Most of today’s recordings are ‘fake’

Live recordings, perhaps; live albums, not necessarily. They often have studio overdubs and other effects added later.

BTW, this is hardly news. In fact many of today's artists take pride in what they can create in the studio with no intention of playing the music live.

even more shock. a lot of music is made on a laptop computer and can sound absolutely glorious. :happy:

so what?

Recording things piecemeal definitely takes away some of the vibe. I remember hearing stories of Elvis who loved to record in the wee hours of the morning. He would have the band play gospel music for hours before they got into the rock & roll.


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rbbert said:

BTW, this is hardly news. In fact many of today's artists take pride in what they can create in the studio with no intention of playing the music live.

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Yeah, because they probably CAN'T play music live without the benefit of studio cutting, editing, etc. In other words, they may not be as good as those musicians who had to do full takes without the benefit of technology. And don't forget singers who need auto-tuning software.

Sinatra was famous for one take will full Orchestra.


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nicoff said:

Yeah, because they probably CAN'T play music live without the benefit of studio cutting, editing, etc. In other words, they may not be as good as those musicians who had to do full takes without the benefit of technology. And don't forget singers who need auto-tuning software.

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You mean like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and 1000's of other very successful artists ? :celebrate008_2:

Yes. I’m not sure if there is a relationship between listening to different stereo methods. They are all great.

XV-1 said:

You mean like The Beatles, Pink Floyd and 1000's of other very successful artists ? :celebrate008_2:

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None of the Beatles were actually able to read music, nor was Pavarotti.


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Kuoppis said:

None of the Beatles were actually able to read music, nor was Pavarotti.


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Neither can Bob Dylan

Perhaps it’s like sausage. You can enjoy the finished product but you might not want to know how it’s made.

The thing is, recording technology has just become more sophisticated today, easier to handle and more compact. So it fits into smaller spaces and can be used more widely. That’s called evolution, I guess.

For the initiated, this is nothing new and has been done for the past fifty years. It’s now just simpler. In tape-age recording engineers physically cut tapes, and attached them together again with adhesive tape to remove parts they did not like. Has been done all along, now it’s just quicker and less audible. Was a huge deal when Pyramid developed that capability for DSD recordings only a couple years back.

In most of today’s pop recordings the vocal track is usually a piecemeal of several takes, there are often overdubs if the artists voice doesn’t carry enough otherwise, and typically electronic pitch correction is applied because lots of the pretty faces can’t carry a tone.

On the other hand, music is also becoming more complex and multi-layered. On Steve Vai’s Passion and Warfare the über-technical soli are assembled from 15-20 different takes, because they’re just so difficult to play. It would take ages to get them right at one go. And good ‘ol Steve is definitely not lacking skill.

Also, people who definitely can play live, like Mark Knopfler, do have recording studios in the comfort of their city home, and prefer to assemble their tracks in layers. It’s not anymore that you need a Paisley Park to do it.

Another perspective is, similarly as remote working is emerging in offices, that’s been the case in music for a while now. For production cost reasons and due to time constraints, excellent recordings have been put together where the musicians never physically met in the same studio.

In a way, that’s not massively different from what happened with ‘Art Pepper: Meets the Rhythm Section’, where the solist and band came together for the first time on recording day and played their parts simultaneously, but almost independently from each other. That’s the reason, why the recording engineers decided to put Art on one and the Rhythm Section on the other channel.

That said, I also appreciate my Bach Starker vinyl, where the artist recorded everything live in the studio in two days. An increasingly rare skill.


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I am also in the camp that doesn't see modern recording techniques as a complete negative but I get where nicoff is coming from.

In 2007 synthpop electronic artist Adam Young made his hit song "Fireflies", under the stage name Owl City, in his parents' basement. The song and album "Ocean Eyes" went on to become certified Platinum and launched a generation of singer songwriters who used social media platforms for discovery.



Another fantastic example is the multi continent collaborative effort "Playing for Change"
https://playingforchange.com/about/






.

This very nice piano recording was recorded w/o the player present.



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nicoff said:

They are created in a studio by the producer/engineer. And here we are trying to rate recordings and sound based on a created (‘fake’) environment?

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Probably true.
And yet they never sounded so good like now!

I guess classical music recordings come closest to the live performance.
Often they even are live recordings.
Not too much ediiting, although it does happen that the recording engineer takes pieces from different concerts.

That being said, after having seen a documentary on the making of 'Sergeant Pepper's', I do appreciate the mixing and editing of a record even more.
The Beatles made an art from it. They were real pioneers.
As were the Beach Boys. 'Pet Sounds': I loved the documentary!
Piink Floyd then iin the 70s, and Krafwerk.
It became mainstream in pop music afterwards.

I hate most auto-tune vocals but many people seem to like it. The world is big enough to accommodate both types.

It's easy to get caught up in process when it's the final result that matters. This happens often in visual art too; some work is ALL about process and backstory. (At brief moments my own work has fallen into this trap to my dismay.) For someone like me who tends to judge art on aesthetics, learning that backstory / process may be momentarily interesting but the final product has to stand on its own without the crutch of documentation. Viewers in the future will not know or care about the process or the level of "talent" the artist had.

I seem to be one of the few that is not trying reproduce the sound a live concert with my audio setup. I just want to hear everything that is on the recording, no matter how that recording was made, and I don't think a live performance is somehow "more correct" than a well crafted studio record.

Mrppv said:

I seem to be one of the few that is not trying reproduce the sound a live concert with my audio setup. I just want to hear everything that is on the recording, no matter how that recording was made, and I don't think a live performance is somehow "more correct" than a well crafted studio record.

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Completely agree.
Especially what I reinforced in your text :thumbsup:

In one sense all recorded music is fake. It’s just a matter of degree. I’ve come to love the fakery in various forms, some subtle, some not so much. Some things like drum machines and Autotune take the humanity out of recorded music. I hate it when that happens.

Isn't there a Frank Sinatra and company album where the current artist dub their vocals onto old tapes. Walaaa, a new album.