{"id":886,"date":"2019-06-01T14:19:53","date_gmt":"2019-06-01T21:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/?p=886"},"modified":"2019-08-22T17:00:43","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T00:00:43","slug":"music-audio-great-recording-of-great-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/music-audio-great-recording-of-great-playing\/","title":{"rendered":"music\/audio: great recording of great playing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I listen to the NPR news summary on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/\">main NPR page<\/a> and the web page often features Tiny Desk concerts recorded at a not-so-tiny desk at some NPR office (and <a href=\"https:\/\/boingboing.net\/2018\/03\/28\/very-cute-hedgehogs-announce-n.html\">promoted by cute hedgehogs<\/a>). Many are excellent. I grooved on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QrR_gm6RqCo\">Thundercat playing with Mac Miller<\/a>, a guy I barely knew about, only to find he&#8217;d died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What&#8217;s impressive about these live videos is the <em>sound<\/em>. Watch this thrilling performance by Tedeschi-Trucks band:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tedeschi Trucks Band: Tiny Desk Concert\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RRipadkd6wk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s 11 people including two drummers recorded in the middle of an office. It&#8217;s <em>crazy<\/em> how good it sounds! Listen to the turn starting around 9:20 from the sax solo that ends &#8220;Don&#8217;t Know What It Is&#8221; (by Kofi Burbridge who passed away in 2019), to Trucks&#8217; sparse transition, to Tedeschi&#8217;s spine-tingling &#8220;Aooohuoooh&#8221; opening &#8220;Anyhow&#8221; (watch how she looks at him at 10:20 \ud83d\udc95\ud83c\udfb6), and into that building horn chart. You can hear everything by everyone as it crests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, here&#8217;s why: two really good audio engineers, Josh Rogosin and Kevin Wait, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/allsongs\/2019\/04\/02\/705579879\/tiny-tech-tips-microphones\">a lot of high-quality sometimes expensive microphones<\/a>, and a lot of experience putting them together. These live performances often sound better than the bands on the late night talk shows; performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live in particular often have thin hard-to-hear vocals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"How We Record Audio At The Tiny Desk\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/e07bI5rz6FY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Troll time<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Someone commented on how great the sound is, and I made up this explanation, and someone else thought I was serious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Watch the Tiny Desk videos where audio engineer Josh Rogosin talks about the care he takes selecting from a multitude of quality, some very expensive, microphones, then positioning them to get great sound from the middle of a ^%$#@! open-plan office. But\u2026 it&#8217;s all a lie! The beer bottles on the shelf behind Derek Trucks are disguised Helmholtz resonators. The shelves of vinyl LPs and books are actually CNC-milled diffusers, you never see an album out of place because they&#8217;re solid Sitka spruce. The desk divider in front of Susan Tedeschi is a $4,000 anechoic panel. The 3-D &#8220;Bob Boilen&#8221; and &#8220;AllSongs Considered&#8221; cut-outs are actually bass traps stuffed with shaved yak fur to tune ceiling reflections. Etc.<br><br> That is the only explanation why Tiny Desk Concerts consistently sound better than artists on Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Kimmel Live, and the other late-night talk shows. That &#8220;office&#8221; is a $2,000,000 recording studio. The truth is out there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I listen to the NPR news summary on the main NPR page and the web page often features Tiny Desk concerts recorded at a not-so-tiny desk at some NPR office (and promoted by cute hedgehogs). Many are excellent. I grooved &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/music-audio-great-recording-of-great-playing\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":928,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions\/928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}