Live recordings and live sounding studio recordings

Z

zwh

New member
So, I've noticed that on most of the live albums I've heard, the recording quality does still pass as good and you really do feel like you're "there" watching the band. You can usually get a feel for the environment, if it's outside or in a venue and the size of the building, etc. I've been listening a lot to Neil Young and Crazy Horse live at Fillmore and so it got me thinking about all this.

Now, if I were to mic a band in this situation with my gear, I know that I would get an ok recording but it would still feel like every instrument was really in your face (close miced) and the vocals would sound like it was just going straight into the board to the recorder, they wouldn't sound natural and fill and reverberate through the hall or wherever it is. And also, my instruments wouldn't mix well together as well as they did in person.
 
Is there a question here Im missing? You may be asking how to get a real "live" feel from a live recording?Ambience!!!
 
How? Record every channel off the soundboard into a different track and a couple of microphones in the hall to record the ambience. Then just be a wizard in the studio and mix it perfectly!
 
Roll up your trousers and double check you don't have your shoes on the wrong hands...then blend the room mics to taste
 
you have to remember in a live situation,like an arena.yes, everything is closed mic'd as you would but...overall levels are a lot louder which means ambient sounds into mic's are more and they always mix in "room "mic's,some from way in the ball of the arena/hall.It shows you how environment effects recordings.
 
+1 from me for listenin to Neil and the horse :D
wicked album.
This is a fun read it talks all about the mics neil uses today in his live situations and how he records shows, and also all the stuff that can go wrong on a live recording haha.
http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_neil_young_rocks/
And talking about live recordings being good enough to be used on studio albums the recording of "come on baby lets go downtown" from that live album actually was used on the studio album "tonights the night "
 
I think the key has to be room / audience / ambience mics.

I've done many live recordings where I tap direct-outs from the board I'm working and they end up sounding great, but they lose the live feel. Every time I look back and wish I'd sacrificed two of the channels for room mics. I still don't learn :D
 
An important concept to remember when making live recordings is that the task is NOT to record what the audience member hears at a live setting. This is what bootleggers do when they sneak a recording device in with them. Even with today's stereo digital recorders, these bootlegs just never sound "right". That's not so much because of a lack of quality of the recording device these days, but it's mostly because that's the cost of recording from that position.

It sounds so much better to the human ear live than it does if you stick a couple of microphones where your ears are for one major simple reason; the audience member has a human brain that is automatically processing the surrounding sounds coming in and " decoding" them into a surround image that "makes sense". The mics and digital recorder have no such programming and just record the mish-mosh of sounds as a flat image, with no real "encoding" of the spacial information that translates back properly in a standard stereo playback. Our ears will always perceive the stereo reproduction as unnatural - or at least different - than the live experience.

Because of this, there is ALWAYS going to be (with today's technology, anyway) a difference between the live experience and a recording of a live experience.

Instead, our goal should be - on a fundamental level - really the same thing as it is in a studio recording; and that is to create a *stereophonic image* that make sense to the human ear. Now, in live recordings there can be bleeds, phase trickery and ambient sounds that can be included to varying degrees to best synthesize or simulate a live setting (including programming for surrround sound reproduction), but the basic foundation is to (re)create *the stage* first.

Put another way, one needs not to record things from the audience perspective, but rather they need to record the sources - i.e. the soundstage itself - first and create the main stereo (or front channel) image *to be projected to the listener* on playback. The ambients can be added to make it sound more like we are in an auditorium than a bedroom, of course, but it still remains at the base a matter of setting up the soundstage and not the listening position.

While it can be done in some instances via stereo pair and stage miking, in rock and pop music there is almost always at least some degree of close miking required to recreate the individual instruments with any kind of clarity.

G.
 
Realize now I forgot my question in my OP.
snellular5 said:
+1 from me for listenin to Neil and the horse :D
wicked album.
This is a fun read it talks all about the mics neil uses today in his live situations and how he records shows, and also all the stuff that can go wrong on a live recording haha.
http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_neil_young_rocks/
And talking about live recordings being good enough to be used on studio albums the recording of "come on baby lets go downtown" from that live album actually was used on the studio album "tonights the night "
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks man. I'll check that link out.
Tonight's the Night is one of my favorite albums, "Come on Baby" being another good example of what I'm talking about. I really admire Neil and his past/current engineers and producers. Time Fades Away is another really good live album of Neil's, with some of my favorite music... I believe it was recorded straight to stereo on an early digital mixer console, Neil hates it and won't release it on CD :( Thank god for bootlegs

SouthSIDE Glen said:
An important concept to remember when making live recordings is that the task is NOT to record what the audience member hears at a live setting. This is what bootleggers do when they sneak a recording device in with them. Even with today's stereo digital recorders, these bootlegs just never sound "right". That's not so much because of a lack of quality of the recording device these days, but it's mostly because that's the cost of recording from that position.

It sounds so much better to the human ear live than it does if you stick a couple of microphones where your ears are for one major simple reason; the audience member has a human brain that is automatically processing the surrounding sounds coming in and " decoding" them into a surround image that "makes sense". The mics and digital recorder have no such programming and just record the mish-mosh of sounds as a flat image, with no real "encoding" of the spacial information that translates back properly in a standard stereo playback. Our ears will always perceive the stereo reproduction as unnatural - or at least different - than the live experience.

Because of this, there is ALWAYS going to be (with today's technology, anyway) a difference between the live experience and a recording of a live experience.

Instead, our goal should be - on a fundamental level - really the same thing as it is in a studio recording; and that is to create a *stereophonic image* that make sense to the human ear. Now, in live recordings there can be bleeds, phase trickery and ambient sounds that can be included to varying degrees to best synthesize or simulate a live setting (including programming for surrround sound reproduction), but the basic foundation is to (re)create *the stage* first.

Put another way, one needs not to record things from the audience perspective, but rather they need to record the sources - i.e. the soundstage itself - first and create the main stereo (or front channel) image *to be projected to the listener* on playback. The ambients can be added to make it sound more like we are in an auditorium than a bedroom, of course, but it still remains at the base a matter of setting up the soundstage and not the listening position.

While it can be done in some instances via stereo pair and stage miking, in rock and pop music there is almost always at least some degree of close miking required to recreate the individual instruments with any kind of clarity.

G.
Click to expand...

Good points I hadn't thought of..... Thanks for the response.




To give a clearer example, I know that a lot of times live recordings are done using the direct outs/inserts on the board, giving each mic/line it's own channel to record onto...
But even with one mic stuck in front of the guitar cabinet they still get a big sounding recording. Seems like when I do that I get this really monaural and flat sound from the recorded guitar.

And then for other things like vocals - How do they get the lead vocal to stay so consistent and smooth? A raw signal from my lead microphone has so many inconsistent volumes and bumps/knocks.
I would just think it's compression but even proper compression doesn't do it for me. What am I doing wrong?
 
zwh said:
And then for other things like vocals - How do they get the lead vocal to stay so consistent and smooth? A raw signal from my lead microphone has so many inconsistent volumes and bumps/knocks.
I would just think it's compression but even proper compression doesn't do it for me. What am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...

It's probably a combination of factors.

Experienced vocalists use a mic correctly, avoiding extreme volume or tonal changes by the way they hold it or use it on a stand.

Then the mic itself is a good one with good handling noise suppression, a good pop filter and smooth off axis response.
Understandably the vision/video people generally want unobtrusive, tiny mic profiles but this tends to popping and wind noise, sometimes outrageously so. There is no substitute for good pop filtering on a live mic, even if it makes for a bigger looking mic. I have no problem with adding an extra foam pop filter onto a standard vocal mic. Whatever gets you through the gig is my motto!


Be aware of mic proximity effect, especially with male voices. With close micing, dont be afraid to cut the lows quite a lot to restore a more natural timbre. I personally dislike standard stage mics with proximity effect because it can lead especially with untrained vocalists to wildly changing bass eq. It can be hard to correct later.

Good foldback to the vocalist lets them hear their own performance clearly and so can adjust the way they sing and use the mic the moment they hear something is not quite right.
Good foldback gives the vocalist confidence.

With an experienced vocalist, the compression needed later doesnt have to be that severe, if at all in some cases.
Then the compression that is used later is set up correctly to act smoothly and sound almost as if it's not there at all.

A high pass filter at 100hz or so helps to reduce any remaining handling noise and wind noise from the mic.

These are basic rules. It's amazing how forgetting just one of them can mar a live vocal performance that's also recorded.


Cheers Tim
 
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