DawgTalkers.net Forums Thread Like Summary - The Best Sound

Prime Video has a documentary called "Long Strange Trip."

The story of the Grateful Dead told by them. It is told in episodes and is quite amazing.

No band that I have heard of approached music like the Grateful Dead. I mean that from many angles but foremost from commercial success. They cared about nothing but playing music live to their fans. Money? Hits? Record deals? Fame? None of that mattered.

My ex-wife worked in catering to concerts in Atlanta for years. She was backstage for every major concert. Both my kids worked part time as teens. Washing dishes and helping in general. I could attend any show for free. Now my son owns a catering business and for twelve years has handled the Joe Bonamassa tour.

I have been up close to hear many concerts.

Sometime in the late 70's or early 80's. I went to the classic old theater "The Fox" in Atlanta to see the Dead.

Had great seats in a theater considered one of the great theaters in the world for acoustics.

The show was on and I had to use the john. I was hurrying back toward my seat from the back of the theater. I suddenly stopped in the aisle.

I was struck and stunned by the "sound." I had never heard anything so perfect. You could hear every note from every instrument perfectly. The sound system quality was astounding. Of course the sound coming from that system was coming from dedicated musicians seeking perfection.

I thank my lucky stars to have been alive while the Grateful Dead were on their "Long Strange Trip."

As performers, we interpret "The Ideal Sound" from one perspective: how well does the auditorium's acoustic signature effect the nature of our performance?

We play acoustic-based music, written to fill the hall for the audience. Old-school music halls were built to accommodate this feature. The very best in the world are shaped like a shoe box. Imagine 2 cubes staked end-to-end. lots of wood surfaces, mixed with just the right amount of fabric (seat upholstery, wall treatments, etc.) to tame excessive reverberation times, and ornately decorated, to break up the sound from spurious spikes in either the high notes or low notes. There are a scant handful of such venues, world-wide that hit the sweet spot.

I've been lucky enough to perform in 3 of the world's top 20.

Symphony Hall, in Boston.
Meyerson Symphony Center, in Dallas
Carnegie Hall, in NYC.

I've never performed internationally, so I've never experienced the Musikverein in Vienna, the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, or the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Bucket list: to sit in these halls, after my playing days are done (I have the money to travel, once I'm retired).

Meyerson in Dallas was a trip. A thoroughly modern installation, designed by the Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei. I saw his austere-looking, thoroughly modern setup and thought, "Yeah- I know what I'm gonna get from this- more of the same. I was wrong. That hall was everything a playa could want: the right feedback, the right acoustic, the right experience for the audience. We had 2 days to play/listen to the hall. Trust me- it was great from both vantage points.

Symph Hall, Boston: delivered as advertised. We filled the hall with with a warm, enveloping sound, and got excellent sonic feedback from the hall, both empty (in rehearsal), and with a 2/3rd-filled hall that night.

But the best concert hall experience I ever had was Carnegie Hall, NYC.

After years of fighting with our concert hall to get our voice out to the public, we found ourselves on the stage of Stern Auditorium, corner of 57th and 7th in Manhattan. 5/7/2011.

20 minutes into our dress rehearsal, Stefan Sanderling stopped the rehearsal, and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, this isn't our home venue. We needn't try so hard to to achieve what we want. We must relax, listen to the hall... and enter into a partnership with the venue. Simply play what's on the page, listen to each other, and allow the hall to help you." Total transformation, less than 20 minutes later.

We projected into that space all the things we had worked so hard to make, and played better than we'd ever played before.
The space makes the sound, if the players know how to use it. That concert was one of the Top 5 gigs I ever played... and the hall helped to make it happen.

_______

Deserving of notice, 2 other events:

1. I was onstage at Tiger Stadium in Detroit for a performance of the 1990's operatic 'supergroup' The Three Tenors It was one of the very last events held at that venerated place on Michigan/Trumbull Ave. The conductor for that gig was the the NY Metropolitan Opera's music director, James Levine.

The entire outfield was the stage. We played back toward home plate, to a crowd of roughly 30K rabid Opera fans.
Unless you actually experience it, you simply cannot appreciate/comprehend the sound of that many screaming fans when they aim their voices at you. We 'note-playing grunts' were the first to hear that crowd. The ThreeTenors will never know the energy that we experienced at Moment One, when we 'noise-making grunts' took the stage.

2. A handful of years later, I played The Palace at Auburn Hills for Luciano Pavarotti's (final) farewell tour.
Portland Dawg was right: The Palace (home of the Detroit Pistons' 'Bad Boys') was The Shoebox, just like the great concert venues of Old School.

We played at the Eastern end of the venue.

Sound reinforcement was necessary, to fill such a big hall... BUT:
The techs weren't ready for the pre-game sound check, and Luciano went ahead with the sound check, anyway.

Dude filled that voluminous space with his own human voice, sans sound reinforcement for almost 30 minutes, until the techs finally got their s# together.
The Palace at Auburn Hills... seating capacity: 20K+... and that brother filled the hall without sound reinforcement.
It was one of the most impressive things I've ever witnessed, in a lifetime of amazing music-related events.

From the Detriot Free press:
Read this here.

I only got to spend about 2 minutes with Pavarotti, but I knew David DiChiera for years, ever since Michigan Opera Theater's renaissance. I was there for Pavarotti's appearance at the inaugural performance when the Detroit Opera House re-opened as part of Detroit's first steps toward rejuvenation.

This was my office, when Detroit mounted its comeback:

As a vet of many Dead shows the place that got me was The Palace at Auburn Hills. That place was designed with concerts in mind. The Dead filled it perfectly. Another was The Pyramid in Memphis. Incredible sound.
I’m so grateful I was young when the Dead was still around. I’m so grateful that I got on the bus when it went by. What a strange trip it was. Nothing in the world like a Grateful Dead concert. It was like running away with the circus. So many incredible nights.

I was waiting for your response. I had you in mind when I was writing the thread.

There are some outdoor venues that have great sound.

I cannot remember exactly the year 70 something. But I went to Tanglewood Music Center.

The Who did "Tommy" and Jethro Tull opened. It was the first time rock was played there. In fact National Geographic wrote a piece about it.

I have not been to Red Rock Amphitheater in Morrison Co. https://www.redrocksonline.com/

But my son has been there many times with the Bonamassa tour. He has run the catering for the tour for twelve years. They do 200 dates a year. That includes both the US and Europe. Albert Hall included. Pretty much every major venue in Europe and the US.

Jade MacRae my son's wife has played the tour but also does solo tours in Australia and New Zealand. She has been performing professionally for over twenty years.

I will ask her about her favorite venues.

I can read and write music. I'm by no means an expert on the topic however. People such as yourself are far more qualified to judge composition than I am. It does make appreciating and enjoying music that is so heavily basic and lacking in artistic talent much harder I must say. I can even appreciate music based on the lyrical content alone when the music is basic.

But when I hear a three chord band that concentrates on sex, drugs and R&R become rich and famous it makes me want to throw up in my mouth just a little bit. Any time KISS or AC/DC come on my classic radio station I change the channel. For me even commercials are more entertaining than that.