Examples of more with less

...and I'm not that good of a pianist!   

Neither am I. And I sort-of gave up a while back, really. But just having the experience of even attempting it at all at a performing level makes you appreciate rather more the people that can do it. You can have one more anecdote, and this time with a name attached:

A few years ago I attended an organ recital on an instrument that has seen better days, given by a certain Dame Gillian Weir - in the list of internationally famous organists, she's firmly in the top ten. I was chatting to her afterwards (I won't bore you with all the details of that - it's complicated) and with all artistes at this level, you have to be a little careful about what you say... It's no secret amongst the people that listen to her regularly that she has some days that are, shall we say, 'better than others', but fortunately for me she was having a good one that day. And without thinking about it, I just said what was on my mind - which was basically that there were times during the recital that I'd quite forgotten that I was listening to an organ, and boy did that change things! Turns out that this was (quite inadvertently on my part) one of the best compliments she'd been given for a while. Opened the chat up somewhat, I must say. But hey, it was what I felt - and that's the difference between the merely competent performer and the great one; they can transcend an instrument completely.

Just to jump in a bit, concerning great musicians and great instruments - I am luckily acquainted with a truly gifted pianist , singer and guitarist, classical and jazz mainly, but one of those who can play anything they hear. He has played accompaniment on several classical song recordings in Norway, and he and his group entertain with French folk music at cafes in Oslo!

 He came to my birthday party at a summer cottage by the Norwegian fjords and played on an old spanish guitar. Sadly the guitar had a broken string, but he stilled managed to play Rule Britannia for me! Yes a better instrument with 6 strings would have sounded better, but I could neber have managed on that guitar!

Great anecdotes, guys.  Steve, I've heard of Dame Weir but never heard her live.

Sadly, too few people every experience that kind of greatness first-hand.

Dames are addressed by first name and referred to by first name with or without surname according to context; so it's Dame Gillian or Dame Gillian Weir, but not Dame Weir.

You may now resume normal service...

Paul

I recently signed up for the Sony "Music Unlimited" service - you pay not much per month and you can then search for and play 6 million + tracks from the Sony, Warner, Universal, EMI, and other catalogs (on your PC or PS3 and other Sony devices, but it's not a download service).  It's completely transformed my music (jazz, rock, 'world' and classical) listening habits, having now 600 times more stuff to choose from - no need to keep going round and round the same stuff from my own library.

Anyway - getting to the topic - it occurred to me the other night to see what versions of the jazz standard "Turn out the stars" are available - I recorded a concert about 30 years ago (for free as I recall it) where the trio played that tune and it's been a great favourite since.  In the results thrown up I saw there was actually a version on CD by that very same trio.  I thought I'd see how it differed from that version I'd taped - and you've guessed it, it was that very same version which some years ago I transcribed from the original four-track cassette and sent to the trio leader for his archive. 

Further checking on the CD (a compilation of live recordings) revealed two other tracks I know were my recordings from the same concert.  Maybe others are mine - I recorded rather a lot for the musician concerned over many years.

Anyway, that cassette-originated version stood up perfectly well against the other versions I tried subsequently - nobody would guess that apart from the humble MT44 recorder, I used a Sony 979 stereo mic on the piano plus a PZM on the string bass and another PZM for the drum kit.  What catches the ear is not the recording per se but simply a first rate, beautifully played verson of the tune.

Of course it's also an example of another kind of more with less - the musician got himself several CD-releasable tracks for nothing!  But I'm not miffed (though a copy of the CD would have been a reasonable expectation) - there's not a lot of money to be made from playing and recording jazz for the most part.  Good luck to him.

I recently signed up for the Sony "Music Unlimited" service - you pay not much per month and you can then search for and play 6 million + tracks from the Sony, Warner, Universal, EMI, and other catalogs (on your PC or PS3 and other Sony devices, but it's not a download service). 

Hmm... if you can stand the adverts, I'd try Spotify free - you can listen to even more tracks for up to 20hrs/month for nothing! And there's also a download option. It's not perfect in terms of coverage, but it's not bad, either.

Spotify isn't really available out here - I think there are workarounds but for me something straightforward I can use on any PC in the house, or elsewhere, it necessary.  Grooveshark is does work here but it seems slightly grey on the legal front, and content seems to be what people have uploaded (though there are many gems in there that Music Unlimited might not have).

"Music Unlimited" uses "Dolby Pulse" encoding which is a new one on me - http://www.dolby.com/professional/technology/broadcast/dolby-pulse.html - I was about to say "but that's off topic" but then, it claims to give more (audio quality) with less (bandwith) so...  It certainly sounds very nice to my rusty ears.

Now that the Sony network is back up and "Music Unlimited" is (more or less) available again, I've  did a little more reading on the technical background and found that to my amazement the bitrate is only 48kbps.  That should sound pretty dire, but it doesn't.  You can read a bit more about "Dolby Pulse" here - http://www.dolby.com/consumer/understand/playback/dolby-pulse.html - to my ear it's remarkably effective, including the stereo image (which is essentially reconstructed from a mono stream, as I understand it).  Makes me wonder whether DAB shouldn't have used this codec.

While Music Unlimited was down, my internet usage figure (download amount) went up quite a bit, because I was using higher bitrate mp3 and radio streams.

More with less indeed.

I understand dawgman's post rather with respect to minimum recording gear than about transmission bandwith. Therefore I contribute a recent live recording using 4 microphones only. This was due to several restrictions on the location - intially I considered that arrangement as fully inadequate. But with some sophisticated postprocessing the 4 tracks (recording, and mixing with AA3) proved to yield a usable result.

There is no doubt as has been discussed that the room had a big impact on the audio quality. And in addition the engineer who were working with big acts probably had years and years of quality training and experience and that to be honest counts for 70pct of where the magic is at IMO. And of course let's not forget the performance and energy itself.

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