35,00€
Opus3records LP26001 B.B.Leon & Triple Treat “Blues Barn”
Bo Nordin’s father Ingvar was a musician and his role model which resulted in a five year old playing the drums to his Jerry Lee Lewis inspired father’s piano playing.
On this album “Boogie for Dad” is his tribute to his father whose Boogie inspired piano playing had been such an inspiration to Bo.
At the age of ten he took up the piano followed some years later by the guitar – the change being induced by problems with the grand piano in the rehearsal room!
His first band where he is on piano was All night Sam and the twelve bar sisters in 1978.
In 1981 he bought his first guitar, a 1977 Gibson Les Paul.
With the band Hound Dogs in 1982 he started to play Blues. First with Ian Haugland on drums and then in 1989 Mic Michaeli joined on keyboards – both of these two gentlemen have been part of the Swedish hard rock band Europe.
It was with this band that Bo began writing songs, initially together with other band members but then eventually on his own.
In 1992 he started to play with Thomas Lingman, who plays drums on this album. Lasse Falck joined on bass in 2005 and Mattias Lundqvist on hammond Organ and Piano in 2016, when B.B. Leon and Triple Treat was founded.
B.B. Leon (Bo Nordin):Vocal, Fender Stratocaster, Grand Piano on track 8 and Lap Steel
Mathias Lundqvist: Hammond Organ and Grand Piano
Lasse Falck: Bass
Thomas Lingman: Drums
When Opus 3 started at the end of 1976, there was far more talk about the way in which the actual recording was done purely in terms of recording technique or philosophy – that is, the methodology employed (multi- mike versus twin microphone technique etc.) and the type of recording situation chosen – natural environments or traditional studio technique, and so on.
Whatever the technical apparatus, it is still the actual, recording philosophy that does most to decide what a recording will sound like – a fact which has been virtually lost sight of in the discussion of sound today. The quantity of electronics used in a recording is also highly important. In the type of mixer consoles commonly used in a studio nowadays, the acoustic signal passes through a very large number of amplifier stages – between thirty and forty or more is not unusual! The Opus 3 electronics, which are mainly tube-equipped and which we have partly developed ourselves, seldom include more than three of four amplifier stages between microphone and storage medium.
Opus 3’s recording technique has been specially developed for acoustic music and is based on using the natural acoustics of authentic environments such as churches, concert halls, jazz clubs and so on. We match the venue to the music, so to speak, as opposed to the common studio practice of adding an artificial reverberation afterwards and so on. The positioning of the microphone in the recording room and the positioning of the musicians in relation to the microphone are also extremely important.
From the very outset we have used what is known as the coincident or X/Y recording technique, mainly employing the special configuration of crossed figure of eights, also known as the Blumlein technique, after Alan Dower Blumlein, the British radar engineer who developed the technique way back in 1934.
Depth of Image
So accustomed are we to three-dimensional vision, that we never really think about it. But we need only shut one eye for our judgment of distances to be reduced and our three-dimensional vision to disappear: we need both eyes and the relation between them in order for see three-dimensionally. Much the same is true of our hearing.
Our brain and auditory system “process” the sound-waves reaching each ear, with regard to level, direction, time and frequency content. The signal is further “analyzed” by our brain and auditory system, and the differences between signals coming from our two ears tell us, for example, about distance to the different sound sources and their relative positions. We experience “Depth of Image”: for example, the different instruments of the orchestra in a concert hall are differently placed, not only from left to right but also in depth, together with the size and acoustics of the concert hall.
By “collecting” the total sound at one single point with a stereo microphone
-that is,microphone with its capsules as close together as possible -we obtain a strict relation between the direct sound and the reflected sound (the diffused sound field), and this gives our brain and auditory system important information for building up an illusion of “reality” – the concert hall, the church or the jazz club. It is also very important for the direct and the reflected sound to have an exact acoustic connection with the sound-waves from each instrument. In traditional recording studios, there is, basically, one microphone (or sometimes even more) per instrument, and these are then mixed together electrically. This is not real stereo, it is just panned mono.
Since, moreover, the microphones are usually placed veryclose to each instrument in an acoustically dead studio, all one gets is the direct sound of the instrument, and so artificial reverberation has to be “added on” electrically afterwards.
Timbre
By timbre we mean the specific character of an acoustic musical instrument – meaning, for example, what makes it possible for us to tell one instrument from another. The timbre of a musical instrument is a combination of its significant spectral distribution, i.e. the relation between notes and their harmonics and each relative level and frequency distribution, and last but not least, the way in which the sound-waves radiate from the body of the instrument.
All our acoustic instruments are designed to be played in some form of concert hall, i.e. in a place where you hear both the direct sound of the instrument and the reverberation of the environment. If, like Opus 3, you are aiming for as natural an instrumental timbre as possible, it is vitally important that acoustic instruments can also be recorded in the type of surroundings they were originally designed to be played in, but also with longer microphone distances, so as also to capture the sound radiating from the whole sounding body of the instrument. The short microphone distances normally used also make the timbre unnatural, and so it has to be “restored” artificially, using various equalizers etc. We mustn’t forget that when our acoustic musical instruments were created, a long time ago, neither electricity, microphones or recording studios existed !
Dynamics
The dynamic range of a musical instrument is the difference between the loudest and the softest sound level it is capable of producing. Like timbre, the dynamics of a musical instrument depend, not only on how it is built but also on how it is used by the composer and performer. Dynamics in this sense are used to create a large number and variety of musical effects, changes of emotion, mood and expression etc., etc. The dynamic properties of a musical instrument are also very much affected by the way in which it is recorded. The short microphone distances used for multi-microphone recording in traditional studios also exaggerate the recorded dynamics. Just like timbre, the dynamic balance then has to be artificially “restored”, using compressors, limiters and so on.
In response to many requests over the years since the release of Eric Bibb’s breakthrough album “Spirit & The Blues ” we are now pleased to make this and also “Good Stuff ” available on special 45 rpm double LP’s.
Since most complete CD’s are too long to be accommodated on a regular LP (33 rpm) it was necessary to produce a double LP, which in turn meant that advantage could be taken of the use of 45rpm. The main advantages of this is that it is possible to increase the cutting level thus reducing, in relative terms, the noise of the record. In addition the increased speed of rotation of the record gives improved high-frequency performance which is of particularly significance especially in the later parts of the record as the circumference progressively reduces.
We would also like to draw attention to the following:
A cutting lathe requires two signals, one feeding the cutter head and the other which gives information in advance to enable the grooves to be packed in the best possible way without impinging on adjacent grooves.
For this purpose a special tape recorder is required with one “preview” head for the spacing of the grooves and one audio head which feeds the cutter.
Between the heads the tape makes a special loop which provides the required delay. Because these very special tape recorders are becoming increasingly rare, many cutting studios have resorted to incorporating a digital delay in the signal path in order to use an ordinary tape recorder. This means that the audio signal in the record-groove has first been A / D converted, i.e. digitalized, then digitally delayed then D/A converted back to analogue. Such a vinyl record is therefore not truly analogue. Needless to say all Opus3 LP’s, are of course mastered in the old authentic way and are thus analogue all the way.
Βάρος | .4 kg |
---|