Recorded and Live Performances.

Often, many people do not make much of a distinction between listening/watching a recorded performance and experiencing a live performance. Many a time I have encountered people who have declined going for a performance because they ‘have heard the recordings of the pieces to be performed’. Allow me to explain some of the more apparent differences between recorded and live performances.

In a live performance, often what you see is what you get. The performance may seem less than perfect, but this is what it means to be human; making mistakes is part and parcel of everyday life. Also, the experience of a live performance means receiving the aura and energy of the performers first hand; you get to feel whether the performers were distant or warmed up towards the pieces performed, whether the players were confident or ill-prepared for the performance, whether they brought out the spirit of the pieces, and so on. These first-hand experiences can only be felt through a live performance, and is something that cannot be stored in a CD, DVD or a Youtube video. To further emphasise the statement ‘what you see is what you get’, it also means that if the hall’s acoustics are less than satisfactory, or if that particular horn gets out of tune in that section of the music, there is nothing that can be done about it at the moment of the performance and all that forms part of the experience.

On the other hand, recorded performances may be far from the adage of ‘what you see is what you get’. Acoustics may be beefed up or altered, out-of-tune notes may be tuned up to perfection and the performance might even be multi-tracked. The last point refers to recording different instruments or groups of instruments separately and then patching them up together after that. Yes, modern audio technology is that advanced and many movie sound tracks are done that way, even with full orchestras. Even I have done that for my composition exams (it’s perfectly normal to do this.); for my Tiny Island Nation for Baritone singer and string quintet, I recorded the string quintet one day and the voice another day. It so happened that the singer was off form that day and sang everything flat; but no problem, I could just tune everything up after the recording and voila! Everything sounded perfect anyway. Even the audience that you see screaming in certain video recordings of rock performances and even classical performances may be staged for dramatic effect. This may sound rather impossible but it has been done and is still regularly done. The ‘audience’ is paid a small sum as calefare and they act as a ‘real’ enthusiastic audience in the performances. Furthermore when multi-tracking is done the recording loses even more of the performance spirit as the musicians are not united in performance at all.

This is not to say that live performances or recorded performances are more superior than the other. Each has their merits; live performances are good to watch once in a while though they may be rather expensive, and recorded performances are good for learning scores, getting familiar with the pieces and perhaps just for the sake of musical enjoyment at home. One important point to note is that recordings are a recent invention and that our past masters like Beethoven, Bach and Brahms did not have the luxury of simply taking out a recording and playing it for relaxation and enjoyment. To create music one had to play it himself on the piano, his instruments or go to the concert hall to watch a performance, which was often rather expensive and far away from most towns.

However, the convenience of recordings in the modern day also means that many of us tend to take them as a substitute for a real and live performance, and thus we should also be wary of the recordings presented to us; we must not take them at face value all the time. Thus I would say…go for a concert once in a while! Listen to good or bad music live and you will realise that a recording can never compare to a live performance.

:D