Here is a major fact that I consider daily; When I record, mix, and master a project one of my main goals is to bring the playback as close as possible to what the performers actually sounded like with me sitting in the best seat in the room. I am for most part one in 10,000. The other 9,999 are doing what I explain to customers as "creating a sound by altering their performance." I take the Hippocratic Oath for recording, others ignore it.
I explain it to a performer like this;
The lead guitar player goes into the studio with his guitar, his effects pedals, his amplifier and his playing technique.
The recording tech plugs his guitar into a DI, splits the output with one going to his amp and the other straight into the recording interface/preamp. He adds a mic in front of the amp to capture the actual "sound" created by the musician.
They record two tracks, his actual musical creation/sound and a "dry" guitar only track.
The guitar player leaves and the "recording engineer" takes the dry track and runs through his own virtual pedals and amps and uses the new altered track in the recording.
The same can be said of every individual element going into that recording if the person doing it isn't interested in capturing the actual performance. As soon as he/she crosses that line, he or she is part of the creative process and any resemblance of the true original performance quickly disappears.
How do you know how hard the recording tech, mixer, mastering engineer has worked to preserve "what the performers actually sounded like with me sitting in the best seat in the room?"
I have used pitch correction only twice in my life, both times to correct/offset a Recorder purchased off of the street in Tibet that the performer wanted to use but was a few cents lower than standard pitch. I believed this to be ethical since it corrected only the absolute pitch of the instrument and didn't truly change the performance.
BTW most musicians are terrible on the technical/scientific/measurement based side and are easily influenced and loose control quickly of their own work. If they are knowledgeable participants in alterations to the original music then they are still creating the sound (let's see them reproduce it in concert). When the performer leaves, the performance stops.
Tom eh
I explain it to a performer like this;
The lead guitar player goes into the studio with his guitar, his effects pedals, his amplifier and his playing technique.
The recording tech plugs his guitar into a DI, splits the output with one going to his amp and the other straight into the recording interface/preamp. He adds a mic in front of the amp to capture the actual "sound" created by the musician.
They record two tracks, his actual musical creation/sound and a "dry" guitar only track.
The guitar player leaves and the "recording engineer" takes the dry track and runs through his own virtual pedals and amps and uses the new altered track in the recording.
The same can be said of every individual element going into that recording if the person doing it isn't interested in capturing the actual performance. As soon as he/she crosses that line, he or she is part of the creative process and any resemblance of the true original performance quickly disappears.
How do you know how hard the recording tech, mixer, mastering engineer has worked to preserve "what the performers actually sounded like with me sitting in the best seat in the room?"
I have used pitch correction only twice in my life, both times to correct/offset a Recorder purchased off of the street in Tibet that the performer wanted to use but was a few cents lower than standard pitch. I believed this to be ethical since it corrected only the absolute pitch of the instrument and didn't truly change the performance.
BTW most musicians are terrible on the technical/scientific/measurement based side and are easily influenced and loose control quickly of their own work. If they are knowledgeable participants in alterations to the original music then they are still creating the sound (let's see them reproduce it in concert). When the performer leaves, the performance stops.
Tom eh
