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Rudy Van Gelder interview from 1995


Jim Alfredson

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Not by seeing or hearing shit that doesn't exist. 

BTW, Charlie Parker says hello. So does, Monk, Miles, Coltrane, Diz, Duke and all the legends of the Jazz world that didn't need the imaginary sound of 24 bit audio (and that elusive analog "warmth") to create shit anyone has yet to touch. 

I don't give two fucks what anyone plays. Unless/even if they're hitting notes above 22kHz, 24 bit ain't doing shit for them, OR the listener. (because, you know, that's beyond the range of human hearing, and whatnot)

Edited by Scott Dolan
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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

When you responded to me about that seagull thing that "you wrote", I assumed it was so directed, perhaps from having a listen to some of the clips from my soundcloud found in my signature. I've made no bones about what those are and are not, so, you know...

 

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

54 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

 

No, but I just listened to  a couple of them. Forget the seagulls. This is some prehistoric stuff, Pterodactylus feeding her babies..baby.

 :P

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

 

54 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

 

 

 

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

 

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57 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Not by seeing or hearing shit that doesn't exist. 

BTW, Charlie Parker says hello. So does, Monk, Miles, Coltrane, Diz, Duke and all the legends of the Jazz world that didn't need the imaginary sound of 24 bit audio (and that elusive analog "warmth") to create shit anyone has yet to touch. 

I don't give two fucks what anyone plays. Unless they're hitting notes above 22kHz, 24 bit ain't doing shit for them, OR the listener. (because, you know, that's beyond the range of human hearing, and whatnot)

Well, that's a highly compressed version of the master tape, but if it sounds good on your system, go for it!

 

33 minutes ago, Dmitry said:

No, but I just listened to  a couple of them. Forget the seagulls. This is some prehistoric stuff, Pterodactylus feeding her babies..baby.

 :P

 

 

 

 

Gertrude & Heathcliff returning home. Fred & Wilma on the way now. :g

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Actually, no it's nothing of the sort. It's just another storage media that contains the same frequency response and dynamic range as any and every master tape ever made. And...then some. Which is of no consequence. 

But, I do appreciate your enthusiasm. :) 

48 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Well, that's a highly compressed version of the master tape, but if it sounds good on your system, go for it!

 

Edited by Scott Dolan
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My baseline of absurdity for data-based hearing stems from a corporate cocktail party gig where the guitarist and bassist spent the entire first set - about 75 minutes - playing about an eighth of a tone apart from each other. At first it was like huh? Then it was funny, then surreal, and finally, just...I checked out, mentally. Alcohol's your friend, at least for a little while.

First thing on the break the bandleader asks these guys WTF? (that he played for 75 minutes before doing this is an absurdity unto itself), and lo and behold, these guys each had digital tuners that showed they were each perfectly in tune. They held them up for all to see, like it was some gladiator shit. And finally the bandleader said hey, here's a E tune to it. And lo and behold again, they were both out of tune with the piano! I'm not making this shit up.

Point just being, yeahyeahyeah, data, tests, what not, but at some point, what you hear should be what you hear, not what your data shows you that you should or should not be hearing. Trust your damn ears for crying out loud. Just because it's not there doesn't mean you're not hearing it, dig?

And yes, this anecdote is rooted in inconsistent control mechanisms, but still and all, trust your ears, and only worry about it if it fucks with your money, and I swear to god, if I had been the bandleader on that gig, it would have fucked with those guys' money. Then again, that guy always paid me in full no matter how..."expressive" I played on the later sets, so oh well.

Still, trust your ears unless you have a foundation-shakeable reason not to. And when that happens, hell, stop listening.

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I don't know what humans can hear, especially if you widen the scope from "hear" to "feel". You got bones in your ears, you got bones all over. As far as I can tell, nobody's really looked into where all the soundwaves go, or what the senses really entail as far as how the brain processes all the different sensory inputs.

Now does that mean I believe in "aromatherapy" and such things? No. But I do know that a good scent can be relaxing, and that the smell of smoke usually causes alarm. So...there's a lot of in-between between swallowing whole and not even tasting. So I recoil from anybody who tries to sell me a vaguery and somebody who tries to forcibly take it away from me in pretty much equal measure.

YMMV, obviously, but this ain't your car, you ain't paying for my gas, nor am I sure we're even heading to the same destination, so...happy motoring to you from me, and, I hope, the same to me from you. all roads lead to...more roads. If they don't, just turn around and head THAT way.

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This is not about hearing per se, but about a sixth sense...how the heck do we know to turn and look at someone when that someone is looking at us, from way out in the periphery? Happens every day when I'm driving.

We all know the Beethoven wrote music after he went deaf. How would he remember what a note sounded like, when our auditory memory is said not to span more than a few seconds?!

What I'm saying is that there is other-worldly, unclassified yet, supplementary sense in us. There's got to be.

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49 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I don't know what humans can hear, especially if you widen the scope from "hear" to "feel". You got bones in your ears...

Right, and that's how hearing works. From the eardrums, through the series of bones in your inner ear. 

The average youthful ear hears from 20-20k. I'm not sure how that is open for debate, as it's been scientifically proven time and again. 

As for where the sound waves "go"? Grab yourself a 22kHz tone off the intertubes, crank it up and tell me what you "feel". Maybe it excites your nose hairs and makes you sneeze, or something. But it's not going to do anything for the sound being played back. 

There is nothing vague, nor anything being taken away. It's just settled science until other scientists feel they can bust it. So far none have taken up the challenge. What's vague is when people say "they just hear it", or some other subjective and unfalsifiable nonsense. 

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I wish (well, maybe not) I lived in a world where that mattered to me that much. It just doesn't. Not when I listen to records, not when I write, not when I play.

Tone production alone, hell, feel is so important there. Two mouthpieces may sound "the same" when heard back on tape, but sound totally different while playing, because you got shit happening inside your skull and the rest of the body that might stay there. But they matter as far as what you hear inside yourself. It's very personal, and never tell a player that they sound the same no matter what, that it's really just a matter of which one is easier to play. Externally, that's essentially true, but internally, oh hell no. Ears? Hell, your jawbone gets some of those vibrations, your fingers get some of them, some of them come back from the metal of the horn, the rubber of the mouthpiece, the wood of the reed. If you can block it out 100%, you're either less than or more than human. Either way, it's a factor. It's deeply interior, intimate, and personal. Whether or not it's "scientifically measurable" or not is besides that point. If it ever stops happening, it would be disorienting as hell, and essentially require reprogramming of the brain.

Either we are allowed our private, internal sounds to process as we see fit or we are not. You can have mine when you pry it from my cold bleeding ears.

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1 hour ago, Dmitry said:

This is not about hearing per se, but about a sixth sense...how the heck do we know to turn and look at someone when that someone is looking at us, from way out in the periphery? Happens every day when I'm driving.

We all know the Beethoven wrote music after he went deaf. How would he remember what a note sounded like, when our auditory memory is said not to span more than a few seconds?!

What I'm saying is that there is other-worldly, unclassified yet, supplementary sense in us. There's got to be.

And I'm wary of the whole "supernatural" BOOGABOOGA thing as much as anybody, but yeah, keeping an open mind to possibilities not yet "known" is not to say that what is known is wrong. It's just to say that what is known is that which can be proven by perception. If one chooses to stop at that, fair enough. But belief in superstition and not being convinced that we now know everything that there is to be known are not the same thing at all.

We know that there is light which cannot be seen by the naked eye, but is still there (and can be used to benefit). I'd expect the same thing to be true of anything involving vibration, including sound. Humans are not the ultimate arbitrator of vibrational patterns, ok? That should create neither a quivery voodoo nor an overconfident datacentricity. I think it should just keep us moving ahead with equal parts confidence and humility.

Good luck, humanity! :g

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

I wish (well, maybe not) I lived in a world where that mattered to me that much. It just doesn't. Not when I listen to records, not when I write, not when I play.

That's great, because I'm not looking for it to "matter" to you. All this has ever been about is separating belief from fact. 

You want to believe in Noah's Ark? Do it, brother! But, fact will show that penguins didn't swim thousands of miles across the ocean to the Middle East. And Noah wasn't running a fucking ocean top taxi service. 

I do not care what anyone believes. What I care about is when they try to represent it as factual. You want to believe your nose hairs are doing the Macarena to some 96kHz frequencies? Be my guest. I guess that's why I keep mine trimmed. 

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If sounds are that "objective" and scientifically "neutral", why would ANYONE remaster previously recorded music to make it sound so different (vs what the master tape and first-generation pressings yielded) and, above all, louder? Like they wanted to grab a bite of the rock market? Why mess things (and sounds) up? And to bring full things circle in THIS thread, if what one subjectively prefers to hear is so irrelevant and the sounds out there are all objective, why not slap RVG posthumously in the face for having made some of his latter-day remasters sound so loud vs the original recordings?

Yes I know this IS quite a different angle of this debate but why, then, did they separate belief (wanting to "update" sounds to suit today's hearing habits or what they thought today's hearing habits to be) from fact (keeping the sound that is there on the master tapes without doctoring) in those (or other) remasters?

No matter how we look at it, in the end hearing is a subjective thing and dictated by what we ourselves want to hear and not by what somebody else tells us about what (and above all, how) we are supposed to hear.

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43 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

If sounds are that "objective" and scientifically "neutral", why would ANYONE remaster previously recorded music to make it sound so different (vs what the master tape and first-generation pressings yielded) and, above all, louder? Like they wanted to grab a bite of the rock market? Why mess things (and sounds) up? And to bring full things circle in THIS thread, if what one subjectively prefers to hear is so irrelevant and the sounds out there are all objective, why not slap RVG posthumously in the face for having made some of his latter-day remasters sound so loud vs the original recordings?

Yes I know this IS quite a different angle of this debate but why, then, did they separate belief (wanting to "update" sounds to suit today's hearing habits or what they thought today's hearing habits to be) from fact (keeping the sound that is there on the master tapes without doctoring) in those (or other) remasters?

No matter how we look at it, in the end hearing is a subjective thing and dictated by what we ourselves want to hear and not by what somebody else tells us about what (and above all, how) we are supposed to hear.

Ah, I never said anything about remastering or making something "sound better". That is completely subjective. One man's EQ settings are another man's garbage. Or something like that. 

This conversation isn't about that. It's about the playback media. 

I believe Kevin mentioned earlier about doing needle drops. If you record a needle drop at CD quality (16/44.1) and play it back, it's going to sound no different than what you heard on the record itself. Furthermore, if you recorded that needle drop at 24/48 and played the digital version back...it's going to sound no different than what you heard on the record itself. Well, as long as your method of transfer is sound. 

 

46 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I guess you don't believe in Shine either? (NSFW)

Boy, do I ever! 

A former neighbor of mine cleaned out his father's house with his brother after the father passed away. In the basement they found shine they had helped him make when they were younger. They used white plums for the base, and by his accounting it was somewhere around 40 years old. Man, that stuff was smooth as silk, and went down like ice cold water on a 100 degree day. 

BUT, you had to be very, very careful...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Some quick thoughts from Quincy Jones on the subject of playing for all kinds of audiences .

https://tedpanken.wordpress.com/2011/10/13/a-1996-wkcr-interview-with-ray-brown-born-85-years-ago-today/

He's talking about Ray Brown -

“After he moved to Los Angeles, we started working a lot together,” said Quincy Jones. “We got closer and closer. After a while, Ray started to take care of booking gigs and travel. He was an astute businessman. Old school played everything. We all played chitlin’ circuits. And you didn’t sit around whining about what you had to play, man. You played it, and tried to make it all sound good.  That’s what I loved about Ray. That’s where I think our chord struck, in being very curious about what the business side of it was and not wanting to be a victim. We wanted to be more in charge of our own destinies.

“A man never plays more or less than they are as a human being, and Ray was a very confident, take-charge person. He played bass like that and lived like that. He ate 17 different dishes like that. Wherever we were, whatever was good, Ray knew what it was. He’d probably eat a 249-pound catfish if he tried!  To me, he was the absolute symbol that if you empty your cup every time and learn to make it a habit, it always comes back twice as full. Give it up every time, man. Don’t save nothin’. I learned more and more about that from him all the time. In everything.”

 

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2 hours ago, Dmitry said:

 

He ate 17 different dishes like that. Wherever we were, whatever was good, Ray knew what it was. He’d probably eat a 249-pound catfish if he tried!  To me, he was the absolute symbol that if you empty your cup every time and learn to make it a habit, it always comes back twice as full. Give it up every time, man. Don’t save nothin’.

For a moment I thought he was talking about Jimmy Rushing! :D

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I like "Deirdre", but that's as far as I go, and truthfully, that might be as much for the arrangements as for the song. Michel Colombier, the right guy for that one.

But lest we give ourselves over to full throated Manilow Reflux, he cut a helluva record with Donne Warwick on that Isaac Hayes song, Deja Vu. Good thing Bruce Johnston is not relevant to that one, thank god.

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