201011/13
Sources
Taper: Scott Bernstein
55:07
Taper:
Scott Bernstein
Transferrer:
Scott Bernstein
SHNID:
RealEstate2010-11-13
Source:
lip of stage audience
Lineage:
Original recording: Neumann TLM170s (onmis, onstage) -> Sound Devices 722 (@24/96, saved as FLAC files) Processed in Spectralayers Pro 11.0.6 (Unmix Song process to split stereo file into individual instrument layers, then 12.9db boost in the unmixed Vocals channel; manual scrubbing to scrub distracting crowd noise that was boosted along with the vocals). Then into Adobe Audition 25.0.0.47 for volume normalization. Tracked in CDWav 1.98.
Taper Notes:
View NotesBands that played on this boat cruise (in order): Rottweiler the Best, Diehard, Real Estate, MiniBoone Photos cribbed from Brooklyn Vegan <a href="https://www.brooklynvegan.com/real-estate-pla-2/" rel="ugc nofollow">https://www.brooklynvegan.com/real-estate-pla-2/</a> -- but are not credited except to "Brooklyn Vegan Staff" Recorded, mastered, tracked, tagged, and posted (3/12-14/2025) by Scott Bernstein Taper notes: This is a cool recording that I made of this band WAY before they became famous. The story goes that I got invited to Mike Greenhaus' (at the time, a writer for Relix Magazine and now Managing Editor of Relix Magazine) private birthday party on a Rocks Off boat cruise. Mike had 4 bands play -- and Real Estate was one of them...and then I mostly forgot about this night. I never did anything with the recordings -- because they were (at the time) unusable due to the odd configuration of the PA setup on this boat (for some odd reason the only PA speakers were set up at the BACK of the dance floor, and the band had no stage monitors). Unfortunately, the recordings came out with basically no vocals on them (but beautiful in all other ways). I also remember it being ear-bleedingly loud, so it was hard to enjoy the music as it was performed and I never wanted to listen the recording. So, 14 years pass by -- and Real Estate gets pretty popular (and critically renowned) -- so much so that I have heard several songs of theirs in rotation on WFUV (and I'm easily able to recognize their sound) and I run into Mike and Amy at a benefit concert in December 2024, and I mentioned this show to him. I told him that for many years all of my recordings have been disorganized and spread across many hard drives I've used over the years, making something like this difficult to locate -- but that I was just about to embark on a project to consolidate all of my archives on a newly purchased large NAS (network attached storage) disk array. Fast forward to March 2025 and, files well-organized on the NAS, I reached out to Mike to find out the date of this party and was indeed able to locate the files! And in the intervening 15 years, the tools have improved such that I now have the ability to use a consumer version AI-backed tooling (much-ballyhooed in Peter Jackson's production of The Beatles' "Get Back" documentary) that can take a 2 channel recording and "unmix" or "de-mix" it into individual instrument stems -- resulting in a recording that can be remixed and massively improved. (I've recently used this technology in Spectralayers Pro to clean up recordings plagued with terrible crowd chatter as well as another recording of mine that had a similar "no vocals" problem -- God Street Wine at Irving Plaza 12/31/94.) This technique can work because even though the recording sounds like it has no (or almost no) vocals -- they are still there -- somewhere! And sure enough, the AI finds them and breaks them out into their own channel -- if quietly. So all I had to do was boost the vocal channel (by a ton -- nearly 13db!), scrub out some of the crowd chatter that the AI also identified ad vocals (hey, it's not perfect) and now we have a really really listenable version of this great recording. Because I put my mics just in front of the band, you can hear the stereo placement of the instruments onstage, so it sounds really warm and up-close -- so close that you can hear some of the band's stage chatter that didn't go out into the PA. Of special note, this is the first entry in my BARN series that wasn't transferred from physical media, but started as a 24 bit/96khz FLAC file. Anyway I hope that you enjoy this very early snapshot of Real Estate -- 15 years later! Enjoy! Follow me on Twitter to track my postings of FREE live music and concert photography: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/scott_bernstein" rel="ugc nofollow">http://www.twitter.com/scott_bernstein</a> Or become a "fan" on Facebook here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-Bernsteins-Live-Music-Photos-Page/166706713365451" rel="ugc nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/pages/Scott-Bernsteins-Live-Music-Photos-Page/166706713365451</a>