Playing live or recording ?

[grimtraveller]

Which do you prefer, playing live or recording and why ?
Do you find the two to be worlds apart or opposite sides of the same coin ?

 

[Manslick]

I prefer live because of the fact that I am not in the basement. But of course like all things there are good times and bad times. Usually the sound on stage is terrible in that I can only hear bass and drums, my vocal sounds like it's coming from another world and I never get a guitar tone I like, except on rare occasions.
In recording, the sound is perfect, so I prefer recording for that reason. Since I record alone, playing live with a band is worlds apart from recording for me, especially since I rarely record covers and we never play originals live.
So depending on the experience, I prefer both , and in that light they're both side of the same coin. The coin being music, you see.

 

[witzendoz]

I love doing both, it may be the many years I have been playinbg but I am just as happy and comfortable doing both,

Alan

 

[mdainsd]

Live for me! I just havent done that much of it, pretty new to playing. So its still very exciting and I love the energy of playing live with my bandmates.

 

[Armistice]

Recording, if I had to choose one or the other. Recording allows me to transcend various limitations and find an audience, at least potentially, that playing live never would, at least in Australia.

 

[grimtraveller]

Recording allows me to transcend various limitations

This is it for me.
I haven't played live for about 3 years and I haven't missed it in the slightest. I've never even daydreamed of doing it in one of those unconsciously unaware moments. When I was younger, I kind of liked the idea of playing live, travelling all over the place, playing in some basement dive somewhere for a few hours with little pay but great satisfaction. I used to enjoy jamming too.
But this always ran parallel with the interest in recording which eventually developed into the desire to record. It's been a long journey that, I suppose in embryo goes back to when I was a little boy in the late 60s/early 70s and my Dad used to record stuff from the radio onto his reel to reel {this was a decade before we were told that home taping was killing music and three before 'downloading' became common usage in our language}. I was fascinated by the microphone

he had and the idea that you could talk and it would play back what you just said ! When you're 3 and 4, that's magic ! "Wow !! That's me !"
Interestingly, as a boy, I was in a number of plays and musicals but I can't say I ever actually liked performing. It was always a relief when it was over and I even chickened out once {I was about 7} as my big part came up.
The applause never gave me that warm feeling or the desire to do it again.
Getting into the Beatles, having my own cassette recorder and becoming interested in what these books I was reading meant by "revolutionary recording techniques" pushed me into finding out what it was all about. It took a few years to understand what the heck all these people were going on about but once it began to make some sense and I figured out what 'tracks' were and how the records I liked seemed to have been put together and that you could do things separately and I read about how Stevie Wonder played keyboards, drums, synth, bass and sang on some of the "Innervisions" songs, bit by bit, these things seeped into my psyche, I thought, yeah, that's what I want to do.
I remember when I was learning to play bass, a guy I'd gone to school with {he was feared at school as a thick, fat bully but when I met him 5 years later, he was a mellow, druggy guitarist} heard I had one and we did some primitive recordings. I hated it. Not so much the process but just going over things again and again and not really understanding where I was in the songs as they were his {ironically, I do that to people now !} and he was making up all the bass lines and I was a lame player at that point. We recorded the stuff on my tape deck then he took the tape away and put his lead guitar on it, playing into another cassette.
It sounded ever so primitive.
I only heard one of the 4 songs we did and I didn't like it. I didn't really listen to it properly. I just wanted to go away and watch the football ! He wanted them for his girlfriend in Spain and he soon left for there and 31 years on, I've not seen him since. I still remember one of the intros though. I used it for years to make sure I was in tune.

I've long thought that multi~tracking is the most significant thing to happen in both songwriting and recording. I don't think I would have enjoyed recording the way they did in the old days for long, that whole live with the orchestra and singer bit. It's interesting that so many of the top session musicians ended up in groups. Overdubbing is a particular skill and multi~tracking enables you to do things at your leisure, deadlines notwithstanding, of course.

 

[Seafroggys]

I do like both.

Logistically, recording is much easier. My drums are set up (unless I'm gigging with them, but even then I use a smaller drumset for most gigs these days), my mics are permanently set up, so its easy to just sit and record.

With playing live, I have to haul my drums and then set them up, and that takes time and effort. And then to play in front of a crowd less than 10 big is super discouraging. But.....actually playing in front of people is far more satisfying than recording.

So really it averages out.

 

[bongoboy]

After 35 years of playing live, I gave it up and never looked back. Unloading my car at 2AM in snow, sleet and rain really got old. And then I was luggage the next day. Now I can play and record at my leisure.

 

[jahey]

For me playing live satisfies a part of the hunger for making music/recording satsifies the rest of it......so I guess same coin but different sides.... if that makes sense

 

[Lt. Bob]

live for me ..... but ya'll already knew that. I play me very best live and it's what I live for ......... even though I play out constantly I never get enough.
If I have a day off I go somewhere and play with someone for free so I'm pretty obsessive about it.

 

[mjbphotos]

I like both, and love playing live when things go right. However for the last year (since the beatles tribute band broke up) it has been *exceptionally* frustrating trying to get an acoustic act together which really cuts the 'love live playing' down to size - if its too much work to get to the actual playing, its no longer fun.

 

[Steve Mac]

Live is more forgiving of my mistakes and sloppy playing

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Rock music need some connection to live performance to keep it honest. I like recording because it lets me be obsessive and it's easier on my back, but sooner or later you've got to leave the safety of the studio and take your chances with a live audience. That's the ultimate test.

 

[grimtraveller]

Rock music need some connection to live performance to keep it honest.

I wonder whether or not people think that simply because live performance came first. Even when rock'n'roll started, it was primarily a live performance entity that had grown out of blues, R&B and country which were all primarily live performance {even if on radio} entities. Really, up until the late 60s and beyond, music was still perceived as live performance based, for the most part, I think.
But that changed {whether for better or worse is anyone's guess and everyones' argument} or began shifting once engineers found that they could manipulate things in the studio and with higher track counts, records taking years to make and simply the scope for the imagination to be unchained, rock as a principally live thing diminished, especially when you had bands retiring or earning huge amounts via sales. And one could argue that home recording has opened that chasm even further.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Rock started as dance music. Take that away and it drifts off into increasingly cerebral realms that are far from the roots of rock. That's not to say it's bad music, but it becomes like classical music. It happened before, when folk music became classical. It got written down, "improved" and regular people stopped dancing to it.

 

[miroslav]

Playing live can be a lot of fun, and it has that instant connection with the other players and the audience...
...that said, I'm much more interested in recording, and if I had to choose one or the other....it would be the studio, without a doubt, and I guess the last 30 years confirms that.

I stopped playing out back in the '80s...band broke up, got tired of reforming again, drummer was trying to bang the female singer, you know, the usual thing...and I had a bunch of songs I wanted to record and had just gotten my home studio a little better set up....so I dropped out of the live scene. I never thought I would stay out this long...and for the half-dozen or so times over the years when I made an effort to get back into a live/band thing, even hooked up with some players, did some practices together, etc...
...after a short time, the studio just called me back, and I realized that I could either spend my best free time with a band or recording, but it wasn't going to work out doing both.

Now I know some guys do both, and whatever, I'm not saying you can't...but I like to spend a lot of time in the studio and I like to take my time in the studio. For me to be involved with a band....studio time would have to be cut back dramatically, and I would want to give the band some serious time, at least in the beginning. I've not found a real compelling reason to do that yet. I just love my time in the studio too much.
That said, I am again entertaining the idea of maybe doing some open-mic kind of stuff, which is much more flexible. I just don't want to do the same-old, same-old open-mic shit that everyone else does, and I really have no desire to break out an acoustic and do a strum-n-sing-a-long thing.
I would like to do some sort of solo, electric open-mic thing...but at this point, it's still just an idea, even though I have been messing around with a looper pedal lately, looking for a new solo player angle that 30 other guys aren't already doing.
My drummer buddy does the band thing and the open-mic thing....he does that shit every week, mostly the open-mic thing, since it's hard to find bands that gig regularly anymore around here....it's dog-eat-dog, and everyone is in like 3 bands trying to fill out their playing schedule if they need the $$$.
Anyway, he keeps trying to get me to come to his open-mics and play....but then, he looks at my studio and says that if he had the same recording digs, he too would never want to go out.

So in the mean time....the studio rules, and I usually enjoy my time in the studio, good or bad, recording is still a nice way to spend a day, and yes, the studio allows me, and for the most part just myself, to create complete music productions. How can that not be a great way to go?

 

[grimtraveller]

Rock started as dance music. Take that away and it drifts off into increasingly cerebral realms that are far from the roots of rock. That's not to say it's bad music, but it becomes like classical music. It happened before, when folk music became classical. It got written down, "improved" and regular people stopped dancing to it.

I agree. But given the way human beings are, it was inevitable. Though people have been known to dance until their pants get wet, one can only dance for so long.
I think the imagination ultimately trumps "getting down and boogieing" ! For better or worse.

 

[Seafroggys]

Rock started as dance music. Take that away and it drifts off into increasingly cerebral realms that are far from the roots of rock. That's not to say it's bad music, but it becomes like classical music. It happened before, when folk music became classical. It got written down, "improved" and regular people stopped dancing to it.

This is so true, and I have this internal battle all the time. I love both style. I like writing cerebral music, but I like playing "dance" music, for lack of a better phrase. And I always strive to write more pop style stuff, and then improve my playing to do awesome technical stuff.

 

[moresound]

I love crafting out an idea into a song in the studio and I also love the showmanship while delivering it to an audience.
Am a man of both worlds.

 

[Bobbsy]

I only mix, I don't play myself but..

While I enjoy doing both, there's a rush that comes from mixing live that isn't there in the studio...and my mistakes don't haunt me for months like trying to pull a mix out of a crap recording does!