Kudos Sue and all at the the British Academy! From a dyed in the wool Charanguero (played in my first Charanga in 1978 and later with Charanga Tumbao y Cuerdas in the bay area for many years.). I hung out in Cuba on the road with La Ritmo Oriental in ‘85, also with Orq. Aragon and Orq. Aliamen. In ‘80 had the good fortune to check out Orq. Tipica Juventud in Santiago de Cuba. I studied Humberto Perera’s (Ritmo Oriental) bass style in the early 80’s and he’s probably my biggest influence on bass in Songo styles. Also I’m a recording engineer who’s been a Ribbon mic collector and evangelist since 1999. You might be familiar with Conjunto Cespedes from the USA, I played bass in the band and was the recording engineer and bass player on 2 of their CD’s (Una Sola Casa and Vivito y Coleando) both recorded in my home project-studio in Oakland Calif in the early ‘90’s. Both of those won the NAIRD award for best produced (and we were up against Tito Puente and Ray Baretto - or so I was told). Lately most of my recording gigs are due to my ribbon mic technique and collections so I’m so on-board with what you’re up to!!!
That's great to hear! Did you play with Polo Tamayo when you were with Ritmo Oriental? A lovely man and musician. And really interesting to hear about your work as a bass player and recording engineer - the ribbon mics seem to me to give a warmer sound - is that your experience?
@@charangasue hi Sue, yes I did get to sit in once on the road with La Ritmo! I sat in on “Azucar a Granel” as far as I remember. Yes Polo was there. I can say with pretty good confidence he’s my favorite flute player in Charanga you can see a picture of me playing Humberto‘s bass which was quite a moment. That would be on my Facebook musical photo album. Look me up there as Rob Holland, if you put the tag Nevada City in it might home in on it but I’ll send you a link one way or another we will figure that out. as far as the sound of ribbon Mike’s, yes absolutely warmer and lacking the artificial exaggerated high frequencies of condenser microphones in particular and the slowness and limited response of dynamic microphones. But in particular I’ve also come to notice that ribbon mics seem to give more “shape“ to the sound as long as the engineer doesn’t try to step on that aspect with too much compression etc. Engineers will also try to make Ruben Mike sound like condensers because they use condenser so much in combination in sessions and the condensers will overpower or “mask“ the subtleties of natural sound. I could go on and on and would be happy to perhaps we could talk on the phone sometime. Or zoom call or the like. By the way, are you familiar with the Los Angeles California band “bongo logic“ (with Artie Webb on Flt)? Well either way I hope you are or become familiar with that music. Brett Gollin the leader of that band and I were childhood friends and also played a lot of music together as well as went to Cuba on our very first trips in 1980 on the same tour consisting of musicians and dancers from the United States and elsewhere, a loose conglomeration of those people basically put together to not break the federal laws existing at the time in the USA. Anyway Brett is a consummate chakra girl as well and wrote amazing music in the jazz/tipica vein, He also studied directly with Danielle Diaz the Timbalero from RO and Brett return to Cuba many times to study. I returned once again in 1985 and have not been back. (p.s. At the time I engineered those two CDs with/for Conjunto Cespedes I did not have any ribbon mics, and it was at a time when they were pretty rare in studios back in the early 90s) (Please forgive any misspellings and horrible grammar or confusing language above if there are any because I’m using dictation primarily and I’m up way too early in the morning) hope to be in touch!
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Kudos Sue and all at the the British Academy! From a dyed in the wool Charanguero (played in my first Charanga in 1978 and later with Charanga Tumbao y Cuerdas in the bay area for many years.). I hung out in Cuba on the road with La Ritmo Oriental in ‘85, also with Orq. Aragon and Orq. Aliamen. In ‘80 had the good fortune to check out Orq. Tipica Juventud in Santiago de Cuba. I studied Humberto Perera’s (Ritmo Oriental) bass style in the early 80’s and he’s probably my biggest influence on bass in Songo styles. Also I’m a recording engineer who’s been a Ribbon mic collector and evangelist since 1999. You might be familiar with Conjunto Cespedes from the USA, I played bass in the band and was the recording engineer and bass player on 2 of their CD’s (Una Sola Casa and Vivito y Coleando) both recorded in my home project-studio in Oakland Calif in the early ‘90’s. Both of those won the NAIRD award for best produced (and we were up against Tito Puente and Ray Baretto - or so I was told). Lately most of my recording gigs are due to my ribbon mic technique and collections so I’m so on-board with what you’re up to!!!
That's great to hear! Did you play with Polo Tamayo when you were with Ritmo Oriental? A lovely man and musician. And really interesting to hear about your work as a bass player and recording engineer - the ribbon mics seem to me to give a warmer sound - is that your experience?
@@charangasue hi Sue, yes I did get to sit in once on the road with La Ritmo! I sat in on “Azucar a Granel” as far as I remember.
Yes Polo was there. I can say with pretty good confidence he’s my favorite flute player in Charanga
you can see a picture of me playing Humberto‘s bass which was quite a moment. That would be on my Facebook musical photo album. Look me up there as Rob Holland, if you put the tag Nevada City in it might home in on it but I’ll send you a link one way or another we will figure that out.
as far as the sound of ribbon Mike’s, yes absolutely warmer and lacking the artificial exaggerated high frequencies of condenser microphones in particular and the slowness and limited response of dynamic microphones. But in particular I’ve also come to notice that ribbon mics seem to give more “shape“ to the sound as long as the engineer doesn’t try to step on that aspect with too much compression etc. Engineers will also try to make Ruben Mike sound like condensers because they use condenser so much in combination in sessions and the condensers will overpower or “mask“ the subtleties of natural sound. I could go on and on and would be happy to perhaps we could talk on the phone sometime. Or zoom call or the like.
By the way, are you familiar with the Los Angeles California band “bongo logic“ (with Artie Webb on Flt)?
Well either way I hope you are or become familiar with that music.
Brett Gollin the leader of that band and I were childhood friends and also played a lot of music together as well as went to Cuba on our very first trips in 1980 on the same tour consisting of musicians and dancers from the United States and elsewhere, a loose conglomeration of those people basically put together to not break the federal laws existing at the time in the USA. Anyway Brett is a consummate chakra girl as well and wrote amazing music in the jazz/tipica vein, He also studied directly with Danielle Diaz the Timbalero from RO and Brett return to Cuba many times to study. I returned once again in 1985 and have not been back.
(p.s. At the time I engineered those two CDs with/for Conjunto Cespedes I did not have any ribbon mics, and it was at a time when they were pretty rare in studios back in the early 90s)
(Please forgive any misspellings and horrible grammar or confusing language above if there are any because I’m using dictation primarily and I’m up way too early in the morning) hope to be in touch!