Recording Live Music & Studio Recording Set-Up (original) (raw)
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The live album or many ways of representing performance
Музикологиjа, 2014
The analysis of live albums can clarify the dialectic between studio recordings and live performances. After discussing key concepts such as authenticity, space, time and place, and documentation, the author gives a preliminary definition of live albums, combining available descriptions and comparing them with different typologies and functions of these recordings. The article aims to give a new definition of the concept of live albums, gathering their primary elements: “A live album is an officially released extended recording of popular music representing one or more actually occurred public performances”.
Twentieth Century Music in the West, 2022
3.1 Recording and production 'The first thing about recording' ambient music composer Brian Eno has written, 'is that it makes repeatable what was otherwise transient and ephemeral' (Eno 2004, 127). Some of the biggest changes to musical culture in the twentieth century were the result of newly emerging recording technologies. As Brian Eno (1948-) suggests, sounds that once had to be performed live could now be captured, packaged, collected and distributed in ways unimaginable in the previous century. This effected both the creation and consumption of music. When used as an instrument to manipulate or make music-a process known as 'phonography' (Eisenberg 1987)-the tools for sound reproduction generated textures and structures difficult to replicate in live performance. In fact, audio engineering technologies saw the advent of reverb, echo, overdubbing, splicing and digital processing, techniques essential to genres as diverse as musique concrète, acousmatic sound art, dub, electronica, hip-hop and turntablism.
Live popular Electronic music ‘performable recordings’
2019
This research focuses on Electronic Dance Music (EDM), or popular electronic music, and the way a band can perform live having the same sonic attributes with those of a studio production, investigating production techniques and performance practices that work with these contemporary mediatized live performances. For the purposes of this research, an Electronic Dance Music (EDM) live act has been formed including conventional instruments, such as electric guitar and keyboards, and other more sophisticated electronic devices such as midi controllers and electronic drums along with vocals. The emerging phenomenon of new types of bands or performers, who try to bring the studio sound on stage, created a gap between 'human' and 'non-human' that requires performers to work with technology in new ways, in this musical style. This thesis builds upon research on authenticity and its relation to aspects of liveness in these types of live performances. More specifically, it builds upon research on Moore's tripartition of authenticities and the two forms of authenticity that are most salient in this process of 'musicking'. These are the 1 st and the 3 rd person as described in Moore's (2002) model. The 1 st person authenticity relates to the extent to which the participants feel that the performers engage in authentic human expression through their performance. The 3 rd person authenticity relates to the participants' assessment of what constitutes an authentic sonic example of a musical tradition or genre-in this case EDM. In addition to what it should sound like, 3 rd person authenticity is also concerned with what are the appropriate 'tools' that should be used and factors such as the coherence between aural and visual, employment of skill, performativity and the constant awareness of a 'standard of achievement'. The aim is to create a musical process in which all the participants feel that the band is performing authentically while being sonically faithful to the genre or tradition. The key is the combination of machine accuracy with some aspects of human expressive performance in a way that maintains the integrity of the popular electronic musical style. Following on from the multiple theories that underpin this research, various methodologies have been followed. Qualitative and quantitative research methods have been followed, through interviews, video observations, and audio data analysis. Having said that, a real-time production and performance process has been developed and is called 'performable recordings', that is, 'a type of music production that enables the artist to perform a musical piece live, using, in real-time, the mixing and post-production processes that create the aesthetics of a studio produced version'. This model intends to promote and support performers' emotional expression and creativity that comes from spontaneity, musicianship, face to face performance and freedom of movement that over the past years were minimized or eliminated due to contemporary production processes and performance practices. Furthermore, it creates opportunities for performers and musicians to get involved on stage with a broader range of modern musical styles and genres.
The recording studio that spanned a continent
Proceedings First International Conference on WEB Delivering of Music. WEDELMUSIC 2001
On September 23, 2000, a jazz group performed in a concert hall at McGill University in Montreal and the recording engineers mixing the 12 channels of uncompressed PCM audio during the performance were not in a booth at the back of the hall, but rather in a theatre at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. To our knowledge, this is the first time that live audio of this quality has been streamed over the Internet. This paper describes the hardware configuration and software system used for the demonstration, explaining the motivation for our approach and summarizing some of the important lessons learned during the development process.
DIY Recreational Recording as Music Making
The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure, 2017
This chapter presents a portrait of DIY (do-it-yourself) recreational recording as it exists currently, using the personal example of a band’s music making processes. It also examines the evolution of DIY recording from its genesis to its current iteration (e.g., digital audio workstation) to illustrate how present practices have been informed and influenced by past practices. While DIY recording may not always be recreational by nature, the chapter focuses specifically on DIY recording as a leisurely pursuit. The ethos of DIY, self-sufficiency, is summarized by the idea that music making is all about producing your own music using whatever resources are available to you. Interspersing autoethnographic excerpts with an analysis of select primary and secondary historical documents on recording (home studio, project studio, tape recording, audio engineering), this chapter charts the development of DIY recreational recording as a process-based music making practice tethered to the tenets of ease of access and ease of use.
During recording sessions, record producers and sound engineers play the role of cultural intermediaries between musicians and their future audience. Their role differs from that of artistic leaders, such as film directors, who express their own ideas through a collective creative process. Studio professionals aim to achieve the best possible representation of a given musical project, similarly to photographers, whose goal is to capture the most significant image of their models. Recently, the delocalisation of well-equipped studios to home studios, combined with the collapse of the traditional business model of record companies, has led musicians to produce their recordings without necessarily hiring studio professionals. And when hired by musicians, producers and engineers often take on both roles at once. This client relationship without the intermediary of record companies modifies the collaborative aspects of the production process. In such a do-it-yourself context, studio professionals need to reinvent their job while musicians need to learn the art of recording and define their expectations when collaborating with studio professionals. This chapter is based on my professional and teaching experience, as well as five research studies conducted with professional producers, engineers, and musicians. In three sections, it highlights the best practices in conducting recording sessions from the perspectives of musicians and studio professionals coming from different musical backgrounds, countries, and generations. The first section focuses on the preparation of studio sessions to produce successful musical recordings. The second discusses record producers' and sound engineers' skills, as well as the mission and specificities of each profession. The third addresses the myths of artistic direction by making explicit the impact of producers ' comments on musical performance.
The Portable Recording Studio: Documentary Filmmaking and Live Album Recording, 1967-1969
2016
While live performance and rock authenticity are topics widely investigated across popular music studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, the particular media practices that constitute liveness in rock music have been treated without rigorous historical specificity. Utilizing the concept of " fidelity " as it has developed within sound media scholarship as a means for historicizing the technological and cultural practices of sound recording, this article examines the construction of liveness through media objects produced via intersecting practices of documentary filmmaking and live album recording. By exploring the operations of filmmaking and sound recording in four live albums produced from North American rock music festivals between 1967 and 1969, this article not only highlights an overlooked history of the relationship between film and popular music recording, but also demonstrates how liveness, as an experiential category, is constituted through media practices not always exclusive to the conventional parameters of popular music industries.
Social, Musical and Technical Processes in the Recording Session
We propose an exposé of ongoing research that seeks to understand the significance and lifespan of the recording session in the context of a broader creative process. In particular, we explore how people interact with one another, the technology and the architectural space that surrounds them. We want to implicate all those present at the recording session in the notion of performance in the studio. We will report initial findings comparing the differences in approach taken by two technical teams given the task of recording the same song performed by the same musicians in two separate recording sessions.