Howlin' Wolf's Weird Notes
G.D.Pratt
has some weird sleeve notes which are slightly over the top. They are
written by Jim Dickinson who describes HW's career before blues singing
as "pull[ing] a plow like a man-mule in the Mississippi Delta" and stating
that he was "the only artist to share the surreal darkness of Robert
Johnson". There you go.
In describing the recording process he states that "his singing is so
powerful that between the vocal lines the compressor-limiter...sucks the
sound of the drum and the French harp up into the hole in the audio mix".
Can anyone tell me what this means? I thought that "compression" was used
on the final record to squeeze the bass and treble into the mid range to
produce a louder sound without distortion.
BTW the catalogue numbers for both volumes of this series, which are on
CD (ADD) and got rave reviews over here as "definitive" are
Howlin' Wolf: Memphis Days - The Definitive Edition, Vol.1: BCD 15460
BCD 15500
both from Bear Family (Germany).
gerry
--
gerry pratt -- workstation support -- university of keele
email: ge...@seq1.keele.ac.uk * tel: 0782 621111 x 3290
"these opinions are mine, mine, mine....ALL MINE I TELL YOU!"
Joseph Brennan
>I just picked up Bear Family's "Howlin' Wolf:Memphis Days Vol.2" ...
>In describing the recording process he states that "his singing is so
>powerful that between the vocal lines the compressor-limiter...sucks the
>sound of the drum and the French harp up into the hole in the audio mix".
>Can anyone tell me what this means?
This refers to compression of the recording volume. Odd to put it the
way the writer does though. This is a measure of how they made the
recording, not of the singing. I suppose he means to emphasize that
the singing was really loud compared to the instrumental, but that
could have been dealt with by miking or just not compressing so much.
What's happening is that the input from the microphones is fed in
high, too high possibly, and the combined output to tape/disk is being
limited to the desired level. Many pop records are limited, although
it usually sounds better if only extreme peaks are limited down. Some
untrained voices benefit greatly from it-- ever hear an amateur sing
where some words are a lot louder than others?-- annoying, isn't it?--
so crank up the input so the softest part is loud enough, and then
limit the output so nothing can be louder than a fixed level, and
you've smoothed it out. When you're recording a singer and band, the
band input is usually set to be below limit, but when the singer is
added, you're over limit; the result that overall the band sounds a
little quieter during the singing. It sounds like the Howlin' Wolf
record is more extreme than that, so the band by itself is hitting
the limit, and is noticeably louder between vocal lines.
Another really compressed/limited record is the Kinks' "See My
Friends". The instrumentals just pulse in and out around the singing.
Watch a VU meter while playing it-- it stays steady through almost the
whole song. Intentional there, for the effect.
Joe Brennan
The Charlatan
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