Live album

A live album is a recording consisting of material (usually music) recorded during stage performances, commonly contrasted with a studio album. Live albums may be recorded at a single concert, or combine recordings made at multiple concerts.

Live albums usually have a less "finished" character than a studio album, and are intended to reproduce some of the experience of attending a concert performance. As such, they may include applause and other noise from the audience, comments by the performers between pieces and so on. They often employ multitrack recording direct from the stage sound system (rather than microphones placed among the audience), and can employ additional manipulation and effects during post-production to enhance the quality of the recording. Live albums also sometimes contain an unreleased or never-before-heard studio track.

Contents

Classical

Live recordings of classical music can be similar to non-classical albums in the sense that they can record an event (e.g. The Proms, Vienna New Year's Concert). However, many artists prefer to record live rather than in the studio, with post-performance edits to correct any mistakes. Hence many 'live recordings' can be virtually indistinguishable from studio counterparts. Depending on the closeness of the miking, such recordings may have a stronger ambient effect than studio performances. The conductor Leonard Bernstein made virtually all of his later recordings from live performances rather than studio sessions.

Additionally, several classical artists and ensembles use empty venues to record what would otherwise be termed studio recordings. An example of this is Walthamstow Town Hall in London.

Jazz

In jazz, live albums often stand beside studio efforts in terms of importance, as improvisation is such a major part of the genre. It is quite common for newly unearthed live recordings to be seen as vital, revelatory additions to a artist's catalog, as with the release of Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall in 2005.

Electronic

Studio and live albums in the electronic genre can be nearly indistinguishable if the recording is made directly from the soundboard. For this reason, some electronic groups have more live material than studio recordings in production. For example, electronic pioneer Tangerine Dream had nearly 300 hours of live bootlegged recordings loosely legitimized by the artists themselves, called the Tangerine Tree project.

Rock and pop

The Who's seminal live album Live at Leeds, was packaged in the anonymous style of bootleg recordings, at the time a threat to the music industry.

Many successful recording artists have released a live album, however these albums are generally seen as expendable parts of an artists’ catalogue, often failing to sell as well as studio albums. However, some pop and rock artists are known for live albums that rival or exceed the sales of their studio albums, such as Kiss's Alive! and Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive!. The best selling live album worldwide is Garth Brooks' Double Live, having sold in excess of 21 million copies as of November 2006[1]. In Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, only 11 albums were live albums:

In jam music, however, live recordings play a much larger role. Since, as in jazz, improvisation is such an important aspect of jam music, every performance is different and unique. Therefore, live albums from these artists offer not just the "concert experience", but new and unique musical ideas that cannot be experienced on studio albums. Many fans attempt to acquire as many live recordings from these bands as possible in order to have a complete musical collection. This leads many jam artists to release many more live albums than studio recordings. Notably, the band the Grateful Dead have released well over 100 different live albums documenting almost every part of their entire 30 year career, while only releasing 13 studio albums.

In recent times, many live albums come with a live DVD. Examples include Green Day's Bullet in a Bible, Linkin Park's Road to Revolution, Muse's HAARP amongst others.

How To

Concert sound recording can be the most challenging environment for a sound engineer, if done correctly the listener will feel that they are an audience member of an exciting musical performance. For a good sounding concert recording a careful combination of microphone placement, equipment selection and timing are crucial. In some instances it is possible to obtain a better recording from a live show than from hours of work in a recording studio. The energy of the performers and the sound of the crowd combine to make an amazing recording, making it a great alternative to an expensive and lengthy process of making an album.

Typical concert recordings are approached one of three ways: The “Stereo Pair” approach where two microphones are set up usually in or near the audience giving a result that is somewhat similar to what you would hear if you were in the crowd at that performance. This is a minimalist approach that sounds very authentic and will include the sounds of the environment and audience, for better or worse.

The “Board Feed” approach where the mix generated by the sound mixer is sent to a recorder. This is another quick and easy way to obtain a recording with minimal effort other than the permission of the band and venue, and a portable recorder. However, this recording wouldn’t include any instrumentation that didn’t require amplification (like a drum set in a small room) and probably wouldn’t include any natural nuance or audience reactions .

Then there is the “Multitrack Recording” approach that captures each microphone and instrument separately to be mixed later in a studio environment. Additional microphones are placed throughout the venue to capture not only the audience reactions but also to blend in the sound of the band in the space. This results in a cleaner sounding recording of the performance than either of the previous methods, but requires far more equipment and expertise.

Each approach has benefits and disadvantages. Multitrack Recording requires a lot more equipment and technical expertise but yields a much higher quality product. The stereo pair approach has a much smaller footprint and less impact on the band and venue but can be compromised by environmental conditions such as a rowdy crowd or a venue with acoustical anomalies. The board feed approach is also quite simple, but produces a less nuanced product than the other two methods.

See also

References

  1. ↑ RIAA - Gold & Platinum - May 30, 2008

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