Ken Newton
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- Mar 29, 2016
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That has several problems:
1. What is 'heard' in live music depends upon location in the venue and the venue. There is no singular definition of the sound of a piano or a guitar.
2. What the microphones 'hear' is not what your ears hear. They're transducers, they change the sound
3. What the microphones 'hear' almost never survives unmolested except in rare minimalist recordings. Your "live" acoustic recording has already been manipulated by mixing, EQ, compression, etc.
4. Multi-track "studio booth" recordings don't have a live performance reference point because the musicians are often not even in the same place at the same time
5. What's the reference standard for music genres that have no natural component? That are entirely electronic?
Yes, I agree, that all of that is correct. Which is exactly why I suggest including simply sounding live/real as among the selection criteria. If an reproduction is both emotionally engaging as well as sounding live/real, then, man, I've arrived. That may seem a fairly heretical notion. However, ponder how much does it really matter that a given reproduction sounds a bit different in acoustic character from the original event - which is something we cannot know anyhow, unless we were present at the session - so long as that reproduction is both emotionally engaging and live/real sounding?
Conversely, does an faithful (whatever that means, exactly) reproduction which, almost certainly, does not sound exactly like the original acoustic event either, and which carries little to no emotional message, while also not sounding real/live, somehow, better honor the intent of the artists? It doesn't better honor my human enjoyment of their music.
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