Red Mosquito

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 1:21 pm**

MadTIGERmaN wrote:Thanks for explaining why im in the wrong even though virtually every post in this thread since your in depth analysis has been about the live versions of songs. Right...

I didn't say you're wrong. I said UGH, which roughly translates to "You're probably right and I think that's too bad."

Live music is fine. Sometimes it's amazing. But what ugh'd me about your (almost certainly accurate) statements was the following:

1. Modern day Pearl Jam is "probably known more for their live shows than for their recorded work." They are literally more adored for, more talked about for, and seem to be more interested in, their ability to repeat motion their way through ideas they had 15 or more years ago than their ability to artistically develop anything new. That's a big fat "Ugh" to me, and it extra ughs me to be reminded of it.

2. Live performances can be much looser than studio cuts (a little less rock, a little more roll)(or vice versa)(or sometimes just sloppy), and they can add or change small inflective qualities to the performance such that old songs contain "new" experience moments within them. A great live performance can feel almost like a shared emotional moment, where-in a band seems to immerse itself in the very feeling that you gain from hearing the song.

But what live performance does not do, and what the equipment-end designs and setups are subsequently not built to capture, is nuance. At their best, studio recordings offer not only a creative pursuit of the heart of an idea that live music can not, but also capture a depth of texture to playing, tone, and atmosphere within the song. Live music engineering does not do this, does not AIM to do this, simply because the equipment needed to achieve it would be detrimental. It would be detrimental to the band's performance, because they'd be trying for a level of response control that is near-impossible standing on stage in front of huge crowds and reacting mostly to monitor mix playback, it would be detrimental to the engineer's ability to control the sound of and high-volume sharing effort of what's actually happening on stage, and it would get fucked up anyway by the 10 to 20 thousand screaming voices.

So having a studio recording is cool, having live recordings can be cool, but there have been plenty of times over the years on this board where people talk about a song and say something akin to "I just listened to the studio version for the first time in years, and wow. I forgot about (bleeh blah)." Or where someone simply says "I almost never listen to the studio versions." So I'm not ughing the idea of live music, or even of listening to live cuts, I'm ughing the accuracy of your statement that "some of us...have no doubt heard the live versions more than the studio." It's like the audio equivalent of saying "Dostoevsky is my favorite author. I read the first chapter of Crime and Punishment and rented the BBC miniseries."

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 2:04 pm**

McParadigm wrote:But what live performance does not do, and what the equipment-end designs and setups are subsequently not built to capture, is nuance. At their best, studio recordings offer not only a creative pursuit of the heart of an idea that live music can not, but also capture a depth of texture to playing, tone, and atmosphere within the song.

I think there are just as many occasions where you could say the exact opposite, though, where studio processes actually obscure the nuance of the playing, or create it artificially, while the rawness of the live performance allows those textures to naturally materialize. With a record like "Binaural," for instance, I think you actually hear what you call "a depth of texture to playing" a lot better in the live versions--you hear the sounds that are more naturally coming off the instruments, and in the better moments, you get a sense of cooperative band interplay (good versions of "Of the Girl," the instrumental passages of "Light Years" and "Insignificance") that, to my ears, create an atmosphere within the playing itself that is harder to achieve with five guys recording separately over backing tracks in isolated booths. A lot of what you're hearing on that record, and on many records where people talk up virtues like nuance and texture, is a meticulously manipulated studio process, not "a depth of texture to the playing."

The best live recordings simply provide a clear document of what happened onstage on any given night, and as much as the band as a collective unit is capable of attaining these things (texture, nuance, tone, atmosphere, etc.) naturally, a good live recording will capture it. Furthermore, there are too many great artists whose creative developments have unfolded in concert as much as in the studio (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, The Grateful Dead, to name a few recognizable ones) for me to believe that what you call "the creative pursuit of the heart of an idea" can't be equally evident on live recordings. Granted, modern Pearl Jam aren't necessarily the best example of this. But to my ears, a jam section in the middle of a 2000 version of "RVM" sacrifices nothing in the way of nuance simply because it was generated on a stage in front of 10,000 people and not in a recording studio.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 2:36 pm**

Kevin Davis wrote:
McParadigm wrote:But what live performance does not do, and what the equipment-end designs and setups are subsequently not built to capture, is nuance. At their best, studio recordings offer not only a creative pursuit of the heart of an idea that live music can not, but also capture a depth of texture to playing, tone, and atmosphere within the song.
I think there are just as many occasions where you could say the exact opposite, though, where studio processes actually obscure the nuance of the playing, or create it artificially, while the rawness of the live performance allows those textures to naturally materialize.

McParadigm wrote:At their best, studio recordings offer...

On a record like "Binaural," for instance, I think you actually hear what you call "a depth of texture to playing" a lot better in the live versions--you hear the sounds that are more naturally coming off the instruments, and in the better moments, you get a sense of cooperative band interplay (good versions of "Of the Girl," the instrumental passages of "Light Years" and "Insignificance") that, to my ears, create an atmosphere within the playing itself that is harder to achieve with five guys recording separately over backing tracks in isolated booths. A lot of what you're hearing on that record, and on many records where people talk up virtues like nuance and texture, is a meticulously manipulated studio process, not "a depth of texture to the playing."

There's not a lot of meticulous studio process to Binaural at all. Even the EQ sculpting work is fantastically gentle. Nor is there (in any of the Vitalogy-Riot Act era) a particular abundance of iso booth work outside of vocals (and even then, it's not always guaranteed). There's so much mic bleed going on, you couldn't "fix" problems even if you wanted to half the time.

The best live recordings simply provide a clear document of what happened onstage on any given night, and as much as the band as a collective unit is capable of attaining these things (texture, nuance, tone, atmosphere, etc.) naturally, a good live recording will capture it.

Live recordings don't capture CLEAR documents of anything. Clarity is not a goal with live rock band engineering. A rock concert is an event, taking place in a frequency bouncing echo trap, and the audio is directed towards achieving volume and promoting event at the expense of clarity.

Furthermore, there are too many great artists whose creative developments have unfolded in concert as much as in the studio (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, The Grateful Dead, to name a few recognizable ones) for me to believe that what you call "the creative pursuit of the heart of an idea" can't be equally evident on live recordings.

The ability to accurately capture and (without manipulation) share sound varies, dependent upon style and format. Comparing what can be captured by Miles Davis at the Fillmore or at a live outdoor festival in front of a jazz audience, to what a noisy rock band with noisy fans in a concrete nightmare can capture, is a purposeless exercise. It's also worth noting that the Grateful Dead are still, to this day, held up among engineers as being not only head and shoulders, but torso, hips, and thighs above any other performing rock band for the craft and care they brought to their live sound setup. And Dan Healy is something of a prodigy when in comes to such things. I've attached an interview snippet with him below that is pretty insightful.

Granted, modern Pearl Jam aren't necessarily the best example of this.

Pearl Jam were never a good example of what you're referring to above.

But to my ears, a jam section in the middle of a 2000 version of "RVM" sacrifices nothing in the way of nuance simply because it was generated on a stage in front of 10,000 people and not in a recording studio.

That's a dubious example, since it only exists in live versions and has no studio comparison. There's no way to disprove it or to actually compare. But it's also an example of interpreting the word 'nuance' to apply only to performance, and not to the capturing of, which is still only arguing against 50% of my point.

You also seem to still be responding as though I'm saying live recordings are useless or "bad" recordings, which I'm still not saying.

The Dan Healy interview:

DH: I do scale drawings before the fact. When we get to the hall, everything references off a stake that's in the front center lip of the stage. Everything is measured from that, so the stage is vectored out on angles from that [which is] known and predetermined. They literally take a transit and set it up just as if you were surveying, and you take that pole and go [to the location points]. But you have to use surveying tools. You can't use a tape measure—you have to be serious about it!

FD: One thing that struck me about your sound. Audiophiles are always talking about three dimensionality, soundstaging, and layered depth. Most concerts, the sound is horrible...

DH: Yeah, it's not even worth discussing.

FD: You're lucky if you hear anything even close to a reasonable frequency response. You take it as a given that properly set up High End equipment can give you better sound than even a recording studio. Here, I heard better sound quality than, maybe, any High End system I've ever heard!

DH: We should take you outdoors sometime. This is mediocre compared to what we can do outside. We can do halls better than anyone else in the world, but you should hear what we can do outside. It'll dazzle you!

FD: What kind of microphones do you use?

DH: I've used them all. The latest state-of-the-art, vintage Neumanns and RCAs, you name it. Sometimes I'll change vocal mikes three times during the course of a tour. There aren't any microphones I'm really satisfied with. I think there's room for another generation of microphones before they bottom out on the physical limitations of the technology. I think you'll see this in the next year or so. I may be more outspoken than most, but I think that any engineer that's been engineering for any length of time would, if they told you the truth, admit that one of the biggest letdowns in the whole audio industry is microphones.

FD: People put so much emphasis on the reproduction of sound that they don't pay enough attention to the production of it. Once the sound hits the microphone, you've already made the potential for perfect reproduction impossible.

DH: You got it.

FD: How about an audiophile question: What type of cable do you use?

DH: We use oxygen free copper. Made to our specifications—it's more rugged than most. It also has a good capacitance specification—about 13pf per foot. The cable used in the snake [the long cable connecting the control systems in the sound booth to the amplifiers on stage] has even less capacitance, about 6 pf per foot. I'm sure all the "hi-fi" guys are advocates of that sort of thing...essentially, non-inductive speaker cable. Although I think these considerations applied to a three foot length of [interconnect] is a little bit ridiculous.

FD: The whole High End cable industry is built around differences in cables and connectors and things like that. Valid to a point, but a lot of it is just an attempt to take advantage of people who want a new toy every couple of months.

The band was willing to put tremendous amounts of their money back into the equipment. That Wall of Sound cost millions of dollars! It was a means to an end for them to have the opportunity to play through [a system] that was truly worthwhile, because they, too, shared the dream of, "Wouldn't it be nice if we could go into one of these places and play music and have it be a truly great experience for us as musicians, as well as for the audience." It was a common goal between the band, the sound freaks, and the audience. It was fortunate that a bunch of genius-quality sound freaks got together and decided that we'd forego your own personalities, at least for a period of time, and collaborate. It yielded a tremendous amount of information that we now use. If nothing else, we found out what we didn't want to do. It's like all breadboard situations—the more flexible something is, the less expedient it is. Flexibility is paid for by the cash of expediency. That's just a reality of life. If you want something that does 20 different things, then it's not going to be as streamlined as the thing that does only one thing.

We were the first ones to start using time alignment. Direct coupling. Getting rid of capacitors. Do you know that this sound system is direct coupled?

FD: I can't believe you guys have the nerve to do that! What happens if somebody trips on a cord?

DH: It's decoupled going into the power amps.

FD: Oh, okay! (Laughter) I was picturing the worst...

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 3:02 pm**

Look, I don't know about everything and everything. What I do know is that I go to a concert looking for something other than great sound. And in this tournament I'm only taking into account the studio versions of the songs, unless there isn't one.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 3:09 pm**

durdencommatyler wrote:Look, I don't know about everything and everything. What I do know is that I go to a concert looking for something other than great sound. And in this tournament I'm only taking into account the studio versions of the songs, unless there isn't one.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 3:16 pm**

I will defer to you and Dan Healy about all the audio engineering stuff; I don't understand it and in the end am not interested by it. What I was contesting was what seemed to me like a fairly overt claim that live recording is incapable of capturing nuance, which I inferred from this sentence:

But what live performance does not do, and what the equipment-end designs and setups are subsequently not built to capture, is nuance.

and which I think is flat-out false, regardless of whether or not we have a studio version to compare it to. I don't understand how the only way to discern whether a live performance has any depth is to compare it to a studio version. It seems like your argument is essentially that there is no depth and nuance to live recordings because recording setups dictate that it cannot be so, regardless of whether or not one's ears tell them otherwise. I provided you examples to the contrary, you made excuses for those exceptions, and then stood by your original argument. But there are dozens more exceptions. I guess I just don't really understand the point you're trying to make. Or maybe I just don't follow what you mean by nuance, texture, etc. Either way, I pretty much disagree with 100% of what you're saying.

durdencommatyler wrote:Look, I don't know about everything and everything. What I do know is that I go to a concert looking for something other than great sound. And in this tournament I'm only taking into account the studio versions of the songs, unless there isn't one.

To me, live and studio versions are just two different documents of the same thing. I understand how a studio version becomes definitive, but I don't think either one inherently is definitive. A studio recording, when you strip away all the bullshit, is just another performance of the song.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 3:35 pm**

Studio or GTFO.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 3:42 pm**

Studio should be the basis for any consideration, since it is the most accurate portrayal, the finished product, the vision of the song as closely perfected as the band can make it. Live considerations are all about the transformative dynamics of a song (Porch live, for example) and sentimentality, which is completely based on personal experience with a given song.

Just my .02...

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 3:49 pm**

You're all wrong.

You can't pigeonhole a song into any one process to interpret it. A song is the same song whether it's recorded in a studio, played live, or on a demo tape. Now, if the lyrics or arrangements are wholesale different, then I'll support it being evaluated separately. But in this type of voting process, I believe we are voting for a song and the defining lyrics and arrangements, not a specific recording. So, whether or not there's nuance, or lasers, or atmosphere, I don't give a shit. I am voting to the song on the combined merits of its studio version and its live performances. In other words, I'm voting for the song. I am not voting for only a recording, or a mix, or fucking nuance-y atmosphere. If it kills live and sucks in the studio or vice versa, then its merit is somewhere in between both.

Go to hell if you don't believe it

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 4:07 pm**

Iholdthepain wrote:Studio should be the basis for any consideration, since it is the most accurate portrayal, the finished product, the vision of the song as closely perfected as the band can make it.

See, this just isn't true. Many bands famously dislike their studio records for this very reason, because they feel like it's not an accurate portrayal, that all the artificiality that can be forced into a studio record can actually take the performance further away from "as closely perfected as the band can make it." It just depends.

Look, the way I see it is like this: Any performance of a song--live or studio, and regardless of what takes place between the inception of the song and the final documentation in any format--is ultimately an attempt to extract meaning from a sequence of chords, melodies, words, etc. which exist, in theory, independently of any one performance. When I vote for "Insignificance" over "Angel," I am not voting for a specific performance of "Insignificance," because this competition is not an exercise in comparing performances; I am voting, first and foremost, for the composition, which is pretty much the same in concert and in the studio. But beyond that, I am voting for whatever lasting impression of the song I've collectively taken from all the versions I've listened to over the years. In one of the previous rounds, several detractors of "Footsteps" began talking down the song and making hurr-durr references, and my immediate reaction to that was, "Wait a second, those hurr-durrs are a vocal tic specific to a single performance of the song--the most famous one, perhaps, but they're not inherently built into what the song is." So I linked to one of the 2000 versions, where Eddie's voice is more subdued and the full band contributes to it. I suppose you can consider this an instance of the live performance being "transformative," which is fair, but again, when you strip away all the other stuff, it's simply an attempt at extracting meaning from a composition, no different from what the "original" version aims to do. In the last round for "Angel," by contrast, I spoke specifically to a part of the studio version that I felt was particularly powerful. It's no one's job to seek out every variant of a song, but insofar as they're out there and hold meaning for people, it's entirely reasonable to allow them to factor into your overall perception of a piece of work.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 4:07 pm**

hlniv wrote:You can't pigeonhole a song into any one process to interpret it. A song is the same song whether it's recorded in a studio, played live, or on a demo tape. Now, if the lyrics or arrangements are wholesale different, then I'll support it being evaluated separately. But in this type of voting process, I believe we are voting for a song and the defining lyrics and arrangements, not a specific recording. So, whether or not there's nuance, or lasers, or atmosphere, I don't give a shit. I am voting to the song on the combined merits of its studio version and its live performances. In other words, I'm voting for the song. I am not voting for only a recording, or a mix, or fucking nuance-y atmosphere. If it kills live and sucks in the studio or vice versa, then its merit is somewhere in between both.

This dude gets it.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 4:08 pm**

I vote based on sheet music

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 4:33 pm**

Kevin Davis wrote:To me, live and studio versions are just two different documents of the same thing. I understand how a studio version becomes definitive, but I don't think either one inherently is definitive. A studio recording, when you strip away all the bullshit, is just another performance of the song.

Sure, sure. I'm not taking sides, only saying that in a "contest" like this one, I'm only using the one performance as my rubric.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 4:34 pm**

never mind. not worth it.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 5:10 pm**

Kevin Davis wrote:
hlniv wrote:You can't pigeonhole a song into any one process to interpret it. A song is the same song whether it's recorded in a studio, played live, or on a demo tape. Now, if the lyrics or arrangements are wholesale different, then I'll support it being evaluated separately. But in this type of voting process, I believe we are voting for a song and the defining lyrics and arrangements, not a specific recording. So, whether or not there's nuance, or lasers, or atmosphere, I don't give a shit. I am voting to the song on the combined merits of its studio version and its live performances. In other words, I'm voting for the song. I am not voting for only a recording, or a mix, or fucking nuance-y atmosphere. If it kills live and sucks in the studio or vice versa, then its merit is somewhere in between both.
This dude gets it.

Yes, I am right with you on this one. It's really not that complicated. A song is written and becomes a song. Everything else is just a variation of the song.

We are actually voting for songs in this tournament, right? If not, the brackets should be labeled as "Track 4, 5th Album, AKA: Given to Fly"

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 5:15 pm**

I mention this a lot, but I listen to Black Market Avocado all the time, I think it's awesome, sounds A LOT better than the studio album. All the instruments sound better and clearer, Ed's voice sounds better, I definitely hear more texture, atmosphere, subtleties, etc. in BMA than I do the studio version of the album.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 5:16 pm**

I'm judging on the studio performances only. I'm not considering live performances at all in this here MM tournament.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 5:20 pm**

i didn't even think about considering live versions until this thread. now i'll think about it, but i won't consider them.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 5:23 pm**

bodysnatcher wrote:i didn't even think about considering live versions until this thread. now i'll think about it, but i won't consider them.

Whenever it's a song from Avocado, I'm pretty much only considering a live version.

Posted: **Tue March 18, 2014 5:36 pm**

Whichever version I like the best, you fools.

team "live is fine"

Red Mosquito

Match CX: Insignificance vs. Angel

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