"Live" Performance Broadcasts These Days

[fu2jobu]

I have been watching a lot of concert broadcasts lately- mostly on Palladia, MTV and HDNet. It struck me how good bands sound in a live enviroment these days. Everything and every band sounds perfect these days which made me wonder how "live" the recordings actually are.

 

This weekend I saw a McCartney concert on TV and I'm thinking to myself how great he sounds. This morning a local radio station played some recent live recordings and what a difference. McCartney sounded more his age and nowhere close to perfect. I still think it was a good performance. It's a shame but I think we are losing live performances (not that live performances haven't been recorded in the past, it just seems like everything live these days sounds perfect).

 

They also played some David Gilmour concerts this weekend and again everything was spot on. Too spot on IMO.

[crowguitar]

you do have to remember.. that both McCartney and Gilmour have the cash to hire the best musical automatons that money can buy. Those sidemen are all top notch and can pretty much nail every tune exact if not better than the original recordings.

 

Plus if you watch the actual videos, there's usually 10 to almost 20 people up there doing each part, from multiple guitarists, keys, horns, vocals, etc.

 

And with that kind of payday at stake, you BETTER nail your parts, or you're getting shipped home.

[crowguitar]

as for some other newer (and even classic) bands, some have been known to fly tracks into live performances, either onstage via protools or just some edits to the board mix in post. More common than most people think, or the performers want to let you know.

[MrChitlins]

Call me crazy, but I prefer high quality sound.

It sounds better.

[Prages]

From a technology standpoint, it's also much easier to do a great sounding live recording nowadays compared to years past. I mean, they can multi-track everything, then after the show they can go back and fix flubs if they need to. Plus, just having the ability to remix everything for broadcast goes a long way.

[fu2jobu]

 

you do have to remember.. that both McCartney and Gilmour have the cash to hire the best musical automatons that money can buy. Those sidemen are all top notch and can pretty much nail every tune exact if not better than the original recordings. Plus if you watch the actual videos, there's usually 10 to almost 20 people up there doing each part, from multiple guitarists, keys, horns, vocals, etc. And with that kind of payday at stake, you BETTER nail your parts, or you're getting shipped home.... as for some other newer (and even classic) bands, some have been known to fly tracks into live performances, either onstage via protools or just some edits to the board mix in post. More common than most people think, or the performers want to let you know.

 

 

Yeah I get that McCartney and Gilmour can hire the best guns. It wasn't the instrumentation that struck me in those cases but the vocals. Too perfect.

 

Most every band I see "live" on TV seems to be perfect in the instrumentation and vocals. Would like to be able to compare some actual live recordings to what they are broadcasting. I get the feeling the live experience would be vastly different (in McCartneys case it was IMO).

[fu2jobu]

 

Call me crazy, but I prefer high quality sound. It sounds better.

 

 

High quality sound is a good thing and I also prefer it. However, there is a difference between high qaulity sound and re-recorded in the studio before showing the "live" performances.