{"id":1764,"date":"2014-02-10T23:33:24","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T07:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/?p=1764"},"modified":"2018-03-01T23:33:55","modified_gmt":"2018-03-02T07:33:55","slug":"recording-by-ear-part-3-studio-vs-concert-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/archives\/1764","title":{"rendered":"Recording by Ear, part 3: Studio vs. Concert Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/u><\/p>\n

Performance Olympics<\/u><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been asked for recording advice by fellow musicians ranging from gifted 12-year-olds to young professionals to performers in mid-career. I no sooner mention recording in concert than they say it\u2019s such<\/i> a good idea!\u2014 but won\u2019t work for them.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re doing concerts anyway (I point out), it\u2019s not much more trouble to record. If you\u2019re streaming a concert, it\u2019s no<\/i> more trouble. In either case, why not give it a try? It\u2019s fun! It\u2019s exciting! It may<\/i> even result in a better recording! After all, we expect a skater\u2019s performance to peak in the Olympics, before an excited crowd, not in an empty practice rink; and it\u2019s natural for a musician\u2019s performance to peak in the concert hall, before an involved audience, not in an empty room.<\/p>\n

Or so I think, with the greatest respect for the views and results of those who record in a different fashion. <\/p>\n

Of course \u201cnerves\u201d are part of the picture, helping us as much as they help athletes. In both fields, we hear people say, \u201cI was nervous; but as soon as I (exited the gate \/ played the first notes) I felt great!\u201d That\u2019s when nerves change from distraction to inspiration; when errors become less<\/i> likely to occur. Contrast this with a famous producer telling me she\u2019d love to record her artists in concert, but, \u201cThey\u2019re not comfortable that way.\u201d Well, my goodness! Since when is \u201ccomfortable\u201d an optimum condition for high achievement?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n<\/u><\/p>\n

Recording Styles<\/u><\/p>\n

Concert recording<\/em>, broadly speaking, aims at the excellence that comes from the excitement of performer and audience. The audience is essential, and little editing is possible (or, we hope, needed).<\/p>\n

Studio recording<\/em>, by contrast, aims to achieve excellence via editing. To provide raw material for that editing, it needs the freedom to record endless takes\u2014sometimes hundreds! An audience would soon be bored, and bored listeners are noisy ones. If they leave, the acoustics would change and edits not match; if they stay, their presence will be a drag on the engineer-performer interaction and on the recording process (the opposite of their effect in a concert).<\/p>\n

True, once in a blue moon, you hear of someone entering the studio and recording some gigantic piece, like the Goldberg or Diabelli Variations, in one take: no editing needed! But we can\u2019t say this is the aim<\/i> of the process; rather, no matter how welcome, it\u2019s a very unusual occurrence!<\/p>\n

As clearly different as they are, the two recording styles are not rigidly defined or mutually exclusive. At one extreme, you can do a pure concert recording. Or you might record in concert and come back the next day to \u201ccover\u201d wrong notes with short takes, as was likely done with Horowitz\u2019s 1965 \u201cCarnegie Hall return\u201d album. It was released as \u201cHorowitz Live and Unedited\u201d; but a musician friend who heard wrong notes at that concert reported with amusement that they didn\u2019t appear on the album.<\/p>\n

Nearer the \u201cstudio-recording\u201d end of the spectrum was a pianist-producer friend I ran into one day. I asked how things were going with his studio recording of another pianist, with a famous name; and he exclaimed, \u201cI could tear my hair out! He won\u2019t play more than four bars at a time, and wants my opinion about each take\u2014as though you could have<\/i> an opinion about four bars! And<\/em> he expects me to edit this mess into a coherent performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before tape-recording existed (pre-1948 or so), we used 78 RPM records and no editing was possible: the performer had<\/i> to play a whole record side\u2014about five minutes\u2014well enough to release\u2014or do it again. A \u201cnow or never\u201d psychology may have made for more exciting records. As suggested in part 2, this psychology was probably in play with \u201cdirect-to-disc\u201d LPs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Signs & Symptoms<\/u><\/p>\n

To look at editing more closely, consider this illustration:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/center><\/p>\n

The top line represents a portion of an unedited recording with note-errors of different durations (X\u2019s). We replace them with error-free takes (check-marks), as discussed in Part 2; and the recording is now note-perfect (second line), but with the following risks:<\/p>\n

Discontinuities in background noise at edit-points can cause low-pitched thunks<\/i> easily overlooked in editing but annoying in careful listening.<\/p>\n

Mismatch of dynamics between an insert and the surrounding material will stand out at the edit-point. Can they be made to match? Sure! But if you shaped the dynamics differently in<\/i> the insert from what you did in the main performance, what matches at the one point may not match throughout.<\/p>\n

\u201cCross-phrasing\u201d: Note that phrases 3 and 5 come from the main performance; phrase 4, mostly from the insert. Imagine the three phrases carry one continuous melody played d\u00e9tach\u00e9. Imagine also that in the performance from which phrase 4 is taken, your d\u00e9tach\u00e9 was more staccato than in the other performance. Will the listener notice that the staccato-ish playing is flanked by legato-ish playing? Maybe not, if you\u2019re lucky; on the other hand, who wishes for an insensitive listener? Or maybe the contrast in articulation will seem meaningful to the listener, though the meaning won\u2019t be intended by you or the composer. If you\u2019re altogether unlucky, the inconsistency may undermine the meaning of the whole piece.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What Are We Learning?<\/u><\/p>\n

Subtleties matter, in other words; and I fear that young musicians may be learning all the wrong things about recording and performing from growing up with \u201cperfection\u201d that comes at a cost of problems like these. Such studio products have been, not perfected, but perfectionized<\/i>. As mastering engineer Doug Sax says, \u201cThe perception of a performance as opposed to a perfect rendition is for the few and unfortunately far between.\u201d <\/p>\n

I would wish all musicians to learn that even the best editing puts at risk the integrity of a performance; and therefore we should minimize the amount of editing. And that\u2019s done most easily by recording in concert.<\/p>\n

And because so many of us agonize\u2014\u201dWill this<\/i> performance be worthy<\/i> of recording?\u201d\u2014which wastes time and energy, I would wish for everyone to record always. Make it not an issue! You can always not use a recording you don\u2019t like. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Performance Olympics I\u2019ve been asked for recording advice by fellow musicians ranging from gifted 12-year-olds to young professionals to performers in mid-career. I no sooner mention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1765,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1764\/revisions\/1765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/boykonpiano.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}