green day - live recording

Moderators: rick, Mark Bassett, gigpiglet

green day - live recording

Postby gigpiglet » Fri Nov 16, 2012 2:47 am

watching a green day live gig on TV (cause its on, and i just got back to the hotel in darwin after mixing josh pyke) it sounds HORRIBLE. obviously a big gig. huge production, mics etc etc. but just sounds bad (apart from the vocal)
waiting for an ad break to hopefully find out what show/ who recorded it...
Gareth Stuckey
gigpiglet productions:presents:recordings
gigpiglet
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1153
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2010 4:10 pm
Location: sydney australia

Re: green day - live recording

Postby Chris H » Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:01 am

I have been wondering why many artists seem to allow bad live recordings to go to air..........and the number of bad live recordings. If they are just a stereo recording of the desk mix then.... understood, although they can be great as well! It almost seems a deliberate decision by artists/management, and many punters seem to think that live recordings by their very nature normally sound bad. To make the point, I often hear comments like "that's great for a live recording" and I think to myself...... No? Just because it's a live recording shouldn't mean a lower standard applies.........It should sound great and often with more energy, vibe and passion than the corresponding studio recording! The bad sounding live recording, often means that someone involved in the recording process doesn't know what they are doing, and often in my not so humble opinion, its the person doing the final mix. It's my experience that you can often pull a pretty average live recording, re the original sounds captured, into an acceptable end result.
Chris Hallam.
https://soundcloud.com/hallamsound
Whatever floats your boat.
User avatar
Chris H
Forum Veteran
Forum Veteran
 
Posts: 2319
Joined: Mon May 09, 2005 11:20 am
Location: Off The Planet

Re: green day - live recording

Postby stosostu » Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:15 am

I watched part of it, too, after a gig, and the sound was awful, and the mix was bad , too. After two songs I couldn't stand it any longer and went to bed. (-|
Bob Charman - Stockport Sound, SA
The Road Goes On Forever and the Party Never Ends..........
User avatar
stosostu
Regular Contributor
Regular Contributor
 
Posts: 458
Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 3:17 pm
Location: Clare and Gilbert Valleys, South Australia

Re: green day - live recording

Postby jkhuri44 » Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:38 pm

urgh, at least it wasnt a world/jazz fusion band mixed live like a rock band...i cant believe i paid $45 for that.
Jamil Khuri
Amusement & Audio Engineer
"it's not awesome unless its 240bpm with distorted 909 kicks!"
jkhuri44
Forum Veteran
Forum Veteran
 
Posts: 2537
Joined: Wed Sep 20, 2006 10:53 pm
Location: Dundas

Re: green day - live recording

Postby gigpiglet » Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:18 pm

well agree with the comments above
(especially given that we do great live recordings - convincing people to pay for the gear/ experience is the hard bit when "anyone can do it")
so i watched/ made it to the end

recorded/ produced by/ for green day. it was their gig (not an mtv thing or something) and mixed by Tom lord-alge!

wow.
ok then.
Gareth Stuckey
gigpiglet productions:presents:recordings
gigpiglet
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1153
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2010 4:10 pm
Location: sydney australia

Re: green day - live recording

Postby Drumstruck » Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:23 pm

... and **ked up for television by ...... :-o (it wasn't me)
Ian Dare
Drumstruck
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1589
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2010 12:37 pm
Location: NSW South Coast

Re: green day - live recording

Postby Chris H » Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:12 pm

gigpiglet wrote:well agree with the comments above
(especially given that we do great live recordings - convincing people to pay for the gear/ experience is the hard bit when "anyone can do it")
so i watched/ made it to the end

recorded/ produced by/ for green day. it was their gig (not an mtv thing or something) and mixed by Tom lord-alge!

wow.
ok then.


Ha ha ha ...... I just insinuated Tom Lord alge doesn't know what he is doing!!!
Should I run away and hide........?
Chris Hallam.
https://soundcloud.com/hallamsound
Whatever floats your boat.
User avatar
Chris H
Forum Veteran
Forum Veteran
 
Posts: 2319
Joined: Mon May 09, 2005 11:20 am
Location: Off The Planet

Re: green day - live recording

Postby ChrisW » Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:18 am

Most of the time these films are made by a local tv broadcaster.
It's a great promo for a big tour. The show goes out live (like Glastonbury for example) and in a sense you 1) have to accept the tv companies budget, and 2) accept the tv companies staff. Few people actually specialise in live to air rock shows. A tv company might do it twice a year? Obviously a live recording engineer would have more experience, but I'm not sure many tv companies would accept their own sound engineer being replaced by someone the band wants. I'm sure a band could have their preferred choice sitting at the back of the live sound truck making observations, but again, there are usually budgetary compromises, and of course politics. Which senior tv company sound engineer wants to be crticised in front of their staff b y an American record producer?
Finally, the mics you use on a gig are often very different from the mics you use in the studio.
I'm not a big fan of the small clip on mics. They sound fabulous in concert, not as good as the standard mic choices on record IMO. A studio bass drum can be as bottom heavy and boomy as you want, but that tends to be a real negative in the live setting. Plastic screens are put around drums, they sound horrible in recordings, spill from overloud guitar amps into vocal mics etc....
Live albums are heavily massaged, overdubs and sample replacement is normal.
Whitten
ChrisW
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1285
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:01 pm
Location: Hunter

Re: green day - live recording

Postby jasound » Sun Nov 18, 2012 1:29 pm

Maybe it could be stereo fold down of a surround 5.1 mix.
I've heard some pretty strange decoding of 5.1 or any cinema multi channel Dolby
mixes when they've gone to stereo broadcast land.
Balances go totally out the window.
jasound
Registered User
Registered User
 
Posts: 181
Joined: Tue Nov 20, 2007 2:32 pm
Location: SYDNEY AUSTRALIA

Re: green day - live recording

Postby rob » Tue Nov 20, 2012 4:41 pm

been listening to Led Zep's celebration day. Both the CD and the Blueray. Surround off the Blueray drives me nuts but the stereo version is ok and pretty much the same as the CD. It is pretty good, though the extreme bottom end is a bit unruly. I still don't get why the crowd noise has to be so hot in the mix.
User avatar
rob
TRM Endorsed
TRM Endorsed
 
Posts: 1011
Joined: Tue May 10, 2005 9:16 pm
Location: Adelaide

Re: green day - live recording

Postby gigpiglet » Tue Nov 20, 2012 4:43 pm

it has to "sound live" man.... every broadcast mix i do i get hassled to "turn the crowd up" or "can you get more of the audience" to make a "vibe"
just the way it is...
Gareth Stuckey
gigpiglet productions:presents:recordings
gigpiglet
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1153
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2010 4:10 pm
Location: sydney australia

Re: green day - live recording

Postby Paul Maybury » Wed Nov 21, 2012 2:19 pm

I find many of the bigger budget live rock recordings of the modern era to have almost no air in them, and very little cymbals. Balances are often weird too, even if they aren't mixed live but are multitracked and mixed later.
Why is this? They often sound completely sterile...
I do a lot of live in the studio recordings and O.B's of several loud bands in a row, with change over times of 15 to 20 minutes, no real sound check, bang, straight to air, and sterile is the opposite of what I'm trying to broadcast.
It's not that freakin' hard, get a balance, embrace the spill and keep your ears in the speakers and your hands on the faders.
Having some idea of what the band want to sound like doesn't hurt either.
One problem I sometimes have is the mic kits used live these days. They can be excessively bright , essy, boomy, subby and way too hot. Mics that make a P.A. jump don't always translate well when broadcast out to all the clock radios, car stereos, ghetto blasters, ear buds, computer speakers and home hi fis of the real world. Fighting the inbuilt eq curves of modern gigging mics when trying to mix live to air is a pain in the arse and ears. Bring back the EV Re's, 421's, 451's and 57's, please!!
Paul Maybury
Paul Maybury
Frequent Contributor
Frequent Contributor
 
Posts: 705
Joined: Tue Nov 17, 2009 3:07 pm
Location: Melbourne

Re: green day - live recording

Postby ChrisW » Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:35 pm

I agree on the mics.
On the Straits tour of '91 we basically had a standard pro studio mic set-up on the kit. People said the gig sounded like a CD.
I know I played on live albums where the drum sounds were all replaced by samples. With slamming samples for kick and snare, it's no surprise the cymbals get lost in the mix, and the rough edges get lost. Samples have no dynamics, or timbre change.
Actually, when I see bands in concert I can rarely hear the cymbals. A live kit consists of an atomic bomb for a bass drum, a Magnum 57 for a snare, and not much else.
Whitten
ChrisW
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1285
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:01 pm
Location: Hunter

Re: green day - live recording

Postby Wiz » Thu Nov 22, 2012 3:35 pm

ChrisW wrote:I agree on the mics.
On the Straits tour of '91 we basically had a standard pro studio mic set-up on the kit. People said the gig sounded like a CD.
I know I played on live albums where the drum sounds were all replaced by samples. With slamming samples for kick and snare, it's no surprise the cymbals get lost in the mix, and the rough edges get lost. Samples have no dynamics, or timbre change.
Actually, when I see bands in concert I can rarely hear the cymbals. A live kit consists of an atomic bomb for a bass drum, a Magnum 57 for a snare, and not much else.



Just playing fan here for a second...

I saw that tour, and went to three nights in Melbourne, the sound was excellent.

I actually got to meet Mark Knopfler in the street on that tour , which was fantastic in two ways, one, his song, sultans of swing is the reason I play guitar, I heard that in 78 when i was 14 and just had to learn to play it, and secondly, because he didnt tell me to F*C(K off!!! 8) which just would have crushed me if it had happened, i cant think of anything worse than meeting one (if not your biggest) Influence and having that happen.

fan gushing over...

back to your regularly scheduled program.


Wiz
Peter Knight

Cant ego loquemur Latine

http://www.peterknightmusician.com
Wiz
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1147
Joined: Thu Dec 03, 2009 10:17 pm

Re: green day - live recording

Postby ChrisW » Fri Nov 23, 2012 5:50 am

The sound team were a bunch of guys from the Welsh Valley's.
In a period where the Americans (Clare Brothers etc) were never off the road doing large stadium tours, it made a refreshing change. Kinda like Coldplay having a sound crew from Dubbo.
One cheeky young chap was goofing off all the time. He was the PA grunt, gofer, dogsbody. He's now doing outfront sound for McCartney.
Whitten
ChrisW
Valued Contributor
Valued Contributor
 
Posts: 1285
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 12:01 pm
Location: Hunter


Return to Live Sound Forum

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests


cron