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Recording Live Could be Fatal
I
can understand the need to get your music out there to the listeners, for them
to appreciate and hopefully like what you do. But there are many bands out there
that are too hasty to do this and inevitably get a negative result instead of
achieving a long line of faithful fans.
I'm talking about live recordings and live
videos.
It isn't necessarily the bands' fault that,
on the whole, the quality of these
recordings is below par. However it is the
bands' fault to release these recordings to
the public.
A band needs to understand that live
recordings of 'established' artists are
finalized in the recording studio, many
times re-recording voice and removing parts
of the show where obvious mistakes were made
onstage.
Live performances are a series of moments.
If you make a mistake, the moment when you
made that mistake passes and is quickly
forgotten by the live audience because they
are listening to the music from the next
moment in the performance.
The problem with live recordings is that if
you don't remove those error moments, every
time the listener hears your performance
they will hear the mistake, because the
mistake has been permanently fixed into the
recording. Sure sometimes it's okay to leave
a mistake or two, after all you need to
appear human, but drums out of time, singing
flat or sad guitar solos are too much.
Bands make the mistake in recording live
with inadequate equipment, where the source
is normally taken from the ambience which,
on the whole, produces a distorted sound,
and not taken from line to the table and
passed onto multi channel equipment to be
mixed and finalized later on in the studio.
The extra cost of doing this will result in
a recording of better quality and the tracks
could be used in a live album at a later
date.
Live recordings are to remember the
spectator what they experienced during the
shows of their favourite band and should be
directed to this audience. A live audience
will experience more than the music during
an event, they would experience the
atmosphere, the emotion of being at a live
event and not concentrating directly on the
music in itself. Rarely a live album would
create for a cold customer the same
experience and so the live recording needs
to highlight the quality of the music.
As we are in the video age, this attention
needs to be doubled as we are able to see
the empathy of the artist onstage also.
Image quality is important, as is the
interaction between the artist and cameras;
I say cameras as just one camera won't give
adequate dynamics.
For up and coming bands I would advise to
use video recordings as a tool for self
improvement, to be kept in private, to be
analyzed to make the live stage performance
better, to see what could be done to improve
the presentation.
I would also advise them to only make public
studio recordings which can be quality
controlled better to generate a fan base and
release the live recordings later on when
the fan can relate more with the band. I'm
not saying that you should from day one
produce a mega album, as that would probably
be unviable, but produce one song at a time
when the cash flow permits. That way at the
right time you will eventually have enough
material to have your collection of songs
and put them all together on one album.
Success.
Steve Allen
Steve Allen Steve Allen is consultant and
music producer. Author of "Marketing Your
Music – Success Strategies", "Personal
Management in the Music Industry" and "Street
Teams – Expand your Fan Base"
http://www.marketingyourmusic.net
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