John Coltrane - A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle (released October 8, 2021)

I'll be curious if your disc 1 is warped.

Both of my Amazon Coltrane's were badly edge and dish warped no doubt due to the vinyl being shrink wrapped with that insert in the same sleeve. Not to also mention that 1 of the warped records had pits and the other had rub wear that could not be cleaned off.

I've never said this before but I'm so tempted to get the CD version.

Man, what is it with new releases and warps.

 

I really enjoyed this. The music is exciting. Very much a live capture. Just amazing personalities in one moment. So cool. The CD sounds wonderful to me.

 

One or two light pops on side 4.

 

Come to think of it, only months after the 2018 release of Both Directions At Once they included it in a box set called 1963: New Directions, w And Johnny Hartman, Live At Birdland, Dear Old Stockholm and Newport '63. So why not a nice Live In Seattle 1965 box somewhere down the road? The previous Live In Seattle, the new A Love Supreme and a bonus cleaned up version of Unissued Seattle Broadcast? Even got some artwork for 'em

 

Mine came today. Not warped at all. Just about to wet brush and vac it before first play.

 

On re-mixing the Beatles, Giles Martin is saying the technology is getting closer for him to be able to remix Revolver and Rubber Soul in a way that he would consider meaningful, i.e. by first separating instruments from four-track tape. At some point tapes like these Coltrane ones should also benefit from such technology.

 

My (double) LP arrived today. Some of the quietest vinyl I've ever heard, even in the very quiet passages such as Garrison's long bass solo on Side D. Except, that is, for a minute or two of horrible crackling all around the outer rim of Side A. Some kind of clag seems to be smeared around one half of that outer circumference on the run in and into the start of the music. Wet-brush and vinyl vac leaning didn't remove it, so I've ordered a replacement. Some kind of deposit or a result of sleeving hot vinyl too soon?

 

Where'd you order the set from?

 

Amazon Japan.

 

Correcting this post. A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle isn't an "amateur audience recording." It's a recording made on the house tape system. The liner notes go into a bit of detail about it.

 

I see that it was recorded by Joe Brazil, who had played flute & percussion on Om the day before, and doesn't seem to have had any other professional audio engineering experience. So I guess it's kind of an amateur recording, but made use of the house system that normally would've taped the radio broadcasts?

 

The liner notes go into how the two track recording was made using tracks 1 and 3 on one side of tape, which was then flipped to use tracks 2 and 4 on the other side, suggesting that the person making the recording had some experience using tape this way. The house system included two mics suspended from the ceiling, connected to an Ampex reel-to-reel. It wasn't an audience member carrying in a portable reel, is all I mean.

 

To be honest I’m biased towards the ‘warmth’ of vinyl, and since it was me playing, switching and comparing the two editions, it certainly wasn’t a blind test. So I’d have to say that the difference in sound (if any) isn’t noticable enough to recommend one or the other.

This also confirmed that the CD offers the uninterrupted, immersive listening experience I’m looking for with live concert releases like this. For exactly the same reason I was happy to stick with the Lee Morgan Lighthouse 8CD boxset, and not the twelve LPs.

 

Here's what I took from the liner notes:

The mics and tape deck were sourced and set up by the club owner, who was not a professional audio engineer. The tape was made by Joe Brazil, who was also not an audio engineer. As you say, though, it seems qualitatively different than a portable deck being snuck in by an audience member. I don't know if there's a word for it, but I would consider it "pro-lite" or "semi-pro," but leaning more towards amateur. It sounds like the intent was to get a "quick & dirty" recording of the event (as opposed to a 'professional-quality' tape), and that no attempt was made to balance the sound or move the mics or anything else that might have resulted in a better mix.

As for the configuration of the tracks on tape, I think that was fairly standard for the tape decks of the day, and switching sides wasn't that much different than flipping a cassette. You take the tape off the take-up spindle, flip it back-to-front and place it on the feed spindle to record the other side. Brazil surely had some experience with reel-to-reel decks, but that's a pretty basic level of knowledge IMO.

 

So, I’m loving this new release. A Love Supreme Live in Seattle

I’ve probably heard it 20 times now.

When I first got my hands on the files I immediately put them into an audio editor to see what we got.
Listening first is so old fashioned. lol

I had probably heard this 8 or 10 times before I ever listened to the original files. Listening to my work in progress version that is.

To me the cd sounds pretty decent. But others have been pointing out some of the issues.

The left channel is a bit more than 4 dB louder than the right channel. RMS values, in other words on average.
The first part of the show before Interlude 2, is more like 5 dB louder in the left channel.
Then during the drum solo the 2 channels are closer in level and closer to what the original tape is probably really like.

The level difference I’m sure is to get the horns in the left channel louder. The right channel is loudest during McCoy’s long solo during Pursuance.

So I like to listen to music that has equal levels in both channels. lol

The other main issue is the fact that 2 microphones on a stage are both going to hear all of the music, but the sound is going to
arrive at the mics at different times. Phase issues. They would have been better off having the two mics on a stand in an x-y pattern.

The recording has the two channels out of phase to varying amounts all the time.

Usually if a 2 track recording possibly had phase issues you can invert the waveform on one side and it will either fix it or sound really awful.
If there was a cable issue and negative got mixed up with positive then inverting one side would work.
But incorrect microphone placement won’t usually be fixed with the inversion trick. Not really ever.
With this recording if you invert one channel it makes no difference at all. It just goes from being wonky one way to being wonky the other way.

So the phase issue, was it known?? And a decision was made to ignore it??
I can sit 6 feet in front of my Yamaha near field monitors and enjoy the cd as it plays. It works and people mostly seem to be loving it.
Everything’s pretty decent/correct eq wise.

So anyway, I have both channels at the same levels now. RMS/average levels. And I’ve corrected the phase issue.
And it opens everything up nice. The drums are spread across the stereo field. It kind of varies a bit throughout the show.
Sometimes I think I’m hearing the high-hat on the right and the low tom on the left. It does seem like the drums are set up
in the center between the mics. Other times it still seems like they lean a bit to the left.
In the liner notes they don’t say that the microphones are hanging. And somewhere around the internet I’m pretty sure I read
that they were on stands. Hanging?? On stands??

When one googles for images of The Penthouse jazz club Seattle you can see several pics that are supposed to be the club. lol
Several of the pics show a brick wall behind the stage. Other pics show something different. There’s one shot of Cannonball Adderley
and his band playing in what looks like a foyer or something.
There is also one shot that shows John Coltrane, it’s supposed to be from the Sept. 30 gig. The one when the original Live in Seattle release was recorded.
That pic shows the drums set up in a peculiar manner. John is about to fall off the left side of the stage and the drums are facing sideways towards him. ???
Is that really The Penthouse??? Who knows. Were the drums set up in that peculiar sideways arrangement on this new release???
If there’s really a brick wall behind them sound could be bouncing off of that and all over the place.
But according to the legend when the club was being readied for opening they took delivery of a new grand piano.
Oscar Peterson was there and sat down to play. The owner stated that he would probably cover up the brick wall but Oscar told him
‘this room sounds great, don’t change a thing’.

So when you fix these issues with phase and levels the horns are still kind of low in the mix. But as someone pointed out they still sound cool that way.
The bass also kind of disappears when the band gets loud. You can hear the bass’s fine when they solo and during quieter parts of the show.

I guess that’s all I got. Let’s hope for more undiscovered Coltrane in the future!!

 

This is amazing!! Elvin Jones is simply on fire during the whole set......On my system I think it sounds pretty fantastic, considering it is recorded to 1/4" tape on Ampex deck with 2 mics, it's better than I was expecting.

 

Wow, detailed analysis! When you balanced the levels of the two channels, did that make the horns in the left channel relatively quieter? I'm no expert in this, so don't know what to take from your analysis regarding your recommended playback settings.

 

Pretty sure Lee Morgan took breaks between songs, sets, and days at the lighthouse, no?

 

The pics you’re referring to where the stage is small and JC is facing Elvin are from the Half Note. There’s a bunch of them in the booklets for the CD and LP releases.

 

Oh, no wonder they seemed familiar. lol

 

Of course the CD breaks occur in between the sets, but most of the records in the Lighthouse LP box have just one tune per side, and never more than two (aside from Side F where the third tune is 53 seconds of "Speedball") before you have to flip or change the record.

 

How considerate: time given to get a drink or go to the loo!

 

Understood. 12 sets across 3 days, 7.5 hours of music….it requires breaks to flip the LPs, perhaps not unlike the breaks at the shows.

Back to the thread at hand. The poster who said this should be called Elvin Jones Live in Seattle wasn’t kidding. I’m glad this release exists, happy to own in, love hearing Elvin go off, but wish I could hear Trane better.

 

Yeah, I guess it's that Tumblr post that uses one of the Half Note pics, captioned as The Penthouse.

4-5 dB louder on the left sounds about right to me. I wonder if it is a choice Kevin Reeves made, or if it was the way it was recorded, and he left it alone.

Pursuance has the best balance because Elvin, as any good drummer would do, lays back a little bit to leave some more space for McCoy.

In the notes from the Harold Land release from The Penthouse broadcasts, the engineer, Jim Wilke, says he had a mixing board that went into a special phone line that went out to KING-FM in Seattle. Wilke is still around, and his Wiki page says he used four mics at the Penthouse, with the board nearest the piano. In any event, it's possible Brazil didn't use any part of Wilke's rig, and just did the Coltrane recording with his own equipment.

That's weird. I'm sure they were all shrink-wrapped the same way. Mine aren't warped at all. I just wish Side 4 played clean during the bass solos.

CD's only $15. Picked one up today, but haven't listened yet.