I'm imaging myself as a 4 to 6 year old kid listening to this monologue repeatedly (we didn't have a TV in our house) and now I'm wondering how on earth I ever imagined I might want to be a sound recordist someday.


:-)

Life can be stranger than fiction.

Mike I am glad you have chimed in on this thread. I stumbled onto the Deems Taylor monologue by accident today in fact. I was impressed by how good the cannons actually sound too. I can definitely use them. I know the conductor wants them to be as accurate as they can be. The cannons in the ships cannon battle SFX I also have are impressive too. Both together will be huge.

I am happy to report the bells and the cannons don't really overlap in the score except on the last cannon blast just before the end. I would not mind having the last say in this piece! There is a version where there is a cannon right at the very end.

I will more than likely have tubular bells to play for real. But after hearing the bells on the monologue I thought OMG! I really want to sample them and maybe get them sustaining by themselves while I play the tubular bells at the same time.

I will proably have a series of cannon samples eg 6 or 8 and alter them all just slightly. They need to sustain too.

You mention impulse responses in the X1 thread and it got me thinking about reverbs on the cannons? Maybe no. I know the hall where they are playing it well and it is quite big and got a pretty big reverb all of its own! I am going to use two speakers though and spread them right at the back of the orchestra maybe. Or do I couple them close together to make one huge sound and simulate one cannon maybe? A big sub would be nice in this situation.

mike_mccue


I grew up in a house with a family record player... and as a child we had 6 records we were allowed to play without direct supervision.

A version of the 1812 Overture was one of them.



all the best,
mike

Uncanny!!

We had a similar setup. 1812 was one, West Side Story was another, and one of my favourites was Scherezade by Rimsky-Korsakov

Another one was Summer holiday - but the less said about that the better.

I got lucky... two of the other 6 were by Johnny Cash!

Which I now know is why, when I play drums, I frequently revert to the Ray Price shuffle.

My childhood record collection, at least the ones I can remember:

1812 Overture
Swan Lake
Peer Gynt Suite
Peter and the Wolf
The Nutcracker
Beethoven's 9th
The Brandenberg Concertos
A sampler of cathedral pipe organs, mostly J.S. Bach
Vaughn Meader's comedy satire of JFK & company
Bill Cosby's "I Started Out as a Child" and "Why is There Air?"

The last three played over and over until completely committed to memory. I can recite much of them to this day.

The echos and decays are very interesting and quite specific too Mike  I agree with you on that. That is why I think stereo might be relevant. It would be great to get some IR responses from that.

I am glad this thread is bringing back old memories and good ones. Talking about the records we had when we were very young and how listening to all that music effects us today. Firstly Dave I must say that is a very impressive list of candidates to be listening to over and over when you were little! The thing that got me thinking was seeing that Glenn Miller album that Steve posted, that is very special to me too.

We had an old HMV mono record player with a crystal cartridge, a two valve amp I think with an 8" speaker mounted in the front and you know it did not sound half bad at all. I can remember back as far as 5 or so (51 years ago!) and I used to lock myself away with that thing and listen to it day and night. Here is a list of the albums that I had to choose from. There may be more that come to mind.

Glenn Miller, Mantovani, Duane Eddy, Al Caiola, Sandy Nelson, Benny Goodman Sextet, Herp Alpert, John Philip Sousa, John Barry (James Bond Music) Ahmad Jamal.

There is a fair bit of jazz in there which accounts for my love of Jazz. I love violins, use string sounds a lot and I am married to one of those pretty violinists! (Mantovani influence maybe) I think my Dad was into the guitar players there. I play drums and know Sandy Nelson had a big influence. (Also Gene Krupa and Vernell Fournier!!) My brother flogged Sousa so I am not sure about that one! Now the James Bond Music had a big impact. Not so much the songs which were great of course but the orchestral underscores. Barry is a master of that. I love underscoring TV docos and things. I am a good underscore composer and it must have come from all that Barry stuff. It is a bit of an art. Check out how good Sean Callery is underscoring 24. He is a modern underscore master. (as are all the great film composers today of course)

Steve seeing that picture of the Glenn Miller album nearly made me cry. I have been trying to track that record down for years. Like all things all those records got thrown out for some reason. I have managed to get some of them back. I have got a beautiful turntable setup now. My father died 22 years ago and I still miss him to this day, he loved that record and so did I. I know every inch of that music back to front. 'String of Pearls' is beautiful.

Anyway I am looking forward to hearing the sounds of this orchestra echoing the 1812 around as the sound of massive cannons and bells go off! I will probably be so excited I will forget to play the cannons. Nooooo Look at my signature. If you tell yourself that you will forget to do something enough times then you will forget to do it! No I will play all 16 of those cannons at exactly the right time!

That's so cool to think that you've made it into the rehearsal stage.

Jeff, I only know it as a music listener... it's ingrained in my mind... but I don't know anything about it from the perspective of a musician.

Thanks for letting us enjoy learning of your progress.


best regards,
mike
 

I hope you have a great time with it!!!

best,
mike

Great news.

I have a big smile on my face as I'm imaging a crowd full of thrilled listeners.

A moment to recall for a lifetime.

best,
mike