audio Fest or AXPONA, follow the same strict protocols, especially with the rise of variants.)

Personally, I felt T.H.E. Show went along swimmingly, as did my colleagues. Although it wouldn’t be practical, I always wish that maybe someday, one day of a show might be set aside with all phones silenced and cameras stashed, and we could enjoy a beverage of our choice and just chill, relax, and listen. You know, have a couple of days for the normal frenetic surge of energy, networking, and seeing new products. And then, reserve a day just for listening, chilling, maybe even a bit of dancing to the music.

I was at T.H.E Show with a friend of mine, Mark Merlino, who I first met when I was a 13 year old kid, attending OCAA (Orange County Amateur Astronomers Association) meetings. Mark would gain fame as the mind behind the well-regarded Qysonic Research line of speakers, and holder of patents on loudspeaker design. Mark turned me onto audio, gave me my first preamp, a Dynaco PAT-4, and taught me about audio reproduction. He wasn’t going to attend at first, but I convinced him to meet up on Friday. He also thought it would be a one-day show for him, and then it became a two day show, and then, well, he ended up buying tickets for all three days. To me, that was evidence of the show’s success. I had a great time, as did Mark and Michael, and everyone I talked to felt the same way. What a great way to welcome back the return to real life. After the pain and struggle of the last year and a half, it was a welcome relief. Job well done. Can’t wait for the next one.

 

Audio shows always have a lot of camaraderie. (L to R) here’s Bailey Couch, Jonathan Couch, Kevin Couch, and Carin Couch of Heavenly Soundworks; Emiko (director of marketing for T.H.E. Show), and Merryl Jaye and Abigail Shelton of Rose City Media Group.

 

Jennifer Martin, professor of music at Cuesta College and David Solomon of Qobuz.

 

Daring to be different: the MC Audiotech Forty-10 speakers, featuring a double-curved spaced array midrange/tweeter section and folded cube bass enclosure.

 

You’ve got a friend: John McDonald and Lenny CoCo of Audience and Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab.

 

Do you believe in magnets? The High Fidelity Cables exhibit, featuring their magnetic conduction cable signal transfer technology.

 

Leonard Dodd at the Erectorbot display, showing parts made by the company’s large-scale 3D printers.

 

Victor Liang of Clean Audio enjoying T.H.E. Show in the Reference Components room.

 

The Reference Components room featured Italy’s Zingali Acoustics Twenty 1.2 EVO loudspeaker.

 

At the Periodic table: Zeke Burgess and Dan Wiggins of high-end headphone, electronics and accessories maker Periodic Audio, showing their Rhodium DAC.

 

Sunil Merchant displaying high-end gear from Covina, California dealer Sunny Components.

 

Our intrepid photographer Harris Fogel and Michael O’Neal from the Beginner Audiophile podcast. Photo by Michael O’Neal.

 

Alex Yoon gives a thumbs up to the Wavetouch Audio Antera V.2 speakers.

 

Mark Waldrep of Aix Records discusses the merits of high-resolution recording with Brian Mitchell of the popular audio website eCoustics.

 

Where there’s an audio show, there’s analog: Steven Norber of loudspeaker company Prana Fidelity cues up a record.

 

Voss Audio had an impressive room at T.H.E. Show.

 

Reaching for sonic heights: Heavenly Soundworks’ Bailey, Jonathan and Kevin Couch with their FIVE17 loudspeaker. Bailey is a chef, and made delicious cookies for T.H.E. Show, which were a hit, especially after Emiko posted about it!

 

Putting things into perspective: Mark Merlino of Tech/Knowledge, who holds the patent on loudspeaker time alignment, titled “Critical Alignment Loudspeaker System.”

 

Relaxin’ at Camarillo – well, actually, at the Hilton Long Beach Hotel – Michael O’Neal, Tammy Johnson, Lonny Gould (Kimber Kable) and Mark Merlino.

 

A good time was had by all: Norman Varney (A/V RoomService), Marcus Hartanto (Cable Support Plate, makers of AC wall plates that support heavy power cables), Mark Waldrep, John McDonald, U.S. Army Specialist Mohammed “Moe” Attrah, John Bring (Cable Support Plate), Emiko, Greg Chapman (Cable Support Plate) and unidentified man.

Header image of ATC Loudspeakers courtesy of Harris Fogel.

The intrepid Hungarian pianist András Schiff has pressed against received wisdom since indulging in Bach early on and rarely programming any Chopin (a cornerstone of any pianist’s repertoire). You can count his 1989 recording of the first Brahms concerto (with Georg Solti) as a solid if unremarkable release. But his Romantic impulses tilt more towards Schubert (his tempting sonata cycle on the London label), his emotional anchor soars with Beethoven (complete sonatas on ECM), and his modernism leaves off at Bartok. Schiff focused on Schumann long before much of Brahms, he doesn’t go near Liszt, and programs a lot of Scarlatti. Such relatively conservative taste now skews adventurous as he approaches 70.

Among many such traditionalists, the Early Music movement proved easy to disparage. Advancements in musicology trailed artistic depth, and most performers stick with the modern Steinway. And yet the better modern players sponge fascinating ideas from period practice. When violinist Pamela Frank released her Brahms Sonatas with Peter Serkin in 1998 (on London), she toned down her vibrato for intriguing contrasts for clean, singing lines that didn’t sound glazed in molasses. (Her 2011 Beethoven Violin Sonata cycle with her father, Claude Frank, gave up similar artistic bounty.)

Now, Schiff turns heads with a period-informed Brahms recording based on immersion into an 1859 piano with pre-Steinway action. He’s figured out how the size and depth of the orchestra (with gut strings) can enhance and illuminate this material.

 

 

Some history: by 1859, Johannes Brahms had suffered through his idol Robert Schumann’s suicidal leap into the Reine and slow decline and death inside a psychiatric ward in 1956. Brahms served as a confidant to his widow Clara as he developed his compositional voice, a huge talent wrestling with outsized ideas and even larger ambitions. He composed several early masterworks, but he hadn’t yet written a symphony even as his pretensions gained authority. And while he knew he had the ideas and determination, he suffered what the literary critic Harold Bloom would later dub “the anxiety of influence.” How could he possibly write for orchestra with nine Beethoven symphonies looming behind him? After Schumann’s death, Brahms relocated from Düsseldorf to Hamburg, where he had grown up. He worked like a fiend, and bore down into these challenges with an epic patience.

Instead of leaping into the symphonic deep end, he held in place; instead of full-fledged orchestral works, he wrote a piano concerto and then two Serenades (symphonies more in form than content) before spending ten years on his Symphony No. 1 in C major, which premiered in 1876. And through this wary, churning patience, he figured out how to turn that anxiety into one of his great subjects.

The trick, as he saw it, was to approach the symphony through concertos for his primary instrument, and transform the pairing into a new kind of symphony, with the soloist and orchestra carrying equal weight, instead of a soloist with mere backdrop. His first Piano Concerto in D minor started out as a two-piano piece, but quickly outgrew its format to demand greater forces. At the premiere in 1859, the audience felt intimidated: at the second performance, the musicians had to talk pianist Brahms out of leaving the stage after the frosty response to the expansive first movement.

This first Brahms concerto has entered the standard repertoire as an unwieldy piece for even the greats, and on classic recordings from Rudolf Serkin or Leon Fleisher (both with George Szell and the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra), you sense a titanic struggle between player and the music’s strenuous demands – gigantic hand leaps, bundles of notes with trills on top, and formidable passagework to wear down the most acrobatic fingers.

For this recording, Schiff gives an illuminating performance on a period Blüthner piano that approximates the sound Brahms himself would have heard, with only 60 players in the orchestra playing gut (instead of the brasher modern steel) -stringed instruments.

 

These lighter, less boomy forces cleanse these scores with a miraculous ease, and the effect is like taking in a restored Rembrandt. Where Brahms can sound thick and overripe, here the music turns transparent and glowing. A central irony of Brahms’s work lies in how even his large-scale symphonies require a chamber player’s alertness, an intimacy between players that only comes from eye contact and rigorous listening.

And this very special Blüthner piano has other advantages: while the grand piano design had just adopted a steel casing, these early models retained a lightweight tone. The Steinway innovation of “crossing over” the bass strings soon boosted the bottom end, added heavier steel, which projected more sound into ever larger halls. But this also robbed the instrument of a delicacy our modern ears need adjusting to.

In the Second Piano Concerto (1882), composed between his Second and Third Symphonies, the intricacies between player and ensemble gain complexity. In the second concerto’s lunging second movement, the string breakthrough (Allegro appassionato, CD 2, track 2, at 4:38) sounds less like a starburst than confetti that sprinkles color over all the previous momentum. When the pianist responds with a hair-raisingly difficult sequence of octaves (5:10), you hear how much easier, and how much more fun, it is to play on this period piano: the keys were actually narrower, making the leaps and note clusters manageable instead of prolix. The effect has charm and ease where most modern recordings convey forced resolve.

 

This recording begs new questions: how much of the heavy, molten Brahms we’re accustomed to came from the industrial scale of instruments he never wrote for? When we encounter this new Brahms, this more original and detail-oriented line writing provides new appreciation for the originality of his voice and a more relaxed conversation with history. For an uneasy, fast-moving era where composer and audience both put Beethoven at the center of everything, Brahms sounds more like a natural extension of the classical period, instead of a brooding, furrowed-brow Romantic.

Scholars can use this performance to reevaluate Brahms’s reputation as an orchestrator, long considered one of his weaknesses: too much doubling, not enough tonal variation, and perpetual balance problems both from within the orchestra and between ensemble and soloist. So many of these problems disappear here under Schiff’s direction; you can know these pieces inside out and suddenly hear new inner voices, lines that had been buried, and colors that never quite bloomed.

Through all this, Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment have a grace and humility that serves both the music and its new textures. We might even start thinking of Brahms as –egads – light-hearted.

 

 

Header image of András Schiff courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Alexander Böhm.

To follow a few installments dedicated to Ampex (Issues 136 and 137) and MCI (Issues 138 and 139), it is time to return once again to the Old World, and discover Europe’s best-kept audio secret!

While Studer (and their Revox subsidiary) was the most well-known and internationally successful manufacturer of professional tape machines in Europe, and their A80 (covered in Issue 134) had one of the best tape transports ever made, they were definitely not the only manufacturer worth considering on the continent. There were a few, but today we are going to talk about the one that started it all, having presented their first prototype in 1934, and the first commercial model, the AEG K1, in 1935. The K2 came in 1936 and in 1941, the major breakthrough of AC bias was introduced. By 1944, the K7 was available as a stereophonic recorder.

As you may have already guessed by the dates, the AEG Magnetophon served as an important tool of the Nazi propaganda machine during World War II and the company, with its various activities, had a dark history of supporting the Nazi party, using forced labor during the war, and so on. Their early tape machines are rather crude for my taste, but AEG kept at it for several decades.
The American tape recording industry effectively started when Jack Mullin obtained two early AEG tape machines in 1945, following the invasion of Germany by the Allied forces, and brought them back to the United States, where they were further developed and modified. The result was the early Ampex series of tape machines.

Meanwhile in Europe, the development of the AEG Magnetophon continued after the War had ended. Several models were introduced, but I will skip straight to 1954 and the AEG M5. Originally a monophonic machine with a rather rudimentary tape transport, it remained in production up until the late 1970s, as the M5-B, M5-C and M5-M. The M5-C was also available in stereo. It was built as if it was meant to keep on recording while the building it was in was being bombed, but in terms of sound quality, it was not yet very exciting.

The Telefunken brand name had begun to be used on the M5, with Telefunken originally starting as a joint venture of Siemens & Halske and AEG. In 1941, AEG acquired sole ownership of Telefunken, but it was not until 1967 that the two companies would merge as AEG-Telefunken.

The M10 was introduced in 1960, with a much-refined transport, improved vacuum tube electronics (although the later models came with early solid-state electronics) and a total weight of 180 lbs., continuing the tradition of designing blast-proof machines. However, I am not a big fan of vintage German vacuum tube designs – too overengineered and complicated for my taste. The tape transport was not yet something to go out of your way for, but it was evident that AEG was making huge leaps in this respect.

In 1971, the AEG-Telefunken M15 was introduced, with what I consider to be the best tape transport the company was to design, and one of the finest tape transports ever made, if not the best.

 

 

It is very minimalistic, having nothing more than the bare minimum of parts, yet packing all the features it needs to guide the tape confidently, with wow and flutter remaining inaudible even to the most discerning listeners, who claim to always be able to hear it on tape.

Several years ago, a classically-trained musician asked me to demonstrate the audibility of wow and flutter on one of my Telefunken machines, by recording and playing back a 1 kHz tone from my bench oscillator. He said that he could hear it every time on all the tape machines he had ever used.

The idea was to compare the sound of the oscillator directly played by the speakers, to the oscillator recorded to tape and subsequently reproduced on the same set of speakers, switching between one and the other. He claimed that the speed instability of tape transports was always audible to his ears using this test. So we tried it, using an unlabeled switch. After a few flicks of the switch, he looked at me confused and asked, “is this the tape or the oscillator?” I thought it was the tape, but I was not entirely sure. I certainly couldn’t tell by the sound, and neither could he. He then asked, “are you sure one of the two is really the tape?” and I said yes.

So, a couple of flicks later, he just suddenly pressed the Stop button on the tape machine, and the tone stopped. It was the tape, and neither of us could tell. I then explained to him that I didn’t think the test was sensitive enough, and that it would be best to use a 3,150 Hz tone instead, or even 10 kHz, which we did, but we were still both unable to tell which one was which by the sound alone, and we also could not hear any wow and flutter with music.

 

 

All mechanical transport systems have speed errors to some extent. The way these present themselves on the M15 renders them largely inaudible, however, which is what ought to be the aim in the design of a professional tape machine, turntable, or anything else for that matter. The errors will always be there; we just need to place them below the threshold of audibility, which is a complicated non-linear function, largely influenced by psychoacoustics. Scrape flutter is also elegantly dealt with.

The overall construction of the M15 remained faithful to its roots in the M5 and M10, with a military-grade cast aluminum chassis, very large motors, and a belt-driven capstan (with a dedicated motor of course, servo-controlled as was the standard engineering practice in the 1970s). The capstan was massive, with a huge balanced flywheel below the chassis to assist the servo control system with some good old pure mechanical brute force, perhaps with a hint of that medieval Gothic warrior instinct shining through (“I understand that the guided missile system is our strategic advantage, but I still prefer to carry that tried and tested skull-crusher, just in case…”).

The electronics were solid-state, and they were good, but not yet outstanding. The M15 was available in many different versions, covering all possible tape widths, speeds and track configurations. The only thing better than an M15 would be the M15 transport with better electronics.

This came in 1977, as the Telefunken M15A. It had the already-excellent transport of the M15, but with improved electronics. The M15A had by far the best audio electronics of any tape machine of the solid-state era, ever. It was sonically transparent and had tons of headroom.

 

 

The M15A had a rather minimalistic approach to everything, in stark contrast to almost anything else designed in Germany. (With the possible exception of the East German, two-stroke-engined, varnished-cardboard-bodied Trabant, an underpowered lawnmower which they successfully marketed as a car, since that was your only choice if you lived in the GDR, and there was a waiting time of around 10 years from the moment you ordered one to actually taking delivery. The West German M15A was a rather more elegant take on minimalism and at the time it was sold, you didn’t have to wait 10 years for one! Although I must admit that the lines of the Trabant look quite cute, at least compared to a Lada 2103 of a similar vintage and pedigree, but don’t try to fit into one. A single M15A reel motor would have offered a significant performance boost for the Trabant, if used as its engine in place of that two-stroke motor, but it would have to be smuggled in from the West, which was risky business. If you find a Trabant today, which will probably cost less than a Telefunken splicing block, you could try using both M15A reel motors to power it, one on each driven wheel, modifying the motor control boards to provide torque vectoring, which would certainly give Elon Musk heartburn…but not because it would pose a threat to Tesla’s market share, especially if you are to also retain the 10-year delivery date policy!)

 

 

There were no separate input boards and recording circuit boards, as there were also no separate repro and output boards. The repro boards also served as the output boards and the input boards also functioned as the rec boards.

There was one rec and one repro board per channel to keep things simple and easy to keep running in the field. The standard version of the M15A did not come with level-adjusting knobs or any form of metering. The input and output levels were calibrated by means of trim pots, adjustable with a screwdriver, in direct relation to tape levels. There were no in-between stages. Metering was deemed an unnecessary expansion of the signal path, since you were meant to meter on the mixing console, or with a dedicated peak program meter designed for broadcasting use.

The audio electronics were designed to handle signal levels up to  +24 dBm, which was the proper engineering practice for all professional audio equipment, yet not always seen on equipment marketed as such.

 

 

Tape levels could be pushed to insane heights, capable of complete magnetic saturation of even the hottest tape formulations ever made, to this day. The M15A was simply the exact opposite of planned obsolescence; it seemed like the engineers designing it set as their design aim that no matter what was invented over the next century, the M15A had to be capable of going a few steps further. It was to never be outdone.

You want 500 nWb/m tapes? The M15A will do 5000 nWb/m. There were discussions during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s where audio engineers were complaining about tape machines that were electronics-limited in terms of how hard they could drive the tape, rather than being medium-limited (tape levels should ideally be limited by tape saturation instead of the electronics of the tape machine clipping the signal prior to the saturation limit of the tape). All the tape machines featured in this series are medium-limited, but the M15A went a bit wild on this.

In the next episode, we shall discuss the features and configurations of the M15A.

Header image: from M15A product brochure.

Eddie Palmieri, The Skye Records Era, Savoy Records, and Huracan

In our previous installment (Issue 139), we reached the end of Tjader’s tenure with Verve Records. (Part One of this series in Issue 138 covered Cal Tjader’s early career.) With this third part in our survey, we’ll gather up a few odds and ends by looking at one final Verve album, a related album for Tico, and a trio of labels he briefly recorded for.

Cal Tjader and Eddie Palmieri

I set aside one Verve album for this third installment. El Sonido Nuevo – The New Soul Sound paired Tjader with pianist Eddie Palmieri and his renowned La Perfecta band, augmented with two additional trombones and bassist Bobby Rodriguez for this gig. The tension of Palmieri’s brassy and tense Nuyorican sound (which would later be known as “salsa”) situated against Tjader’s West Coast cool created a memorable outing for both musicians.

While the liner notes make a big deal of the rapport between Tjader and Palmieri, apparently one source claims that in an interview Eddie Palmieri gave in recent years, the two never performed together on this album. Palmieri and La Perfecta recorded their parts; then, by telephone conversation, Palmieri advised Tjader on where to add his vibraphone parts.

Here are a couple of featured tracks. “Los Jibaros” leads off the album.

 

They would also record what has become a Latin music standard – Tito Puente’s “Picadillo.”

 

The duo also reconvened shortly thereafter on Palmieri’s label, Tico Records, for the similarly excellent (if slightly less clearly-recorded) Bamboléate. (Sources I’ve read have placed the recording date anywhere from a few weeks up to a full year later than El Sonido Nuevo.) In order for Tjader to record outside his Verve contract, the labels made an agreement where the two artists would record one duo album for each label.

Where the prior album had a lot of creative tension, the feeling here is perhaps a little more relaxed at times, and Tjader’s vibraphone again blows a cool breeze through the proceedings. His initial recording of “Samba do Sueno” featured here percolates at a much lower level than the version he would record on his Verve album Along Comes Cal about a year after Bamboleate was released.

 

And since Palmieri is known for his montuno style, here is a good example, “Mi Montuno.”

 

Both Tjader/Palmieri albums are available on CD and streaming.

Cal Tjader on Skye Records

After Cal recorded his final album for Verve, he co-founded a new label with Norman Schwartz, Gary McFarland and Gabor Szabo, named Skye Records. Tjader looked forward to having more freedom at the independent label, but Skye would only last a couple of years before falling on financial hard times. Tjader would issue only three records with the label: Solar Heat, Plugs In (at the Lighthouse) and Sounds Out Burt Bacharach. The contents of a fourth album remained in the vaults until the DCC label released these tracks as Latin + Jazz = Tjader, although it confusingly adds a track from Plugs In (“Nica’s Dream”) to fill out the disc.

The title track from Solar Heat was penned by Tjader and Gary McFarland. You will notice from the arrangement and instrumentation that Tjader had somewhat modernized his sound.

 

Recorded at The Lighthouse, Tjader plugged in with a nice arrangement of Horace Silver’s “Nica’s Dream.”

 

With Sounds Out Burt Bacharach, Tjader succeeds in recording what is essentially a pop instrumental record, free of any Latin influence and skirting jazz as well. An interesting if non-essential album in his catalog, it’s a recording you can safely walk on by from and not miss much of anything.

 

From the live recording Latin + Jazz = Tjader, here is a tune penned by Tjader’s long-time conguero Armando Peraza, “Armando’s Bossa.”

 

For anyone interested in the Skye recordings, I would suggest finding either the original Skye pressings if looking for vinyl, or the DCC releases for digital. (Note that these are standard CDs – not the gold CD reissues that DCC was known for.) The label’s recordings have been bounced around between owners so many times that there are many questionable versions of these albums out there. I have a Gryphon release of Solar Heat on vinyl that has a very strange tonal balance to it (and I believe the channel balance is way off), whereas the various CD versions out there may be a grab bag in terms of quality. There are also compilations that reuse the cover art from Sounds Out Burt Bacharach, such as the Fried Bananas CD with the cover art tinted green. The only “official” compilation on vinyl I can think of is Tjader-Ade, released back when Buddah Records owned the label.

Cal Tjader at Crystal Clear Records

Jumping ahead in our timeline, Tjader recorded Huracan, a one-off record for Crystal Clear Records, a direct-to-disc recording label, in 1978. This would later be reissued on CD by the budget label Laserlight with two additional tracks that were not on the original LP (which contained only four tracks, as it was recorded at 45 RPM). As with many direct-to-disc recordings, this one has a stiff, tentative performance, the band afraid to let loose since any mistake in the performance would mean a wasted lacquer on the cutting lathe. Evidence of this is in the title track, “Huracan,” featured here. Despite essentially an all-star cast (Willie Bobo, Clare Fischer, Poncho Sanchez, Frank Rosolino, and others), it feels as though nothing ignites much of a fire beneath the musicians.

 

Cal Tjader at Savoy Records

Our final rarity reaches way back to the 1950s. After Tjader recorded his initial 78s for Fantasy, but before he began recording his LPs for the label, he recorded a handful of sides for Savoy Records, which were eventually released on a 10-inch LP. Here is “Minority.”

 

As neither Huracan nor the Savoy sides are available on Qobuz, I’ve compiled two playlists.  One features highlights from the Skye Records catalog.

https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/6221894

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqXkJPkOFzFlYpedTdVWon5mYH2yJvDxC

The other is a combination of both Cal Tjader/Eddie Palmieri albums, resequenced together.

https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/6211154

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqXkJPkOFzFnIbepmsDAsnOM_PcGGGqkq

Our next installment continues our Tjader timeline, and could be considered a homecoming as Tjader moves to yet another label to begin the 1970s.

Companies specializing in tour set design, lighting and effects are constantly being challenged to deliver new and exciting experiences for bands and their fans. It’s a costly endeavor, affordable only to a few artists who can consistently deliver both high-ticket pricing and large-venue sellouts. All likely not a big concern for Metallica, as to date their WorldWired Tour has grossed over $416 million, the eighth-largest revenue-producing tour of all-time.

For artists with elaborate staging, like Metallica, the Stones, U2, Roger Waters and so on, their studio recordings are like an appetizer to the live show experiences. Each tour is enriched by whatever state-of-the-art technology is available during tour planning, with custom staging, sets and sound considerations often taking a year or more to map out, design and build.

A Metallica concert is a totally immersive and visceral experience. It’s theater as much as it is sound, but the theatrics are designed to enhance, not distract, from the band’s performance. A Metallica show is still musically as intense (and loud) as a concert ever gets.

 

If music fans were asked to describe in a word or two what comes to mind when thinking about Metallica, “angst” would be a common response, certainly far more top-of-mind than, say, “community service.” Unbeknownst to many music fans, however, is that Metallica are large benefactors of community-based support programs and strong advocates of volunteerism. A few years ago, for example, the band’s All Within My Hands foundation, named after a Metallica song, inspired over 1,000 volunteers to spend the day working at local food banks to support the fight against hunger. Another program of theirs is the Metallica Scholars Initiative, in collaboration with the American Association of Community Colleges, that funds training programs for students entering the workforce. Each participating college, chosen from a rigorous application process, receives funds to support student training. In 2021 the program plans to donate $1.6 million to 23 community colleges.

But let’s not digress any further, shall we, and continue this conversation with Mike Washer, Metallica’s stage manager, who has a lot of big time music tour experience.  As background, Mike has also crewed with The Stones, U2, Aerosmith, Pink, Joe Cocker, Luther Vandross and, wait for it, Pokémon Live!

Stuart Marvin: Hello, Mike Washer. Appreciate your time. So, tell me, what’s it like being a concert stage manager today?

Mike Washer: As a stage manager (SM), you’re on the ground first thing, meeting with local labor, local promoters, etc. You have to know where storage is for all the various departments, for empty set carts, empty cases and various other items. You need to know what can stay in the truck, what goes back in the truck, and the order the trucks rotate through (for equipment load in and load out). Of course, you rely on all your department heads, truck drivers, bus drivers to take care of their own areas, but they come to you for advice, final decisions, direction and timing. Everybody works together, and gets on a local level with whomever or whatever they need. I’m on my feet all day moving from department to department. I’m a big clock-watcher, making sure everything is okay, and if we’re not where we should be (schedule wise), then I figure out why and how to get it remedied.

SM: What’s the difference between touring with artists like Metallica who have very elaborate staging and artists who don’t?

MW: Generally, with the larger shows you tend to get more experienced crews in each department. For management there’s probably a bit less to worry about. The lighting and sound vendors, for example, they have guys who they want to represent them (on site) for the big tours. So you tend to get a better-quality technician for lighting, sound, pyrotechnics and video. The crews also tend to be larger, so there are people who can cover [for others], if need be, to get things going. They’re generally professional, self-motivated and disciplined. But then again, it can be hit or miss.

SM: What are the challenges from a SM’s perspective with indoor venues vs. outdoor stadiums?

MW: When you’re outside, weather will always be your enemy, whether it’s too hot, too humid, [or] it’s gonna rain, snow or whatever. That all gets taken away [when you do a show] indoors. I don’t have to worry (indoors) about where all the plastic or Visqueen (a brand of plastic sheeting) is located. Or notify my guys if a storm is coming in. Your hands stay warmer, and your boots stay dry. There are some great times to be had in outdoor stadiums, and the electricity of 80,000 people is simply amazing, but I prefer being inside. The older I get, the drier I want to be, I guess.

 A muddy field at the site of a Metallica gig. Courtesy of Mike Washer.

SM: As an SM are you ever consulted upfront about stage design?

MW: Not as a stage manager, but as a carpenter or head carpenter (what Mike was before becoming stage manager), carpentry crews would often be sent to the vendor building out the scenery to help finish it up, get it out the door, and to put [their] hands on it to better understand how it comes together and comes apart. This could also include saying, “if we did this or did that, it would pack (or unpack) easier.” So from the carpentry side of things, you can possibly have input before scenery leaves the shop.

 

 Behind the main stage. Courtesy of Mike Washer.

SM: How many in the Metallica crew are part of the national touring road show, and how many crew are sourced locally?

MW: With truck drivers, bus drivers, office support staff, catering, wardrobe and all of the departments, probably near 200 people. With local crew, we were probably between 80 and 90 for load-in, and then probably around 120 for load-out. In some heavy union shops (venues), the sound guy can only do sound, the carpentry guys only carpentry, etc., so you need to be strategic in how you use labor. Sometimes the local union will step in and say, “we’ve seen your show and we think you need this (number),” and then management will then have to compromise with crew staffing.

SM: What’s more stressful for you, load-in or load-out?

MW: I like load-in because every venue has certain challenges that you have to overcome. But when you get to (work) enough venues over time, you kind of remember. But the challenge aspect of load-in is a lot more fun. Load-out is all about, “let’s get it done.” Get it done quickly….and get it all into the trucks!

 Stage setup in Trondheim, Norway. Courtesy of Mike Washer.

SM: What’s the role of an advance team?

MW: It’s an important function. They can answer all of your questions before you walk in (to a new venue). And now with e-mails, texts and photos, while you’re loading-in one show, they can be in the next city advancing it. For example, they can send a picture of a door that may be too small to get through. And you’re like, “okay, we now have at least 24 hours’ notice to start thinking about it.” A lot of time we’ll send an advance team of riggers ahead with a full motor package [used to operate lights and staging], if it’s a difficult rig. You save a lot of time cause you can [then] immediately jump into load-in. A lot of tours could use them (advance teams) and don’t. It can be an important tool.

SM: With effects, lasers, pyrotechnics and heavier concert touring rigs these days, how have safety concerns grown and changed?

MW: I like it when my crews wear PPE (personal protective equipment). Some venues may require them, particularly in Europe where local touring crews are required to have both hard hats and vests. I like to see that everybody at least has safety in mind when they put on a helmet. I’m always in a hat and a yellow vest. I like to be visible. It’s getting to the point where, you know, OSHA is getting its fingers into everything, which is for better or worse, whatever your opinion may be. People need to be taken care of, and everybody wants to go home (safely).

 

 A concert in Paris, France. Courtesy of Mike Washer.

SM: I noticed that Metallica’s concert tours are scheduled with two weeks on and then two weeks off. That’s pretty unusual, no?

MW: There’s not a lot bands that do that. It’s so you don’t dedicate your life to being away from family. Everybody has a chance to watch his or her kids grow up.

SM: Does Metallica deploy multiple sets of trucks and rigs when touring?

MW: Fortunately, with the way Metallica tours, their shows are spaced out far enough [where we don’t have to do that]. Our own rig team would go in the day before and have the luxury of a full day to load in, and the luxury of a full day to rig.  But other tours, where they’re doing back-to-backs, they might have a (separate) full set of motors and steel ready to go (to the next show).

SM: You and other Metallica crew have been with the band for a long time, does it feel like family?

MW: Yeah, it does. You know, there’s always a certain amount of trust you build with (your own) family that you can (similarly) build with the people on the road.  It’s referred to as the “Metallica Family,” and that extends to their fans and audiences. It does have a good family vibe, and you welcome that (feeling) when you work somewhere. Everybody wants to succeed, and you want everyone else to succeed, too.

SM: Why do you think Metallica has such staying power in such a competitive field?

MW: It’s the fan base, plus you have parents passing the music down to their kids.  It’s the love they have for this band, and like the Rolling Stones, it’s still going strong.  I guess they hit at the right time, with the right sound, to the right people. It’s a dedication, (that goes) back and forth, between the band and the audience, and the audience to the band. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a rare occurrence.

 One of the attendees I met at The Home Entertainment (T.H.E.) Show in Long Beach last month was a guy named Carter. Every time I noticed him in the listening rooms or hallways, he had a smile on his face. So, when I observed him the next morning sitting alone at breakfast, I asked if I could join him. “Absolutely," he responded; "I’d appreciate the company.” I discovered that Carter was a retired Texas oil man who loved both music and motorcycles – just like me. We soon felt like kindred spirits and chatted about everything. I told him about my multi-amped stereo system and my recent 1,500-mile motorcycle ride through the Sierras.

He told me about his tour of Europe a few years earlier. “I informed my son I was going traveling for the summer,” he chuckled, “But I was there for almost two years! I’ve loved music all my life, every type of music, but never had time to indulge my passion, so I made a point of attending every concert I could. I heard the best orchestras in cities from Dublin to Vienna and Stockholm to Athens. I auditioned the biggest church organs in Europe, hundreds of chamber orchestras and quartets, saw dozens of local folk music performances, and even a Mongolian throat singing group in Munich!” He went on, “I met all kinds of fascinating people. You know that most of them speak English over there? Surprised me! I got invited to many parties and events, and was often a house guest. Sometimes I woke up wondering where the hell I was at! Best thing I ever did.

When I got back to the States, I spent a couple of months with my son, and he drew me back into the oil business. All my anxieties, frustrations, and worries returned, so over a drink one evening, I told him, ‘Look son, I’ve enjoyed being with you and your family, but I’ve got to get out of here. I’m starting to feel ill and I don’t like that feeling.’

So I went to South America and did the same thing I did in Europe, attended all the major concert halls, church recitals, and cultural events I could find. I had a ball, met all kinds of people, though not many spoke English, and stayed in many places I didn’t expect to stay at.  Best thing I ever did!”

He continued, “But after a year or so, I got homesick and decided to do something different. My son had a Honda Gold Wing in his garage, so I asked if I could take it to Alaska. We used to do a lot dirt riding together when he was a kid, and although he expected to continue riding, family and work got in the way. So, I used it for a couple of years to travel the US like I did Europe and South America – as a tourist taking in everything I could. I rode north in summer and south in winter. I visited 45 states and attended most of the big motorcycling events including Sturgis, Laconia, and Daytona. I met many people, was often a house guest, and woke up sometimes wondering where the hell I was at. Best thing I ever did.”

“Sounds like you’ve lived a charmed life,” I commented.

“Well, not exactly. My eldest son died in Afghanistan, and my wife committed suicide four years later. She just couldn’t come to terms with his loss. I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2015 and given six months to live.”

“Good Lord, now I feel foolish for calling your life charmed.” I apologized.

“No, don’t,” he responded; “Getting sick was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Really!”

“Yah, I’d become so trapped in my role as a successful oil man, it never occurred to me that there was more to life. It took a terrifying disease to shock me out of my smugness and prompt a change in lifestyle. I figured if I’ve got only six months to live, I’m sure as hell not going to spend them in the oilfields, I’m going traveling.”

“Well, um, how come you’re looking so healthy now?” I asked gingerly. “Have you ever gone back to the doctor?”

“I did, the same one who diagnosed me six years earlier. My son insisted on it.”

“Well, what did he say?” I asked.

“Said he couldn’t find a trace of the cancer. Surprised the hell out of both of us. He couldn’t believe the test results so he asked me to go to a research hospital for further tests.”

“Did you?”

“I wasn’t going to do that! What do I care, I feel healthy and I tested healthy, but my son insisted.”

“So what did they say?”

“Well, the head honcho there came to the same conclusion as our family doctor; no trace of cancer. She told me I did the right thing by going traveling and gave me a note to carry around with me. I had it laminated in plastic and read it every morning.”

Carter handed me the note and I copied it. It read, “If you place genetically identical cells in different culture mediums, they will express differently. If they are placed in a toxic medium, they will wither and eventually die. If they are placed in a nourishing environment, they will grow and flourish. You had the foresight to remove yourself from what had become a toxic environment into a nourishing one, Carter, so the expression of your genes changed accordingly. You rid yourself of disease by ridding yourself of dis-ease. I’m going to use your example to inspire all my patients.”

He added, “I read it every morning to remind me of what I need to focus on. If I’d stayed in Texas, I’d have focused on my cancer. I’d have visited all kinds of doctors and clinics trying to get healed. These trips have taught me that life’s like a vacation; you can’t appreciate it if you’re focused on its conclusion. I don’t do conclusions anymore; I’m too busy planning my next adventure. I’m riding to Laconia bike week tomorrow and touring New Zealand this summer. Next year, I’m flying to Germany for the Oberammergau Passion Play.” He added excitedly, “I can hardly wait!”

Laconia Motorcycle Week, June 2021. From laconiamcweek.com.

I was very impressed with Carter so I gave him my contact info and invited him to stay at our house in San Diego. He may wake up wondering where the hell he’s at, but I bet he’ll tell us that coming to visit was the best thing he ever did.

Header image: Honda GL 1800 Gold Wing, from honda-mideast.com.

 

***

At a traditional wedding reception dinner I was invited to attend, the large turntable in the middle of our dining table was overflowing with local favorites, which my table mates dug into with gusto. As hungry as I was, the only dish I could identify was a steaming heap of glass noodles to tumble and splash into my scalding bowl of savory broth. None of the guests on either side of me spoke a word of English, but nevertheless nodded their approval as I twirled the almost translucent strings around my fork. In my experience, noodles are not supposed to “pop” when they meet your teeth. Not wanting my hosts and fellow guests to lose face because of an uncouth “Gweilo,” which means “white ghost,” i.e., foreigner, i.e., me! – I discreetly used my napkin to remove what I later found out were jellyfish tentacles from my confused Western mouth.

***

I must have caught them in between batches. There were no other customers in the small, quiet street-side restaurant near the Shanghai train station. I pointed to a photo of the menu items on the wall and prayed that I had ordered plain, unsurprising noodle soup. The proprietor immediately began kneading dough on a stone table. After rolling it out and cutting inch-wide lengths, he and his assistant stood by a large roiling cauldron and ripped small triangles of flat dough with remarkable speed and dexterity and flung them in quick, single motions into the boiling vat of turbid broth from about three feet away. I sat in quiet awe. They didn’t miss, not once. Admiring their white knitted skullcaps, I took out my guide book and confirmed that they were Chinese Muslims, a minority group that has lived in China for almost 1500 years. “As-salamu alaykum!” I said to the man who brought me my soup. “Wa-Alaikum Salaam!” he sparkled back with a wide smile. This was my first encounter with China’s Muslim population. The roughly 40 million of them speak the local language, but the similarity ends there. The proprietor’s features were graceful and delicate, with pale, clear skin and warm eyes. He sang a beautiful song as I watched him mimic a fan with his hands and stretch a quiver full of long noodles from his deft fingers. People in traditional occupations in China have usually learned their trade from their parents, and teach it to their children, continuing a legacy of expertise and pride in one’s work which is a pleasure to watch. I don’t think he was showing off – this is just how it’s done here. I ate my soup slowly and quietly, surprised and delighted by aromas from my childhood steaming from its surface. He came and sat across from me as I peeled a clove of raw garlic from the bowl on the small table and popped it into my mouth. He asked where I was from. “Meiguo,” I answered, America. My language skills did not allow me to relate my being born in Israel, nor my Egyptian ancestry. We took to each other instantly, feeling a distant but palpable kinship. With all deference to the many “first-time-you-meet the-in-laws” jokes…you know you are a valued guest when the photo album comes out. He proudly showed me pictures of his Mosque in Shanghai. Emotions almost overwhelmed me. I want peace between our cultures so badly that I would have over-salted the soup had I not restrained my tears. We just looked at each other for a minute, blinking occasionally, transfixed by the wonders of non-verbal communication. How's the soup? he motioned. “Haochi de!” It’s delicious, I replied, which it was. As I hoisted my heavy pack onto my back and prepared to leave, he took my outstretched hand in both of his. As-salamu Alaykum, he said warmly into my eyes – peace be unto you. And Shalom Aleichem to you, my brother – the Hebrew version squeezing out a tear despite my efforts.

***

And now, some travel magic. It was two decades ago that I had that big bowl of noodle soup in Shanghai. Throughout that late lunch, I was so engaged in the moment that I did not take any photos. However, since the experience of that aromatic fare had become so imbued with meaning, the images were clearly etched into my memory. I did not remember the name of the small establishment, but on a whim, I Googled “Muslim Noodle Restaurant near Shanghai train station.” Hundreds of images came up. Sorting through them, I actually found a YouTube video of this restaurant! I remember the painting of his mosque on the back wall, the table in the far right corner where I sat, and the white knitted head covering the men wore. I experienced an unmistakable visceral knowing that this was definitely the place. Considering the traditional practice of boys learning the craft from their fathers, the young man stretching noodles in this photo may be the son or grandson of the proprietor who made my meal 20 years ago!

 

*** © Copyright Alón Sagee 2021– all rights reserved. If you enjoyed this story, please leave a comment below. Links to more of Alón’s stories published in Copper:

• The Not-So-Great Wall of China https://www.psaudio.com/copper/article/the-not-so-great-wall
• Everest Part 1 https://www.psaudio.com/article/getting-high/
• Everest Part 2 https://www.psaudio.com/copper/article/getting-high-part-two
• Everest Part 3 https://www.psaudio.com/copper/article/getting-high-part-three/
• Mongolia Part 1 https://www.psaudio.com/article/five-weeks-in-mongolia-part-one/
• Mongolia Part 2 https://www.psaudio.com/article/five-weeks-in-mongolia-part-two/
• Two Hands Clapping https://www.psaudio.com/article/two-hands-clapping/
• Sublime Moments https://www.psaudio.com/article/sublime-moments/

Header image courtesy of Pixabay.com/xiuqilong.

In Part One (Issue 139), Adrian Wu outlined a history of Garrard 301, 401 and other turntables, and provided an in-depth examination of their advantages and foibles. Part Two concludes with a look at some modern upgrades, and the SME re-issue of the legendary model 301.

The Garrard company was founded in 1735 as a jewelry maker, and it remains a high-end jeweler by appointment to the Queen to this day. The company founded a subsidiary, Garrard Engineering and Manufacturing Company, in 1915 to produce motors as part of the War effort. After World War I ended, it needed to reinvent its business and entered the nascent gramophone manufacturing sector. Decades later, after losing market share to Japanese competitors, the parent company sold the business to a Brazilian investor in 1979, who ended its business activities. Loricraft, an English company specializing in record cleaning machines, licensed the Garrard name in the 1990s and provided servicing for the Garrard turntables. They also re-manufactured many parts, designed new plinths, and eventually produced a Garrard 501 turntable of their own design. This turntable was regarded as an oddity at a time when belt drive ruled the roost, and the mainstream British audio press never took much interest in it.

In Japan, Ken Shindo had been working on the 301 since the 1960s and had come up with a new main bearing, idler and platter. Together with his plinth, a 12-inch tonearm modeled after the classic Ortofon RF-297 and a highly modified SPU cartridge, the record player was sold as a complete package. This record player was and still is taken very seriously indeed by the Japanese audio community. Loricraft and Shindo remained the only game in town, if you didn’t want to get your hands dirty and work on refurbishing turntables yourself, until the early 2000s. With a revival of interest in these classic turntables outside Japan, many companies have sprung up in the last 15 years to provide servicing and modifications as well as plinths.

Slate Audio (now defunct) was one of the early players, and they claimed slate has a natural structure well suited to damping the vibrations of the Garrard motor. The first 301 I bought had a new paint job and zinc plating of the links that operate the idler wheel mechanism (the originals were plated in cadmium, a toxic metal), but everything else was original. The color of the paint did not quite match the original, and the zinc plating started to peel off after a while. I also discovered that the power cable to the motor was not rewired in a safe fashion. The slate plinth had a faux marble outer finish that looked good enough, but the finish of the edges was rather rough. Nevertheless, it was cheap, at 1,000 pounds (in 2003) for the whole lot including tonearm and a slightly used Clearaudio cartridge. It had some wow until I bought a new idler wheel and a set of springs from Loricraft, which fixed the problem.

After a couple of years, I came across a cream-colored grease bearing unit, which I bought to replace the oil bearing unit while keeping the same plinth. There was not a lot of difference sonically between the two units, but I believed the design was capable of a whole lot more. The sound was lively, impactful, with solid imaging, but the pitch was still not as stable as it should be, and the frequency extension could have been better.

I then came across a new main bearing that was receiving a lot of rave reviews on the bulletin boards. The company was called Red Beard Audio, and it was basically a one man operation. The guy owned a machine shop and produced every bearing himself by hand. It has an oversized shaft and housing with very tight tolerances, and does not rely on bushes, ball bearings or thrust pads. It uses a highly viscous synthetic lubricant that has a consistency between oil and grease. It was a major improvement over the original bearing, with vastly improved frequency extension and a tighter impact. He was very successful initially by all accounts, with a large backlog of orders.  Sadly, he had some quality control issues once he started to scale up production, and some unhappy customers demanded replacements, which he was not able to fulfill in a timely manner. Some of these irate customers became very vocal online, which led to the collapse of his business. Being an early customer, I have had no issue with the part, which is still working perfectly with no sign of wear after more than a decade.

During this time, I also upgraded the knife-edge bearing of the SME 3012/II tonearm and rewired it. With the new main bearing, the turntable has finally reached a satisfactory level of musicality. However, I was still in constant search for perfection, and two obvious areas for improvement were the plinth and the chassis.

People argue endlessly about the overall merit of a slate or marble plinth versus a wooden plinth with constrained layer damping. The former aims to sink the vibrations into the mass, whereas the latter is supposed to spread the energy over a wide range of frequencies. Advocates of wooden plinths claim the slate deadens the sound, whereas the other camp claims that the “tuned” plinths color the sound. As for the chassis, the original 301 chassis was made of cast aluminum. It is only supported around the edge where it sits on the plinth, and it is possible to flex the center of the chassis if one pushes down on the bearing. This lack of rigidity means vibrations from the bearing gets reflected back to the platter, record and stylus. The 401 chassis addressed this issue with bracing underneath to make it more rigid, but the 301 chassis looks way cooler.

I found a company in the UK called Classic Turntable Company that machines new 301 chassis out of blocks of aluminum twice as thick as the original. Every detail of the appearance is the same except for the four bolt holes. Instead of inserting the bolts through the chassis, the bolts are screwed into the bottom of the chassis like the 401. The company also produces platters with perfect balance, made from machined aluminum or brass, as well as an improved idler wheel and main bearing. I therefore packed up my motor unit and shipped it to them. They stripped and rebuilt the motor, stripped and chrome plated the links, replaced the springs, idler, spark suppressor and chassis, and replaced all the wiring. I also bought a new aluminum platter. I did not replace the bearing, as the Red Beard remained in perfect working order.

In essence, I got a new turntable unit except for the bearing, links and motor. The company also recommended a cabinetmaker who had been making plinths for their customers for many years. I bought a solid cherry wood plinth with a natural finish. This new round of upgrades cost around 2,500 pounds, a bargain in high-end terms.

The whole thing came together nicely and the record player has ascended to the next level of excellence. With well-mastered LPs, the performance approaches that of tapes played on the Nagra T Audio open reel deck. I can still identify some deficiencies, such as a slightly emphasized mid-bass, but I suspect this might be due to the tonearm. The tapes still have a bit more of that eerie see-through quality, and the soundstage is wider and deeper still. However, this record player is now competitive with some serious high-end turntables.

In 2018, SME announced that they had bought the Garrard trademark, as well as the Loricraft company. The following year, they showed a “new” original 301 built with New Old Stock (NOS) as well as remanufactured components. The plinth follows the Loricraft design, which has a top plate supported by four rubber mounts, similar to the Roksan. The machine is only sold with a 12-inch tonearm, a descendent of the 3012. I have not seen an official price yet, but have heard various estimates from £12.5K to £20K.

[Note: as of press time, there is a website with an official-looking web address for Garrard, but when attempting to log on, a warning message comes up that the connection is not private and the site may be trying to steal information. No information about the new turntable is available on the SME website. We will attempt to find out more. – Ed.]

While I am happy that these classic machines have again re-entered the mainstream consciousness, I cannot help but wonder if SME got it wrong. Re-creating the machine exactly as it was might appeal to vintage audio enthusiasts, and there is certainly a market for that, but most audiophiles are interested in this design for its potential to achieve state-of-the-art performance using modern manufacturing technology. That is why so many people have worked on improving the parts. SME, being a top precision engineering company, should be perfectly placed to make significant advancements. Will serious audiophiles pay £12.5K for something manufactured with 1950s technology? Of note, Thorens went so far as to “update” their classic TD124 with direct drive. I feel this might be going a bit too far, since the idler wheel drive of that machine is the soul of the design. They should perhaps offer two choices, idler wheel or direct drive. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I look forward to the chance to audition the “new” 301 in its original glory, and would love to be proven wrong.

Here are links to a few other vintage Garrard restoration specialists and parts companies:

Layers of Beauty: a specialist antique furniture restorer, cabinet maker and plinth maker for vintage turntables.

Artisan Fidelity: this US-based company is a restorer of vintage turntables and plinths, offers upgraded parts, and is also a retailer for a number of high-end brands.

Perfect Sound: the largest spare parts manufacturer for Garrard turntables, and an authorized Loricraft parts supplier.

Woodsong Audio: the company offers Garrard, Thorens and Linn Sondek LP12 restoration, plinths and parts, as well as a variety of cartridges, tonearms and other products.

TJN Analog/ Turntables by Jean Nantais: he restores Garrard, Lenco and other turntables.

So Did I Like It Or Not?

Out of Time is a typical R.E.M. offering. It’s not their best album; that would be Life’s Rich Pageant. (Who names a pop album Life’s Rich Pageant? Revolver, Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud, The Dark Side of the Moon, Born to Run, Broken English, Beauty and the Beat, Pretty Hate Machine, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, and Good Girl Gone Bad are names for pop albums. Life’s Rich Pageant is the name of a TV show about how to cook fish.)

Out of Time is nowhere near R.E.M.’s worst album, either. It features “Losing My Religion” and “Shiny Happy People,” two tunes you can’t dislodge from your brain. I want to listen to half the songs and skip the other half – also typical.

 

By 1991, Michael Stipe had learned to enunciate his words – ironically, just in time to confront Nirvana’s crunching Nevermind, on which Kurt Cobain slurred everything that left his mouth. It’s clear to me that Out of Time is R.E.M.’s attempt to remain relevant. The album is loaded with extra instruments, including a harpsichord, which only works if you’re living inside a Jane Austen novel. The rapper KRS-One introduces the opener, “Radio Song,” to less effect than Cheech & Chong’s brief appearance on Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark. The B-52’s’ Kate Pierson drops by to sing the “Shiny Happy People” chorus. That’s all? Where’s the duet?

Two things still impress me about Out of Time. The first is that the closing track, “Me in Honey,” is so good. (Ms. Pierson added some “whoas.”) Most pop albums end because the band runs out of gas. The final tracks are like no runs, no hits, no one left on base in the bottom of the ninth. “Me in Honey” is four minutes long, which is about a minute too much, as the guitar line is just a loop. But like the album itself, it’s a solid song with some interesting, if opaque, songwriting.

 

The second – the biggest – thing that impresses me about Out of Time is that R.E.M. may have entered the studio in 1991 without a flicker of inspiration, but they carried on anyway. And that’s my point. When you’re an artist, you show up for work every day, even if all you have going for you is your craft.

Although Out of Time was steamrollered by the onset of grunge and the release of U2’s last good album, Achtung Baby, it remains a respectable outing that will not bring shame to your record collection. It’s better than Grand Funk Railroad’s On Time or the Mavericks’ In Time, though several laps behind Dave Brubeck’s Time Out.

I’ll report on more finds from the chaos of Trent’s early years after I work my way through all these NIN boots.

 

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/CityFeedback.

As far as Danny was concerned, he was not a businessperson either. What he could and did do was get the Ramones known. Lots of press and exposure, but he did not know what to do with them career-wise. The Ramones themselves had a sense of what needed to be done and they had gotten themselves far enough along to warrant the next step, which was a record deal. It has been said that they were the inspiration of the three-chord sound that became the basic structure of the punk sound. Short loud songs with lots of guitar.

Years later the Ramones were more successful and made serious money touring and even headlining stadiums. Though in the beginning years it was safe to say that beyond the CBGB scene, for the most part they did not appeal to American audiences and the management team of Danny and Linda had no clout or touring experience or were really aware of what kind of accounting and tax responsibilities were called for. The two of them were interested in having fun and partying, but give em credit, they did move the Ramones’ career along. In 1977, the Ramones’ single “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” reached No. 22 on the British charts. Sheena. Insiders say the song was about Linda Stein.

 

It was Linda who had the London idea for the Ramones: she told Fields that the Ramones should go to Britain. The tour was just two shows that they played in London in the summer of 1976 at Dingwalls and the Roundhouse. It has been said that the Ramones were the ones who ultimately ignited the punk scene in Britain. Among the British groups that took their lead from them were The Clash and the Sex Pistols.

Linda Stein was not a shy person, and she had a forceful personality. It has been mentioned that she had a quick and loud temper. She cursed so much she could make a night club bouncer blush. At this point she is the ex-wife of Seymour Stein, the co-founder of Sire Records. Seymour later was a vice president of Warner Bros. Records, and he has left his mark on the music scene. His autobiography, Siren Song: My Life in Music was published in 2018. He is a respected voice in the music industry.

 

Linda’s relationship with Fields lasted throughout their management of the Ramones. After the Ramones’ contact had expired, Linda and Danny were still sharing an office but the relationship was strained. Danny said, “it was like being married,” with bickering and such. It ended with a squabble over $13,000, money that her daughter’s production company owed Fields for the use of some of his pictures. Those Ramones pictures were quite good. After his lawyer complained about non-payment, the documentary team finally delivered the check the day before they used the pictures. Linda got annoyed at Danny, which was strange because it wasn’t even Linda’s business, but perhaps mommy felt she was protecting her daughter. Danny had taken tons of pictures of the Ramones over the years. He had said, “I had nothing to do once we arrived at the gigs, so I started carrying a camara and taking pictures of the band.” It has been noted that they reconciled some years later, after they had both moved on to different lives.

All this seemed unimportant when Linda was found dead in October 2007. She was discovered in her Fifth Avenue apartment, bludgeoned to death. At the time of Linda’s death, she was a successful celebrity realtor, having found luxury apartments in Manhattan for clients like Sting, Billy Joel, Calvin Klein, Elton John, Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Donna Karan, and Andrew Lloyd-Webber. She had got her start in real estate when she sold her ex-husband Seymour’s apartment.

Real estate was a natural for Linda. She was comfortable dealing with famous people and knew how to handle them. She was quoted as saying, just treat them as fifth graders. She had the balls to shepherd these deals. If there was a co-op board to deal with, Linda could do that too. New York magazine noted that she once snapped at Angelina Jolie to “get that fu*king vial of Billy Bob’s blood off from around her neck” before it cost her the approval of a co-op board. To get approved by a co-op board in Manhattan is as difficult as joining a secret society.

Her murder was front-page news. At first the police initially suspected some of the men from her past relationships. However, they had building security video of Linda’s assistant in the building around the supposed time of the murder, but that was not enough for the police to go on.

After four or so days the press had unearthed some prior discrepancies in Linda’s assistant’s past. The press started hanging out in front of her place in Brooklyn. Their presence was making a scene and they impeded her comings and goings, while peppering her with questions. The assistant called the homicide detectives to ask for protection from the press. They met with her in a nearby diner in Brooklyn and then moved her to a police station in the Lower East Side.

By the next morning they had gotten Linda’s assistant to confess to the murder. The story that the papers reported was that she beat Linda to death with a yoga stick. She said Linda was constantly annoying her and had made a racist remark earlier that day. She claimed that Linda was always trying to get her to smoke pot, and that on the day in question Linda was blowing smoke in her face, and the assistant snapped. It was over quickly, and Linda died in a pool of her own blood. At the end of her trial, the assistant was convicted of second-degree murder and of the theft of tens of thousands of dollars. She was sentenced to anywhere from 25 years to 32 years to life (sources vary) in prison. Later, she recanted her confession.

The press made a big thing out of the assistant being picked on by Linda, and while that rings true, what wasn’t really addressed by the press was the fact that she stole thousands of dollars from Linda. I guess justice was served, but to me that it seems like the theft of the money was probably the real motivation.

Linda was a cancer survivor and had had a double mastectomy and reconstruction a few years earlier. She had recently gotten a diagnosis of cancer’s return, this time in the brain, and even though it was early on it was a scary diagnosis. Linda was on medicine that had some profound and serious side effects. Though the prognosis was still fairly good, she was suffering and perhaps Linda thought the writing was on the wall. It was also reported that the daughter said, “Mom would have liked all the drama about her death, as opposed to a quiet spiral downward to a certain and perhaps painful death.”

***

 

Danny Fields had first seen the Ramones in CBGB in the mid 1970s. Tommy Ramone been calling him and begging him to come down and see the show. When he did, Danny was convinced that they were going to be a big act. So when he spoke with the band afterwards in front of CBGB they asked if he would write about them, and in response Danny said he wanted to manage the band.

Tommy answered, saying, “lots of people want to manage us. We need $3,000 for a drum kit. And if you can come up with that, maybe you can be our manager.” Fields related, “I went to Florida and asked my mother for $3,000 to invest in a band that I really believed in, and she did it. Because of my mother, it was the Ramones and me together as a team…and we were off.” Then he called Linda and told her she had to see the Ramones. She did, and was convinced and converted. They arranged an audition for Seymour Stein at a rehearsal space on 20^th Street and Broadway. Seymour signed them to Sire Records and the rest is history.

All the band members adopted pseudonyms ending with the surname “Ramone.” although none of them were biologically related. They were inspired by Paul McCartney, who would check into hotels as “Paul Ramon.” The Ramones performed 2,263 concerts, touring almost nonstop for 22 years. It has been said that they were the best bad band of their time.

Portions of the research for this article are from “Death of a Broker,” New York magazine, November 16, 2007, and other sources.

Header image: the Ramones in concert, Toronto, Canada, 1976. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Plismo.

...and a podcast announcement. I now have a podcast called “The Jay Jay French Connection: Beyond the Music,” available on the Spotify, Apple Music and PodcastOne platforms. On a recent segment my guests were Michael Fremer (Stereophile) and Ken Kessler (Hi-Fi News & Record Review).Those of you who read this column should know both names.

You also can probably guess that they have very strong opinions about all things hi-fi related. Listen and enjoy!

Click here to listen to Part One.

Click here to listen to Part Two.

The last house I was able to visit (i.e. the last social engagement prior to the pandemic’s shutdown of all outside, non-very-close family members’) was a visit to Michael Fremer’s house.

At that first visit, Michael was in the middle of his review of the Von Schweikert ULTRA 9 loudspeakers and the Valve Amplification Company (VAC) Statement 452 iQ Musicbloc power amps. To say I was blown away by the totality of the entire experience would be an understatement.

Not just the gear.

Michael’s record collection was like mine but on the most powerful steroids currently available. Thousands of albums to choose from. At the time, I listened to Michael’s long-time reference turntable, The Continuum Caliburn. So much to take in. Overwhelming.

I thought about that visit during the subsequent pandemic shutdown as I was listening to my not-modest system.

I did spend a lot of time during the lockdown listening to my system and its variety of sources (vinyl, disc and streaming).

I even refined my system during this time, at least the digital side. I got a PS Audio PerfectWave SACD Transport and PerfectWave DirectStream DAC with the Bridge II network connection option. I had lots of time to experiment with power cords, interconnects and Ethernet cables. Yes, they all sound different. Not necessarily better, but different in how the music was presented. This is what is fun about this hobby.

I pretty much have the system where I want it now. (Famous last words…LOL.)

As the pandemic effects began to wane and all of my friends and associates got inoculated, I began to wonder what it would be like to visit another house or apartment again. Amazing what we take for granted, isn’t it. Michael told me that his system was now totally different (remember, Michael is a reviewer so the gear comes and goes) and he invited me over to listen to the latest incarnation of his reference system.

Irony of ironies. I said yes, and a couple of weeks ago, with both of us fully vaxxed, made it back to the last place I visited prior to the world changing, across the Hudson from Manhattan, to Michael’s house once again.

This time, however, I was determined to really listen, eyes closed, to what many would consider a version of the ne-plus-ultra of high-end audio. This time, Michael was in the middle of listening to and reviewing three turntables. The models are irrelevant but what you do need to know is that these three tables exist on the edge of the analog art, fully loaded with at least one or two tonearms (depending on the turntable’s design) each. The list prices, minus power cords, interconnects and cartridges were roughly $250,000, $300,000 and $550,000.

A friend asked me what the difference is between a turntable that cost $250,000 and one costing $550,000. The answer? $300,000!

Seriously, I spent several hours at Michael’s this time. I sat down in the reference chair and listened, eyes closed, to some of the greatest analog playback gear that man has ever created.

 

 

Some thoughts:

First off, the tables, using different arms and cartridges, made it impossible to discern why things sounded different. The only commonality then was the $5 piece of vinyl played.

Yes there were differences. Not better or worse. Just differences.

Michael is a very gracious host and answered my questions regarding the turntables’ differing technologies, but never chimed in as to what his opinions were. I assumed his reviews would speak for themselves and I respected that. I did point out to him what I thought I was hearing, however, and he was able to explain how certain design concepts made things sound the way they do. Two tables were direct drive, and the other one was belt-driven.

 

 

Car analogies always come to mind when I try to explain to my friends about the relative cost versus quality of super-high-end audio gear. (This is something I’ve had to revise after my visit with Michael.)

I always say that you can buy a Kia, then a Lexus, a Mercedes, a Rolls, a Maybach and ultimately a Bugatti. The prices of each rise enormously and one has to ask oneself, “why would I own any one of them?” The answer is, if you had the money and cared to know the differences, then the decision may be easier. You also may have all the money in the world but decide that you don’t need a Bugatti.

The problem with my car-versus-audio analogy is that, at least with cars, you can only make comparisons using each car’s unique technology – each car has to be taken as a whole. If you were to put the same tires on each car, for example, then the totality of the unique driving experience of each car would be seriously compromised.

On the other hand, in the case of audio systems, where each part is usually designed by a different manufacturer, a reviewer or listener can (using turntables as an example) choose from different arms, cartridges, and even record weights.

The reality of vinyl playback is that no matter how much money one spends on a turntable, arm, cartridge and phono stage, a major part of the sound you’re going to hear has to do with the quality of the vinyl – where and how it was pressed, whether it was one of the first or the last in the queue of the approximately 5,000 pressings the “mother” plate stamped, and so on.

You can’t retrieve what ain’t there to begin with, and that can happen with poor pressings.

This is what Ken Kessler’s gripe about vinyl is all about, although he is a huge LP fan who owns great turntables. He knows that reel to reel tapes, for the most part, are copied from tape masters that are generations closer to the original master tapes than records are. I have been to Ken’s house and heard direct comparisons between commercially-sold reel to reel tapes, and their vinyl counterparts. The tapes kill the vinyl every time.

This however, is not about Michael’s system vs. Ken’s.

This is about the relative enjoyment one gets from a system regardless of price.

 

 

Listening to music on the gear Michael had was a revelation, for sure. Regardless of which turntable was used, the combination of his DarTZeel preamp, DarTZeel NHB-468 power amps and the Wilson Audio Chronosonic XVX loudspeaker was truly incredible. Instruments that I never knew were on the recording were in the mix in music that I thought I knew. Vocalists appeared in locations that were not there before. This is what money, technology and a proper setup can buy you. It had better do that! Otherwise, why bother?

 

My guess on the total list price of this system? Approximately 1.4 million dollars!

I left the house after several hours, contemplating where all this ultimately goes. About what this high-end journey is all about. About how far we have come and where we go from here.

And then…

My friend Ira has a friend Joe who has become a fan of streaming, and was selling his albums. Was I interested in possibly helping him evaluate his record collection for possible sale?

We went to his apartment on the Upper East Side. This was not any kind of hi-fi emporium. Just an apartment. In the living room was a small Cary SLI-80 tube integrated amp on the top shelf, a Parasound CD player below that. A Bluesound Node 2i streaming unit below that and an unconnected turntable on the bottom shelf.

 

The speakers were a pair of older Audio Physic Scorpios.

According to Ira, who helped Joe put this system together, the list price of the amp, speakers, streamer, interconnects, speaker cable and power cords came to about $18,000.

After I went through the vinyl collection and cherry-picked some of the titles for myself, Joe asked me if I wanted to listen to his system. Not wanting to be rude, I said “sure.”

What happened next really blew me away.

His system, streaming CD-quality Qobuz only, sounded incredible.

Not only did it sound great but it “felt” right.

Yes, it just felt perfect. Like Michael’s but in a very different way

Was it the tube amp? The speakers? the room? It was all of it. Everything came together to make magic.

System and room matching, when done right, can make audio magic happen…regardless of price.

That made the trip to both locations all worthwhile.

 

Child stars have a way of losing their luster in adulthood, but country singer Tanya Tucker is a rare exception. She had her first hit single in 1972, when she was only 13. In 2019 she released her 25th album, and she’s currently on tour. Whatever the secret is to career longevity, Tucker has figured it out.

She spent her early childhood in Wilcox, Arizona, where country music was the only option on the radio. By the time her family moved to Utah, Tucker already knew she wanted to sing for a living. With her father’s help, she went to contests and auditions, landing in-person and radio gigs that made producers and talent managers take notice. Although she was only 12, Columbia Records snapped her up in 1970; she remained with major labels for the next 30 years.

Her debut album, Delta Dawn (1972), was named after her breakout single. Despite the urgings of her Columbia producer, Billy Sherrill, Tucker chose the Larry Collins song “Delta Dawn” after hearing Bette Midler sing it on TV. Her instincts were right on: the single hit the No. 6 spot on the country charts. Another single, “Love’s the Answer,” also reached the top ten.

Tucker was rare at the time for focusing on her lower register, giving her a melancholy yet gritty sound that distinguished her from her female colleagues. A good example is “New York City Song.”

 

The next two years brought a string of No. 1 singles, including “What’s Your Mama’s Name” and “Will You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone),” each of which had an album named after it. Both of those albums, produced by Sherrill, featured The Jordanaires as back-up singers plus the string arrangements of Bill McElhiney, known for his work with Roy Orbison, Connie Francis, and Patsy Cline.

An eponymous album that is not a debut usually indicates that an artist has switched labels, and that was exactly the case with Tanya Tucker (1975), the singer’s first record for MCA. The producer was Snuff Garrett, who had made a name for himself working at Liberty Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s with early rockers like Bobby Vee and Del Shannon.

While some tracks are thickly glazed with strings, there are also some rock/pop elements, particularly in the use of drums and synths. That dreaded crossover of rock and country that purists feel ruined country music definitely has some roots here. “Traveling Salesman,” a song by Gloria Sklerov and Harry Lloyd, is a good illustration.

 

In 1976, Tucker started working with producer Jerry Crutchfield, which led to huge commercial success in Top Ten singles like “You’ve Got Me to Hold On To” and “Here’s Some Love.” The biggest single from Ridin’ Rainbows (1977) was “It’s a Cowboy Lovin’ Night” – are you sensing a common theme in her most popular songs? – but the best track on that album is “White Rocket.”

It was written by Van Hoy and features (uncredited) electric guitar solos and an arrangement that owes more to prog rock than to Nashville. The topic is also outside Tucker’s usual comfort zone, dealing with the sordid life of a homeless alcoholic and the escape that drinking gives him.

 

Three albums later, on Dreamlovers (1980), Tucker was still working successfully with Crutchfield. They may have hoped that the nostalgic country-star power of Glen Campbell on two songs would get fans’ attention, but it was the solo song “Can I See You Tonight” that charted highest by a long shot.

The arrangements are dependent to an unfortunate degree on a wobbly electric keyboard sound and generally tend toward the saccharine. There is one exception, the Sterling Whipple number “Don’t You Want to Be a Lover Tonight,” which has some pleasingly bluesy guitar work by Johnny Christopher.

 

The early 1980s were a period of pain and struggle for Tucker. A string of relationships failed, most of them with celebrities and therefore covered in embarrassing detail by the media. Her singles weren’t selling, and her label dropped her. Through all of this, she suffered from worsening alcohol and drug problems.

After friends and family finally convinced her to go to rehab, she took a few years off from the studio and touring. Her comeback offering, Girls Like Me (1986), was her first with Capitol records, which would remain her label into the 1990s. With a new pop-flavored country sound, she once again found that sweet spot with the public, pouring out hit after hit for the next few years, including “If It Don’t Come Easy” and “Strong Enough to Bend.” In 1991, the Country Music Association named her Country Music Artist of the Year.

That same year, she released what would be the highest-charting album of her career, What Do I Do with Me. Although it was not a single, the best song on that record is “Bidding America Goodbye,” which illustrates the death of independent farming in the US. The lonesome harmonica work is by the great Terry McMillan.

 

A standout album from the 1990s is Soon (1993), featuring perhaps the best arrangements, best instrumental players, and best sound production of any of her records. The sentimentality and synth-reliance of the 1980s was behind her at this point, so the studio was packed with fantastic country session musicians like guitarist Brent Mason and fiddler Rob Hojacos.

“Sneaky Moon,” by Bill LaBounty, has a genuinely bluegrass feel. This is surprising, considering LaBounty made his name as a soft-rock composer; clearly, he had absorbed his new genre in a profound way, and Tucker delivers the folkish melody and glib lyrics with her usual grit.

 

In the 21st century, Tucker has continued to put out albums once in a while. The indie projects Tanya (2002) and My Turn (2009) did not garner much attention. After a ten-year break, her latest effort is While I’m Livin’ (2019). Released on Fantasy Records, it was produced by a singer who owes a lot to Tucker’s style, Brandi Carlile; Shooter Jennings, songwriting son of Waylon Jennings, co-produced. Make no mistake, this was no sad last-gasp effort of a has-been: While I’m Livin’ won the Grammy Award for Best Country Album!

Besides producing, Carlile also contributed most of the material for this record, co-creating songs with her usual team, Phil and Tim Hanseroth. Among those is “Seminole Wind Calling,” an old-school country gospel number that seems to travel back decades to a time when country music had a different, simpler definition.

In his own day, Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) was decidedly retro. The Italian composer was trained first by his cellist father in the town of Lucca and eventually in the musically conservative city of Rome, only to be whisked away to serve in the Spanish court, which further isolated him from the latest compositional trends. As a result of this background, Boccherini’s music sounds like it’s from the late baroque or pre-classical eras, even though he was born 11 years after Haydn.

A slew of recent recordings explores the genre in which Boccherini was most prolific, and for which he is best known today: chamber music. His years in Madrid, under the patronage of the king of Spain’s younger brother, taught him to churn out small-group instrumental works – be they for two players or a chamber orchestra – as an almost daily soundtrack to the royal lifestyle. Once he lost that job (for refusing to change a passage in a string trio!), he had no trouble finding deep pockets to support him back in Italy. It was in that later period that he wrote the String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No. 5, whose Minuet movement has become a shorthand in movie soundtracks to signify elegance, often with an ironic wink that the composer never intended.

But the Op. 11 quintets are just a sampling of the 160 pieces that Boccherini wrote in that genre. The Elisa Baciocchi String Quintet just came out with a recording of the set of four Op. 42 quintets on Da Vinci Classics. This Italian ensemble specializes in lesser-known classical and pre-classical chamber music.

As exemplified in that famous Minuet, successful renditions of Boccherini place elegance at their center. The Baciocchi recording of the Quintet in B Minor, Op. 42, No. 3, complies with the expectation insofar as the phrasing is expressive and non-aggressive. Yet the players unfortunately seem to equate a galant sound with a lack of solid contact between bow and string, as in their breathy rendition of the opening movement, marked Andantino affettuoso.

 

The group’s energy is more focused, if the articulation still not razor-sharp, in the Quintet in C Major, Op. 42. The third movement, Allegro assai, is a wonderful example of Boccherini’s ability to make the instruments communicate as equals, just as Haydn had recently established as the industry standard for chamber music.

 

The creation of much of 18th-century chamber music was determined by how many musicians happened to be available and what size room they were supposed to play in. Sometimes Boccherini wrote for three instead of five, including over a hundred string trios (violin, viola, cello) and a dozen or so piano trios (violin, cello, piano).

Examples of the former have been included in a new recording called Boccherini: La Bona Notte by La Real Cámara on the Glossa Cabinet label. On the program are three string trios and a violin duet. The Spanish ensemble La Real Cámara, under the direction of its founder, Emilio Moreno, was formed in 1992 with a mandate to preserve the music of Spain, the country where Boccherini produced a significant number of his works.

Moreno, who is also a violist, is joined by violinist Enrico Gatta and cellist Wouter Möller. The three men work in symbiotic artistry, tugging at Boccherini’s phrases in a way that acknowledges how, despite his conservatism, he was a composer of the mature classical era, not the baroque. Listen to their expressiveness in the Rondo second movement of String Trio in G Minor, Op. 6 No. 5.

 

The fact that Boccherini was himself a cellist certainly contributed to his choice of instrumentation. In an album intriguingly titled Sound Pantomimes on the MBM label, Russian cellist Dmitri Dichtiar celebrates with the composer’s six sonatas for cello and basso continuo. One might expect that the continuo, which traditionally used a chordal instrument (piano, harpsichord, lute, guitar) and cello in this period, would leave out the extra cello. But no, Pavel Serbin takes on the role of continuo cellist, while Thorsten Bleich plucks delicate yet stirring harmony on a theorbo (a lute with a six-foot neck).

For its unusual sonic textures alone, this record would be worth hearing, but Dichtiar’s exquisitely melodious technique makes it doubly so. The opening Allegro moderato from the Sonata I in A Major has a relentlessly aching, sweet quality, reminding us that this music deserves to be performed more frequently.

 

The busy Mr. Boccherini was also a flutist, and his output of works for that instrument is significant, mostly in the form of trios and quintets. Recently, Spanish flutist Rafael Ruibérriz De Torres recorded the complete flute quintets with the Francisco de Goya String Quartet on Brilliant Classics.

Ruibérriz De Torres, who specializes in 17th- and 18th-century performance practice, captures the perfect latter-day Rococo sound: elegance infused with a complex sense of drama. In this excerpt from the Flute Quintet Op. 19, No. 3 in C Major, the virtuosic yet effortless flute solo line is ably accompanied by spritely, graceful phrases in the quartet, which by turns functions as continuo and as counterpoint, sometimes passing around the melody without the flute.

 

On their new album Une nuit à Madrid, French early-music ensemble Les Ombres also takes a crack at the Op. 19 quintets under the music direction of Margaux Blanchard and Silvain Sartre. These are all short, efficient pieces of only two movements each, making it particularly important to capture the dramatic arc in each section. Les Ombres’ performance of the Presto assai that ends Op.19, No. 5 in B-flat is an absolute nail-biter, full of suspenseful rhythmic energy and grit while still maintaining that essential lightness.

 

No discussion of Boccherini’s instrumental music is complete without mentioning the guitar. During his time in Spain, the composer paid special attention to that instrument, which was largely ignored in the rest of Europe throughout the classical period. Les Ombres included two of Boccherini’s nine guitar quintets on their record.

While the composer mainly stuck with movement types standard in chamber music, the most famous movement of his guitar quintet output is the finale of the Quintet in D Major, G. 448. Rather than having an Italian expressive marking, it is labeled “Fandango,” with the structure and rhythm of the famous Portuguese/Spanish dance.

Les Ombres’ sexy, humorous reading, complete with castanets, leans into the syncopation. It will have you stomping your feet. But elegantly, of course.

When Jaimoe, one of the last surviving original members of the Allman Brothers Band reached out to his former bandmates early last year, no one could possibly have imagined how COVID-19 would quickly take over our lives. In the phone calls he made to his musical “Brothers,” he asked that the group reunite for one last show, to properly tie off their fifty-year run in a fashion that matched the remarkable impact the band had made on modern music. It was something the band had discussed five years earlier, but the passing of Gregg Allman and drummer Butch Trucks made that notion seem largely out of reach. Now the idea made sense to everyone, and they quickly moved to rearrange schedules and commitments to make this sendoff real. And so began the process of creating “The Brothers Concert.”

Guitarist Derek Trucks recruited his brother Duane, who has for years held down duties behind the drum kit with the band Widespread Panic. Long-time Allman Brothers member Warren Haynes stepped up as the logical choice to assume all vocals and to play guitar. And veteran organist Reese Wynans, who earned notoriety for his work with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, was recruited to handle the very important needs on the Hammond B3 organ. He also had had history with Gregg Allman and Dickey Betts through playing on their solo efforts, so his inclusion was as natural as a blood line. Pianist Chuck Leavell, who made unforgettable contributions to the Allman Brothers album Brothers and Sisters, bassist Oteil Burbridge and percussionist Marc Quinones rounded out the band. (See our interviews with Chuck Leavell in Issues 133 and 134.)

They rehearsed for less than a week at SIR studios in Chelsea, New York before hitting the stage on March 10, 2020. There they crafted a set list of just over two dozen ABB hits, which will be released on CD, Blu-ray and DVD on July 23 as The Brothers, March 10, 2020 Madison Square Garden.

The song selection holds no surprises. Instead, it is the set progression that best demonstrates the group’s remarkable ability to establish a sequence that guides the audience on a one-of-a-kind journey. That night they drew a community of over 18,000 fans into an experience no one will soon forget. The band played with precision and a singular sense of reverence that celebrated a body of music that has forever transformed rock n roll. In the end it would be the last performance given at Madison Square Garden before the lockdown. It was also the last major concert event of 2020. The finality tied to this concert is poetic in so many ways. If you had to pick a band to close out the performance of live music in the pre-pandemic era, who better than the band that completely changed the way live music is presented, consumed, and collected? I was really fortunate to be there that night with my wife. It was a magnificent evening in so many ways. The release of The Brothers, March 10, 2020 Madison Square Garden is sure to be the band’s next best-seller. It will join another epic release by the band, Allman Brothers Band – Bear’s Sonic Journals: Fillmore East, February 1970, a deluxe edition 3-CD box set.

 

We had the opportunity to catch up with our good friend John Lynskey, chief archivist and historian for the Allman Brothers Band Museum at The Big House (www.thebighousemuseum.com) about how the 50^th anniversary night came together, why it ranks among their best performances, and what impact the legacy of the band and this night will have on the future of rock and roll. Ray Chelstowski: Did COVID-19 create a sense of urgency in getting the show done? John Lynskey: I think that the reality of COVID crept up on everybody in rehearsal, particularly on the last day. Then suddenly it was like “oh sh*t!” Had it been a day later the show would not have happened. So, I think that the sense of urgency was about playing the best show possible because no one knew what was coming next. In that regard they hit a home run.

 

RC: Rehearsal for the show was really limited, especially considering the band had to rehearse with new members.

JL: Yes, there were only a few days of rehearsal but when you think about the level of talent, the tremendous amount of chemistry, and the fact that everyone had done their homework it’s not surprising . Everyone had communicated before rehearsals and knew the set list. So, for Duane to step in for Butch was perfect because he was able to play with the energy that Butch had twenty years ago. With Reese it was literally about coming full circle, having been part of the Second Coming, a pre-Allman Brothers group that included Dickey Betts and Berry Oakley. Reese was part of that famous jam in Jasonville when Duane Allman said, “anybody who wants to leave this room is going to have to fight their way out.” Reese was there so it was really interesting to see what he would bring to the table. It all fell into place because everyone really wanted to do it. It tied up some loose ends, and as Derek (Trucks) said, “when Jaimoe asks you can’t say no.”

Everyone came to the table with a common cause and no agenda, with the only goal being to play the best show possible.

RC: Was there ever discussion about bringing in any guest vocalists or other sidemen or women?

JL: No. This was purely “family,” the surviving members and close associates only. Credit Haynes for coming up with the idea of adding Reese because they need a Hammond B3 (organ) player. It was a brilliant idea. Other names were thrown about but Reese was there, as I said, even before the beginning of the band.

RC: Chuck Leavell told me that there was quick talk that night about taking this on the road, but COVID ended all of that.

JL: Yes, I talked to Chuck at intermission at the show and he was saying how this would be an amazing act to take on the road. Could it have happened if COVID hadn’t hit? Given everyone’s schedule, who knows if they could pull it off. But good God almighty it would have been worth seeing.

RC: Were there any scheduling conflicts that people put aside to make this all work?

JL: Well for this one show there was enough advance notice for everyone to clear their schedules. For Chuck (Leavell) the Stones had just finished their tour. (Warren) Haynes and Derek (Trucks) work like crazy. (Marc) Quinones is with the Doobie Brothers now. Oteil (Burbridge) is with Dead & Company and Duane (Trucks) is with Widespread Panic. So, coming up with the date required a lot of advance work by Bert Holman (the Allman’s manager), talking with everyone managers to make this happen. I think that that actually the key. Everyone worked together, management, musicians, everybody.

RC: What do you think was the real highlight of this show and does it come across as powerfully in the recording?

JL: That’s like asking someone to choose between their children! I think you have to look at it between the instrumentals and some vocal songs. Instrumentally there were moments of sheer brilliance where you can tell that these guys were just creating, where there was a Zen-like form of communication at work. As you come out of the drums on “Mountain Jam,” the last five minutes or so, you get an example of the greatest creative flow you may ever hear in music. You have eight guys exactly in tune with each other. They did it on “Jessica” as well, at about the six-minute mark right after Derek’s solo. The next seven minutes of that song was an expression of improvisational creativity like no other. On the vocal side, “Every Hungry Woman” was an amazing treat in that it’s a song that was rarely played live, either by the original lineup or with the band from 1989 onward. So, that was a bit of an unusual choice and what they did on that from beginning to end was extraordinary. Then the real high-wire act was the run and gun between Haynes and Derek. I mean they were on the edge of disaster, where one slip would pull the whole thing apart, and yet they pulled it off. It was amazing.

Vocally you have to tip your hat to Haynes. Haynes had a lot of pressure on him that night and he was phenomenal. Is Warren Haynes Gregg Allman? No. But he’s Warren Haynes, one of the best cover singers of all time. While I wouldn’t call Allman Brothers’ songs “cover material,” he resurrected Gregg Allman that night and still remained “Warren Haynes,” I think that “Desdemona” was the best combination you could have hoped for where Warren Haynes is the vocalist and the guitarist. The depth he showed on that song alone was his A-game.

RC: Warren Haynes has told me that Gregg Allman was always generous in sharing vocal duties with him. That experience singing many of these songs really came through on this important night.

JL: He was as prepared as anyone could be that night. Yeah, the relationship between him and Gregg was interesting. In the early years Gregg did give him tremendous opportunity. In the latter years Gregg came to depend on him to be another vocalist. The year that Haynes and Dickey both left you could tell the burden that that put on Gregg. So I can’t say enough about what Haynes did that night. This is a man who has covered everyone from Van Morrison to Jerry Garcia to Elton John. The list goes on and on. He is a musical chameleon who some say makes the cover version of a song better than the original. Let’s face it. Gregg would have been very proud of what Warren did that night.

RC: Let’s switch gears and move to Allman Brothers Band – Bear’s Sonic Journals: Fillmore East, February 1970, which was recorded by Grateful Dead engineer Owsley Stanley. Why was his role so important and what helps set this record apart?

JL: I just think that his maniacal dedication to searching for “the sound” made him legendary. Never mind the LSD at the same time. But he was one of the first real innovators and pathfinders of searching for that perfect sound. He experimented with different mics and different angles and that made him a real trailblazer. At least with the Allman Brothers he just ran tape, all of the time. It didn’t matter. That’s why we are so fortunate to have those tapes from February of 1970. At that point, The Brothers had no money for anything in terms of , and there were only certain venues where you might have soundboard tapes of any kind. So Owsley’s big contribution to the Allman Brothers is that he actually had the tape running. This album reflects a real moment in time. You can see that this is a band that’s just eleven months old. They were still finding their way. And their credo at that time was, “when in doubt, just jam.” It’s fascinating to study the evolution of “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” The versions that are available on this collection are the earliest to have been captured via the soundboard. They had started playing “Liz Reed” out in California the month before and so you get to February of 1970 and you have a good recording of the song. Fast forward a year to the same venue and it’s a completely different animal. And it’s a completely different band in terms of their interplay, their confidence, and their creativity. “Liz Reed” is a great example of that. It’s like watching a child grow up.

You can trace the evolution, growth, and I think the confidence in these songs. That’s what was so great about February 1970. They didn’t have a very big set . It was still very blues-based. But it was like watching a great ballplayer as a rookie. You just know that this guy is going to be great. It just is going to take a little time and the Allman Brothers came together faster than almost any band you can name. The chemistry they shared was amazing.

RC: The bill for that night was eclectic, with the Grateful Dead, Jack Bruce, Mountain and more.

JL: That was the genius of Bill Graham. He would expose people to different genres of music and if it doesn’t work on this bill then we will switch the bill up. He was obviously not afraid to mix and match. Bill was always willing to give the Allman Brothers a chance because he loved them and the relationship blossomed on both coasts, east and west.

RC: What’s next?

JL: We are working on a live box set with the original lineup, 1969 to 1971. It will present the best version of every song they played live. It will be a true live compilation of the original band’s best work and I think that people are going to absolutely love it. We are curating it through a lot of listening followed by a lot of discussion, The team that Bert Holman has put together includes the sonic mastery of Bill Levenson, who wants things as a producer to sound a certain way. Then you have the historical input that comes from tour manager and photographer Kirk West, Richard Brent, (Executive Director of the Allman Brothers Band Museum) and me. It’s a real give and take. However, sometimes it’s a moot point because there’s only one version of a song available.

RC: Is there one infamous performance out there that has gone missing that you’d love to get your hands on?

JL: The holy grail of all holy grails is the night before the closing of the Fillmore East in June of 1971. If somehow, someway a tape of the performance showed up in someone’s attic that would be the one. There’s all kinds of stories and rumors that the tapes were rolling that night. Wouldn’t that be something if it turned up? Never say never. As people from that time start to pass on their kids go up in the attic and they find things. Richard at The Big House (The Allman Brothers Museum in Macon, GA) receives new items every day that were discovered just like that. There’s always hope.

RC: As someone who is arguably one of the most knowledgeable people alive when it comes to the band’s history, do you still learn new things every day about the Allman Brothers?

JL: Yes, absolutely. For example, after the original lineup compilation is released, we want to go to a five-man band live compilation. The five-man band period, which was pretty short going from November of 1971 to summer of 1972, delivered shows that were out of this world. This is just prior to keyboardist Chuck Leavell joining the band. Just listening to how Gregg, Dickey and Berry came together to fill the unfillable void created by the loss of Duane Allman is just amazing. Betts stepped up, not just in his slide playing. But the guy who filled the biggest gap was Berry Oakley. He was a monster during that period playing lead and bass lines at the same time. It was amazing to see them all work together in their grief to make some amazing music. It’s a very overlooked period in the band’s history. I’ve immensely enjoyed digging deeply into the five-man band period and think that most people will find it as illuminating as I have.

RC: In the end, what was your favorite takeaway from The Brothers concert at Madison Square Garden?

JL: What I got a kick out of is that the Allman Brothers started with two brothers named Allman and the whole thing ends with two brothers named Trucks. There’s a great juxtaposition to that, that the legacy could be carried forward in the end by two brothers, just as it started.

As a result of COVID-19, AES 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.

In Copper Issue 84, Jack Joseph Puig stated in an interview:

“Since the message is so similar in many cases, it’s the tonality of what you’re presenting in the song that is crucial in delivering the right intent in the communication.

When you think about it, tone is the universal connector – even more so than music. Tone can make people feel different ways. Tone is the carrier. If I go to a foreign country where people don’t speak my main language, which is English, they may not know the ‘F-word’ but if they hear me using the ‘F-word’ with harsh tones, they’ll know something’s not right.

I have always been a tone junkie; that’s where it’s at. Tone is the delivery system that the heart and soul of a lyric and melody ride on in a song.”

One of the more popular topics of AES Spring 2021 Europe was the effects of sound on perception and psychology. A trio of Yonsei University scholars from Korea: Eunmi Oh, Jaeeun Lee (presenter), and Dayoung Lee – presented a video titled, Mapping voice gender and emotion to acoustic properties of natural speech. More specifically, the presentation was a study on how tone of voice conveys a variety of emotions.

Exploring tone, timbre and nuance in speech as a means to interpret emotion is a key to communication. Psychology professor Albert Mehrabian, renowned for his work in non-literal communication, categorized the voice tone sector as comprising 38 percent of human communication, with body language at 55 percent and words the remaining 7 percent.

The researchers decided to see if it was possible to map the basic acoustic parameters of natural speech samples to perceptions of gender image and affective attributes. Ms. Lee noted that a 2003 experiment that used speech synthesis to attempt a similar outcome ultimately proved inconclusive.

 

Ms. Lee and her colleagues decided that natural dialogue might prove a better model to use. Extracting 290 samples of actual recorded speech from an AI database of 1,000 hours of samples from 2,000 Korean speakers, the research team took 2 seconds from different parts of sentences, and matched them at -23 LUFS (Loudness Units to Full Scale) using a 16 kHz sampling rate. They included different emotional nuance excerpts in the samples, different depths of breath, and other parameters. In addition to gender, there were seven pairs of affective attributes the researchers sought to test for:

• Stressed – Relaxed
• Angry – Content
• Hostile – Friendly
• Happy – Sad
• Interested – Bored
• Formal – Intimate
• Confident – Timid

As the test was for the attributes to be discerned via tone of voice, the experiment was conducted with 50 non-Korean speakers who each listened to 20 voice samples per session on headphones. Each participant listened first to identify gender, and then to indicate which of the seven attribute pairs best matched the sample, and which direction on the scale of those pairs did the sample tend to emphasize and to what degree.

 

Here are some of the results the tests revealed:

• Wider pitch variations were described as more feminine whereas smaller pitch variations were identified by the majority as masculine.
• Voices categorized as “intimate” were the ones most defined by pitch variation.
• Shimmer, HNR (harmonic ratio) and voice breaks (non-pitch information) were predominant parameters in “timid” voices.
• “Bored” voices contained a combination of both pitch and non-pitch elements.
• In general, attributes generally considered more “positive” on the valence scale (i.e., happy, confident, content, et al) correlated with maximum pitch and higher pitch variance than “negative” attributes (i.e., bored, sad, timid, et al).

A spectrogram sample showed visual representations of the parameters that the subjects identified aurally:

 

On the other hand, emotional arousal was marked by non-pitch factors, with larger voice breaks and smaller HNR identified with active-sounding voices, and the opposite holding true for more passive-sounding voices. With Mapping voice gender and emotion to acoustic properties of natural speech, Ms. Lee and her colleagues did an admirable job of scientifically quantifying and documenting the elusive quality of “tone” that Jack Joseph Puig so poetically mentioned as the driving force in the music he produces that connects with listeners around the globe.

 

***

Along similar lines, the distorted wailing guitar solo sound of Eric Clapton’s Cream-era Gibsons, using humbucking pickups with the treble rolled off through a cranked Marshall amp, was described by him as the “woman tone” – a reference to the vocal-like nuance he was able to elicit from his guitar rig with that setting. Given how the electric guitar has become such a force in the history of popular music, starting with people like Jack Miller, Eddie Durham and Charlie Christian’s recordings with Benny Goodman and then to blues and rock and roll, the next presentation helped to explain why we find the sound of the electric guitar so compelling. Emotional and neurological responses to timbre in electric guitar and voice was presented by Sephra Scheuber. It explored the ways in which timbre affected the perception of a sound’s emotional content and people’s neurological reactions to sounds. As a psychologist as well as audio engineer, Ms. Scheuber’s experiences with the manipulation of timbre in recording the electric guitar and how it can alter emotional effects, as well as her work in music therapy with melody, harmony, and non-linguistic sounds, formed the foundation of her research. Since the isolation of timbre from other audio elements is the most difficult part of studying timbre and its effects, Ms. Scheuber explained the dearth of research into the subject was what prompted her project. The fact that most previous research into timbre almost exclusively is devoted to western orchestral instruments and little, if any, to modern electric instruments was also a motivation for her. Another reason for her choice of electric guitar is that while most orchestral instruments have an intrinsic sound that is recognizable even with extreme amounts of equalization, the electric guitar has a well-known sound but in which most people are accustomed to hearing its timbre easily altered through a variety of electronic effects, whether they are conscious of it or not. Finally, Ms. Scheuber incorporated vocal sounds into her study as a frame of reference, primarily due to the familiarity of emotional ranges expressed through the human voice. Due to the aforementioned issues regarding isolation of timbre, especially in pre-recorded material, Ms. Scheuber recorded her own sounds, using electric guitar and different effects pedals in addition to vocal performances by actors evoking various emotions.

 

The participants were asked to listen to the recordings and indicate their impressions of the following:

• Emotional categorization (happy, sad, angry, etc.)
• Emotional intensity (weak to strong on a 5-point scale)

Among the results of the study:

• 80 percent of the participants agreed on the emotional categorizations for the vocal sounds.
• Guitar sounds exhibited trends, albeit with subtle emotional identifications: some listeners might have interpreted a particular sound as “sad,” whereas others might have categorized it as “angry.”

The most significant common timbre feature between the guitar and vocal recordings, in which participants concurred on the emotional content conveyed, was in the attack slope (i.e. speed of the sound's articulation). Angry sounds had the lowest, while happy sounds marked the highest. Ms. Scheuber also recorded EEG tests on the participants, for measuring neurological activity in the brain while listening to the vocal and guitar sounds, and to judge whether they were similar or dissimilar. For quantifying the data, she extracted alpha (8 – 12 Hz) and theta (4 – 8 Hz) brain wave rhythms for analysis at Cz and Fz (neural networks).

 

The Cz (middle) portion of the brain displayed emotional reaction, with higher levels when listening to angry sounds and the lowest for happy sounds. From a therapeutic perspective, this study may indicate how music therapy featuring specific guitar sounds can be used for treatment of schizophrenia, depression, and other psychological disorders. Ms. Scheuber’s study shows a scientifically-validated depiction of how we react to guitar sounds in music, explaining why the fast attack of rhythm guitar masters like Nile Rodgers or Cory Wong usually are perceived as happy and joyful, while the slow blues of an Albert King or Funkadelic’s iconically mournful “Maggot Brain,” in which George Clinton instructed Eddie Hazel to play “as if his mother had just died,” are gripping and create a much different mood. *** Legendary producer and engineer Tom Dowd once said he had a “producer button” on his Neve console. Whenever a label executive would try to “armchair quarterback” Dowd during a mix session, Dowd would tell him to push the “producer button” to improve the sound. This inevitably would mollify the unsuspecting label rep, unaware that the button was not connected to anything in the console, but would leave him convinced that the button enhanced the sound. For a different perspective and approach to human perception in audio and how the brain might play tricks on us, Michael Lawrence spoke with audio engineer and author Ethan Winer in the presentation of Audio mythology, human bias, and how not to get fooled.

 

Winer’s book, The Audio Expert: Everything You Need to Know About Audio, touches on a few of the themes he discussed in his interview about audio mythology and how the brain sometimes fools our perceptions of audio with confirmation bias. A YouTube video from 2009 in which Winer demonstrated and debunked numerous audio myths has logged more than 450,000 views. Winer explains that auditory memory, the fact that audio nuances are much harder to objectively perceive than visual ones, and that individual egos are all factors, can all play into audio mythology and confirmation bias. While audiophiles all have subjective opinions on preferred equipment and can argue over the merits or shortcomings of particular features ad infinitum, Winer cites several credible examples of fallacious premises, such as:

• Audiophiles and engineers will often form opinions based upon what someone else whose opinion they might admire has written, taught or said, rather than empirically testing and personally listening. While audio magazines and textbooks may usually be reliable information sources, experts can sometimes be wrong. “Argument from authority” can often create entrenched audio myths.
• Basing opinions on listening to equipment under different circumstances in the past, and perhaps misremembering the actual sound due to emotional reactions that may have created stronger impressions at that time, can cloud the listener’s ability to listen impartially to the same equipment in the present day.
• As little as a 4-inch difference in listening position in a small space can radically change listening responses. Acoustic changes can contribute to equipment sounding different to a greater extent than electronic (equipment-related) changes, such as changing cables or connectors. Acoustics are the elephant in the room but often the last consideration for some listeners, who don’t want to take the time and effort to take corrective action.

However, Winer's underlying premise that “if measurements match between disparate equipment units, then, ergo, they must sound the same,” is one that some people feel is much less defensible. By his own admission, he says that, “if someone rolled off 15 kHz, he probably couldn’t hear it at his age.” He also cites topics like digital graininess in reverb tails as “something people can only hear with the volume turned all the way up.” Perhaps it’s a case of diminished confidence in his own hearing capabilities, but the over-reliance on tests to try to objectify something that is tied to the human sense of hearing, which is intrinsically subjective, is a topic which I explored in depth in Copper issue 138 in the article, “How Much Do We Actually Hear When We Listen?” Daniel von Recklinghausen, the renowned audio engineer at Electro Audio Dynamics and KLH, is famous for this old chestnut: “If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad. If it sounds good and measures bad, you've measured the wrong thing.” To his credit, Winer also noted that if someone points out where he might be wrong, he is happy to be informed about it. An open mind and acknowledgement of one’s own shortcomings is a good foundation for building wisdom. For the final installment of AES Show Spring 2021, we will be covering some less-esoteric subjects, such as audio streaming, video game sound, and other topics.

Devils Golf Course, Death Valley National Park, California, October 2018. The rock formations are about knee-high and sharp enough to cause cuts.