BRASS IMPACT
BRASS IMPACT
| SIDE 1 MASQUE NADA ELEANOR RIGBY THE BREEZE AND I ONE NOTE SAMBA MR. LUCKY BAUBLES, BANGLES AND BEADS |
SIDE 2 IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT BRASILIA THE SWEETEST SOUNDS WHAT NOW MY LOVE PRELUDE TO A KISS A FOGGY DAY |
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MASQUE NADA | ||
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ELEANOR RIGBY | ||
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THE BREEZE AND I | ||
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ONE NOTE SAMBA | ||
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MR. LUCKY | ||
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BAUBLES, BANGLES AND BEADS | ||
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IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT | ||
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BRASILIA | ||
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THE SWEETEST SOUNDS | ||
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WHAT NOW MY LOVE | ||
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PRELUDE TO A KISS | ||
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A FOGGY DAY | ||
| COMMAND RECORDS ORIGINALLY RELEASED AS A COMMAND RECORD BY GRAND AWARD RECORD CO INC USA MADE IN AUSTRALIA BY FESTIVAL RECORDS PTY LTD The Brass Choir Conducted by Warren Kim Ever since Command Records opened the door to the musical potential of stereophonic recording with Per¬suasive Percussion, the record that introduced this im¬portant new label, Command's inventive engineers and musical directors have continued to open door after door on a succession of new worlds of recorded musical excitement. Sometimes the primary challenge has come from Command's engineers. When they developed a use of 35 mm. magnetic film that produced miraculously clean, noise-free recording, it served as a challenge to Command's music men to create arrangements and performances that could take full advantage of the translucent clarity that the engineers' discovery had given to them. When Command's musical directors thought there should be a third source of sound in stereo recording —a middle channel to fill the space between the left and right channels the engineers didn't waste time pointing out that a playback system with only two speakers could not possibly have more than two sources of sound. On the contrary—the engineers de-. vised a "ghost" channel, a non-existent channel that produced the effect of a third or middle source of sound with startling realism, Command's Dimension 3 Process. Unlike the development of 35 mm. magnetic film and the Dimension 3 Process, the latest and most fas¬cinating recording advance on which Command's en¬gineers and musical directors have collaborated did not start with either group. The germ of the idea was found on a tape which Warren Kime, a Chicago orchestra leader, trumpeter-flugelhornist and arranger, brought to Command's ..New York office. The tape contained recordings of some of Kime's arrangements, including a few in which trumpets, flugethorn -and trombones were used in conjunction with voices and a woodwind. In the way that Kime used these resources, Command's music men thought they heard possibil7 hies" for a fresh and exciting new voicing concept. The ground work was there but it had to be developed to bring out the dynamic qualities that lay just under the surface. Arranger Jack Aftdrews and Command musical director Bobby Byrne began to explore the possibil¬ities that Kime's idea had opened up. They eventually settled on an inktrumentation that bristled with brass—four flugelhorns (with Kime as soloist), three trumpets (Doe Severinsen aking the solos) and four trombones soloist). Along with these, they lined., up three girl singers, a woodwind (the ubiquitous and versatile Phil Bodner), rhythm guitar (Al Casamenti), bass guitar (Bucky Pizzarelli), ,bass (George Duvivier), drums (Eddie Shaughnessy) and a percussion team made up of Phil Kraus and either Bobby Rosengarden or Jack Jennings, An essential part of the basic concept was the use of the girl singers in opposition to and as reinforce¬ment to the flugelhorns and trumpets. The girl's voices, in close conjunction with Bodner's flute, frequently doubled with the brass on the melodic line or gave added impetus to high impact explosions. Meanwhile the trombones took over the role that might normally be carried by a saxophone section. The writing for flugelhorns and trumpets in¬volved subtle and unusual colour changes as the seven horns involved were individually added or sub¬tracted to solo and ensemble brass passages. As the music concept took shape, it became evident that not even Command's most advanced recording techniques would be able to handle the problems of separation and definition that these arrangements would require if their full colour and dynamics were to be captured without any loss or diminishment. So the music men sat down with the engineers and. went over the problems involved. One of the problems was how to retain the definition of the sections, particularly the closely allied flugel¬horns and trumpets, without leakage or mixing. Com¬mand's very live studio added to the complexity of this task. Start of the solution came with the creation of a unique new studio arrangement of the musicians. In¬stead of clustering in circular groups or backed up. row upon row as they normally might be, the musi¬cians were stretched out along the entire length of the studio. At one end were the three girls, sheltered by a "gobo" or isolation booth. Directly in front of the "gobo" was Phil Bodner with his woodwinds. Next came the trombones, sitting in an arc and focused toward one central point Beyond the trombones were the trumpets and then the flugelhorns, seated facing away from each other so as to discourage sound leakage but in close enough proximity so that they could hear each other,The rhythm instruments were centred behind this long stretched' out line with the drums in the middle so that everyone could hear the beat. One of the usual difficulties with such a stretched out set-up is delayed phrasing, as the more distant instruments come in just an instant late. In this instance, the drums and other rhythm instruments filled enough of the back¬ground to keep the beat consistent. In addition to the unusual positioning of the men, newly modified Church and Neumann microphones were used — microphones which are particularly good at maintaining both defin¬ition and isolation. Because the unusually high signal-to-noise ratio has been increased or "stretched" practically to infinity as a result of this tremendously high level and the concomitant lowering of ambient noise, there is more pure musical sound in these performances than in any other record that Command has ever released. What's more, none of the potential musical sound has been compressed. The complete, full sound spectrum is re¬produced from the very top to the very bottom. The dimensional effect of this total reproduction has been enlarged even further by the use of a new method of tape echo used in conjunction with regular three-channel echo chambers. This enhancement can be heard with especially startling effect on the percus¬sive sounds.And now, if your audio-emotional senses are ready to take the plunge--here is the incredible sound of Brass Impact! Originated and Produced by Loren Becker and Robert Byrne |
