I awoke from a bad dream early this morning. Last evening I was doing some reading for a term paper. I had been listening to the Goldberg Variations (Bach) played on a Klavins “Una Corda” piano, where instead of two strings per course, the piano has onely one string per course. There is a good bit of reverb in the recording, and the playing is masterful. I can hardly comment on how the Una Corda design differs in sound from a conventional piano. The sound is beautiful through both discs worth of music tracks.
What had me going to be with some sense of unease was that one of the new tubes I recently bought, for my Schiit Audio Valhalla 2 single-ended triode, output transformer-less all-tube headphone amp / preamp, was behaving microphonically (making sound in the headphones when I tapped on it) and was making noise that sounded as if there was a defect. I swapped them out for the previous set, and there was no microphonicity or noise. This morning, I popped the new tubes back in, and they sound great! Yesterday, the amp had been running all day, and maybe the tubes or some other part had had enough. Maybe I swapped channels, and the tube was behaving microphonically and making noise in the right channel but, now being in the left channel, the electronic situation is different, and there is no problem. Whatever the case, I have no complaints and am relieved at the result of swapping out.
A friend introduced me to Klavins pianos through a Nils Frahm album (below). These are mind-blowing pianos, for the most part. I don’t know a lot about pianos, but the vertical concert grands shown here are amazing.
For example, this one:
A smaller piano, the M370, is featured on this free-download album by Nils Frahm: https://www.nilsfrahm.com/works/sol/. I recommend it. The bass in the tone is beyond any piano I’d heard.
Having wrapped up listening to disc two of the Goldberg Variations again, I’ve switched to Dizzie Gillespie with Sonny Rollins, on Sonny Side Up, from 1957. There’s plenty of room reverb on Rollins’s saxophone. You can hear its sound reflecting off the walls of the recording studio. This can also be heard on Kind of Blue, with John Coltrane’s sax and Miles Davis’s trumpet. Sonny Side Up begins with “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” and there is singing by Dizzy Gillespie. I had no idea he could sing. The album features Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins, both on tenor saxes, as well. I only knew Stitt as an alto player. Charlie Persip is a drummer I don’t know, and he’s killing it. Ray Bryant is on keys, and Tommy Bryant (brothers?) is on bass. This album is hot, like a cooking egg.