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Recently, while browsing in a second-hand bookshop in Haworth (the home of the Bronte sisters), I came across a little book entitled ‘A Concise History of Jazz’ by John Robert Brown. John is an ex-colleague of mine from the Leeds College of Music where he was a Principal Lecturer and, before he retired to pursue a literary career, their overseas recruitment guy. He is a clarinet and saxophone expert and an ex-President of the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain. During the 1970s he led a ‘predictably-named’ and successful band – ‘The John Brown’s Bodies.’ He has broadcast, hosting a regular jazz programme on a local radio station, and he is a very good artist and author.
Following a reading of John’s little book, I found myself re-reading Gunther Schuller’s ‘Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development,’ a seminal work in Jazz history. I was prompted to re-visit the book after noticing that John’s main reference sources were Gunther Schuller and, of course, Leonard Feather, and Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff (the books of which, all quietly rest in my personal library). Aroused by John’s book, I now find myself re-visiting the origins and history of jazz – a timely project that lshelping to while away the long, boring wintertime. Co-incidentally, Gunther Schuller has recently published a new biography and John was reading the biography for review. He posted the following information from the web:
About the Author
Gunther Schuller has been on the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music and Yale University; he was, for many years, head of contemporary music activities (succeeding Aaron Copland) and director of the Tanglewood Music Center, and served as president of the New England Conservatory. He is the author of ‘The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945′; ‘Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development’; ‘The Complete Conductor’, and many other books.
Reviews of his biography
“If you’d done a quarter of what Gunther Schuller has done in his lifetime, I’d want to read your memoirs, too. . . . He is the only musician in the world who can claim to have played with Maria Callas, Miles Davis, Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra, Igor Stravinsky and Arturo Toscanini. . . . I couldn’t put it down, and I can’t wait until he finishes the second volume. . . . Compulsively readable. . . . a cultural history of America in the 1940s and ’50s, viewed through the prism of his personal experience. “ – Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal.
“Gunther Schuller’s monumental memoir instantly becomes an essential document of twentieth-century music, in all its forms. Time and again Schuller has been witness to the making of history, and more than once he has made it himself. No future account of the period will be able to ignore this book.” – Alex Ross, The New Yorker
“One of the world’s great musical explorers guides us to some of the most interesting corners of American music history. Schuller gives a back-stage look not only at his emergence as a composer but also such history-making events as the 1949 Fritz Reiner-led “Salome” at the Metropolitan with Ljuba Welitsch and recording sessions in the ’50s with Miles Davis, John Lewis, and Ornette Coleman.” – Travis Rivers, senior music correspondent, Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Washington.
Published 15 October 2011 by University of Rochester Press – $49.95
(A bit pricey, but this is a ‘big’ book and well worth the outlay)
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Recently, I have been contributing to Hacker Public Radio with, so far, three podcasts. The details are in the show notes for each podcast, and can be accessed form my Home Page; but I thought it might be useful to set it down in my Blog as well . . .
First, my set up and gear. I use a Behringer C-1U, USB Condenser Microphone, with a boom mike stand and a ‘pop’ screen, straight into a laptop for quick, direct-input, recordings. Also, for outside work and possible future external interviews, I use a Zoom H4n. The Zoom seems to be the podcaster’s hand-held recorder of choice. It has very good audio, and can simultaneously record up to four tracks – 2 stereo and 2 mono, if necessary.
My main ’studio’ set up, at present, is a Sennheiser e815S microphone into a Behringer Xenyx X1204USB Mixer. This mixer has on-board USB/Audio Interfaces and 4 mono and two stereo input channels, all balanced or unbalanced. The XLR inputs have good quality microphone pre-amps and each has 3-band EQ, pan functions and two auxiliary sends. On the ‘X’ model, the Auxiliary 2 control sends the signal to an FX processor that has 16 built-in reverb, ambience/delay and other effects. These effects should prove useful to future projects. In addition, each of the four mono inputs has a studio-grade compressor on the strip. The mixer is portable enough to be be useful on live gigs, as well as providing a reasonable quality of audio for my studio-based music activities. And the price of the mixer is right at just under £140 Sterling.
Acquiring this, now allows me to add my ageing Yamaha PSR-350 Keyboard into the ‘mix’ as another input and sound source. Another advantage of adding the mixer is that I can link in the Zoom H4n in, to allow separate recordings of voice, and voip signals. I also have a Tascam US-100 Audio Interface which I can use to plug straight into the computer via a USB port. The Sennheiser, by the way, is the microphone that I use for P.A. in my live performances. The response curve seems to suit solo instruments, saxophones in particular, better than other microphones I have tried – with a nice clear, warm sound. The Shure S58 is a great vocal mike of course but, since I don’t sing, dance, or do monologues, I find the Sennheiser a better, slightly cheaper, alternative for instrumental work.
How the audio is captured depends, upon what it is I’m recording. For example, for recording my voice for the podcast, I can using the Behringer USB mike, straight into the computer, captured in Audacity. Incidentally, I use Klaatu’s config file to set up Audacity. I find his keyboard controls and screen layout gives me a much faster work flow when I’m editing the podcast. I also am using Ardour to record my musical bits and pieces and am increasingly finding the programme the best option for the studio. Generally, it has a steeper learning curve than Audacity, and many many more features than are required for podcasting work but it is fairly essential for the musical audio.
I use one of two laptops to capture and process the audio – an Asus EeePC 1005HA, which has a 10.5in. Screen, and a Sony Vaio VGN-BX297, with a 17in screen. Both machines originally came with Windows XP installed but have since been completely re-built with Ubuntu 11.04. The Asus is more than up to the job for capturing voice and instrumental recordings. Anything more than that, however – score work in Sibelius, for example – and the size of the Asus screen, ‘hampers’ the ability to view and move about a score effectively. That is where the Sony comes in. At 17 inches, the screen is ideal for viewing and navigating the musical scores.
The quick way is to record straight into Audacity. I save the audio file as a WAV or FLAC file to preserve the maximum amount of audio data at that stage of the process. I usually prepare a script for the whole spoken part of the show – and this helps simplify the preparation of the published show notes. I will, typically, record each segment of the script as a separate file, again in WAV or FLAC format, so that I can easily drop in any audio fills, or pieces, into the programme. I will then assemble the segments and the audio in Audacity, adjust the fades and overlaps, where necessary, and export and mix down the file to one, composite, MP3 file. For the HPR podcasts, the assembly starts with the supplied HPR intro music, and ends with the outro audio.
Following the updating of my hardware, I now find that I use ‘Ardour’ instead of ‘Audacity’ as my main Digital Audio Workstation for serious music projects. I am only just beginning to get to ‘grips’ with it but already I recognise that it is a highly polished, professional piece of software that is close to comparable with ‘Cubase’ or ‘Logic Pro’ for all but the most serious ‘professional’ musician. I am still exploring its capabilities for my particular set up, and shall probably feel the need to do a Podcast on ‘Ardour’ at some time in the future.
I shall still continue to use ‘Audacity’ for certain edits, because it has a couple of great compression tools that I use. Another very useful programme, for setting or editing ID3 Tags, is ‘Kid3Tag.’ This little programme accesses more ID3 parameters than can be set via the ‘Audacity’ export function.
For the moment, I shall continue to use ‘Band-In-A-Box’ and ‘Sibelius 6′ in ‘Virtualbox’ for the preparation of backing tracks and for score-writing. I am currently trialling ‘MMA’ – ‘Musical Midi Accompaniment’ – about the closest I can find in Linux to Band-In-A-Box! And I am looking at Muse’ and ‘Lilypond,’ in the hope that I can get to the point where I can dispense with the Windows-based software all together. As before, I write the backing tracks in Band-In-A-Box, without the melody or solo track, and capture it on the Zoom H4n, mounted to a photography tripod, and set up directly in front of the stereo speakers. I export the track to ‘Ardour’ where a solo track is recorded alongside and mixed with it. It’s still a bit experimental at this stage, but it seems to work and I’ll let you know how I get on.
