Miles Davis Septet
November 6, 1971
Philharmonie
Berlin, Germany

NDR Radio ‘live-to-air’ FM radio broadcast, 83:52, A

Miles Davis (tpt); Gary Bartz (ss, as); Keith Jarrett (kb); Michael Henderson (b); “Ndugu” Leon Chancler (d); Charles Don Alias (perc); James Mtume Foreman (perc)

1 Introduction / Band Warming Up (0:51)
2 Directions (14:05)
3 Honky Tonk (17:50)
4 What I Say? (8:28)
5 Sanctuary (4:41)
6 It’s About That Time (16:26)
7 Funky Tonk > Sanctuary (21:27)

Version History

This recording originates from a plaz transfer of his friend’s tape in 2000 or thereabouts, so here’s the original information….

Lineage: NDR FM stereo radio broadcast > R > cas > cdr
Transfer: Akai stereo cassette deck > TASCAM CD-RW700

Editor 1: 1st generation cassette transfer and WavLab 4 restoration by plaz and Guiseppe Candiamo

• Continuous NR: The original transfer disc contained a couple of perfect noise samples at the start and end, so it was possible to remove most of the broadband tape noise and hiss without adversely affecting the music. The two channels were separated into L and R channel files and de-noised independently because the noise was different for each channel. The continuous DNR process was run successively at a very low rate, using the output from the previous run to remove any DNR artifacts during the subsequent run, a virtual CEDAR processing stack. This process was applied to each of the two cassette tape sides involved, and then the files were reassembled.
• spliced 2 tape sides: This recording was copied from a continuous reel and appears to be the complete live-to-air broadcast.
• gain normalized and tracked

The layout of the original trade CDRS:
CD1 [47:48]
1 Introduction / band Warming Up (0:56)
2 Directions (14:55)
3 Honky Tonk (2:38)
4 Funky Tonk (1:41)
5 Honky Tonk (6:50)
6 What I Say? (15:48)
7 Sanctuary (4:56)
CD2 [39:18]
8 It’s About That Time (17:04)
9 Funky Tonk / Sanctuary (22:13)
TT: 87:04

Editor 2 (twat with advisor Prof Goody)

Post Production: FLAC > WAV > Adobe Audition (Pitch Bender: +60 cents, Fade Out: d1t08) > CD Wave (Re-Tracked & removed gaps) > TLH > FLAC
Editor 3 (TomP with Nero 7)

• Reduced RH channel to 70%
• Cross-faded L&R channels (80:20 ratio) to fix headphone unfriendly mix
• Fixed glitch 8.22 in Honky Tonk
• Fixed glitches 3.37 3.52 & 4.30 in Sanctuary
• Fixed glitch at 0.41 in “It’s About That Time”
• Combined the split Honky Tonk tracks (inc. short Funky Tonk fragment)
• Fixed the Fade out between Sanctuary & It’s about that time; now it is a continuous set

Comments:
Recording clarity is superb, with very low noise, so the original recorder did a fantastic job, but it still needed the final touches (details above) to make it a ‘must have’ recording; its has low noise and a great mix as the 3 percussionists are spread across the stereo image. I would classify it as similar to the quality of the official Black Beauty CDs, a slightly edgy sound, but terrific powerful performance, definitely towards the electric side (my distinct preference as Keith plays a lot more organ) rather than jazz side of this group’s recordings, so…Hope you enjoy this as much as I do now! Many thanks again to ‘twat’ for his post and encouragement for this remaster

Editor 4 (plaz): Sound Forge 10 Pro

• repaired a few clicks and pops, removed a few micro gaps near a couple of the track boundaries, gain normalized and retracked.

Acknowledgements:
Thanks to ML for his generosity in loaning me his 1st generation cassette of this (then uncirculated) stereo recording. Thanks to Giuseppe Candiamo at AllSound Restore for invaluable help with this and other music projects. Thanks for the remastering work by Professor Goody (editor 2) and TomP (editor 3). Eric Theissen has kindly created the artwork.