South Indian Carnatic Classical Music

[Divakar7]

BTW Carnatic musicians are more open to being recorded than their counterpart in the north. You can't ask them right before the concert, send them an email before hand and they will most probably agree.

 

[canchi]

BTW Carnatic musicians are more open to being recorded than their counterpart in the north. You can't ask them right before the concert, send them an email before hand and they will most probably agree.

How do you record a live concert? To get the sound stage effect you need seperate mics for each person on the stage?

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

I just purchased a few CDs of the ncpa releases of Balamurali, dagar brothers, ms gopalakrishnan. Extremely disappointed that these are cut to a standard 71 minutes. Why is the assumption being made that we are all fast food junkies? I admire the folks at sangeethapriya who have generated such massive interest often with poorly recorded mp3s. The full length concert is of tremendous historical importance. I have often gone to great lengths to transfer from a 10" reel to mine in order to capture the announcents, remarks made by the musician etc. unfortunately with the ncpa release we get just the t20 version.

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Gobble. I have that LP too. L Shankar controls himself admirably and so does palghat mani so that semmangydi keeps centre stage.

 

[Divakar7]

The easiest way to record is to have two mikes in a XY configuration, there are other configurations that are also possible based on the characteristics of your microphone. XY will give you a realistic image of the soundstage, try to avoid picking up the sound of the PA and have the mikes close to the main musician but not too close.

Having separate mikes for each performer means you will have to go back to the studio to mix the different feeds and create a "realistic" soundstage. This would never be close to how the audience "heard" that concert.

Personally, I believe in the minimalist approach, the original recording should be as close to the "original" requiring no post production processing.

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

In the NCPA CDs, they have actually intervened in the alapanas also, and cut the rendition itself. It is the height of offensive intrusiveness in editing. It has been done very subtly, and it is very difficult to detect in the form of discontinuities.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

An elderly friend with a huge archive told me, "These days, you go to more concerts than I can: you really should record them." But I have limited enthusiasm to do this.

First and foremost, all but a few would go largely unlistened. I prefer my carnatic music live, and don't even listen to CDs very much.

Second and foremost () I'd never be satisfied with the recording quality. My new phone (Motorola Defy+) is far superior to the old one, but still either overloads and clips and/or gives that recorded from outside the hall far-away feel. Would a dedicated recorder, eg Tascam or Zoom, be very much better? I don't doubt that it would from on-stage, but would it when sitting in my chest pocket half way down the hall? I expect many of us love gadgets, and I would enjoy buying one of these --- but if disappointment led to it being left on the shelf it would be a sad waste of money, not to mention the [justified] grumbles from the wife!

 

[Divakar7]

@Thad I have the Tascam DR100, the recording quality is remarkable. Recording using the phone just isnt in the same league. You can record at 24bit 96khz and download the file on to your laptop. No need to make CDs or mastering. Just listen to the music when you feel like revisisiting from your laptop connected to your DAC.

I would suggest buying a mini camera tripod although keeping it on the lap also works. Their built-in mikes are in a XY config. In the future if you get dedicated mikes you can connect them to the DR100 (like I do) via XLR and which also provides phantom power.

I promise to never buy any more CDs but can't resist the temptation. I specifically avoided the NCPA releases where I saw the shortened ragas. I got Vilayat Khan, Gangubai Hangal and Rashid Khan. Good but nothing exceptional. If this is the best of what they have of the other 5000 hours of music in their archives, I am disappointed.

 

[Divakar7]

Tascam DR100 is also great for stealth recording I recorded quite a bit of the Dover Lane music conference in Kolkata this year with the device sitting on my lap

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Divakar, i am already dreaming of the luscious 10" reels lying inside NCPA that must have been the source of the releases. Now if only there were some way of laying ones hands on them. Dont mind taking my TC-399 or even buying a Tascam DR100 provided it has a line-in.

 

[Divakar7]

@Gerry the DR100 has line in: Product: DR-100 | TASCAM

+1 to getting hands on their reels! In the ideal world, they would sell the full-length concerts as high quality downlodable files, no need to be restricted to 71 minutes. At least they have the facilities to preserve this legacy of ours. Think of all the reels rotting away at AIR, they aren't sharing much nor will they allow others to help them.

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

The hi res full length downloads option cannot have escaped them. I will try to approach them to see what can be done.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

The DR-100 would, I think, be beyond my budget, as and when there is a budget for such a machine. Would probably buy Tascam, though.

 

[balu613]

An elderly friend with a huge archive told me, "These days, you go to more concerts than I can: you really should record them." But I have limited enthusiasm to do this.

First and foremost, all but a few would go largely unlistened. I prefer my carnatic music live, and don't even listen to CDs very much.

Second and foremost () I'd never be satisfied with the recording quality. My new phone (Motorola Defy+) is far superior to the old one, but still either overloads and clips and/or gives that recorded from outside the hall far-away feel. Would a dedicated recorder, eg Tascam or Zoom, be very much better? I don't doubt that it would from on-stage, but would it when sitting in my chest pocket half way down the hall? I expect many of us love gadgets, and I would enjoy buying one of these --- but if disappointment led to it being left on the shelf it would be a sad waste of money, not to mention the [justified] grumbles from the wife!

I have tons of bootleg recordings of jazz concerts and many of them are of a fairly high quality. I see the term 'soundboard' used to describe these recordings, but don't know what that means. I am assuming that such recording are made from a mixing console or something similar. Can't similar recordings be made of Carnatic music concerts?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

As I understand it, soundboard, in this context, means that the recording was made with a wired connection to the mixer. The quality should be as good, maybe even better, than heard during the concert itself

This requires intimacy with the event organisers, and co-operation of the engineer. A few venues will be recording anyway, either for themselves, or to give a copy to the artists, or both.

 

[balu613]

Balu 613, I have the 1966 concert in 2 LPs of MS Subbalakshmi...more as a collectors item than from wanting to listen to them (not my favourite artiste).

On the original topic of this thread, I wonder if anyone has heard L Shankar's 5 ragas. They are Kiravani, Hemavati, Savitri, Shankarabharanam, Aberi. They are all structurally hard-core carnatic classical, though L Shankar's unorthodox presentation is visible.

The files are commonly downladable in flac format (ask for Shankar Pancha Nada Pallavi flac).

The sound is quite brilliant in all but the #2, and #3, where it is a bit shrill. But in the Kiravani, his double violin makes his impact.

He is much more musical than his brother Subramaniam, but obviously less inclined to be classical. However he has stayed disciplined in this set.

The acocmpaniments are naturally top class (Vinayak Ram, Zakir Hussain).

The first 2 are enchanting, to say the least (one must tolerate a bit of tuneless singing in the beginning).

Through all this, his virtuosity is unbelievable.

The 1966 Concert you mention is probably the U.N. Concert that has been available for a long time.

Regarding L. Shankar, I believe you are referring to some of his output for ECM records. In addition to the recordings you mention, he also recorded a fusion album titled 'Song for everyone' which has a track with some brilliant saxophone playing by Jan Garbarek. Also memorable was an album called Vision with some haunting violin/saxophone/trumpet interplay.

I was initially introduced to L. Shankar's music through his contributions to Shakti which included such memorable tracks as "What need have I for this, What need have I for that ...". However, sometime in the 1990s, he started his "tuneless singing" which he doled out in large doses in his concerts. After attending one such concert in 2000, I was convinced that John McLauglin and Zakir Hussain made the right decision in dropping Shankar from the Shakti mk II (a.k.a Remember Shakti) lineup to bring in U. Srinivas.

 

[canchi]

Attended the Prince Rama Varma concert at the Fort High School grounds in Bangalore yesterday.Heard him for the first time live, sings well, nice baritone voice.Great rains, cool atmosphere at the time. The Prince even joked about wanting to sing the raaga Amrithavarshini, but that it was pouring already!Apologies for the crappy pic....



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[Divakar7]

Awesome! I had just texted the Prince about the Hindustani equivalent of Amritavarshini (he said he hasn't heard about it). He is an amazing singer and explains the music so lucidly. And he plays the swaraswati Veena beautifully. Try to get hold of his Veena CDs, they are well recorded and unlike anything you may have heard.

If anyone is into Prince Rama Varma's music and is passing by Hyderabad, would be welcome to listen to my recordings. I have many of his concerts on DAT.

 

[Gerry_the_Merry]

Diwakar. What all formats do you have music stored in? Besides wanting to add md?

 

[Divakar7]

@Gerry I started recording using the Sharp 702 portable. So I already have a substantial MD collection . My portable got stolen and a Sony component MD has a capsized transport, can't be repaired. I have couple of seasons of Dover Lane Music conf on MD

Many moons ago I decided on moving to a better quality medium and acquired a portable Sony DAT and later the more rugged Tascam DAP1. I have about 50 DAT tapes of live recorded music. In my eternal quest for "better quality" I upgraded to the Tascam DR100. With DAT I was restricted to 44.1/48 kHz and 16 bits. No more. With DR100 I can go up to 24 bits 96khz.

Problem is that I have "precious" music across many media including cassettes! I haven't found the time to move them all to computer.