AUDIO
MAKING A CONTRIBUTION // FIX IT IN THE MIX ? | Jeff Hawley
I remember back in my early college days as a jazz performance major when I had the opportunity to check out a small group lesson with the jazz trumpet legend Arturo Sandoval . Sitting around in a small room with about 12 other students ( mostly trumpeters ), Sandoval would talk about a particular jazz solo or trumpet performance technique and demonstrate on his bespoke ( and very expensive ) trumpet . this rule of thumb fails to hold ( consistently ) in the realm of live sound . Almost running in reverse of the Arturo Sandoval experience , I ’ ve heard great sounding bass drum PA sounds that were horrible acoustically up on the stage .
The same goes for tiny guitar amps that ended up sounding ( and feeling ) like a row of Marshall stacks by the time they were mic ’ ed up well and mixed and coming out of the PA . Perhaps for some instruments in some cases more of the
At one point he played a scale entirely with his embouchure ( without the use of the trumpet valves ) — a seemingly impossible feat well beyond the reach of most trumpeters . One of the students asked if this sort of pitch control was possible because of Sandoval ’ s fancy trumpet design . To all of our amazement , he grabbed a regular ol ’ trumpet from one of the students and played the scale sans valves once again . It didn ’ t matter much to Sandoval which trumpet he was using , 95 % of his sound was in his technique and ‘ in his lips ’ so to speak .
I would bet that most top-tier guitarists could grab a $ 99 guitar and perform a similar feat . Bill Frisell will sound like Bill Frisell no matter what guitar he is playing . Jaco Pastorius could have gotten ‘ his ’ sound on a cheap-o bass . What might this tell us about how we approach optimizing the sound our own worship band and the overall mix ?
START AT THE SOURCE ? ‘ Garbage in , garbage out ’ is a common refrain when it comes to many domains . I think that
Bill Frisell ( jazz guitarist ) - By Schorle - CC BY-SA 4.0
94 January 2025 Subscribe for Free ...