Name: Hello beginnings by DianeMoser
Duration: 1 min 5 s
Description: A recording of improvising with a chipping sparrow and a black capped chickadee

A recording of improvising with a chipping sparrow and a black capped chickadee

Birdsong Project

Hello beginnings

Solo DUETS

I Wonder If He Knows

Pennies From Heaven

Sweatin It

Roly Poly

Do You Know What It Means?

Swing 42

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Angel Eyes

All of Me

This recording needs some explanation: 
It is made to compare two systems 1/ a stereo binaural system with two omnis, like SASS or likewise and 2/ a system with two cardioids sitting as close as possible to one another, facing 90 degrees left and right, so called ”X-Y” stereo.
The track is continous, that is 5s taken from the binaural track, then the following 5s from the XY track, then the following 5s from the binaural track and so forth.  The two recorings were made simultaniously.
One can hear that the omnis don´t have exactly the same ”tone” as the cardioids, but it´s more interesting to hear the difference because of the distance between the omnis compared to the distance between the cardiois. As the omnis are about 150mm apart from one another they will pick up a phase stereo, while the cardioids will not, as they are too close too ane another. 
Thereby, the cardioids will ”place” the  traffic noise in the middle of the stereo picture where it becomes more (psyco acoustically) audible. 
I certainly find the sound from the omni rig much more pleasant than from the XY. In the same time I am aware of that ”all” professional people would classify the XY as more ”correct”. 
This, I think, goes back to a very old dogm. Fifty years ago, the broadcasting companies, BBC in particular, had problems with the coming stereo television sets: How can we (BBC) produce a stereo  sound that sounds good also in the mono set up´s? The best answer was M/S stereo, where the M (mid) came out nicely also in the mono TV loudspeakers. The next best was XY stereo, with the cardioid capsules so close to one another that the phase differences could be neglected. That was fifty years ago, but ”you can´t use binaural systems professionally” still lives on.
A fact is that XY stereo produces a better amplitude stereo when loudspeakers are used, which everyone with nearfield monitors will hear. It is also clearly visible if you open the track with Audacity for example. But it is a ”better sound” compared to the omnis?

Binaural stereo  vs. XY

Diane Moser has been a featured performer and composer throughout the US with jazz ensembles, big bands, orchestras, chamber music, dance and theater companies since 1975. Since 1996 she has been the music director/contributing composer/pianist for her 17 piece Diane Moser's Composers Big Band, other groups include the Diane Moser Quintet, and the Diane Moser Trio. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony  and Virginia Center for the Arts and in 2011 was named the Mid-Atlantic Creative Arts Fellow at the Millay Colony for the Arts. She has received composition awards from Chamber Music America, Meet The Composer and the American Music Center. She has been a featured pianist and composer with Mark Dresser, Marty Ehrlich, Gerry Hemingway, Howard Johnson, Oliver Lake, Tina Marsh, Charles McPherson,  Lisa Sokolov, Yale Strom, poet Bill Zavatsky, the Cedar Rapids Symphony, Tri-City Symphony, the Drifters and many others. 
She recently composed and recorded the music for the award winning documentary "Breaking Boundaries:The Art of Alex Masket" ,and her recording with the extraordinary bassist Mark Dresser "Duetto" for CIMP records was recently released in March 2012. Since 2006 she has been a member of the core faculty for The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music where she teaches the composition/ensemble and history courses.
Originally from Iowa, she has lived in San Diego, CA, Brooklyn, NY, and since 1988, Montclair, NJ, where she maintains a private piano studio, while performing and composing throughout the NY/NJ area. 
review of "Duetto"..."Versatility is one of Dresser's strongest attributes, and being a sensitive duo partner is another. There is a simpatico going on here that navigates the sublime. These two musicians seem to live in each others heads, because everything is perfectly balanced--from the tune authorship to the remarkably even distribution of melodies and solos....Moser takes an astonishing solo that places her in the elite of improvising pianists working today" Robert Bush, San Diego Reader, 4/12/12
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/jam-session/2012/apr/12/diane-moser-mark-dresser-duetto/

Hello beginnings

DianeMoser

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