Kevin Bresnahan

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone. I bought this one Record Store Day many years back. Clear vinyl. Music is just OK for me. The thing I'm not a fan of is the dynamic compression the recording engineer applied. Everything sounds loud. No nuance at all.

George Coleman - Ronnie Scott's Presents George Coleman Live (Pye). Great record. Whoever recorded this did a great job too.

I take it that you are not married?

Does anyone know why the Japanese producers added the 's' to shout or even better - why they didn't use the Reid Miles cover that was in the vault?

A Tommy Flanagan kinda night... Just finished: Now playing:

Both of those CDs are available as a two-fer: https://www.discogs.com/release/12618078-Freddie-Hubbard-And-Woody-Shaw-The-Freddie-Hubbard-And-Woody-Shaw-Sessions

Wasn't this recorded in stereo though? RVG started recording in stereo in March of 1957 and by May when this was made, he was recording all sessions in stereo. I know that there have been LPs released with "Electronically rechanneled for stereo" stamped across the cover when the music is in actual stereo.

Ah - the famous Johnny Gri... err, I mean Hank Mobley two-fer.

Cancer sucks. Cancer plus Covid must've really sucked. Damn. Too young.

I'll miss his posts here. From his Facebook page, it looks like his death may have been related to or due to Covid. In his last post, he wrote that he was having a rough time with it even though he was vaccinated and boosted.

It's a pain at home because you need special upward-firing speakers and the only ones on the market are not what you might consider audiophile. These upward-firing designs need to be placed properly to get the right reflections too. As much as I love surround sound, I won't be going for this. Atmos speaker:

I had to laugh when you mention warbling under a cover photo of "Black Fire".

There are 2 pressings of this on vinyl and there are several copies of each for sale on discogs. Also, you might get more responses if you said what you were willing to pay for this LP.

I get that it's missing the book, but you could just buy the download for 10 Pounds and burn it to a CD-R yourself.

The last two nights, I was able to see Chris Potter (in a trio) and Yoko Miwa at the new jazz club in Portsmouth, NH, Jimmy's Jazz & Blues Club. Next up on my calendar is Alex Minasian, who is bringing a great-looking band into Sculler's Jazz Club on March 26th, with Alex on piano, Billy Pierce on tenor, Vince DuPont on bass & one of my favorite drummers, Joe Farnsworth at the drum kit. I haven't seen Alex in many years. He was a local (Hudson, NH) piano prodigy who I first encountered when he played piano for Curtis Fuller's band when they played in the area. I bet he was around 15 the first time I saw him. How time flies...

Donald Byrd - Blackjack (Blue Note)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/arts/music/maxine-gordon-dexter-gordon-jazz-advocates.html If it helps understand their dynamic any... Maxine is about 27 years younger than Dex.

LTD is one of the jazz players that I wished I had gotten around to seeing live when he was around. Unfortunately, I started going to jazz shows shortly after he stopped touring. After reading these reviews of his later shows, I don't feel as bad about it.

Wilton "Bogey" Gaynair* – Blue Bogey (Jasmine Records). I do enjoy this records. Gaynair reminds me of a combo of Charlie Rouse with Ike Quebec.

As I understand it, Ron McMaster had customers. These customers had their producer get him to pull a tape, get the playback set up (bake the tape, align the azimuth etc), add EQ per the tape box recommendations and then digitize it. The producer gets a CD-R, listens to the music and gives it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Ron McMaster is not a producer.

That 1977 recording was Childs' recording debut at the young age of 20.

I saw his last iteration of the Wailers at the Regattabar in Cambridge, MA and it was an incredible night. To be honest, I really liked that front line and I was hoping that they would carry on the name. Taylor was not the star of that band that night.

Speaking of Farnsworth... Anthony Wonsey - The Thang (Sharp Nine). I always liked this label. I should have bought more of them when they were around.

You got that right. Joe is a fantastic drummer. I always try to go to any show when he is going to be in the drum chair.

Over the years, there has been a story repeated over & over that Ron McMaster's Blue Note LPs were always cut with a digital look-ahead circuit that resulted in them all being cut digitally. He refuted this several times but not with a lot of detail, probably because he was still cutting LPs and didn't want to get in any trouble with the boss. So this came up again on the Hoffman forums with this post: It's been documented several times on this site that Capitol isn't able to cut AAA because their tape machines lack the crucial preview head (which is prohibitively expensive to implement after-the-fact). So even if they master from tape, that tape gets sent through a digital delay, i.e. being digitised. Which is virtually the same as cutting from digital files. Figuring that Ron might be able to give us more detail now that he is retired and Capitol Mastering Studios closed for good, I messaged him on Facebook and told him what some people are reporting and asked him if he could elaborate further on his LP mastering of Blue Note LPs and he replied: Hi Kevin, My disc mastering rooms at EMI and Capitol were all analog rooms. All tape-to-disc projects were cut to disc completely analog. We used NO digital preview like some studios had to because we had a Studer A80 Mastering machine which contained an analog preview head. You would make different tape paths on the A80 for the preview head depending on the speed of the master tape. If it was 15ips it was one path, if it was 30ips, you would use a different tape path. There was also a different path between cutting an LP or 45 depending on if the master was 15ips or 30ips. Yes, some studios that cut from analog did have a digital preview, because they did not have a fully equipped analog mastering tape machine, but we never had to do that. Both Wally’s* room and my room had Studer A80 mastering machines. The person who made the comment is correct in that some studios had to use a digital delay because they didn’t have a specific mastering machine with built in preview path and preview head but we never had to do that. I hope that this will help you. Nice to hear from you and I hope this helps. Ron * Wally Traugott So - to be clear - all of Ron McMaster's LPs were cut fully in the analog domain when he was given an analog tape to work with. Ron has told me that he was sometimes only given digital tapes for some LP cuts. He didn't control that. However, he also says that he always worked with the analog tapes for all Blue Note cuts. His words were something like, "Why wouldn't I? It only took a few moments to pull the tape". I believe that back then, the masters were not stored very far away. BTW - I told Ron that he needs to write down his mastering stories and he agreed, saying it was something many of his friends have been asking him to do for years. I hope that if anything, someone can at least interview him and get a few of his stories out there. If anyone knows of someone who is looking to talk to a retired mastering engineer who has mastered almost every Blue Note title ever recorded, let me know & I'll see if I can make it happen.