Todd Garfinkle's company, MA Recordings, makes astonishing-sounding albums
of brilliant music with not much more than a pair of microphones and a
recorder.
Two MA Recordings albums, "Departe De Casa" and "Krushevo."
Steve Guttenberg/CNET Todd Garfinkle started out as a musician and landed a recording contract with CBS/Sony in 1986, while he was living in Japan. The relationship with CBS/Sony didn't continue, so not long after that Garfinkle decided to start his own company, MA Recordings. He bought a custom-made microphone preamp, a pair of Bruel & Kjaer microphones, and a specially modified Pioneer Electronics DAT high-resolution digital recorder. He avoided sterile studios, opting instead to record in great-sounding churches and concert halls, as he knew those places would be a better environment to make music in. Once you record in the best-sounding places there's no need to add digital reverb in the mix or post production -- he gets exactly the sound he wants on location.
MA Recordings has now produced 84 albums of world, jazz, and classical music, and more are in the works. Garfinkle currently records in higher-resolution 176kHz PCM or DSD on a different
recorder than the one he started with, but for the most part Garfinkle's no-frills approach hasn't changed all that much. He still uses just a pair of mics to record solo artists or large groups. No matter what, the recordings are always "live," made without overdubbing or adding any
other tracks.
With most commercial recordings the "sound" is created in the mix, after the vocalists have stepped away from the microphones and the musicians have put down their instruments; MA Recordings' artists play an integral role in creating the sound of their music as they perform it. There's
no after-the-session mixing.
Garfinkle personally produces, records, edits, and masters almost all of his projects; he's now based in Los Angeles, and records in Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Argentina, and here in New York.
One of my favorite MA Recordings is "Out of Time and Country." It's folk music from Sweden and France, for voice, medieval fiddle, guitar, percussion, and the sound is pure and clear. Like Garfinkle's other recordings, "Out of Time and Country" sounds like there's nothing to it, and I mean that as a compliment. Definitely also check out "Llama," which features the extraordinary voice of Silvia Perez Cruz and steel pan drum percussion; it was recorded in a little church in the Barri Gotic quarter of Barcelona, Spain. The church is as much of a player as the musicians, you're in the space with them!
Garfinkle adjusting the microphones for a Bosendorfer Imperial piano solo session in 1988
Todd Garfinkle Garfinkle very rarely uses dynamic range compression, equalization, or processing-- he doesn't need to -- he fine-tunes the sound at the session by moving the singers' or instruments' positions relative to the two microphones. That's it, but after you listen to a bunch of MA Recordings music it's best not to immediately play any other CDs or LPs. They will sound squashed, processed, and lifeless by comparison.
The best way to get acquainted with the music is to start with the SACD Sampler; it has two completely different sets of tunes, one on the CD layer, another set on the SACD layer. MA Recordings' titles are available on CD, and some are also available on LPs and high-resolution DVD-ROMs.
Garfinkle didn't jump on the high-resolution bandwagon because Neil Young now thinks it's cool; Garfinkle has been recording high-resolution audio from Day One. He will start selling high-resolution downloads on his Web site before the end of the year.
Google is reportedly working on a music subscription service to compete with the likes of Spotify, MOG and Rdio. It might seem crazy to jump into a crowded market whose basic business model is already questionable – but for Google it makes perfect sense.
The company is already a huge, albeit unofficial, player in streaming music. YouTube is now a top destination for listening to songs and albums, not to mention the trove of remixes and parodies that get uploaded everyday. Today, when teenagers want to hear a new song, they don't turn on the radio or buy a CD. They go to YouTube.
There's good reason for that. First off, it's free. It also has an enormous amount of music. I've had premium subscriptions to Rdio, Rhapsody and (currently) Spotify. As extensive as those services' libraries are, there's lots of music they don't have. Whenever I can't find something on Spotify, I check YouTube and SoundCloud. It's usually there. Want to stream the Beatles from your phone? Their songs are all over YouTube, not Spotify.
YouTube: The World's Biggest Accidental Music Service
If there was any question about the critical role YouTube plays in music discovery, it was answered last week when Billboard announced it will factor YouTube listens into the formula behind its Hot 100 singles chart. In a post-"Call Me Maybe" world, it's impossible to accurately analyze the popularity of a song without taking YouTube plays into consideration.
Of course, the music-streaming use case is not quite what YouTube was designed for. It's a video site. It may work as a one-song-at-a-time music search engine to fill Spotify's gaps, but it's pretty poorly organized compared to existing music services. That's why Google Music is a more logical and likely home for this rumored streaming service, presumably with some cross-promotion via YouTube.
The fact that people turn to YouTube for music is something that evolved organically thanks to its user-generated nature and Google's willingness to pay licensing fees to keep the music playing. There's still plenty of copyright infringement going on, but Google is getting more aggressive about dealing with that. The RIAA may still complain, but more and more, Google is catering to copyright owners. Initiatives like this are exactly why the Plex is so eager to please the content industry.
Thanks to YouTube and the Google Music MP3 store, the company already has relationships in place with labels, songwriters and other copyright owners. But those existing partnerships aren't enough. The subscription-based streaming model is fundamentally different and requires unique, rather costly licensing deals.
Music Streaming Is About To Get Even More Crowded
If you think the music streaming space is crowded now, just wait. Deezer, a hugely popular streaming service now available in 182 countries, is in talks to launch in the U.S. sometime this year. This summer, another much-hyped streaming service will go live, this time from Beats Audio, which acquired MOG last year. Then there's the ongoing rumor about Apple taking aim at Pandora with an iTunes-based Internet radio product of its own.
Exactly what Google's streaming service will look like is anybody's guess. That will depend in large part on what kind of content deals it can manage to negotiate. But the company is in a very good position to enter this space. After all, Google already has millions of streaming music users. It just needs to polish (and almost certainly rebrand) the experience and make it official with the major labels.
