Recording Bluegrass Instruments Online Extra | Mix Magazine
• Monday, March 16th, 2009
Tradition is good, tradition is important. But just as no one expects rock ’n’ roll albums today to sound like the Sun and Chess records of the genre’s 1950s pioneers, the sonic tastes of bluegrass fans have evolved considerably since the seminal ’40s and ’50s recordings of Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, Flatt & Scruggs’ Foggy Mountain Boys, the Osborne Brothers, the Sunny Mountain Boys, Ralph and Carter Stanley, and all the other greats who helped define the style. True, there is a certain romance to the gritty mono recordings that were usually cut with just a couple of microphones direct to disc: You can sometimes hear the fiddler or guitarist or mandolin player actually leaning in towards the mic for a solo, and you can feel how the band as a whole balances itself from moment to moment, both in relation to each other and with the soaring vocal harmonies that rise above the instrumental conversation of the ensemble. Good as those recordings might sound—and with today’s restoration techniques, many of them have literally never sounded better—they tend to be light on bass and guitar, somewhat imprecise on both the upper and lower registers of the mandolin, occasionally too ring-y on certain banjo notes, and lacking the ambient “air” that modern ears appreciate.
Full Article:
Recording Bluegrass Instruments Online Extra | Read the Full Recording Bluegrass Instruments May 2008 Mix Article
Full Article:
Recording Bluegrass Instruments Online Extra | Read the Full Recording Bluegrass Instruments May 2008 Mix Article

















































