Editing and Recording

[arensky]

What do you all think of editing as it is used in modern recording, and how does it affect what we do? It seems to me that the note perfect recordings we have had since the 1950's may have had a negative effect on our art form; we hear a note perfect recording from a pianist, then we hear the pianist live and are surprised if they make mistakes. The recordings have set unrealistic standards and expectations for pianists, imo. How can we and should we have to match perfection? I have become interested in this matter since getting my first Ipod two years ago, the sound is so clear that I can hear the splices in many instances, such as in Leon Flesher's "Wanderer Fantasy" and in Horowitz' legendary recording of Barber's Piano Sonata, just to name a couple. There have always been the flawless or near flawless pianists such as Michelangeli, Godowsky and Gould, among others but they have been the exceptions not the norm in the past. Should we have different standards for live performance and recorded performance? Wanting to know what y'all think about this...

[nicco]

Very good question. The thing about edited recordings is that the piece looses its "wholeness" when you put many parts together. When my teachers tell me to listen to recordings, they say i should listen to recordings dated back when they didnt have such recording techniques. I have plenty of recordings where mistakes are all over the place, with claudio arrau, horowitz, cortot and similar, but i dont really care, for me they are in a way better then todays perfect recordings, because they are so honest, so real, so "in the moment" playing that i like them more. Mistakes make it human.

[lamia]

Indeed, good topic!

I can't stand how out of hand editing has gotten these days. However, what you say about raising our expectations doesn't affect me. Indeed, quite the contrary. Usually, when I go to a concert to hear a pianist whose recordings I own, I'm amazed by just how much more I enjoy the live performance. The freedom, the personality, even the mistakes just make it all so much more alive!

On the other hand, I dislike going to concerts per se. I agree entirely with Glenn Gould, who saw concerts as a dreadful experience due to memory lapses, loud audiences, bad pianos, cell phones, etc. etc.,  I much prefer to stay at home listening to my stereo. Also, the shame about concerts is that sometimes the pianist is just having a bad day!

Editing in itself isn't a curse; it's how we use it that makes it a disgrace. Producers want their recordings to sound clean, "perfect", and while this might please the layman, the more knowing listener will pick up the coldness in such abuse.

I think the ideal editing would be one over which the pianist has total control (not some editor behind the glass), and which is used to express a vision, rather than just to eliminate wrong notes.

In my opinion, listening to Cortot or Schnabel will reveal that the human element of wrong notes and tempo fluctuations are part of what makes a great recording great.

[practicingnow]

Ditto good topic -

But you know, in the end, the recordings that all the pianists and connoiseurs choose as favorites are the classic unedited live ones from the early days, Cortot, Freidmann, Hoffman, Moiseiwitsch, Barere, Rachmaninoff, Schnabel, etc.  Somehow those recordings have survived the new standard of perfection, and remain the epitome of high pianistic art.  They are still the favorites of all the young (and old) piano lovers - why?

Yes the playing was great, but I believe it is more.  I believe that those old scratchy unedited "sloppy" discs contain an excitement and beauty in the grooves that the new sterilized digital studios can't provide.  There is an energy and an atmosphere in those old analog recordings that is not improved by modern digital sound.  On the contrary, it is lost.  In my opinion, the sterile modern digital studios, with all their the compressors and effects, actually homogenize the sound, so many of the pianists nowadays all sound the same, as far as tone and touch.  And in fact, the clarity is so intense in all these new recordings, that it actually even more clear than it sounds in real life(!) which results in a kind of "in your face" sound, which I really don't like.  The colors and subtlety which once existed in the analog recordings from the 1950's through the 70's is now lost, I feel.

What do you think?

[m]

What do you all think of editing as it is used in modern recording, and how does it affect what we do?

Besides purely marketing aspects, which heavily and inevitebly affect overflown modern CD market, there is another one--all artists want to document their art and bring to people their ideas in the most perfect way, possible. Richter spent 14 hours recording Beethoven 1st Concerto, Gould spent almost a year editing his last version of Glodberg Variations. Did they do it for sake of "clean" notes?
Could not they just sit and play it clean from the first take? Surely they could, but they wanted it EXACTLY, PRECISELY, PERFECTLY as they wanted.  I am sure if Rachmaninov, or Friedman had this luxury, they'd surely use it in full.

The art of recording is completely different genre, as opposed to live performance, with all its pros and cons. It does exist whether we want it or not. There are some boutique labels however, who specialize on straight, unedited recordings, but they are very rare.

Another aspect, when you listen the performance in the hall, because of acoustical phenomenon and the atmosphere of live performance, the wrong notes are mostly invisible, you just don't pay attention to them. On the recording, because of certain microphone position, the effect of wrong notes multiplies tremendously. In fact, on the older, much less perfect in term of sound recordings, this effect shows much less.

Moreover, MANY artists do not feel comfortable in a studio setup and have a great difficulties of finding that "concert" atmosphere, which is so natural when there is an audience in the hall.
It is actually not much fun to play for microphones, and many even greatest artists just start panically afraid and think "how not to hit a wrong note", which of course happens right away. Would they want to leave for history this struggle unedited?

[cloches_de_geneve]

Interesting exchange ... I was wondering whether there is hybrid category like an "adjusted live recording". That is, you essentially have a live performance recording, but using the same concert hall and microphone setup, post hoc, some of the worst passages are re-recorded and fitted into original live recording. I was wondering whether some of the recordings labeled "live" are in truth slightly adjusted in this way.

[quantum]

Interesting exchange ... I was wondering whether there is hybrid category like an "adjusted live recording". That is, you essentially have a live performance recording, but using the same concert hall and microphone setup, post hoc, some of the worst passages are re-recorded and fitted into original live recording. I was wondering whether some of the recordings labeled "live" are in truth slightly adjusted in this way.

Good question.  I have wondered myself such things as Lang Lang's Rach 2 CD. 

But then there is the issue of the persence of an audence affecting the resonance of the hall. 

[m]

Interesting exchange ... I was wondering whether there is hybrid category like an "adjusted live recording". That is, you essentially have a live performance recording, but using the same concert hall and microphone setup, post hoc, some of the worst passages are re-recorded and fitted into original live recording. I was wondering whether some of the recordings labeled "live" are in truth slightly adjusted in this way.

It is a very common practice. Many (esp. Concerti with orchestra) recordings were made this way. Usually, they record a dress rehearsal and then combine with the "live". Sometimes, they re-record some parts right after the concert (famous scandal with Horowitz's "live" Historical return Schumann Fantasy).
For a very skillfull sound engineer it is not a big problem to "match" difference in ambience. Most of the time, though, you can hear it, esp. with pre-digital era, when edits were made with splicing  tapes on reel-to-reel.

[arensky]

Ditto good topic -

But you know, in the end, the recordings that all the pianists and connoiseurs choose as favorites are the classic unedited live ones from the early days, Cortot, Freidmann, Hoffman, Moiseiwitsch, Barere, Rachmaninoff, Schnabel, etc.  Somehow those recordings have survived the new standard of perfection, and remain the epitome of high pianistic art.  They are still the favorites of all the young (and old) piano lovers - why?

Yes the playing was great, but I believe it is more.  I believe that those old scratchy unedited "sloppy" discs contain an excitement and beauty in the grooves that the new sterilized digital studios can't provide.  There is an energy and an atmosphere in those old analog recordings that is not improved by modern digital sound.  On the contrary, it is lost.  In my opinion, the sterile modern digital studios, with all their the compressors and effects, actually homogenize the sound, so many of the pianists nowadays all sound the same, as far as tone and touch.  And in fact, the clarity is so intense in all these new recordings, that it actually even more clear than it sounds in real life(!) which results in a kind of "in your face" sound, which I really don't like.  The colors and subtlety which once existed in the analog recordings from the 1950's through the 70's is now lost, I feel.

What do you think?

I love the old recordings too, probably more than those of most of the post WWII pianists. Everything you say about about modern digital recording is true, imo. Now anyone can have note perfect performances and a beautiful tone, although they will be largely indistinguishable from the next pianist. We need to take this extraordinary recording technology and use it to carry the art further.

The first thing that comes to my mind is the fact that Hofmann, Friedman, Rachmaninov, Schnabel  etc. were trained for and primarily performed in a live medium. They approached recording with a completely different artistic and business attitude. Their recordings were snapshots of their live performances; editing as we know it did not exists, so they went into the studio without the burden of being note perfect that the modern pianist has. Back then recordings were only suitable for short pieces. There were many recordings of Symphonies, Operas and Concerti on shellac 78rpm records but they're annoying, you have to change the record every five minutes (usually three). Not good for concentrated listening and learning, unless you already know the piece. I know this from experience. The first classical piano record I fell in love with was Kapell's Khachaturian Concerto, on 78's. I listened to the first mvt. cadenza more than the rest of it, so I didn't have to change the records so much. I was happy to get an excellent LP version (Lorin Hollander's), although I would still listen to and preferred Kapell. For shorter pieces, the 78 record was ideally suited. And these short records were an ideal promotion device to get people to come hear an artist. Today, we go to hear the concert of the person we have on record...

Magnetic tape made recording extended pieces possible and this was great, and it also made editing easy. This boon to recording engineers and performers soon led to a shift in classical playing attitudes and practices. Because everything could now be "perfect", at least in the superficial sense, performers embraced the new technology enthusiastically. As Marik points out, artists like Richter and Gould (and others) did not need this technology, they used it to further their art, and the live acoustic of a concert hall lessens the negative impact of false notes.  OTH the canned perfection of recordings has led to unrealistic expectations for musicians. We have become so conditioned by recordings that we're afraid to hit a wrong note, and the music suffers. What is more important, the spirit or the letter? The spirit of course, but we have to break the conditioning, as the note perfect idea is now so ingrained in us. In short, I think we have to learn again how to "let ourselves go" in front of an audience, as well as in the studio, where many of the errors can be removed. In short, we need a new perspective that encompasses all that is available to us as performing AND recording artists.

[bella musica]

Since everybody complains so much about all the editing in recordings these days, it kinda makes you wonder how the practice has survived... lol

[repeat]

Interesting exchange ... I was wondering whether there is hybrid category like an "adjusted live recording". That is, you essentially have a live performance recording, but using the same concert hall and microphone setup, post hoc, some of the worst passages are re-recorded and fitted into original live recording. I was wondering whether some of the recordings labeled "live" are in truth slightly adjusted in this way.

As far as I know the recording of Rach.3 by Andsnes was put toghether from three live preformances on consecutive days in the Oslo concert hall.

[repeat]

Why is it that everything seems  to sound so boringly alike today. The old recordings of pre- WWII where so much more interresting it seems. I don’t think this has anything to do with note perfection or studio sound. I think there is another quite crucial consequence of modern technology which is the reason why everything sounds alike. Today absolutely no pianist  can create his own ubiased  interpretation of any known composition for the simple reason that he has heard it a thousand times before on record. And the same goes for the audiences. Thus, over the years freedom of interpretation has dwindeled into almost nothing. Today everyone knows how any standard classical piece should sound, and  dear you as a pianist if you step out of line and  deliver anything else, then you are immediately labelled as exentric.
Not so for the pianists of the old days. They played to an unbiased audience with live performances as their only source of reference, and they where themselves free to play as they liked. That’s the diversity we have lost through modern technology, and that is why we don’t really need yet another recording of just about anything any more. Because we have heard it all before.

[timothy42b]

I like live performances.

I will sometimes pay to hear a performance of a piece of music I already own on CD, and can hear any time for free.  How dumb is that? <grin>

But I consider live and recorded music to be two different art forms. 

For some, recordings are just an attempt to capture a live performance as faithfully as possible.  In this category editing probably harms the effect.  But the effect is never perfect anyway, unless you only listen once and throw it away. 

For others, recordings are their own art form, and you would expect them to be edited to the standards of artistic perfection demanded.  Do we insist a novelist give us his rough draft?  Or is his work better when refined and polished, and not delivered until ready?  The same can be true for music.