The Negotiation Between Performance Practice And Recording Practice
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Section Headings:
1. A Conflict of Interests
2. Getting Comfortable
3. Performing To The Edit
4. Who’s In Charge? – Authority and Authenticity.
5. Designing Products for Performers and Engineers.
A Conflict of Interests
Throughout my time as a sound engineer and record producer I was aware of the constant negotiation between performance practice and recording practice in decisions about the recording process. There seem to be several points of conflict between factors that musicians consider to be conducive to achieving a good performance and those that sound engineers regard as desirable or even necessary for obtaining a recording that meets the technical and aesthetic standards of contemporary recording practice. The underlying problem rests in the principally communal practice of musical performance and the desirability of isolating sound sources from each other in the recording process. The desirability of isolation stems from the use of multiple microphone techniques and the aesthetics of the ‘artificial’ staging of performances in a virtual environment.
Getting Comfortable
Musicians, then, generally favour working in the same space, at the same time, with good lines of sight for communication and a live acoustic in the space so that they can clearly see and hear the rest of the ensemble and react to them. The technician’s desire for separation and isolation in the recording process has developed a practice that works in more or less direct opposition to these preferences. If musicians are playing in the same space and time on a recording, they are likely to be screened off from each other to reduce spillage from one microphone to another. This not only compromises their visual communication but will also reduce their ability to hear the rest of the ensemble clearly. The use of headphones obviously solves this problem but often at the expense of the musicians’ feeling of connection with one another. Screens are not always considered to provide a sufficient level of isolation, especially when loud instruments such as kit drums are involved. Musicians are therefore frequently placed in different rooms, which makes communication less direct, even when glass partitions are used. Multitrack tape recording has extended the possibilities for isolation by allowing musicians to record at different times: this removes not only the possibility of visual communication but also of two-way interaction in the performances. Negotiations between, on the one hand, ensuring the comfort of the musicians and creating the right atmosphere for them to stimulate the desired performance and, on the other, using recording techniques that provide separation are found in all genres of music and involve many different forms of compromise.
Frederick Moehn’s description of the changes in recording practice for the annual Sambas de enredo CD that accompanies the Rio de Janeiro Carnival offers a case in point. In 1999 the producers of the album decided to record the percussion tracks in the Company of Technicians Studio instead of the large circus tent that had been used previously. This involved separating out some of the musicians into isolation booths away from the main room and using headphones. Aside from saving money by employing fewer musicians, this change was instigated by the executive producer and the chief sound engineer ‘in order to arrive at a cleaner sound’. A contrasting solution is described by Beverley Diamond with regard to the Wallace family’s recording of their CD Tzo’kam in four different studios. In the first studio the drum was in a separate room from the vocals; in the second the singers were separated in different rooms and overdubs were added; in the third they were all in one room with separate microphones; and in the last they performed as they do live but with a single overhead microphone. Russell Wallace performed on and produced the album and describes the changes in terms of seeking a greater comfort-level with the performance arrangements, or what Diamond describes as the ‘social space of the studio’. The choices made are seen as being key to getting the right performances from the musicians and as being specific to this genre of music.
When I was recording jazz albums in London in the late 1980s and early 1990s I took part in many similar negotiations. The musicians had an idea of how they wanted the recording to sound, and typically that required a significant amount of separation; and yet they wanted to play in an environment that afforded as much interaction as possible. Factors such as the instrumentation, repertoire, and playing styles all contributed to the decision-making process. For example, the studio had a separate isolation booth for drums and a very small booth designed for vocals. The piano was in the main room and was usually screened off from the double bass in the same space. With quartets, the saxophone or trumpet would sometimes perform in the vocal booth and have artificial ambience added. Louder players, and often tenor sax rather than alto players, would frequently dislike the ‘feel’ of playing in the booth, and we would organize another screened-off area in the main room. Although this usually gave a less satisfactory audio quality, it was accepted as the ‘price’ of getting the right performance from the player. With quieter drummers the decision was regularly made to leave the door of the isolation booth partly open to improve the line of sight between the drummer and the bass player.
Paul Tingen’s description of the ways in which Daniel Lanois affected the working practices of U2 when producing The Unforgettable Fire (1984) and Achtung Baby (1991) shows that this negotiation is not confined to genres in which recording is generally restricted to capturing a single live performance. Although Lanois encouraged the band to record as an ensemble, he also extended to other areas of recording practice this desire for getting the right atmosphere so that the musicians could produce the desired performances. The chosen venues were not recording studios at all, but a castle and a rented house by the sea in Ireland into which mobile recording equipment was installed. Lanois was thus prepared from the outset to sacrifice audio quality and ignore the conventions of recording practice in order to achieve the right performances. This extended to the use of amplified monitoring instead of headphones, recording in the control room with the producer and the sound engineer rather than in a separate studio room, and generally allowing the recording process to take second place to the creative processes of composition and performance.
Performing To The Edit
Gavrilov and 2 bar takes stitched together, Miles Davis, Teo Macero and cleaning up ‘messy’ improvisations to create a structured piece that not only would survive repeated listening but may also serve as a model for future performances.
Paul Simon and writing by editing.
Roni Size, Portishead and the Garage Band approach to creating recordings for composition.
Who’s In Charge? – Authority and Authenticity.
The issue of power relationships and studio politics raised here is not merely a question of aesthetics determining whose preferences prevail and to what extent. It was only when The Beatles had become a best-selling international commodity that they had enough clout to alter the recording practices at Abbey Road studios to suit their personal preferences. On the other hand, Louise Meintjes catalogues a sequence of events in the South African recording scene that demonstrates that musicians who, while associating ‘liveness’ in recordings with their African identity, have also had to compromise with engineers and producers to record what West Nkosi describes as ‘piece-piece – every individual plays alone’ overdubbed performances. The social dynamics of the recording environment offer many potentially fruitful avenues for future study, and some have been alluded to in the previous section, but this aspect of negotiating between performance practice and recording practice has a direct and palpable effect on the sonic qualities of the recorded output.
How do these negotiated decisions get made? Aside from the performer, the final decision about editing will usually reside with the producer and yet the practicalities of ‘performing’ the edit (usually by an engineer) – of offering a multiple choice of possibilities to the producer – can be hugely important in determining the precise microtiming and phrasing of the recorded output. This can be more messy than the logical structure of a systems model might imply:
For a start they are not always made by the person or persons who is meant to have artistic control. Changes and decisions that technicians make without consultation - adding processing and treatment out of habit or because it’s ‘good practice’. This can often extend to ‘cleaning’ up edits and correcting timing.
Multiple choice decisions – do you like this? Stroppy technicians withholding an ‘option’ because it’s boring work.
Mike Howlett – creating a model vocal through ‘comping’ that forms the basis for a further performance.
These types of unplanned or non-standard activity can all be included in the idea of the culture of rules or the field of experts but this needs to be explicitly stated.
Designing Products for Performers and Engineers.
Product design has altered according to who the ‘target’ audience was – started by being a copy of the mixing desk and now the DJ model has become more popular. How have musicians been lured into the purchase of recording technology – MMC and keyboard control of transport controls.
How much does the technology itself influence the editing process? Pre-tape – editing wasn’t an option
Roy Halee – the ‘Graceland’ album couldn’t have been made without the digital PCM 3324 multitrack because of the amount of editing and copying.
Ergonomics – the difference between re-doing tape edits with a razor blade and moving them around in a non-destructive non-linear editing system. It’s not just about what is possible or not possible - but about what is more or less likely, more or less difficult or more or less obvious.
We must also take account of the fact that technology is often rejected as well as accepted: Hank Shocklee’s rejection of quantization
Steven Street (Kaiser Chiefs, The Smiths, Cranberries, Blur) and audio quantization - “I mean drums are so often programmed these days and really tightened up with beat detector (sic) and stuff. Sometimes you do find people – are they tightening up the drums because they really need to or because they can?” - talking about the Beat Detective audio quantise system in ProTools.
