Posted by Mark on September 24, 2002 at 12:06:07:
In Reply to: Fountains of Rome posted by David on September 24, 2002 at 10:23:58:
David:
I don't have any idea what's best for the audition.
As far as the acoustics, however, the answer must be "Yes". After spending time with my "new" horn these past few months in my home, a couple outdoor gigs, and in a bad rehearsal room, I took my horn to practice in my church late one night. I recorded it to critique myself, and compare the impact of some mouthpieces "out front" in a hall with the mics about 60 feet away. Although the sanctuary I used is less reverberant than a good concert hall (1.5 versus 2.0 seconds typical orch. hall reverb), It was much closer to a "real" hall than I had played this horn in previously.
Holy moley! what a difference the room made. While I could easily hear all the mistakes and bum attacks as I expected, that Sound was there, even when I was at the volume limit.
While I didn't play like Gene (Never will), I was pleasantly surprised that the recorded sound had that serious growl and "size". I didn't "blatt." I'm sure that part of that particular sound is the York signature (Gene and Ellis playing real 6/4 Yorks, and me trying on my lil' 4/4 York.) It seems to help projection.
As an aside, the couple mouthpieces I sampled had less impact out front than I expected, just as Ellis pointed out in his recent posting.
I often wish that the orch excerpts CD was available in an optional 'dry' version, where the mics would have been on Gene's head so we can hear what he hears as the performer. Maybe a DVD recording will someday be made so we can toggle back and forth between the out-front and player's perspective. That would be really helpful!
FWIW,
-- Mark