Could the Imperfection of Live Music Make it Sound Better?

 The third in a series

At PAN we’re continuing our exploration of live classical music and the human ear. There are both artistic and scientific implications when it comes to trying to explain why live music can sound so much better, and richer, than “perfectly” recorded music.

We recently posed this question to PAN.

Q: Tell us about your earliest experiences with “live music” and why it was so magical.

A: Well, it all goes back to those lovely Corycian Nymphs and the Muses I used to run fast and loose with. I spent a fair amount of time in the Corycian cave on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus in Greece, where they lived. Just visiting, of course.

Q: We understand that you played quite a bit music there, and that the cave is still considered sacred by your admirers.

A: That’s correct, although I don’t know why. Despite my outstanding work on the panpipes – named after me don’t ya know – the cave was not, sadly, the scene of any great conquests.

Oh, about your question… the acoustics of that cave are amazing. A discovery I made when I played the pipes to sooth my broken heart. I get that same sense when I hear live classical music in great concert halls today. 
 

BACK TO THE MUSIC
 

The only way to reliably and faithfully reproduce the effects of live performance is to mimic the location and spatial separation of the ears, both in recording and in listening. 

Thus the best way to duplicate the live experience in recording is to place two microphones some distance from the source separated by the distance between the ears. By placing a mannequin head between the microphones - to reproduce the distortion of the sound created by the head - then listening to the two tracks through headphones, the live musical experience is best captured. 

But if recorded music is played through loud speakers, the "live effect" is lost. Note that this recording technique will produce quite different results for performances in an empty room, with its high echo effect, compared to a room filled with people, where their bodies absorb much of the sound.

Any music producer knows the horror of thinking the sound is great when hearing it in an empty auditorium and then finding it flat or worse after the audience arrives for the concert.

Because the question of fidelity to the original is so important in classical music, reverb and surround sound are seldom added to the original.  Hence the same music from the same ensemble, which may feel so vibrant and thrilling in a small concert hall, may sound flat and uninteresting on a recording. 

There are other differences that can cause classical music aficionados to prefer live recordings versus studio recordings, but they usually arise from the banality of perfection. 

Live performances often have a kind of nervousness about them, leading to minor miscues, erratic tempi, and unrehearsed dynamics - which, like echoes, create distortions, which ironically enliven the music. 

Improvements in the acoustics produced at the Walt Disney Concert Hall have caused musicians in the LA Phil to change their approach to performing. As the LA Times reported back in 2003 “The bassoonist Michele Grego noted that she must be especially careful in preparing her reeds. They must be perfect, since any reed noise will stand out, so well does her deep, mellow instrument, often buried in the Chandler (former home of the LA Phil), now project.”

One might even argue that the mind prefers the sense of freedom that such distortions and performance variations can create, and that perfection is abnormal and perhaps to be frowned upon. Better the rabble outside than the order within, as some have said of democracy and algebra texts.

Given this condition, there may be an aesthetic and market opportunity to create recordings which enable reproduction of live music using the technique suggested above: Two microphones separated by a head within a live concert hall, and reproduced through headphones.

The music could not be edited much, but then why should it be?

PAN might just agree - as while playing his panpipes in the Corycian Cave on Mount Parnassus in central Greece – his pursuit of passion might have led him to miss a note or two.

In our next post we’ll look at advances in recording techniques that attempt to recreate the live classical music experience.