Recording - October 2013 - 16

By Eleanor Goldfield
Cheap Trick at Budokan was the band’s best selling
album, going 3x platinum.
Garth Brooks’ Double Live went 21x platinum, beating
out any of his studio albums, which peaked at 17x platinum with No Fences.
Bruce Springsteen’s Live/1975-85 went 13x platinum,
beat out only by the iconic Born in the USA album which
went 15x platinum.
The Eagles, Nirvana, Eric Clapton, Bob Seger and many
more artists have gained tremendous success by releasing
live albums... Why?

RECORDING October 2013

Live magic—why?
Anyone who’s ever gone to an amazing live show can probably
answer that question. It may not be a very eloquent answer, peppered instead with a lot of expletives, and the odd “Man, you
should’ve seen it!”, “There was just this, this energy”, “I was transported”, “I can’t believe that show!”, “I can’t even explain it—it
was just incredible.”
It’s that in-person connection made between artist and fan; art
playing out before your eyes in a one-of-a-kind, never repeatable
performance. It’s the raw energy, the ability to step into the songs
while they’re being performed. It’s imperfect, messy, loud, sweaty,
hot; the music fills you up with a pointed intensity that pushes you
to mosh, scream, jump, head bang, and gyrate in the most awkwardly cathartic ways you can think of.
It’s emotion that parallels with the dynamics of the song—projecting loudly across a sea of people, or enveloping an intimate crowd.
It’s the lights, the pulse of the bass in your chest, the breath of the
singer, the crush of the guitars, the presence of the entire band—
kinetically pushing each syllable, beat and note; the feeling of anticipation mixed with excitement, awe, surprise, joy, sorrow and every
other emotion you can possibly think of slammed, jammed yet perfectly wrapped up in one evening of music.
It’s the reason why—no matter what happens in the music industry—live shows will always exist, the same way that theater has
existed long past the invention of TV.
But as incomparable as live shows are, they aren’t the whole
story. Studio recordings are the before and after of that great night.
They’re what gets you to go in the first place, or what pulls you further in the next day. They’re what plays on that TV show you like,
on the radio, at your friends’ party, at the gym, on Pandora and
the million other nooks and crannies of the internet.
These days, a band needs great studio recordings and a great
live show to get and maintain a solid fan base. Unfortunately,
many great live bands just don’t translate to the studio well. “I can’t
tell you how many times I’ve gone to see a band live and thought...
these guys are really good, great energy and tones, only to have
them give me a CD after the show and think, is this the same band
I just saw?” says Rich Mouser (Oleander, Weezer, Spock’s Beard).
Make it happen in the studio
For many bands, the live show is a natural form of expression. I
know I feel that way. Getting on stage for me is a cathartic release
and an incomparable high. It’s an intoxicating sense of immediacy and unbridled creative emotion. In contrast, recording can be a
fumbling experience of trying to lock in sounds, auditioning mics
for hours, measuring distances to check phase... and before you
know it, you’re perusing a take-out menu, wondering how much
time you can kill by reading it backwards.
As someone who’s spent their entire adult life working in studios,
being recorded and recording myself, I get off on recording sessions. From the nuances in mic choice to the joy of tinkering and
building songs, I feel studio recordings can be just as fulfilling as
being on stage. Not everyone is like that, though, and not every
band does well in front of a single mic in an iso booth, tied down
by headphones and the inability to move to the music. You can easily destroy a great live band by putting them in a situation like that.
So that raises the question: how do you translate a phenomenal
live band into a great studio recording? While there’s never just one
answer in the recording world, the general consensus seems to be
that the best way is also the simplest: Don’t take the live show out
of the band. Let the band to do what they do best—play together.
When capturing the essence of a great live band, the studio
recording can’t be about cutting them up into perfectly isolated and
unrealistic pieces, only to mix them together into an overly-quantized, mechanical flat line. It has to be about capturing that energy, that emotion. And the best way to do that is to let them play the
way they would live: together, live, in a room, making eye contact,
feeding off of each other, and playing the song from start to finish.

Recording - October 2013

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