a "cool" way to fool the audience

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why the hell is this thread in the 'recording techniques' section... I dunno :p .

but anyway: yesterday I watched some parts of the "VH1 music awards" or something like that... and my "hero" lenny kravitz was there too, playing "dig in".
he started out with the guitar riff I guess, and it sounded quite "live" (as the drums came in the guitar level was too low).
then it got better and when he started to sing I thought: "hey, lenny's said to be quite bad playing live - but this sounds good... too good."
the higher "there is nowhere to run..."-part was very suspicious. the mouth-to-mic-distance remained the same but the vocals still sounded so perfectly mixed AND THEN there were these lenny-backing-vocals... AND these lenny-lead-vocals... at the same time. but there wasn't any second lenny on stage... hmmmmmm.

so now I wonder what they did:

a.) play the intro and fade in a full-playback with some more reverb and a bit worse levels.
b.) play everything live but the leadvocals (that would be the "cool new way to fool the audience)

i guess 15 year old female lenny-fans would say: what a great live-performance... but he can't fool ME :D :D :D :p :p

btw: his guitar-solo in jagger's song was just awful. what a shame... I think that WAS live!
 
THATS REALLY LAME! to play live but not really. havind a dat hooked up with lenny milli vanilleing it up. what does he is a pop star or something. It allways pisses me off watching someone live and there drifting away from the mic and the level is the same, it gust screams fake.
 
"milli vanilling it up"... YESSSS! :D


you know what topped it all? calista flockheart (ally mcbeal chick) introduced him as something like THE rockstar.

yeah - real rockstars don't play live.

I thought I had to throw up, really.
 
a lot of the time, it is the other way round. bands or solo artists mime the song, and then as the song fades out, their stage mics are faded in and they just finish the song, maybe with an acapella (which usually stinks!). when you hear them saying "thank you" or whatever at the end, it makes the audience believe that they did sing it live.
 
the best is when say....brittney spears is on mtv or something and she "does a track from her new album"

She's wearing one of those mic headsets...When the song is done, and **insert mtv personality here** goes to talk to her, they have to give her a hand held mic.

Didn't that other headset mic work just fine? I got her through her difficult vocal track, it can't handle a little bit of talking?
 
I saw a real cool band on saturday. They played kinda commercial-like dance music, but live. Everything was synchronous with the sequenced music, drummer wearing headphones all the time with a click... He was playing crazy jazz-rhythms on his ride and snare all the time. Oh, and half his kit was electronic, playing samples thru filters. Sounded pretty awesome.

The background vocals were also samples that played with the sequencer. Same girl, voice sounded incredibly good both background and lead, in fact, the sound was pretty much the same, and never out of tune!!
But I was pretty sure she was singing for real. Her breathing-technique was awesome and the mixer probably wouldn't bring in a tube compressor (fatman) if she was lipsyncing... Talked to her after the show, she's a studying 'jazzsinging' (how do you say that in English?) at the conservatory...

The other musicians were also kinda educated and very good. Amazing guitarsolo's too.

So... My point: if you got good musicians, you can have them play together with sequencer and sampler, and it would still be live. And the show was one of the best shows I've seen this year...
 
executivos: maybe her speaking would sound strange because the headset is connected to an autotune-box :D
No really... I hate it when 'artists' try to fake the playback in a way that it sounds live. At britney's "live" shows (which aren't live... damn I wouldn't pay anything for a ticket to such a show) they put the volume of the vocal tracks a bit down and all the kids believe she's singing. and if she sings - damn - quite out of tune. who the f*ck said she could sing?
some guys of this bbs say she just sings with that whiny voice because it sells. MIGHT be. but someone who's not able to sing in tune can't sing.

ok, back to lenny ;)

roel: ok, playing to clicks and sequencers is quite another story. I once happened to see Van Halen (opener for bon jovi). I was quite amazed to see that there was no keyboarder on stage when they played "jump". and damn, alex does quite weird fills sometimes... must be hard to click tracks ;-).
by the way: bon jovi samples in the high choirs at the end of "livin' on a prayer" when playing it live... you can definitely hear it on the live recordings. that's a bit of a pity: I'd rather hear jon screaming and trying to hit that high E-flat (I wouldn't care if he failed) than the samples.

in my opinion you shouldn't use sequencers and stuff live (at least in rock music and so on) - I mean Van Halen could easily find a keyboard-player for the tour, couldn't they? :)
 
The background vocals were also samples that played with the sequencer. Same girl, voice sounded incredibly good both background and lead, in fact, the sound was pretty much the same, and never out of tune!!
Click to expand...

Poe did something like this when I saw her live this past Summer. She actually had a lot of her backing vocals pressed to vinyl, and a DJ "span" them as she sang her leads. I thought it sounded pretty cool, and her backing band was quite good.

I don't have a problem with artists using some pre-recorded material to thicken up their sound a bit... especially an artist like her that will track several vocals on the album version of a song. It isn't quite the same with just one person singing.

It's a fine line, between embellishing and faking...
 
Some years ago I mixed a great coverband. They had a lot of gigs, and when doing the same thing over and over you sometimes get bored. Whenever I got bored I used to try and do stupid things like pushing buttons on the lightman's mixer or removing buttons and fadercaps from my mixer.
These were 2 of my favourite:

1. when the leadsinger was talking to the audience inbetween song I used to put a 200ms delay on his voice while removing the original signal. Big fun, talk about fooling the audience. Bad example of lipsincing.

2. gently mix a previous recorded discussion between Bert en Ernie from sesamestreet onto the leadsingers inearphones. Best done in stereo with Bert left and Ernie right.

Boy did I have fun.
 
Forgot :

3. Put the backingvocal of the guitarist thru a pitchshifter and PFL this on your headphones. Now let the girlfriend of this guitarist listen to this signal and tell her you're not going send her boyfriend into the mix because he really
can't sing. (offcourse he's in the mix in tune, but she doesn't know ) Now watch them get into a fight after the concert when she tells him he can't sing.
 
>>2. gently mix a previous recorded discussion between Bert en Ernie from sesamestreet onto the leadsingers inearphones. Best done in stereo with Bert left and Ernie right.


that's just wrong man...funny as hell, but still wrong:)
 
Hey :

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago in a theatre production:

Volunteer to take the main artist's clothes with you in the truck. Forget he is not going to put on his performance outfit untill 2 minutes before showtime. Go to the FOH area and wait untill 800 people are seated next to you. (remember we're in the theatre so once people are seated there is no way to leave the FOH) Now give the 3 minutes to showtime signal on the ASL (intercom) and directly turn the intercom off (!!!!) Wait till the light dim and put the ASL back on and........................watch in horror while you hear a complete stressed crew desperately trying to find the artist clothes backstage. Offcourse the artist doesn't remember he gave you the clothes and they're safely locked in the truck outside. Try to remain calm and not to wet your pants laughing your ass off when the artist comes on stage in his old clothes explaining to the audience he has lost his clothingbag.
 
Same theatreproductions :

the artist had a lyric which mention the war between Irak and Iran. Now he thought this was a little bit sensitive/outdated with everything that happened the last months so he tried to replace the following (translated) sentence :

Here we are standing against each other like Irak an Iran into:

Here we are standing against each other like to mean dogs.

First show he forgot to sing the new lyrics, so he made note with that sentence and put it on the grandpiano where he played that song. Second show he didn't forget so the note seemed to help.

Third day I got bored and was walking round the stage when I saw the note on the grand piano. I was in a funny mood so I got hold of some white gaffatape and a marker, and replaced dogs with rabbits . We went to dinner and I completely forgot about it untill during the show and that particular song the artist noticed the note. Boy did I hear some false chords during the rest of that song.

I wonder if I do to many shows a month ?
 
Weehoooo Tim. You're downright evil. :D

Cool... :D

BTW. Still haven't found the time to come over. By any chance, you don't do any shows in Belgium, do you?
 
Nope. although I'm just 2 miles from Belgium this artist is strictly located in Holland. We tried to do a couple of shows in Belgium last year, but it was no succes. People only come to see an artist in the theatre when they really wanna see that artist. Not like in the pop/rockscene where you go out and there's this band on stage.

People pay big bucks to see the show. In Belgium this artist gets no media-coverage---->no audience---->no money---->no show.

Media coverage is the trick. I was last year mixing a festival in Belgium when this nice girlyband was on stage. I never heard off them, and that kind of irritated their stagemanager who was standing next to me. this festival was 15 km from my house. BTW this band was K3. They are in Holland also on the TV now, so everybody over here knows them, but back then they didn't have the mediacoverage. Though the borders between are country aren't really their anymore they actually still are.
 
You are actually using the terms 'nice girlyband' when talking about K3. That is wrong. Very wrong.

No. They are nice. But their public is kids. I saw them in my hometown with the little 5 year old sis of a girl I know. The kid loved it. The sad thing is that alot of older people like it too, and don't even realize it's a kiddie-thing. That's very sad.

So you were mixing K3... Sheeezz... That's alot of mixing aye. What did ya have to do? Put on the tape? :rolleyes: Make sure the mics are turned DOWN during the show? :eek:

Yup... Lipsyncing all the way...

Who are you touring with? Maybe I know the dude... The only good cabaret in Belgium is on the Dutch tv-channels. Sigh... And a few less known dudes. But the ones that get broadcasting are sh!t. They aren't even funny.
 
Okay, mixing K3 wasn't the most difficult job ever. I admit. I actually didn't even have to press the play button, the manager did. But I had the control over the volume ......!!!!!!!!!! It was indeed just another tape act, like most band at the festival.

At the moment I'm touring with Gé Reinders (www.g-reinders.nl), oh hell there's even a photo of me on his website. We're doing about sixty shows in five months. Before Gé I toured with a dutch singing lady, Margriet Eshuijs.
 
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