From: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org (precious-things-digest) To: precious-things-digest@smoe.org Subject: precious-things-digest V2 #44 Reply-To: precious-things@smoe.org Sender: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-precious-things-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "precious-things-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. precious-things-digest Saturday, February 15 1997 Volume 02 : Number 044 Today's Subjects: ----------------- 1995 technical Tori article Stephane Sednaoui does anyone know??? Re: What Does Tori Mean? Re: What Does Tori Mean? Re: does anyone know??? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:46:42 -0500 (EST) From: Richard Handal Subject: 1995 technical Tori article Hello, Online Toriville: [waves] :-) So. A number of weeks back I was going through a bunch of professional audio technical publications, and happened across the following article. I wasn't certain whether or not I should post it, but the other day I read it over the phone to a dear friend of mine and she thought I was nuts. (For doubting that folks would be interested, I mean.) Anyhow, here it is. Some brief explanatory notes follow. I hope at least some of you enjoy it. Be seeing you, Richard Handal, H.G. <>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<> Publication: Pro Sound News (European edition) (ISSN: 0269-4735) Date: October, 1995 Page: 3 Article Type: Interview Writer: Phil Ward Photos: One color photo 3.7" W x 2.4" H of the recording setup described in the article, with the piano and harpsichord separated by the V-shaped baffle arrangement; with pews in the foreground, and church architectural ornamentation including stained glass windows with sunlight shining through them, in the background Caption: Unique acoustic screening separated the two keyboards and the singer Headline: Hallmark of quality for Tori album IRELAND -- Tori Amos has been recording her third album at home in Cork and on location in a church in Delgany, exploiting the natural acoustics of the aged building with Neumann microphones and a unique approach to the problem of isolation. Engineer Mark Hawley, who has been responsible for the American singer's FOH house for nearly two years, fashioned an acoustic screen between her favoured piano and harpsichord to create sufficient separation while the overdub-free keyboard and vocal performance was executed. Some songs featured both keyboards--"I wanted the overhang from the piano when I hit the harpsichord," Amos reveals. "In order to separate the vocal signal from the piano and harpsichord mics," says Hawley, "we built a wooden construction, acoustically tiled on the inside, which encased the two keyboards. The instruments could then be mic'd in the hall while she sang in an entirely separate acoustic space." Nick-named `Tori's house', the device enabled an intimate recording via four U87s, two KM184s and four KM140/130 modular stereo kits straight to Sony digital multitrack by way of Focusrite pre-amps. A 60-year old M49, acquired by Tori Amos from a Canadian radio station, was also used on vocals. "Her vocal sound is exact and we were able to capture it without compromising the keyboards," adds Hawley, "which were recorded with full ambience in the church. On the piano we had just two U87s as a stereo cardioid pair, while two KM184s were configured as closely as possible to an ORTF pair. "Then we used an A-B pair of KM130s about two feet away from the piano, which was recorded with the lid off to provide a more ambient signal. We were recording in the main church hall, with a beautiful acoustic and a very gentle reverb, so we added a couple of KM130s at the back of the hall just to pick up the reverb trail. The results are amazing." Phil Ward <>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<>====<> Notes from Richard: FOH means "front of house." Overhang here refers to the sound of the piano as it slowly fades out, while the harpsichord comes in. ORTF is a mic positioning where the capsules are placed 17 cm (approx. 7") apart at a 110 degree angle. "A-B" is another pattern of microphone positioning. Cardioid is a loose, unidirectional pattern describing the "live" areas from which a mic picks up its sound. I came across the following ad for the model of microphone Tori used for her vocals: "Beautiful M-49 tube mic complete with box, hanger, new cable and power supply- Has brand new old stock KK-49 capsule. $5300.00 plus shipping- Firm" There seems to have been an editing error in the article. I expect the questionable sentence should have read "...encased Tori in between the two keyboards." Anyone interested in the microphones described in this article should check out the Neumann website at http://www.neumann.com. The Neumann company (pronounced NOY-man) has a rich history, and has contributed mightily through the modern era of recorded sound. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 08:12:58 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: Stephane Sednaoui Stephane Sednaoui (that's the correct spelling by the way) directed the videos for Garbage's "Queer" and "Milk," both of which are available on a commercial videotape along with three other Garbage videos directed by others. "Milk" is a really good video; "Queer" is brilliant, one of the best videos I've seen in years. Don't know anything else Sednauoi has done, but I wouldn't mind finding out. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 14:26:19 -0700 From: thax2807@badger.snow.edu (Melissa) Subject: does anyone know??? does anyone know if tori has been on american journal yet, if not, do you know when??? THANKS Melissa ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:02:55 -0800 (PST) From: Richard Holmes Subject: Re: What Does Tori Mean? Alicia Candice Krissy writes: > Okay, I don't know if I'm the only one, but I don't > really get what Tori is trying to say in nearly all of > her songs. I love the music. But I don't get the > lyrics. Anybdy have some spare time to explain a song? > usualy i can't really make out everything she says.. If you're wondering about what *words* she's saying, many of the tori websites have the lyrics -- as do some cd jackets. But many people don't understand the *meanings* of the words she does say - because they "don't make sense".... anyway, I'm sure that if you've been on this list long enough, you've heard various people's opinions on the imagery in Tori's songs. I don't follow a lot of these discussions too closely - although interesting, it doesn't detract from the music for me to know all the attributions for various imagery; the imagery is deep enough in and of itself to allow the lyrics to have a strong emotional impact. I think that the songs, whether by intent or because Tori creates her music in such a way as to allow it, have meanings on multiple levels (as all great art does). I guess it may be sort of like the druidic runes; they had many attributions, so that each rune meant a letter, a hand-sign, a type of tree, a kind of weather, a food, an emotion, etc. So when a bard told a story, those who had studied the correspondences had a much richer experience, and could be "in on" the puns being made, sometimes at the expense of the host or other attendants; the uninitiated could see it as a nice story or beautiful poetry. I tend to get my correspondences in an intuitive, right-brain manner, and I'm often surprised when those who know have confirmed my suspicions with documented snippets of conversations, or from other research. And I think this is how Tori creates them too... does anyone know if she's ever talked about this subject (yea, the resident mediaphobe, me, doesn't read much of the tori stuff floating about, so you folks are my *source* for the goods)... Many bright blessings, dark dream-times and powerful awakenings! - -Richard PS Speaking of druids and such -- have you seen Trader Joe's (a food chain) bran muffins -- called "Bran the Blessed" !?!? I'm for real here =8^) @ \@/ Richard A. Holmes (rholmes@cs.stanford.edu) @ | @ \|/ "If you could fill a veil with shells from Killarney's shore, @ | And sweet talk in a tongue that is no more, @ , , | , , If wishful thoughts could bridge / The Gulf of Araby between @ ' ' ' ' What is, what is, what is, / And what can never be. @ - Katell Keineg, "The Gulf of Araby" @ @ Loreena McKennitt / Kate Bush / Tori Amos / Katell Keineg / Happy Rhodes @ Kiva / Kate Price \ Dar Williams / Renaissance \ Sheila Chandra @ Laura Love / Sinead O'Connor / Jane Siberry / Pauline Oliveros @ Sarah McLachlan \ Libana / Danielle Dax \ Dog Faced Hermans ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 19:44:03 -0500 From: abbe@mit.edu Subject: Re: What Does Tori Mean? My impression is that when Tori is asked what her songs mean she occasionally gives generic "themes" - like UtP is suppose to generally be her "girl" album and BfP is supposed to be about "boys" (except IMHO it's mostly about how "boys" hurt "girls", but that's a separate issue..). I can't remember any specific things she's said about individual songs, but they're mostly on the same level as the "boys" and "girls" stuff. When she *does* go into a little more specifics - well, let's just say that I think tori's mind works the same way when she's speaking in interviews as when she's writing her songs. The images are there, the words are all connected together, even if it isn't exactly a coherent train of thought that the interviewer's going to make any sense of. If you've got a pretty good feel for what her songs are about,( without trying to go for a word-for-word interpretation or anything else) , then what she says in an interview or a magazine article or whatever will have about the same feel and give you about the same amont of meaning. If you don't, asking her what the song means probably won't tell you anything new. :) I agree that you can appreciate her music on any of the levels from the emotion and sound of the music, the general "feel" of the lyrics, to actually taking the lyrics as poetry and trying to pull a meaning out of some pretty complex stuff. At some point I'll post some of my interpretations if people are interested. - -abbe ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 19:48:06 -0500 (EST) From: Richard Handal Subject: Re: does anyone know??? Melissa understandably wondered: > does anyone know if tori has been on american journal yet, if not, do you > know when??? Unless she was on this evening's broadcast, no, she has not been on yet. We get AJ the day after it's current, played at 11a.m. I've been taping and checking it every day since last week. The one from this morning, which was broadcast last night in most places, did not tell the lineup for the following day's show, as had been done at the very end of all the other recent shows. They deal with enough current events material that their schedule can be thrown off by things in the news, anyway. Their website lineup list didn't mention Tori for this week's shows, although the lineups didn't seem complete for all the shows, either, so even if she's not listed on their website next week I would not assume that she won't be on. I called the chief publicist for AJ last Friday and left a message on her voice mail but she didn't call me back. Her name is Jan Murray, and her phone number is (212) 439-7667, BTW. :-) All that can be done is to keep taping and hoping. God forbid this might ever be simple. Here's the URL for the program listings, in case they actually mention the story on there: http://www.kingworld.com/ajournal/lineup.html Be seeing you, Richard Handal, H.G. ------------------------------ End of precious-things-digest V2 #44 ************************************