https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubhsTbruRXo

Impressive. Yours? Mics? Has there been any recent post processing? I'm just saying that's a nicely quiet mag tape!

Wow! Thanks for posting that, Tom.

This is quite a piece of history you've recorded. Fabulous!

Yes I did the recording. Shure SM58 on the vocals and a I think an MD-421 on the Banjo. Recorded outdoors at commencement. Strait to the Revox A77 mic inputs. I adjusted the levels and balance before I posted it. I am very happy with the overall sound and luckily it was a calm day so no wind noise.

Yuuuuuge report. Great fidelity. Great program!

Yes, a great hi-fidelity time capsule Tom…so I’m guessing a couple of aux’s or tape sends from the PA system ? A little over modulation when his singing got loud, but nothing to write home about.

50 years on and we still have ‘adult delinquency’…war…pollution…ecological challenge…Guantanamera morphed into Guantanamo Bay…and maybe today Bernie S best embodies the ideals of Pete S ….while hope still resides in the potential of beneficial
change, that colleges such as yours were built to encourage ?

Good live performance by Seeger. Nice balance between voice and instrument, and noise and distortion not really a problem.

Just surprised nobody mentioned the "hollow" sound, possibly due to mixing of the two mics to mono. If the two mics were premixed before recording it probably cant be completely fixed, but some careful boosting of the null bands might help, although there are many bands to correct! But if the mics were recorded on separate tracks I might have separated them a little in the stereo stage to reduce the cancellations, allowing a more natural, open sound.

I'm always glad to be reminded that great music can be greatly recorded with very simple means, and that I wasn't crazy back in those days in thinking that some of what I got (in this same fashion) worked out pretty well!

Nice! What tape type is it?

Magnetic, I think.

FYI

It was an outdoor performance in a "reviewing stand" at the local college's commencement. He was standing to the audience right of the podium with his own mics for his voice and his banjo. The "reviewing stand" had a wooden floor and a top made of canvas that was about 3 to 4 feet over his head with a "banner" in front. The reviewing stand was full of other folks participating in the commencement and it was a very hot day in late May (Memorial Day). As to the recording. It was 1972. I had a REVOX A77 tape recorder. I did the best I could with what I had to work with. If it is not up to your "standards" I am sorry. It was 50 years ago and a "historical" recording of a live outdoor concert by a famous folk artist.

You seem to delight in finding faults with everything, so be it. I wanted to put it up so others could enjoy the concert. Had I done it this year instead of 50 years ago I would have done it much differently.

FWIW

I believe it is Scotch 150 which is what I was using at the time but it is now in a white 7" box and there is no other information on the box. It was 50 years ago so...memory of that event is limited

Cool thanks. Whatever it is it sounds nice!

Thanks for your comment and thanks for all the other comments. Really appreciated. It was a work of love and appreciation for a GREAT folk singer whom I admire.

When I worked at the local college it was my privilege to drive him to the Cleveland Airport twice after his concerts. He was an amazing man to talk to. He was all excited about his Civitas Commode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incinerating_toilet) which he had just installed in his house and about his Hudson River Sloop https://www.clearwater.org/the-sloop/ he was building. A great man and very easy to talk to. FWIW

Thank you so much! This is absolutely wonderful : )

Really refreshing how two dynamics and an A77 with minimal faff after it but something actually worth recording in front of it makes such a stark contrast to today's norm of deeply technical detail and faff and hardly ever anything of true value in front of the mics. Simple beauty over complicated emptiness.

First thing I heard, but then I pushed the mono button to check what's up with the phasey stereo and suddenly it sounds very good. Much easier to listen to

Being recorded outdoors, and with not much in the way of reflective surfaces nearby...plus using dynamic mics... there probably was little phase/comb interactions between the 2 mics. Maybe some of the audible PA spill contributes a little mayhem, but not much.

Nothing wrong with a good mono recording (of a good mono event) !

Tom, how did your recording interact with the PA system....was it your mics feeding the PA from the output of the Revox, or were there 2 sets of mics involved (recording and PA) ? Did Seeger bring his own amplification and mics ?

as it's only two mono mics and not any stereo technique, just close mikes it's inherently mono, being outside bleed from PA should be close to zero so the phasing effect is probably just bad tape machine calibration (azimuth?), in mono is sounds like it should, nothing is lost, there's no comb filtering, try it

If nothing is lost in mono it ain't comb filtering, is it.

I tried that too. It helps but only partially. Again the problem I first heard and then saw on the Spectrograph is multiple cancellations (comb filtering). Interestingly the cancellations appear in each channel but as slightly difference sets of frequencies. If it was originally a mono recording, the different sets of cancellations left and right make no sense. I dont know for sure what caused it. Possibly a transfer or post production issue.

Spectrograph of left and right with vertical axis zoomed to show different null frequencies clearer.

It still can be, I meant that in different way, there's nothing of emotional value lost (like space, reverb, air, all notes and words, instrument, voice is still intact) which can happen quite often after folding to mono

Interesting, could it be some pseudo stereo effect? The ones I use (Melda MStereoSpread, Matthew Lane DrMS) I specifically choose to be perfectly mono compatible, but I guess there are others that can cause this

So you meant "the comb filtering didn't turn it to shlt and it still works as music".

No, I said it was quite striking and to me it sounds better in mono as in less annoying and phasey. It's perfectly fine to not bother with it, but to me it's interesting to know what would cause this kind of effect, being intentional or not

I am away and only have a phone here so can't really join your impressions with ones of my own in regards to phase lol

I guess I should never have posted this...

I thought it was a good recording of a GREAT folk singer from 1972 whom I admire but some people on this forum cannot stop criticizing everything. Not what I had in mind. I guess I will ask the Mod to take this topic down.

Sometimes this forum can be brutal.

I'm glad that you posted it Tom. Its a piece of history. And its also much better that some taped concerts that I did with a small Uher back in those days.
I think the urge to dissect and discuss is just a inherent part of who we are here. Some of us anyway. If this spoils the vibe for you, by all means take the post down. But I hope it stays.

I hope you leave it, Thomas. I think this is one of the coolest posts I've seen on this forum.