live/memorex

By Robbie on May 20, 2009

My son Nick came to see me play in Brooklyn with Jenny Scheinman.  The next day he asked, non-sardonically, "Why is it that I walk into some hole-in-the-wall joint and the sound of you guys sitting there singing and playing over a little PA is so much better than your records?"  I saw a similar comment here, from someone who was disappointed with the new MP3 package after having seen one of my rather high-production midwest shows the other week.  Okay, first, it's irresistible to quote Mark Rubin: There are a lot of answers to that, and you're not going to like any of them.

An interesting question though.  A touch sensitive too, but let's try and not be that way.  I can think of three replies that seem accurate, two of which treat the presumption as correct.  The reply that doesn't is: close your eyes -- it's not as good as you think.  Sam Cooke supposedly said something like this to Herb Alpert when they were auditioning a singer of whom the horn player had an inflated opinion.  The excellent book "Capturing Sound" by Mark Katz reminds us that the divorce of sound from sight, at the dawn of the recording era, was instinctively felt to be weird and unnatural.  People sat and stared at the voices issuing from the magic box.  This wasn't really very long ago, and in another hundred years or so I guess we'll take a look at where the record and radio businesses stand and have a better idea whether the ears-only version of music was a fluke or a terrific discovery, seismic and lasting.  For now, rest assured that cutting off one broad stream of sense-information has a marked perceptual effect.  Listening only is like sex in the dark.  Listening and looking is like I don't know what.  Sex with a silken-voiced runway model who hates your guts.  Anyway, the two experiences aren't very compatible or comparable, and if you ever hear a board tape of a show you thought was great, you'll find out what performers find out early on, that it's hardly ever as good as it felt in the moment, with all senses firing.  (Also that board tapes suck.)

But let's say my live shows excel my records.  The most obvious reason that could be true is that I've made about a dozen records and played a couple thousand live shows.  If I wasn't good at live performance by now, then I'm doing something very wrong with my life!  To me, performing is much simpler in every way than recording.  If the room is comfortable for all concerned, the sound guy knows his job, and you're in passable shape (clear-voiced, sober, neither hungry nor full), then all you have to do is...what you do.  There are lots of bad rooms and sound guys, obviously, but what comes directly from you is the overriding factor; as good as it is having all 8 cylinders at your disposal, you can get by fine on 6. 

By contrast, recording encompasses a lot of things one doesn't, so to speak, do, or do nearly as effortlessly: digital editing and piecemeal overdubbing, listening to the squeak of one's fingers magnified through a headset, scheduling and time management, patience and perspective through interminable replays.  You don't have visual charisma to exploit, so you're that much more dependent on audio specialists.  For a guy still coming to grips with pre-Newton technologies, a recording studio is a daunting environment, and even after those dozen records I continue to struggle dopily with audiophysics concepts and the names and functions of all the metal boxes.  That's not an excuse, by the way.  When you decide to make records to sell to people, you are deciding, whether you like it or not, to gain some instrumental knowledge about some arcane subjects which might not interest you, just as, when you buy a house, you are agreeing to gain a limited if not an immersive acquaintance with carpentry, the equity markets, Euclidean geometry, Fed policy, pest control, contract law, the emergent properties of water, thermodynamics, urban planning, and so on.  And on, and on.  "I was dragged kicking and screaming into this knowledge," said my neighbor, a financial analyst, as we crouched in his basement last November, vacuuming out four inches of water.  Me too, buddy. 

What's remarkable to me is not that someone might record at a weaker level than he performs, but the other way round.  How can someone who has mastered the painstaking art of crafting sound and performance in the multitasking dystopia called a studio not be able to walk down the street to the corner bar, sit on a stool, and make a pleasant sound on command?  Yet the times in which we live have evolved this kind of mutant, and we see him all around.  It's a common reaction, when you see an act on TV or in person that apparently can't sing on key, or is deficient in the most basic kind of communicative skills, to feel that you've been duped by the overly manipulative recording industry.  But it's not true in the very important sense that the records still sound great.

I'd sure like to learn as much about sound recording as T Bone Burnett or Emory Gordy or Dr. Dre or John Lomax knows/knew, and apply it to my records.  Won't happen, but it's something to shoot for.  I can't honestly say that each of my records has sounded better than the last, because I've learned too little too slowly or glancingly or autodidactically, and I've been too reliant on whoever is engineering.  (I can't see dollars correlating to results, either, though you should never forget whatever Laffer-like curve it is that shows stinginess beyond point x producing diminished music.)  I can say, though, that each record is a little more reflective of my own conscious intentions and increased awareness (if not ability), in every department from lyric writing to sound engineering, than the last.  The buttons and boxes retain their mystery, but one learns that a certain layout of personnel and baffles and mikes is likelier to yield a certain result.  That a convincing document of a natural-sounding performance is easiest to achieve by creating -- what do you know! -- natural-performance conditions.  That studio monitors are at least as fallible a gauge of bass volume as your car's factory-installed speakers.  That if you don't get excited on immediate playback, you won't get any more excited after a long mix.  That planning is important, but casting is crucial.  That T Bone's comment about a mix coming down to treble, bass, and volume, while a comical simplification, carries a lot of truth.  That you don't tell a good musician what to play, only how.  (Though producers routinely violate this precept, I stand by it.)  All this doesn't make up for not having the first idea about the circuitry of a Neve console, but it's very good practical knowledge to have, all the same.

So my first answer to the stipulated deficiencies of my records is: "I'm still learning, give me more time!"  But another important thing to note is that the more you play a song, the clearer you tend to get on how to put it across -- and simple confidence has a role too.  It seems safe to say that most of what gets recorded is freshly composed music, music that hasn't been previously performed (in this arrangement, with these people) very much.  That's the case with me, at least.  Going into the studio with a song you've played in public 500 times may be more sensible, but it's like getting married in a three-year-old suit.  Most of my records are a deliberate mix of the road-tested and brand-new, except for "50-vc. Doberman," on which almost everything was only a week or two old upon documenting.  That aspect made for wicked fun on my end.  Don't let the fact that the songs are still improving from onstage reiteration, month by month, deter you from buying the record...right now!