Buddy Holly, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins et le MONO

Je ne suis pas un amateur du rock'n'roll des années '50 (trop loin de mes racines), mais comme prise don son mono cristalline, c'est inégalable. L'influence sur les Beatles des années '63-'65 est palpable, le son glorieux. Dynamique? Écoutez le monstrueux solo de piano sur "Think It Over"... Un mastering digital "as is" qui a popularisé l'expression "From The Original Master Tapes" et le travail de l'ingénieur de mastering Steve Hoffman. Qui avoue n'avoir rien fait!

Well, the first compact disc I did was an album by Buddy Holly called "From the Original Master Tapes." It's an album where the mastering part took about three hours, but actual research, finding the right tapes, took maybe half a year. Spread out all over the place, I found everything, brought them all together. That was 90% of the battle. When I mastered that album, I was sitting right there with the engineer who was a really nice guy, and I said, "Look, all these things sound great just the way they are. Do we have to master them? Can't we just transfer them straight?" And the guy said, "Transfer them straight? Well, I hear a cloud on the bass a little bit here. And I hear this and I hear that..." I said, "well if you take the cloud out, his voice just doesn't sound right. Leave the bass cloud in, worry about the voice, and my name's going on it, so if there's a problem I will take the heat." And he said, "ok, we won't do anything." So I just did it straight, trusted my instincts, and it's the album that I'm most noted for because... [sighs] I had nothing to with the sonics of that album. It was all Norman Petty's engineering back in New Mexico in the 50s. He did it right, and I saw no reason to tamper with it.