Conversations with Jim Anderson

[Big Wheel]

You can check out the clips at Comedy Central: http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_col...ent/index.jhtml

Definitely one of the most random Reports ever.

[Adam]

That link has many things. Which one is it?

Edit - Found it - Countdown to Guitarmageddon

The Decemberists are quite good.

Edited December 23, 2006 by Adam

[jim anderson]

Not only am I the envy of my engineering friends, I'm the envy of my regular friends, colleagues, students, my children, neighbors, and other lovers of the Truth.

Glad you saw the show.

[Adam]

So although Spitzer recused himself, did you find out which guitarist he actually preferred?

[jim anderson]

From our chatting between acts, I got the impression he would have been for Frampton.

But, frankly, we were all impressed by Chris, as well.

Edited December 24, 2006 by jim anderson

[Jim Alfredson]

That was pretty weird, alright. How did you get contacted for that gig, Jim?

[jim anderson]

The Colbert people contacted the NYU publicity people, who, in turn, contacted the Tisch folks.

They were looking for someone on the panel that would provide the proper amount of gravitas.

I trust I complied.

[Jim Alfredson]

UP, because I'm just wondering how our friend Jim Anderson is doing. One of these days I'd like to make an AES convention and meet face to face.

Jim, you'd probably find it funny that I now have an old Scully 2" 16 track machine to go along with my digital recording rig. I'm gearing up to engineer the next organissimo album myself. FUN!

[Guest Bill Barton]

UP, because I'm just wondering how our friend Jim Anderson is doing. One of these days I'd like to make an AES convention and meet face to face.

Jim, you'd probably find it funny that I now have an old Scully 2" 16 track machine to go along with my digital recording rig. I'm gearing up to engineer the next organissimo album myself. FUN!

Up again for the same reason. Some of the most interesting conversations on the old Blue Note board were with Jim.

[jim anderson]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the wake-up call and good to hear from you.

I hope you'll be able to make it to an Audio Engineering Society Convention, someday.

This past one, last October, was a major success.

A lot has happened to me over the past year.

I've got a few new albums in the pipeline:

Last summer, I recorded a new album with pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba for Blue Note. This new one is with his trio and horns, for the first time.

There's a new project releasing soon with soprano saxophonist, Jane Ira Bloom, and her band drummer, Matt Wilson, bassis,t Mark Helias, & pianist, Dawn Clement. http://www.janeirabloom.com/

I recorded and mixed a project for James Carter for Universal/UK with Michael Cuscuna producing, a new John Zorn - Bar Kokhba Sextet CD called Lucifer: The Book of Angels Vol.10.

I engineered the New York City contribution to the NPR's New Year's Eve broadcast, Toast of the Nation. Trio da Paz w/Kenny Barron rang in the new year.

Two weeks ago, I was in the studio with pianist, Kenny Barron, tracking his next project for Verve/France, which we'll mix next week, and right now I'm at home listening to the mastering of the new Patricia Barber album for Blue Note, entitled: "The Cole Porter Mix" to be released in the spring. We'll put this puppy to bed, shortly.

All of this happened while chairing the department at school and charing the AES Convention, this past October. (I'm also honored to be President-elect of the AES, to be effective next October, following the San Francisco Convention) And we sent our first round of graduates into the world from NYU, of which I'm very proud. I'll attach a PDF of the studio we built at NYU for you to see, if that's possible on the forum.

Now about your 2" 16 track Scully. Good on you, as they might say in Canada!

I love that format. If you want to check out a couple of projects that I engineered in that format, check out "Rendezvous" with Cassandra Wilson and Jackie Terrasson and "Hubsongs" the music of Freddie Hubbard played by Tim Hagans and Marcus Printup both produced by Bob Belden for Blue Note.

15ips, no noise reduction, +3/185, 2" 16 Track. Got To Love It!

A while back, I worked in a studio in Providence, RI that had a 2" 16 track at the output of their pro-tools system, so you could the PT fixes and then get the good stuff from the analogue machine.

I did a recording of the Norbotten Big Band, lead by Tim Hagans, with all of the horns on the analogue machine and the rhythm section on PT, which was locked to the tape. After any fixes, etc. that had to be done, we'd bounce it back to the PT and then re-use the roll of tape for the next take. So, it eventually ended up being a 40 track PT session, but the first 23 tracks were of analogue origin.

The new Patricia Barber that I'm listening to right now, was 24/96 with the Lynx Aurora front end of the PT for the mix (http://www.lynxstudio.com/aurora/index.html) and used an Ampex ATR 1/2" with Dolby SR +0/185, 15ips for the mix, which I oversaw the transfer back to digital in 24/96 and we used that for the mastering. I also need to give props to John Hardy for all the M-1 microphone preamplifiers he loaned us (the only other pre used were my 4 channels of Millenia).

OK, enough from me.

What's going on out there?

Best,

Jim

ps that episode (that very episode!) of The Colbert Report was nominated for an Emmy for Best Direction - who would have thought?.

Edited January 5, 2008 by jim anderson

[Jim Alfredson]

Jim, you'd appreciate this:

Eight channels of vintage Quad Eight AM10 based mic preamps that I racked up. Transformer ins and outs, discrete 10 transistor op-amp design. They sound killer. My next goal is to DIY some Millennia style preamps. I also have some API-style that I need to get up and running after I swap out the pre-2520 style op-amp for something better (probably a Hardy 990c).

And here's the Scully:

Very simple machine; based on the old Ampex designs. No way to sync, unfortunately. But it is very stable and the line amp cards were made by Spectra Sonics and they sound great. Big ol' UTC transformers in there. Lots of flavor. I might track the next organissimo record directly to it; I haven't decided yet. It might be too "rock n' roll". But man, is it a beautiful beasty!

I have that Terrason/Wilson side. I'll dig that out and give it a listen. I remember the piano sounding really nice on that one.

[Guest Bill Barton]

Hi Jim (and Jim!) :

I'm looking forward to hearing that new Jane Ira Bloom CD. A few weeks back Dawn Clement told me about the session. It's great that they're working together and likewise great that they have such an impeccable engineer.

I see that you're busy as usual...

Happy New Year!

Bright Moments,

Bill

[jim anderson]

Hi Bill,

You know, the interesting thing that Jane and I have done on her past two CD's that many might not be aware of is that when we're done mixing, we take the album and turn the tracks into a suite.

This began because Jane was of two minds of how to present the music on "Like Silver.."

When she performs, the music flows from one tune into another, but that's impractical when hoping that a radio programmer, etc., might want to only play a single track. I suggested that we create a 'suite' from the album's music and put it on the CD as an MP3 that could be downloaded and listened to on an iPod or computer. There's always room left over on the CD and this way we have the best of both worlds and the fan could have a sense of how Jane might present this music in concert. And we've done that, again, on this new CD.

Jim,

You know Quad 8 consoles had the highest voltage on the rails giving them some of the highest headroom of any console available. I think the rails were at 32 volts.

You might (should?) be able to use your tape machine as your master and have your PT rig slave to it, rather than make the machine follow the PT. It won't be too rock and roll. It'll be great sound. What tape do you plan to use? I did a Ron Carter CD, "The Golden Striker," with 15 ips, 16 track and Dolby SR.

Oh, by the way, check out very end of the Cassandra track "Little Girl Lost." Now there's some good old analogue print thru!

You can hear her coming AND going!

Come to think about it, the piano on that album was the house Steinway D at Clinton Recording (it's the original Columbia 30th Street Studio Steinway which would have been played by Monk and Bill Evans on Kind of Blue and others) and I miked it with a pair of Schoeps cardiod microphones

Best,

Jim

Edited January 5, 2008 by jim anderson

[Bluerein]

Didn't know Monk played on Kind of Blue

Edited January 6, 2008 by Bluerein

[Jim Alfredson]

You know Quad 8 consoles had the highest voltage on the rails giving them some of the highest headroom of any console available. I think the rails were at 32 volts.

+/- 28vdc. I got these cards when there wasn't much interest in them for $40 a piece. Now you can't get anything Quad Eight related for under $600 a channel. So far they sound really good on anything.

You might (should?) be able to use your tape machine as your master and have your PT rig slave to it, rather than make the machine follow the PT. It won't be too rock and roll. It'll be great sound. What tape do you plan to use? I did a Ron Carter CD, "The Golden Striker," with 15 ips, 16 track and Dolby SR.

You mean print timecode to one track and let Cubase (I use Cubase instead of PT... same difference) follow that? Not a bad idea. I'll look into that.

Right now I have some 499 and I'll run at 15ips. The machine came with 16 channels of DBX NR but I don't know if I'll use it or not. Even though it is not calibrated yet, I'm going to do some test recordings to it today with organissimo and just see how it sounds with that kind of material.

Come to think about it, the piano on that album was the house Steinway D at Clinton Recording (it's the original Columbia 30th Street Studio Steinway which would have been played by Monk and Bill Evans on Kind of Blue and others) and I miked it with a pair of Schoeps cardiod microphones.

I looked at the Clinton Recording website and wow... what a room! Studio A looks amazing. I assume you used one of the smaller rooms for the Terrason/Wilson date?

The local studio here in town has a couple of things from the Columbia 30th St. studio including a Neumann M49 and boom arm. But nothing like having THE piano. That's amazing.

[jim anderson]

No, of course Monk didn't play on KoB. That might have been interesting, though.

But the piano was used on Monk's Columbia albums and other Columbia 30th Street recordings.

Clinton has many of the M49's and other tube microphones from CBS (they still have the CBS property numbers etched on them). You know that one classic shot of Miles and an M49 on the back of one of his albums, I've always imagined that that microphone was in the Clinton collection...

We used Studio A, the large room, to record, and Studio B, the smaller room, to mix.

The control rooms are almost similar. Studio B's control room is @a foot smaller in size, except height

Edited January 6, 2008 by jim anderson

[Guest Bill Barton]

Hi Bill,

You know, the interesting thing that Jane and I have done on her past two CD's that many might not be aware of is that when we're done mixing, we take the album and turn the tracks into a suite.

This began because Jane was of two minds of how to present the music on "Like Silver.."

When she performs, the music flows from one tune into another, but that's impractical when hoping that a radio programmer, etc., might want to only play a single track. I suggested that we create a 'suite' from the album's music and put it on the CD as an MP3 that could be downloaded and listened to on an iPod or computer. There's always room left over on the CD and this way we have the best of both worlds and the fan could have a sense of how Jane might present this music in concert. And we've done that, again, on this new CD...

That's a brilliant idea. I wonder if others will eventually follow your lead. When you see Jane again please pass on a "Bright Moments" from me. I've been a fan of hers since she was at Yale and put out her first albums on Outline. When I was Music Director at WCFE-FM I had the honor of introducing her at the Discover Jazz Festival in Burlington, VT (it was a great show.)

[Jim Alfredson]

I think it is a shame that jazz radio is so limiting when it comes to run times.

[jim anderson]

Jane's MP3 suite of music runs @60minutes!

[Guest Bill Barton]

I think it is a shame that jazz radio is so limiting when it comes to run times.

Agreed! FWIW, I've played Don Cherry's Relativity Suite complete and uninterrupted on Bright Moments and regularly feature tracks running between 15 and 30 minutes. In community and college radio you may still run across that flexibility.

Jane's MP3 suite of music runs @60minutes!

Cool... I'd play it on the air, no question.

[jim anderson]

When we would record David Murray albums in the '90's and we ended up with a 17 minute cut ("David Murray Big Band"), or a 35 minute cut ("Picasso"), we'd just put it first on the album!

Why not?

I told that story to Mike Friedman after we had recorded the tracks for Patricia Barber's "Modern Cool" and that's how "Touch of Trash" ended up being placed first. Put it out there and don't be shy...

[Guest Bill Barton]

Hi Jim,

The Jane Ira Bloom Mental Weather CD arrived in the mail today and I'm just finishing my first listen to the MP3 "concert" file as I type this. Beautiful! What a great idea...

[AllenLowe]

Jane is great, a nice person, and married, by the way, to the actor Joe Grifasi -

as for running times, I'm begnning to be of the opinion that we need legislation to restrict all cuts to 6 minuts, tops - I'm starting to have greater interest in the short form and, honestly, have not heard an improviser or jazz composer in recent memory who can sustain anything for over, at most, 10 minutes - and that's pushing it, IMHO -

as a matter of fact, there's a bill in congress in this regard that's going through as we speak - better get those CDs out, boys, before it's too late -

[jim anderson]

Bill,

Jane and I (I may have described this in a previous note) came up with this idea an album or two ago. The first may have been on "Like Silver, Like Song." The thought was that we'd certainly like to have this played on the radio, but she'd also like to be able to present it in the manner that she'd perform the set, live. Since there's generally room on most CD's for a little extra (or lagnappe, a little something extra, as the folks in Louisianna might call it - spelling optional), I suggested that we create the 'concert suite' that she was looking for and tuck it in as an MP3. We do this after the project's been mastered, insuring the same sound as the CD. It takes us about two hours to create the suite and we bounce it in real time as a 44.1kHz file that Alan Silverman can turn into a high quality MP3. I say 'high quality' because not all MP3's are alike and he takes care in the coding of the low resolution file. I hope you're enjoying it!

Best,

Jim

[jim anderson]

Bill,

Any reaction to the MP3 on "Mental Weather"?

There's some bits, there, that don't appear on the album, but help to create the transitions.

Jim