Fred- Nowadays wax recordings are read by microscope and then digitally converted to sound. No needles, trumpets or mikes! Ed Sutton ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Sturm" <fssturm at unm.edu> To: "College and University Technicians" <caut at ptg.org> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 7:51 PM Subject: Re: [CAUT] Grieg Experiment > Hi Ric, > Fascinating! Amazing job of matching both style of playing and timber of > the instrument. It certainly sounds convincingly like a re-creation from > the past. Do you know to what extent the digitized version of the wax > cylinder recording was manipulated electronically, if at all? (I guess > there is bound to be some manipulation, even if not intentional, in the > mechanical process of cylinder to needle to "trumpet" and then placement > of mikes and setting gain and whatnot). > Regards, > Fred Sturm > University of New Mexico > fssturm at unm.edu > > > > On Apr 23, 2008, at 11:45 AM, Richard Brekne wrote: > >> Hi Folks >> >> I recently was privileged to be the technician for a very special >> recording on Edward Griegs own old Steinway B. To make a long story >> short... old wax roles of Edvard Grieg himself were used to reference >> his playing style so that a present day pianist could recreate his exact >> style on Griegs own instrument. There has been some controversy as to >> how fast to play these old roles. One thing that came clear was that >> playing them so as to achieve present day pitch results in the music >> being very fast and rather makes Grieg the pianist sound a bit comical. >> The folks behind this project were convinced that Grieg was adamant >> about using a much lower concert pitch... 434-436 and when playing these >> roles so as to achieve that pitch the playing becomes much more lyrical >> and beautiful... more what one might expect from a musical genius such >> as Edvard Grieg. So we tuned his instrument down from its present day >> usual 442 to 436... which had a dramatic affect on the sound of the >> instrument as well... virtually eliminating a very prevalent killer >> octave area. >> In anycase... the link below is a sample clip which interlaces the new >> recording with digital copies of the old wax roles of Edvard Grieg >> himself playing. I hope you enjoy this little taste of the project. >> Interesting to be sure. The segments where the wax roles come in are >> easily distinquished because of all the static that could not be >> filtered out. The rest is our recording on Griegs Piano. Hope you like >> it ! >> >> Pianists Sigurd Slåttebrekk / Edvard Grieg >> Producer and Sound Technician Tony Harrison >> Pianotechnician Richard Brekne >> >> http://www.pianostemmer.no/music/Grieg.wav >> >> Cheers >> Richard Brekne >> >> > >
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC