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Live album shenanigans


Nail Soup

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Inspired by an exchange about live UFO albums in the "What are you listening to" thread.

We all know what the great live albums are....but what tricks, cheats and general shenanigans have been used to make live albums?

Fake crowd noise, over dubs... tell us what you know..... both specific albums and general techniques. And any legit methods used to make live albums I guess!

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I was involved in John Mayall's 70th Birthday Concert which was filmed and recorded. Trombonist Chris Barber was a guest and had a radio mic on his trombone. Backstage he played along to almost everything. Couldn't be heard out front, but the engineer in the truck had no idea he wasn't on stage, so when it came to mixing the DVD he couldn't understand what on earth was going on until I told him! Pretty sure we got rid of most of it.

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Having worked on far too many live recordings for my own good (all very low level stuff btw) I've long reconciled myself to things like vocals and mic'd instruments being overdubbed after the fact.

But what narks me is additional fake audience noise, especially when they get it wrong. The original pressing of Dylan Unplugged had a terribly obvious loop of audience whooping running incessantly through one song...

I think there is a long history of dropping audience noise from one recording into another: the famous Oasis live cover of I am the Walrus I think has crowd noise from a Faces bootleg; Lou Reed Live has a John Denver audience - although I'm not sure the cry of "Lou Reed sucks" comes from the JD gig.

The Woodstock live LPs have several tracks recorded elsewhere sneakily dropped in - always been particularly annoyed by this one. And speaking of Woodstock, the more recent Hendrix releases ov his set have everyone other than the basic trio essentially mixed out...

Was a bit gutted when I heard the raw version of the Doors doing Gloria having spent years marvelling at what a tight "live" performance it was on Alive She Cried.

I recently mixed a live recording for a reasonably well known US band where there was no chance of overdubbing anything. Cheats I used included:

-muting a lot of bvs

-putting the main vocal through a valvey distortion effect to thicken it up

-re-amping the rhythm guitar throughout

-copying a couple of passages from one part of a song to another to cover flubs

-a few instances of stretching bass notes to hide chokes

-loads of automated eq to kill feedback 

So nothing controversial or too devious but a massive amount of work to make it sound halfway decent. I can definitely understand even the most well intentioned verite project fast descending into studio trickery.

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I'm pretty sure that Queen Live Killers has different parts from different gigs on it (bass from one, drums from another etc).

Live and Dangerous is a famous example and certainly the solo played by Robbo on the accompanying DVD (supposedly of the gig) is different to the one on the recording.

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9 hours ago, Steve Browning said:

I'm pretty sure that Queen Live Killers has different parts from different gigs on it (bass from one, drums from another etc).

Live and Dangerous is a famous example and certainly the solo played by Robbo on the accompanying DVD (supposedly of the gig) is different to the one on the recording.

Wasn’t there some talk about how much of ‘Live and Dangerous’ was actually live? Seem to remember claims from some people involved with it at the time about the amount of overdubs etc.

The Who story about ‘Live at Leeds’ nearly being ‘Live at Hull’ surfaced a few years ago too. Apparently the band preferred the sound of the Hull gig ( the night after the Leeds one) but there were problems with parts of the bass recordings dropping out so they went with the Leeds gig instead. When they released the Hull gig 40 odd years later they used the Leeds bass recordings on some of the songs to fix this.

Edited by casapete
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These days with Dante or MADI technology on the desk FOH it's easy to do a complete multitrack recording of every gig with nothing more than a single cable, laptop and a copy of Reaper/Protools etc.

If the band are playing to a click, there is nothing to stop you making a live album by comp'ing individual tracks together from different venues to get the ultimate version of a particular track, and compile the album later in the studio.

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Rush were pretty open about overdubs on their live albums. Certainly All The World's A Stage and Exit...Stage Left had overdubs. Exit... also stitched songs together from different performances and actually made the crowd noise quieter. I'm not really familiar with later live albums from them.

Edited by Oxnard Montalvo
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Secret of a good live album is a good live performance with a good producer type person on the sound. From what I understand The Sex Pistols had their Never Mind The Bollocks producer/engineer doing the sound for them at Finsbury Park for their Filthy Lucre album. I was there for that gig and the CD really captures the performance. Don’t really hear any overdubs on it.

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9 hours ago, Dankology said:

Was a bit gutted when I heard the raw version of the Doors doing Gloria having spent years marvelling at what a tight "live" performance it was on Alive She Cried.

 

You have just reminded me, I also had a very minor role in the release of Beach Boys Live at Knebworth. An awful lot of gaffa tape and polyfilla was used to make that fit for release!

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There's a lot of consternation aimed at Judas Priest's Unleashed in the East album, people claimed all the vocals were studio takes due to Rob Halford not being able to hit the highs notes. Maybe they were, but I called Bullshyte on that claim that he couldn't hit those highs, as I saw them on The Killing Machine tour in 78 and again at Donington in 1980 and he certainly had no problem hits those notes.

9 hours ago, Steve Browning said:

I'm pretty sure that Queen Live Killers has different parts from different gigs on it (bass from one, drums from another etc).

Live and Dangerous is a famous example and certainly the solo played by Robbo on the accompanying DVD (supposedly of the gig) is different to the one on the recording.

I saw Queen in Edinburgh in 1976 and again in Newcastle in '79, '79 was basically the Live Killers set list, they blasted through that set with no apparent problems, my only gripe was Brian May seemed like he was just going through the motions with the rockier elements. Whereas in '76 he was still a rock god!  As for Thin Lizzy's L&D album, Producer Tony Visconti himself said most of it was redone in the studio, especially the guitars & vocals. I know that Southbound was recorded during the soundcheck, some of the songs on the album are actually from their gig at The Tower in Philadelphia in October 1977, hence they differ greatly from the video/DVD.

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1 hour ago, dudewheresmybass said:

A fella I used to know a long way back was the audience clapping on a Peter Gabriel live album (Early 90’s)- the audience clapped out of time, so they sampled a clap and had him playing a keyboard triggering the sample in time. 

If only there was a fix for out of time clapping at actual live gigs!

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If you want to hear some real live music, you can`t go wrong with the Richards Picks series from the Grateful dead. Forgotten lyrics, terrible out of tune backing vocals, musical clangers, sound problems they are all there. But there is some fantastic playing in there as well.

It tells you on the back of the booklet that there is mistakes in the recording but what you get is what happened on the night of the recording and that is what Deadheads love about it.

I can`t believe the profanity filter changed D i c k s Picks to Richard! :D

Edited by jezzaboy
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1 hour ago, Nail Soup said:

If only there was a fix for out of time clapping at actual live gigs!

I love an audience that splits into 3rds with one 3rd clapping on the 1 and 3,one 3rd on the 2 and 4 and rest just at some random timing of their own 🙄

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Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense film apparently had some post-production work. IIRC, as I haven't watched it for years, it is fairly obvious that the video itself is an amalgamation of several nights' concerts but the audio also had some 'editing and fine-tuning', I don't know how much. The albums are pretty much separate tracks and not pretending at all to be a continuous live concert. 

Still one of the best-ever performances by a band,  though.

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Most of my favourite albums are live. From The Band's Rock Of Ages, several from Little Feat, inc Waiting For Columbus, Delbert McClinton's Live From Austin and Live from Bergen, Keb Mo, Edgar Winter, BB King, Bonnie Raitt the list is a long one. They all benefit from that something that a live performance brings.

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On a slightly different note, has anyone listened to/seen the iHeart Radio Music Festival 2020 recordings on YT? Obviously done in a closed studio, but some idiot has overdubbed a large crowd clapping and cheering over all the performances. 

Its like canned laughter, only more fake. 

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On 26/09/2020 at 10:26, Nail Soup said:

If only there was a fix for out of time clapping at actual live gigs!

There is.

Make sure you have an audience composed entirely of percussionists.  Can you imagine the fights that would emerge from the queue for the bar at the interval?  Be careful what you wish for.

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On 26/09/2020 at 15:24, KevL said:

Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense film

<snip>

Still one of the best-ever performances by a band,  though.

Ground breaking I feel.

I used to go to the Ambassador cinema in Dublin and when they showed it there, everyone was up out of their seats and behaving as if it WAS live.

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On 26/09/2020 at 11:40, Maude said:

I love an audience that splits into 3rds with one 3rd clapping on the 1 and 3,one 3rd on the 2 and 4 and rest just at some random timing of their own 🙄

Posted this a while ago but always worth a second look - Harry Connick Jnr. sorting out how to make the audience clap on the 2 & 4. From around 35 secs in.......

 

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8 minutes ago, casapete said:

Posted this a while ago but always worth a second look - Harry Connick Jnr. sorting out how to make the audience clap on the 2 & 4. From around 35 secs in.......

 

Ha ha brilliant, who was celebrating behind HC when he turned it around, notice the arms in the air cheer 😁

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