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Comment by jcims | Hacker News Reader

NPR's Tiny Desk concerts (when they were actually at NPR) regularly blow me away with the production quality. They are so good at it despite all the wonky setups that come through. If you dig around in the comments you'll see my handle in there fawning over them regularly lol.

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The dude in charge of the Tiny Desk Recording is Josh Rogosin, he made a couple of videos about the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e07bI5rz6FY

Edit: this is one of my favourite tiny desk concerts, it sounds so good on headphones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47XlUL6sRow

Couple more sweet mixes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB4oFu4BtQ8 (Roots. The brass mix gives me goosebumps lol)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFycqnOpifQ (Nickel Creek. If there really is only one mic someone has sold their soul. The sound stage is perfect.)

Chris Thile is such a genius, Goat Rodeo (Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, Stuart Duncan, Yo-Yo Ma) is one of my favourite things in the world https://youtu.be/O7EcT5YzKhQ

> If there really is only one mic someone has sold their soul.

The one mic thing is actually ort of a bluegrass tradition, stemming back from radio and how it was recorded. A lot of bluegrass players learn how to balance themselves around a single mic, moving towards or away with solo and leaning in over the instrument to sing.

Nice! You can tell they know exactly what they are doing, i wasn’t aware of the relationship to bluegrass.

I used to produce a (very) little bit of live music and the difference in ‘babysitting’ required between an professional performer and someone who may have an amazing or even superior talent but little experience was remarkable.

> If there really is only one mic someone has sold their soul. The sound stage is perfect.

“Note: The secret of the 418-S is that it's two mics in one; a cardioid "mid" condenser capsule facing front, and a bidirectional capsule focused on either "side." It's a mid/side stereo mic that needs to be decoded in post, which allows you to control the stereo width of the image, even after the recording is made.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2019/04/02/705579879/t...

Nice find! That’s awesome! Also glad he didn’t technically have to sell his soul for that sound. XD

Thanks for that, here's one of my favorites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7My5IpEzVM&ab_channel=NPRMu...

Not exactly Tiny Desk Concert, but close enough, my fave was an appearance by Steven Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields). This NPR series was called "Project Song"-- the challenge was to write and produce a song in two days.

https://www.npr.org/2007/11/04/15859351/stephin-merritt-two-...

The KEXP stuff also sounds as good if not better than album recordings most of the time. Quite impressive stuff both of them. Of course there's something magical about live sets that often get lost on studio recordings.

Great thing we have sources like NPR Tiny Desk and KEXP so we can discover and enjoy awesome music.

Just throwing in some semi-random sets I enjoy

KEXP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhicDUgXyNg Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub-naDJbKFY Billy Strings & Don Julin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IIuHL_8Olg amiina

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev5UXJpUTpY Mokoomba

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpnQlnra_to Kikagaku Moyo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo1zyMk1n5I José González

NPR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGAzPtwUJJU Andrew Bird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwYAeUpH1NM Trombone Shorty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsNKSbTNd5I DakhaBrakha

> Of course there's something magical about live sets that often get lost on studio recordings.

I went on a SRV bender a couple of years ago, comparing the studio cut of Lenny to pretty much any bootleg live recording i could find. There’s no comparison to be had, the live ones are just better.

There are a million other examples of course but possibly a surprising one is Miley Cyrus. Her energy during shows just hits highs that seem unavailable in the studio. Her vocals have come into a new era these past few years, especially her covers.

Anyway, thanks for links!

These are all great but holy moly DakhaBrakha is the best thing I've seen in a long time. Just give this a few minutes. Headphones or good speakers please lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxg1dL_x0gw

I think this is the first time i've understood the siren song. I have no idea what they are saying somehow i still want to do it.

Heh yeah pretty much same reaction I had when I stumbled over them!

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