Ah yes, Keith O Johnson, or is that professor Keith O Johnson? N
ot sure if he’s a real professor or whether this is just a name of affection?
But he certainly is something else.
He looked extremely fragile when he came up but his mind and focus are very special indeed.
He reminded me a bit of Stephen Hawking, not his physical condition of the body but his mind.
It was a missed opportunity by the people from Chattelin Audio that they didn't film the entire lecture about the vision of Spectral and the development of high end audio.
You can watch a short video clip here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAif-3F27Lc
When the lecture was over I approached him with my ignorant questions about recording music.
Felt a bit like I was going to discuss chess positions with Magnus Carlsen.
But he was most kind. What he told me was that first of all it will never sound better than how good a musician has played.
And that's entirely true I found out during my first experiences with this recording.
If a musician produces a glorious tone then you will hear this, even when it’s badly recorded.
The bass player on this first record of Alive! Modern Savior decided to use an in-ear headphone for the first time in his career.
But as a consequence he played probably 10% to 20% less loud as he would have done without.
And this, in combination with the habit of Dutch audiences to behave not necessarily very quiet during concerts
and the classic issue of cross talk with recording double bass made we had a problem during the mix.
There was simply too much audience on the bass players mike.
Fortunately we decided to have a so called DI mike on the bass as well (direct input).
Now double bass players hate a DI and they do so quite rightly. Because this just doesn’t sound like acoustic bass.
But we had to use 30% or so of this feed.
It is not a problem at all when you listen to this record in your car or on your iPod, it is actually better for this,
but on very revealing systems it becomes to boomy. Something we learned for our second recording.
Then with respect to the actual recording technique Keith Johnson told me he always uses the reflections of some walls or a corner.
And he never miked straight on but always 2 mikes pointing in a certain angle at the bass player and those walls. And I believe he said he liked AKG mikes.
For example when you listen to the standing bass on Harry Belafonte’s outstanding live in Carnegie Hall you think this sounds pretty good.
Fantastic engineering on this record. And dead quite audience and no cross talk because the musicians are miles apart.
But compare this to a good studio recording, for example Manu Katché - Neibourhood (ECM) and you hear the (huge) difference.
If you have a chance to meet KOJ please do so.
cheers
