Secrets of live performances

The music business is very interesting. Some musicians are popular because they are talented. Others are popular because they caught a break or know the right people. Others are popular because of their personality. And then there are others that are popular because…..actually, I have no idea why they are popular. They just are.

Some musicians record well but don’t perform well live. I have always admired musicians who are daring enough to produce actual recordings from live concerts. Often, you can hear some problems in those recordings because live performers cannot do unlimited takes, splices and various other techniques to get close-to-perfect music. I have a Liberace live concert recording that is just filled with mistakes. I respect his willingness not only to take the risk of recording live but also that he actually released a project that was so far from perfect. I am not ready to do either myself. I just have a feeling that right now, I need to keep performing and recording separate.

In general, if you want to know if a musician is good or not, listen to their live performances more than their recordings. I cannot even begin to go into all the technology that can magically make horrible musicians sound pretty good and average musicians sound great. In the studio, you can break a song down into as many pieces as you want and splice them together. If you make one tiny mistake in a song, you can go back and record just that note again. That is not to say that the final product will be perfect, but it will always be way better than a live performance.

But even in performances, there are a lot of things that musicians do to cover their inadequacies. For example, instrumentalists can hide a lot of problems simply by playing with other musicians. If that is not possible, they play with tracks. Many times, I have heard pianists that sound great when they play with tracks and like a hack when they play without them. I cannot be too critical because I like playing with tracks too.

Singers also have a bag of tricks to sound better in their performances. A few years ago, there was an uproar when a pop musician got caught lip syncing a song on national TV. I have no idea why anyone was surprised; lip syncing is a very common practice. Do you really think that popular singers actually sing the national anthem before the Super Bowl?  Not hardly…

Vocalists can also utilize auto-tune which is technology that will actually bend their notes to the right pitch. While used extensively in the studio, it is also used in live performances.

This topic reminds me of a popular southern gospel quartet I heard recently. The first time I heard them, they were asked to sing impromptu at an event, and it was obvious that they were at best just average in ability. Yet, they have great sounding recordings and also sound good live.

The reason why they sound so good live is because they use heavy stacks. Stacking refers to a studio technique that has found its way into more live performances than most musicians will admit. When stacking in the studio, the same musicians will record the same part several times for a fuller sound. For example, on my projects, we stack the strings two times to make the string section sound bigger. We also stack the background vocalists three or four times to get a bigger sound.

Stacking has worked its way into live performances in that vocalists will often sing along with their studio stacks to sound better. Obviously, those stacks will normally be perfectly on pitch and they give the singer and sound crew a lot of options.  The most extreme option of couse is just to cut the live mic and let the vocalist lip sync. More commonly, the stacks are mixed with the live mic in a way that does not sound fake but makes the singer sound better than he/she actually is.

In the case of this group, they even used stacks with the “impromptu” acapella songs they sang. Here is how they did it.  You have probably noticed that almost all live musicians play with an earpiece now. Earpieces are very helpful because they give musicians control over what they hear. This is very important by the way. Sometimes, the mix going to the earpiece also contains a click or count so that the musicians can stay in time with everything else. (I use a click or count to stay with my tracks too).

So, a group singing an acapella song simply has to start a track consisting only of vocal stacks. They know when to start singing because of the click or count they have in their ears. This kind of thing is not complicated and is undetectable to most people in the audience.

Now, I am not saying that using stacks or any even lip syncing in live performances is wrong or unethical because I really don’t think that is the case. I just thought some of you might find these things interesting.