Dave Rempis and Tim Daisy at the Sugar Maple in Milwaukee on September 19, 2020

A few weekends ago I had the pleasure of attending a delightful concert on the patio of the legendary Sugar Maple featuring Chicago jazz heavy hitters Dave Rempis and Tim Daisy. The socially-responsible concert was limited to 20 attendees who were seated at least 6 feet apart and who were required to wear face-and-spittle-covering masks. I felt fortunate that Dave and Tim agreed to be recorded for this blog. Let me take this opportunity to recommend that you purchase some compact discs (and possibly an LP or two) from these two musicians (see links below).

I also enjoyed seeing my taper friend Joel Berk who runs the wonderful recording blog Sweet Blahg. Naturally he got there before me (pretty much everyone got there before me) and had excellent front-row access. This came in handy for unobstructed-view photos as well as for assistance with assembling a much-needed "matrix" recording of set one. 

above photo courtesy of Joel Berk

This photo is one of mine

As you can see from the second photo, my microphones were placed at the perfect angle had Dave been standing two or three feet behind where he actually wound up standing. This spatial discrepancy was most pronounced during the first set, and led to a somewhat thin reed sound. Joel's capture of the first set from the front row helped reinforce the not-quite-there sax sound that my microphones captured. 

The microphones used were: a stereo pair of Line Audio CM-3 wide-cardioid microphones in a custom-made 3D-printed ORTF configuration mic clip by Shapeways, and a stock Shure SM58 on the drums. These were fed via Mogami microphone cables into a Sound Devices MixPre 6 and recorded at 24bit/48kHz resolution. I used Audacity to assemble the matrix and to carefully EQ out the many dozens of very brief moments of wind noise (yes, I forgot my wind screens at home), as well as converting to 16bit/44.1kHz wav files. xAct converted the resulting wav to FLAC, ALAC, and mp3 files. Monitoring was accomplished with a Schitt Audio Asgard 3 preamp with AK4490 DAC as well as Focal Spirt Pro headphones

Please support these fine artists and decent people by going to their shows, buying multiple copies of their merchandise (your friends need the music -- why aren't you buying music for your friends?), and talking to them like they are real human beings after shows. If they don't mind.

https://timdaisyrelayrecords.bandcamp.com

https://aerophonicrecords.bandcamp.com

https://www.daverempis.com

https://timdaisy.wordpress.com

downloads

16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC files (448 MB)

16bit, 44.k ALAC files (460 MB)

320kbps mp3 files (199 MB)

here is video from a concert the previous month at the same locale:

Ballister at the Sugar Maple, Milwaukee on September 27, 2017

Here we have a powerful set by the trio of Dave Rempis on reeds, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and Paal Nilssen-Love on percussion. The Sugar Maple has been host to a long list of free jazz luminaries, and I believe they have hosted Ballister several times. This concert was, as expected, full of energy and intricate interplay between the three members of the group, which has been releasing albums since 2011.

photos by Jan Erik Dyke

These two sets were recorded by Richard Hayes with a combination of a pair of Beyerdynamic MC930 microphones (with cardioid capsules) on a stand in the back and a venerable Shure SM58 up in the performance area a few feet above the floor near where Fred was playing, all fed into a four-channel Tascam DR-70D recorder. I was able to mix the three channels in Audacity to capture the sound of Fred's cello (and amp), which has a tendency to be lost in the room when playing a few feet away from a powerful drummer.

Please support these fine artists and decent people by going to their shows, buying multiple copies of their merchandise (your friends need the music), and talking to them like they are real human beings after shows.

http://www.paalnilssen-love.com
http://www.daverempis.com
http://www.lonberg-holm.info
http://aerophonicrecords.bandcamp.com
http://paalnilssen-love.bandcamp.com
http://fredlonberg-holm.bandcamp.com

A guide to download formats:

WAV = files which are able to be burned as a CD without any conversion steps. This is the largest size of file on offer here.

ALAC = stands for Apple Lossless Audio Codec, which is a method of making a lossless copy of an audio file with about 60% of the space required with a WAV file. You can natively play these files on any Apple device and enjoy the same resolution and sound quality as a WAV file (it just takes up half as much space on your hard drive or device). 

mp3 - this is a lossy compression codec which utilizes psycho-acoustic "tricks" to drop certain audio information which is not noticeable under normal hearing situations. I am not a huge fan of mp3 but still find it useful because a high quality mp3 file will take up about 25% of the room on your storage device compared to a WAV file and about half as much as a ALAC file.

Downloads:

16 bit, 44.1 kHz WAV file (603 MB)

16 bit, 44.1 kHz ALAC file (400 MB)

320kbps mp3 file (164 MB)