Jinjer and dealing with very loud environments [Rant]
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2020 9:52 am
I've been grooving on Jinjer lately, and I finally ended up finding a very "honest" live show recording them. Here, the band still sounds pretty good, but the singer Tatiana is definitely pitchy in her full-voiced vocals. So, stuff in other "live" videos is probably is "fixed" in post-production. However, I think this is probably a consequence of the band's setup in live shows, specifically it being extremely loud, which is pretty typical in that "genre". I know from my own experience that playing in very loud concerts, I literally cannot hear my own pitch. It's not just not hearing the sound of my bell, but actually having my ear drums over-driven so that it's literally impossible to hear pitch. The natural tendency in that circumstance is to go sharp - and that's exactly what I hear in this concert.
Everyone has room for improvement, I guess. I still think this is a great band, although definitely not for everyone, as is all music. And even with the pitch problems, I think that Tatiana still sounds fantastic. It's cool to see other musicians deal with the same problems we deal with - musicians who know me all know that I gripe about trumpets (sometimes), and more often, keyboards and bass, being loud.
A related idea: there definitely is a conceptual similarity between bands like this and some forms of jazz. I'm thinking specifically of people like Maynard Ferguson making a spectacle of blowing the piss out of his trumpet, and still being able to perform with well thought out ideas.
To not just be a nit-picker and suggest a solution: if they could find a way to work with the visual change, have Tatiana perform in a noise-cancelling helmet, similar to what we see some helicopter pilots use. In really loud environments, earplugs, in-ear monitors, and even headphones may not be enough, because sound will travel through the skull to the eardrums.
Everyone has room for improvement, I guess. I still think this is a great band, although definitely not for everyone, as is all music. And even with the pitch problems, I think that Tatiana still sounds fantastic. It's cool to see other musicians deal with the same problems we deal with - musicians who know me all know that I gripe about trumpets (sometimes), and more often, keyboards and bass, being loud.
A related idea: there definitely is a conceptual similarity between bands like this and some forms of jazz. I'm thinking specifically of people like Maynard Ferguson making a spectacle of blowing the piss out of his trumpet, and still being able to perform with well thought out ideas.
To not just be a nit-picker and suggest a solution: if they could find a way to work with the visual change, have Tatiana perform in a noise-cancelling helmet, similar to what we see some helicopter pilots use. In really loud environments, earplugs, in-ear monitors, and even headphones may not be enough, because sound will travel through the skull to the eardrums.