Rudy Van Gelder
Rudy Van Gelder is an American recording engineer from Jersey City, New Jersey. He was born on November 2, 1924 and is still alive to this day. Van Gelder specializes in recording jazz music and is regarded as the most important recording engineer of jazz by some observers. What is strikingly impressive is that Van Gelder has recorded several thousand jazz sessions, including many widely recognized as classics, in a career spanning more than half a century. The man has recorded many of the great names in the genre, including the likes of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Grant Green, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane just to name a few. Rudy Van Gelder has worked for many record companies, but he is most closely associated with Blue Note Records.
As a youth he possessed an incredible interest in electronics and microphones and wanted to gain a better understanding of how the big record companies recorded such amazing albums and so he made it a point to focus his attention primarily on the recording techniques and eventually found the “Van Gelder” sound within his recording process.
Van Gelder was named a fellow of the Audio Engineering Society in 2009. In 2013, he received the Society's most prestigious award, the AES Gold Medal.
For my review I wanted to use a piece from my own private collection so I pulled out deep from the depths of my hodge podge collection of jazz and found a jem I didn’t even know I possessed. I found the “Moving Out” album recorded in 1954. This album features Thelonious Monk & Sonny Rollins Quartet. On here we have Sonny Rollins playing tenor sax, Thelonious Monk on piano, Tommy Potter on bass guitar and Art Taylor on percussion. I wanted to pick one track and focus my attention on this and so I choose the song “More Than You Know.”
I was lucky to come across this recording and is in pretty good condition with a few pops and snaps but the quality for analysis is right on par and exceptional for an listening and analysis review.
Jumping right into my review and after listening to this track on repeat several times as well as on headphones, I really loved the warmth of the recording, your obviously going to relay a ton of warmth from this representation on vinyl but there seems to be a really warm sound especially and more specifically with focus on Sonny Rollins tenor saxophone. The Allmusic review by Michael G. Nastos describes the lineup as "one of the more potent combos of 1954". Author and musician Peter Niklas Wilson called it "simply a typical blowing session, in which virtuoso up-tempo playing and a wealth of invention in a well-known framework count for more than structural innovation". I would have to absolutely agree in the essence that this individual song from the album itself has such a primary focus on Rollins performance. There is a fantastic solo by Thelonious Monk that carries the whimsical nuances that Sonny instills into the piece and helps gently nudge the piece along but I cant help to think that this is a soft and smooth opportunity for Sonny Rollins to take an opportunity to explore his subtle side.
I am to understand that this was the period just before Sonny really found a new way to present his skills in a different light and that these recordings done through the great production recording of Van Gelder were used to reference the dynamic change that Sonny Rollins went through with his progression with tenor sax into who we now know the musician to be. The over all balance to this recording is fairly simplistic. The recording tends to be a center driven mix with a parallel to the actual notation in such a matter that portrays the slightly panned left keys and tenor sax. It has a sway to the balance and to me really is appropriate to the mix especially because it feels like it fits to the deep groove of the track itself. The dynamic mix of the instrumentation is extremely apparent though on this track. You have a front and center presence with both the solo’s from again both Sonny’s performance as well as Thelonious’ performance. To me honestly the keys fell a little more flat in the recording even though they had an intentional push forward in the mix, however I’m not too sure of Corse of Van Gelder’s intent on his mix. The bass comes in a little hotter then it truly exists in the rest of the mix, but this just again displays how dynamic the balance is of the sax and keys here. As far as a percussion and bass driven song, this is not the case. Here we have these instruments acting as an accompaniment to the primary focus at hand, tenor sax, and the way that Van Gelder’s microphone techniques were utilized, I believe he really accomplished this nicely and is exactly what I would be looking for in a mix when it comes to a primary focus and attention to detail with placement. I really feel that he did a remarkable job with this.
In my humble opinion though, I really wanted to have a touch of more presence from the percussion, even if it was just a tad more compression and gain in the mix with the overheads of the kit itself. I feel like the higher end of these frequencies were more than slightly absent, therefore giving way to a slightly bold attack when the sax comes back in after the keys solo. The high end obviously exists within the tenor sax performance so it leads me to believe that this was again another intentional approach of Van Gelders. I really appreciated the fact that I could analyze this song on vinyl. My take from this is that you can definitely get a good understanding of the “Van Gelder” sound and that is exactly what I was hoping to achieve. Really warm tones on specific instrumentation, and a slightly flat representation on others with a parallel between the mix and the vibe of the song itself. In it’s entirety, the mix was very conservative and worked fantastic with what he was trying to accomplish. The “Van Gelder” style of production stood out to me immediately and I appreciated the opportunity to look into his lens through listening with my heart.
