We were just a few days into the UK coronavirus lockdown, when a copy of The Last Seat in the House: The Story of Hanley Sound arrived on my doorstep. The book’s author, John Kane, had emailed me having decided that his was a book I needed to read. I was happy to oblige.
His timing was good, so I settled into self-isolation with ‘the father of festival sound’ and a beer.
With only 13 countries presently likely to be remaining Covid-19 free, the live music and club industries worldwide have taken a heavy blow. The games industry, meanwhile, reports seeing an upturn in downloads while Billboard research indicates that around three in ten Americans claim to be listening to more radio since the US coronavirus outbreak. We are glimpsing a new pro audio landscape… and the inside of musicians’ homes.
When it appeared in 1983, Midi changed my life – as it did for countless other keyboard players around the world. Like any revolution worthy of the name, its arrival wasn’t universally welcomed but it was unstoppable.
In the years since, Midi has become a music making mainstay, and is now in the spotlight again.
Having explored the thinking and story behind the evolution concept, Sennheiser’s exclusive show-and-tell session in London gave the floor to the a handful of the mic systems’ users: Brian May guitar tech Pete Malandrone, monitor engineer Joe Campbell and Global Radio’s Chris Denham.
Between their contrasting viewpoints, they paint a first-hand picture of a defining microphone in Sennheiser’s remarkable history.
‘Twenty years ago, a question was posed: should Sennheiser continue to produce dynamic microphones? Our prices had gone up and our profit had gone down because we were producing them in a very old-fashioned and expensive way.
Also, Sennheiser predominantly delivered microphones for the broadcast market, which weren’t attractive to the live sound market –partly because they were too expensive…’
Released in March 1967, ‘Arnold Layne’ was the first of eight singles from the fledgling Pink Floyd that year. Fifty years on, and with an unassailable place in rock music history, Pink Floyd are the focus of an exhibition at London’s V&A Museum.
Rich in memorabilia, the exhibition is prefaced by the EMI console used for the recording of The Dark Side of the Moon displayed in the museum’s foyer and is littered with instruments and equipment from every stage of the band’s career.
Sharing time and a couple of bottles of Asahi with another former pro audio magazine editor in the bar of London’s Metropolis Studios recently, the hoary subject of equipment reviews raised its head once again. The observation this time was a new one, however…
It was the attention given to dedicated plug-ins as compared to the onboard effects suites found on live mixing desks.
Sometime around 1975-76 I wanted an MXR Phase 90 for my Wurlitzer electric piano – I wanted what the ‘real’ keyboard players of the time were using. Instead, I bought the cheaper Electro-Harmonix Small Stone, believing it to be the poor man’s alternative. I was wrong.
That both are now effects icons and remain in production today shows just how wrong…
With the ambition of the first Leslie emulation pedals finally fulfilled, the story of the Shin-ei Uni-Vibe has come full circle. In its wake we have phasers, flangers and digital modelling pedals, each having taken their shot at replacing the Leslie loudspeaker cabinet.
Common sense would have cast the Uni-Vibe aside along the way. But the final twist in the story is its own heritage.
My local pub has a split personality. Or, maybe, it’s more like a secret identity – a single location but with two roles in life.
For some of us, it’s a friendly place where we can go to talk, laugh and read, and with ready access to music for any occasion or discussion. For others, it’s a fully-fledged sports bar, with access to all the required TV channels, and comfortably more screens than it has walls. And that is where our story starts...
I once read that smell is our strongest associative sense. I’ve since tried to establish the relative ability of our other senses to evoke memories – most recently after hearing the award-winning Notes on Blindness discussed at The Sound of Story conference.
One of the film’s producers told the story of its making and its reliance on sound… but let’s start at the very beginning.
It seems to have become a common misconception that guitar fuzz boxes and distortion pedals predate more eloquent effects, such as phasing and flanging.
OK, tremolo and spring reverb were originally guitar amp features, and fuzz and distortion evolved from damaged loudspeakers, impedance mismatches and voltage sag. But effects that were developed in the recording studio are the result of earlier experimentation, exploration and serendipity.
If you count the green 1970s Carlsbro thing that’s presently in storage in a city 100 miles away, I’m now up to eight footpedal delay units. Before the Carlsbro there was a Watkins Copicat. I love my echoes...
Recently, it seemed the right time to sort all those boxes out – to decide what each was capable of and best at, and decide how to use them. It wasn’t long before it all got rather interesting.
Just a few days after the events in Brussels and in the wake of the killings at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, an incident at a London venue went largely unreported.
A recent gig at London’s Roundhouse Theatre was interrupted by what was later to be reported as a ‘false fire alarm’. A first-hand report of the crowd management offers an insight into the practical considerations now surrounding security at entertainment venues.
The world of bootlegging music has come a long way since I bought my first illegal concert cassette from a Walsall market stall. Its lousy artwork, poor recording and incorrect song titles brought their own excitement to my record collection.
Back then, a bootleg of studio outtakes offered an insight into an artist or band that was beyond the control of a major record label, while a live recording was an open ticket to a unique live performance.
Sitting down to write this shortly after the deaths of Lemmy and David Bowie, I’m presented with yet more sad news. I can add Mott the Hoople drummer Buffin Griffin and Eagles front man Glenn Frey to the count of lost talent.
Tony Visconti has posted on Twitter: To the assholes who are saying they're dropping like flies, you nitwits, they are Dying Like Heroes! January seems like a very, very bad month for heroes.