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Live vs recorded

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2015-12-01 07:45

Sometimes I am surprised at how much I take certain things for granted. I have many times written here how important it is to hear live playing because recordings just don't do the real thing justice. And I fully believe it, but I'm so used to hearing live orchestral and other "classical" music that I forget what it must be like not to hear the real thing.

The difference was brought home to me tonight when my wife and I went to hear, not a symphony orchestra, but the Glenn Miller Orchestra in a live concert at a local school. I've heard very little big band music live and all of it local, usually school groups. I've heard lots of recordings of the great bands of the '30s and '40s, including the original Miller band, and I love listening to them. But I was amazed how this band sounded tonight even in a school auditorium with poor acoustics. I have honestly never heard a sax section with so much control and ability to produce dynamic contrast. From the quietest subtone to a full-bodied fortissimo, they were perfectly in tune and together, seemingly effortlessly and with a sheen on the sound that just doesn't come through in a recording. The brass sections were equally as polished and controlled, but because I can experience the sax playing more viscerally from my own playing experience, it meant a great deal to me. I don't want to gush, and I know it's a great band, but the difference between what we heard tonight and what I hear on countless records in my collection was incredible.

I hear the same difference in "classical" music between live and recorded, but I tend to take that difference as a given because I've been exposed to it so consistently over the decades. Tonight made the realization so much fresher and more intense.

I just needed to say that.

Karl

Post Edited (2015-12-01 10:36)

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