Laurence Juber Visits
One of AIX Records’ best selling recording and on of my personal favorites is “Guitar Noir” by Laurence Juber (you can read more about his amazing project at http://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=297). I produced and engineered that project in 2002. When customers ask me what project from AIX shows off the benefits of real HD-Audio, I routinely point to “Guitar Noir” or “The Latin Jazz Trio” DVD-Audio/Video titles.
Laurence came by the studio yesterday bearing gifts. He has recently completed a new project for his long time label Solid Air Records. The title of the new project is “Under an Indigo Sky” is a collection of 14 cover tunes arranged for solo guitar. He gave me a copy of the CD and a signed and numbered vinyl LP! I don’t have a lot of vinyl and I don’t currently have a functioning turntable so it may be a while until I get a chance to hear that version. LJ struggled to get his label to release a limited run of 500 LPs. Vinyl fans will thrill at his playing and I’m sure the vinyl sounds really fabulous.
What’s interesting about this project is the production path. LJ records at his own personal studio using Pro Tools. He uses a pair of Schoeps microphones and custom-made 2.0 channel microphone preamp made by Jim at Audio Upgrades. He recorded the whole project at 96 kHz/24-bits in an acoustically isolated room and then took the project to multiple Grammy-winning engineer Al Schmidt to mix it at Capitol Records Studio C.
Al Schmidt is one of the best audio engineers in the world and has contributed his vast experience and talents to many of the biggest recordings every released plus he’s a very nice guy! There’s a reason that he has over 45 Grammy nominations. As I sat listening to the project in the studio yesterday, a couple things blew me away. The record sounds really great…even at CD specifications.
The first thing was the playing. LJ is famous for using alternate guitar tunings. As he pulled into the driveway at the studio, I couldn’t help by noticing his DADGAD license plate. That’s a tuning that he uses quite often and it drives a normal guitar player such as myself crazy while watching him because there are no recognizable finger shapes in his playing. Nothing to see here folks…move on.
The second thing is the arrangements. My first exposure to his playing was over 10 years ago when I was turned on to his “LJ Plays the Beatles”. On that album he plays many of the original Beatles hits from the “Meet the Beatles” album…and it sounds like he’s got a few extra fingers! How else would he be able to keep the bass line going on “I Saw Her Standing There” and play all of the melody lines at the same time? You can get an idea of this by checking out the “Strawberry Fields” arrangement and performance on the “Guitar Noir” album (which can be downloaded at 96/24 PCM from iTrax.com).
There were also a couple of things that drew me away from the music. I thought the spacing of the tunes was too tight. I like to have a few moments of repose following each tune…but that just a personal taste thing. Having been a mastering engineer for over a decade, it’s amazing how adding a second between tunes changes the way the album flows.
The other thing was the artificial reverberation. There’s just something organic about recording in a sonically rich auditorium. It’s hard to find the right place and it definitely costs more than recording in your own studio but adding the best digital reverberation to an otherwise dry signal is different than the real thing.
As LJ and I sat in the studio yesterday, I played a couple of things that I had done with him during our 3D project shoots a few years ago. I have a solo piece called “The White Pass Trail” and a trio piece called “Into the 3rd Dimension”, played with Kevin Axt on bass and MB Gordy on drums. As he heard his tracks, he sat back and marveled at the fully immersive 5.1 mixes. Maybe it was the real ambiance of the room or the extra set of mid-distant spaced microphones, but he commented that how great it sounded. Both of these selections are on the HD-Audio sampler.
If you want to hear LJ, the FTP site that has our free samples also has a track from “Guitar Noir” called “Mosaic”…which won the 2002 Demmy Award for “Best Sounding High Resolution Track”.
