Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Smith
I remember hearing from Band leaders in my early days 'the Bass is too loud' while playing. To me, it was barely loud enough to carry the band.
|
I used to play occasionally with the Chicago Jazz Ensemble that was led by the late Bill Russo, former arranger for Kenton. He always complained about my bass being too loud. I was playing through a tiny combo amp with a 10" speaker and could barely hear myself with the band most of the time. One of the last times I played with the band, we were in a fairly large club, the whole band, including the drums, was miked through the house system except for me. I turned my amp to a reasonable level, or so I thought, and the next thing I know he's telling me to turn the amp off, I'm too loud. Well, give me a break, acoustically I wasn't even in the mix at that point. My bass just isn't that loud.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken Smith
Even on old big band or pop singer recordings from the 40s, 50s and 60s, the Bass is barely heard and they had a Mic in most cases. Many of them recorded on one track, two and four with only later stuff being 8 tracks. I remember 16 being the norm until about 1975 when the 24 track boards hit the studios. Sometimes, the Bass was only as loud as it could be heard acoustically because they didn't have a way back then to bring it up in the mix. Why? Because there was very little mixing capabilities to begin with back then.
|
I can tell you an exception to this is an album Ellington did on Capital Records at Universal Studios in Chicago in 1954. Every sound on that side is huge, especially the bass. Don't know how they recorded it, but the sound of that album stays with me. After hearing it for the first time, I listened to a contemporary big band album recorded in NY with one of the top bands, and the sound didn't even come close to the Universal recording. It sounded puny in comparison.