kinda

[Guest]

Imagine,if you will, a sound-stage( a stage even) with drums rear left, bass centre and piano on the right. It could be Joe Morello, Eugene Wright and Dave Brubeck as I saw them many,many times at the Hammersmith Odeon in the 60s ( it isn't). In the curve of the piano is not Paul Desmond but the tenor sax, the trumpeter is central and the altosax is on the left.
Now, if you are in an indulgent mood, you may wish to click on the link below and scroll down to the 11th entry "kinda" and, provided you are listening to speakers (and not on headphones which will put you in the middle of the stage, you do not want to be there!) you will hear some music, achingly familiar, eternally satisfying and which brings to life the sound stage you have imagined.

http://www.cliveheathmusic.co.uk/vinyl.php

..........and I know what you might think..........

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

...to continue the theme of we are in heaven Clive eh ....

[clive heath]

get ahead

In " kinda " I suggested that you might enjoy "Kind of Blue" with the channels reversed to give a sound stage common to many live performances. You may feel that the texture of the music benefited (or not).
For something different lets start with the actual, not imagined, stage layout for the televised "New Rhumba" -Miles and the Gil Evans band

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPlZ_WhPWMY&feature=related

You can see that the brass is split either side of the drums, bass and Miles: trumpets and trombones on the right, horns on the left. Also on the left are the sax/flute group. This is what Gil Evans is hearing from his seat at roughly the centre of a semi-circle. My guess is that Gil was a bit of a stickler and arranged the studio the way he wanted it whether recording or for television. I also suspect that he used the same plan for all the solo/big band dates of the late 50s. I would also be surprised if, for this televised performance, Miles would be happy to have the band layout reversed. On this basis,

Miles Ahead is incorrectly published with tmpt,tmb on the left

New Bottle Old Wine has only "Willow Tree" correct. As there are no horns here the trombones move left of centre.

Porgy and Bess, correct

Well, you may say, "so what", but if you would like to hear the performance as Gil Evans heard it in the television studio that day, "ahead" follows "kinda"..... or you can get cunning with your phono leads. Again you may or may not prefer the reversed sound stage. By the way, the televised "New Rhumba" does not have the 5-beat bar, about 17 seconds in, which both my LP and CD have.

[Ivor Cockburn]

Thats a fascinating line of enquiry.
For TV in those days is it not certain they'd have been mixing for mono anyway? A recording in a TV studio wouldn't be set up the same way a sound studio would. Mics in vision, foldback etc. Also the acoustic sound treatment (if any) for a tv studio would be very different to a recording studio. A TV studio is all about the vision, sound is secondary.
That said, the video shows mics for most instruments but they're not close so the sound spill is going to make stereo balancing difficult, and the proximity of the mics to each other but not near to the instruments means they're getting a lot of studio ambient and reflections all from slightly different positions. This would destroy phase relationships for all but a crude left and right from each row of horns. Then theres the drums, one overhead mic it looks like, no acoustic screens all near the rest of the rhythm section.
So what would they have likely to have recorded? It wouldn't be common to have a multitrack or even a stereo tape machine in a tv studio, unless this was being used in conjunction with the tv sound recording in a sort of OB fashion.
Its obviously video, not a film recording (which would have made it more likely to have better audio recording facilities) and its being made for TV (ie not a video of a recording session, correct me if I'm wrong) so I'm inclined to think that unless special provision was made for the audio, the TV sound would have been the main consideration, not a stereo master and even that way after what it looked like. And for that you have to consider how the (pretty large) cameras were able to move around too.
Also consider recorded TV sound is highly compressed. This would have made things sound closer but less detailed. I wonder if they added any 'reverb' or that the (I'm guessing) the cavernous acoustics of the tv studio did the job.
Though there are photos of Gill's recording sessions, do any of them show such a deliberate 'visual arrangement' as we see here? I don't think so but if anyone has any other info that would be interesting.
So contrary to whats said, I think this is entirely a setup for tv. If theres a (genuine) stereo recording from it I think we should consider ourselves fortunate.

[kevmusic]

I loved that, but I got some distortion in the louder, higher parts of Miles's solos. I don't normally get it in my pc set-up and I'm sure it can't have been present on the original recording.......can it?

[clive heath]

..............probably not, kevmusic, somewhere along the LP wear, stylus, playing weight, preamp, AtoD, chain I've no doubt some distortion creeps in, that said, Miles' tone wasn't always the purest. Hi-fi wasn't the main point of these uploads after all, but glad you loved it!

[clive heath]

Further to the above, I was musing on other Miles' recording of the period and reminded myself that I've got the 2 later, expanded, LPs of the Blackhawk sessions. Foolishly thinking Miles=East Coast it suddenly clicked that when I set up my site it included a section on the Shelley Manne sessions at , duh, the Blackhawk on the West Coast ( the only Blackhawk, of course). So you won't be surprised to find that, like the Manne sessions the Miles engineers have the piano on the left which goes against the visuals, both those on the Manne covers and the pic of Brubeck during his time there. Unless they moved the piano to the other side of the stage just for Miles! The joy of this was the rediscovery of the 2 LPs and the marvellous music and what a tenor player Hank Mobley could be. So now I'm going to wallow in the "Workout"s and "No Room for Squares".

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I think the Miles Blackhawk nights are my fav. live recordings. Wonderful sound, Wynton Kelly majestic, and Hank just going for it...despite Miles scowls!

Joy.

BN.

[clive heath]

A less well known but IMV wonderful live set is the 2 LP "Integrity" recorded in 1984 in Bologna; with Phil Woods, Tom Harrell, Hal Galper, Steve Gilmore and Bill Goodwin. Worth a listen if you get the chance.

[clive heath]

re recordings at the Blackhawk club, a Californinan member of another forum posted the following,

" The channels are indeed reversed. I knew it when I first heard it (plus, I had been to the Black Hawk and seen the setup), but it was confirmed for me by Stuart Kremsky, formerly of Fantasy Records. It was done either during the recording, the mixing or the mastering. God only knows why - maybe just a mistake. It's too bad, because that series of recordings is generally acknowledged to be one of the best-sounding live jazz recordings ever done.
I correct it by listening with my headphones reversed on my head!"

which appears to validate what I first suggested 3 years ago on my site and which gives weight to the subsequent suggestion that the Miles Davis, Hank Mobley et al sessions at the same club are similarly reversed.
As someone who rarely listens on headphones (reminiscent of the bath/socks scenario) you will have to reverse your CD input leads to your power/control amp to correct this..and then remember to re-reverse!! I built in to my pre-amplifier a reversing switch as well as a phase reversal switch (necessary for Miles' "Bags Groove" in its OJC 20 re-release of Pestige P-7109 where played normally it is a disembodied sound as though recorded in a large bathroom, and very occasionally a BBC broadcast).

[eighthobstruction]

Loving the Quincy Jones....thanks

[clive heath]

In line with the OP ( I believe it's called) a viewing of

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=30th+Street+Studio&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=aA-xUc_dNYaMO_G5gLgB&sqi=2&ved=0CD8QsAQ&biw=1366&bih=622#facrc=_&imgrc=9MrX4ww_LroArM%3A%3B7dch07uMPFpK0M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Faudiohistory.com%252Ffiles%252Fimages%252Fabbeyroadstudio.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Faudiohistory.com%252Fcategoriesother.php%3B648%3B800

will give you loads of pix of the 30th Street Studios where "Kind of Blue" was recorded the same year as DB's "Time Out" and later, "Further..." both of which are issued with the piano on the right. On the 4th row of pix you will see an introspective Dylan, Miles with a fag and , guess what, Coltrane, Cannonball and Miles ( and mikes) on the left and Bill Evans also with a fag (or is it a pencil?) at the piano on the right lending just a tij of credence to my theory.

The next picture to the right might well be the Brubeck Quartet with the studio set-up as heard on "Time Out" i.e. drums left, piano right.

[grippie]