Live studio recordings

[nofi]

i prefer this 'warts and all' approach to recording, like early blue note jazz artists. to me it is a more honest representation of the music than spending six months in a studio and spending lots of money to polish something to perfection. as well as mistakes there are also happy accidents in live recordings that can't be planned but add to the organic nature of the recording. imho of course. i also like field recordings for the same reasons.

maybe this post should be moved somewhere else?

[rahock]

We were talking about T Bone Walker the other day and I mentioned I was a big fan of his. On some of his old album covers they showed pictures of the band recording through just one big old mic. When T Bone was singing,  he stood in front of the mic, when one of the horn players took a solo, T Bone stood back and the horn player stepped up to the mic. Pretty darn primitive, but amazingly freakin' good.
 A lot of his stuff was originally cut on 78s and then later remixed on 33 1/3 , but whatever you hear from him , the quality of the recordings is excellent.
My hat's off to the guys who got such excellent results under such primitive conditions, but my hat is  REALLY off to T Bone and his band .
When you're good you're good and that is about all there is to it. No tricks, no fancy schmancy technical stuff, just a bunch of outstanding musicians with good mic technique, great sense of dynamics and the ability to just plain and simple, make the magic happen .

Anybody who plays the blues(or anything else) should give T Bone a good listen. Check the dates on the recordings and listen up. You will here a lot of guitar work and arragements that you've heard done hundreds of times by hundreds of people.....and all most all of them were done by T Bone a couple of decades before the other guys borrowed them.  His guitar licks are legendary but someone else at a later date is usually credited. If you give this guy a good listen and check the dates, you will walk away thinking he invented everything done on the electric guitar except the wah wah .
Rick

[JimB52]

I'm a big fan of live to tape.

[rahock]

There have been many bands who were so great live and not so great on recordings even with all the fancy studio tools.
Back in the 60s and early 70s there are a few that come to mind. Lee Michaels and Canned Heat are two that top that list. I saw both several times and their live shows were as good as it gets. I don't recall if either ever did live albums, but no way did their recordings ever do them justice. There records were OK , and they had some considerable success with them but they really didn't tell the same story that I heard by seeing them live.

The Allman Bros on the other hand were a win under any circumstance. Live , studio, live recording, whatever, always a win. Earth Wind and Fire were amazing in that respect too. In fact their live recordings were IMO, more polished than their studio work, and for the type of music they did, that seems almost impossible.
I know a lot of people will want my head for this comment, but Led Zeplin, who I caught twice, couldn't put a live show together to save their lives. Yet their first two albums are some of the finest work that ever happened IMO. If they had started out with a couple of live albums I think they would have had about as much impact as a fart in a windstorm .
Rick

[nofi]

oh yeah, led zep was amazingly sloppy live. many times the shows sounded  like drunken rehearsals, but another band emerged in the studio.

[Chris P.]

I guess The Who are the other way around. Great live, but they didn't capture the live sound well on records. Of course they did with some live albums and Who's Next sound great.

I love sixties recordings. Simple, primitive, a mistake here and there. Today they take six months to mix and repair the music of love concerts. I know a case of this. Every bad hit on snare or cymbals were replaced by better ones... People here/see this 'live' DVD, go to a local band and expect the same sound...

Of course we already talked a lot about live concerts on CD not being live...

[Dave W]

I love sixties recordings. Simple, primitive, a mistake here and there. Today they take six months to mix and repair the music of love concerts. I know a case of this. Every bad hit on snare or cymbals were replaced by better ones... People here/see this 'live' DVD, go to a local band and expect the same sound...

That's ridiculous. It defeats the whole purpose of recording a live concert. "Perfecting" live performances has gone on here and there for years but not to that extent.

[Psycho Bass Guy]

The band I am currently producing recorded all of it tracks live in their rehearsal space with only vocals and embellishments dubbed later.  I am very happy with the sound.

[rahock]

I've done some basement live studio recordings where the music came out absolutely great , but the vocals were way too muddy. Too much volume and a confined space tends to take away the top end edge off the vocals. The music comes out fine but the vocals land with a dull thud. Definately some touch up work needed on the vocals .
 A larger space to work in, where there the vocals could ring out would have helped a lot. Even then, it's still tough to capture good quality vocals. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can pull off a good quality live recording with no touch ups on the vocals.  The vocals can be spot on  , it's just difficult to capture
The guys basement studio where we were working has turned out some first class stuff ,but the first class stuff was done in multiple tracks and the vocals done seperately using higher grade recording mics . On the live stuff we were looking at a couple of SM 58s that picked up a boatload of backround noise and in general lacked the range and sensitivity to capture the vocals properly. Everything sounded great while we were doing it but on the playback, the vocals lost all the upper edge and any trace of natural echo......just plain flattened out.
Rick

[nofi]

the cowboy junkies have recorded a couple albums live and the vocals are pristine. check out 'whites off earth now' and 'the trinity sessions'. not surprisingly on the first album the bass is the thing that is too loud and you have to back it off on your stereo.

[Dave W]

I remember The Trinity Session. It was well done.

[Freuds_Cat]

I'm not against either "live at once" or the "individual tracking" approach to recording. I love the environment where you feel like you can place no restrictions on whats possible in a studio, but if a song needs more of the energy created by spontaneous interaction then by all means, why not all play at once?

I recently co-wrote and recorded 3 songs by individual tracking, and minus certain individual musical shortcomings I'm very happy with the way the band gels. That said, we also recorded the one and only live performance of these songs. Editing on them starts this week. We will not be doing an Eagles (ie Hell Freezes over DVD) and replacing, re-recording or cut / pasting huge chunks of the live recording. At most the odd noticeable bum note will get replaced with the same but correct note from elsewhere in the song. The vocals will get the Auto tune treatment  The rest will just be an honest clean mix.

[nofi]

when you replace bum notes and tweak the singing isn't that about the same as individual tracks but with a 'live' presence?

[Freuds_Cat]

when you replace bum notes and tweak the singing isn't that about the same as individual tracks but with a 'live' presence?

Kinda but not really in my opinion. The live stuff will have the mic spill that the individual tracking wont. Means you are more locked in when making any changes after the fact. I guess thats pretty much the point of individual tracking. it gives you the freedom to continue making changes after the initial bed tracks have been done.

As I mentioned, I like both styles of recording. They both give you big benefits IMHO. It really depends on the song and the band as to which I prefer at a given time.

You have an opinion on this Rob?

[Psycho Bass Guy]

when you replace bum notes and tweak the singing isn't that about the same as individual tracks but with a 'live' presence?

...not in the least. First of all, unless you're multitracking, there's usually no way to isolate a single instrument or single note. As far as further tweaking on two-track recordings, those are just accomodations to the recording medium, as most live sound is not done with regard to a recording, and the recording levels are made with respect to the live sound, not vice-versa. For examples of live-in-the-studio magic, you need look no further than the revered recordings from the 50's and 60's, where a studio band had to really be able to work as a group instead of individuals counting on a mix engineer to create a chemistry that is often lacking. In terms of fidelity and technology, Motown was awful, but it was the magic of the Funk Brothers backing so many of those stars which made those recordings classics.