Professional recording and clicks and squeaks

[glassynails]

Hi.

When I listen to cd's by famous people like Russell, Williams, etc, am I correct in assuming that the tracks are edited? I mean, do they remove all the left hand finger squeaks and right hand nail clicks, bring out the bass, mids, or trebles? Isn't this cheating? What I like about Segovia's ol' recordings is they don't seem to have a lot of fancy reverb and doctoring, you're hearing Segovia, complete with his squeaks and clicks!


Thanks

[Denian Arcoleo]

Guitarists like Russell have pretty much eliminated the clicks and squeaks from their playing. Russell, for example, sounds just as good live (perhaps even better) than he does on CD and that is unusual. Eliminating finger squeak from a recording is very difficult without altering the sound of the guitar.
Having said that, legend has it that the average classical recording contains on average 300 edits...so yes, there is cheating going on.

[glassynails]

Guitarists like Russell have pretty much eliminated the clicks and squeaks from their playing. Russell, for example, sounds just as good live (perhaps even better) than he does on CD and that is unusual. Eliminating finger squeak from a recording is very difficult without altering the sound of the guitar.
Having said that, legend has it that the average classical recording contains on average 300 edits...so yes, there is cheating going on.

Thanks Denian.

[Nick Payne]

You can also get polished strings (the basses, that is) which are supposed to greatly reduce string squeak (I've never tried them). eg D'Addario EJ45LP. One of the John Williams recordings I have - I think El Diablo Suelto - shows in the liner notes that he used EJ45LP strings for the recording.

[Nick Cutroneo]

legend has it that the average classical recording contains on average 300 edits...so yes, there is cheating going on.

I don't consider it cheating (although I get a sense of sarcasm from your comment...meaning your cheating comment may be meant in jest...while others do consider it cheating). The concept of what a recording is has changed over time. In today's day and age, performers approach recordings as an "ideal" performance of a piece. I believe that it is this ideal performance that is sold that makes the art of concerts scrutinized by concert goers. "Oh no, they buzzed a note, or they missed a passage..." Concert goers who expect to hear a CD quality performance and see that their favorite performer is only human, complain that it isn't as good as the CD.

What is recording on CD verse a live performance/video/recording/etc... are two completely different mediums, and we have to keep that in mind. Studio recordings serve a different purpose now, and we as listeners and enjoyers of music have to understand the difference. Go home, and enjoy the "ideal" performance, then go out and enjoy a live performance.

[Denian Arcoleo]

I don't consider it cheating (although I get a sense of sarcasm from your comment...meaning your cheating comment may be meant in jest...

Nope, I'm not jesting. If a recording contains 300 + edits then that seems like a pretty clear case of cheating to moi. Having said that, I don't really want to own and listen to a recording with fluffs, squeaks and clangers: therein lies the dilemma.

[coppice]

I don't consider it cheating (although I get a sense of sarcasm from your comment...meaning your cheating comment may be meant in jest...

Nope, I'm not jesting. If a recording contains 300 + edits then that seems like a pretty clear case of cheating to moi. Having said that, I don't really want to own and listen to a recording with fluffs, squeaks and clangers: therein lies the dilemma.

I think its simple practicality. A shuffle here and there, or even a few coughs, are hardly noticed in a live performance. When you hear them in the same spot on every play of the record they really start to grate. I have a piano recording I used to greatly enjoy on vinyl. Now I have a CD of the same recording, and with the quieter background noise means I've started to learn every point where her foot shuffles on the floor, and its really distracting.

[bobtone]

When I worked at a classical music radio station, one of my jobs was to preview CD's of classical guitarists.

With a pair of headphones on, and listening very carefully, I was able to identify edited tracks. Clearly, another track was slipped in to cover up a mistake. I won't name that artist, but he plays the Sor/Segovia study #17 agonizingly slow. And he bills himself as "One of the greatest composers and performers of all time."

[Gruupi]

It just depends on what you think a recording should be, for some it is a mirror of what an honest live performance of what the artist sounds like. For me it is more about an ideal interpretation of how the artist feels about the music. Some people get great results and thrive off of the one take idea, where you take chances and somehow they work. But for me, if I am going to listen to a recording for years, I prefer the more ideal situation. I won't complain about minor clicks and sqeaks or other imperfections but at some point they can distract from the music. There is always a tradeoff, it can be just as hard to get an inspired performance doing 300 takes as it can be to get one clean unedited track.

We will probably be argueing this forever but the trend now seems to be in favor of perfection. Who knows, this may change. I hear of blues guys now making their records sound like the old Robert Johnson records by trying to use historic recording techniques or maybe even adding some of these imperfections after the fact.

[Jouni Stenroos]

It would be interesting to know how the "300 edits" are counted. If they are just cut points, then the number can be understood. If you have two takes of one piece, and use mainly the other one but replace two bad spots with good ones from the other, you will have 4 cut points already. In any case, 300 edits is something completely different than 300 takes.

If the CD is 70 minutes long, you will have about 4 edits per minute. If we assume an edit is same as a cut point, then there will be 2 imperfections replaced by better ones from some other take each minute. They might be just small squeaks, far from actual mistakes. There can be some external noise disturbing the recording session. Or simply a part of music was played a little better in one take and another part better in another take, without involving any actual mistakes.

I've read somewhere that the typical amount of recorded material to make one professional guitar CD is about 10 hours. How many edits there are, depends on how carefully you want to choose the best take of each short passage of music, I guess.

Just my two and half cents.

-Jouni

[Nick Cutroneo]

Edits are not the same as takes. Doing numerous recording sessions, I can only tell you what I've done.

I first do a complete run through of the piece (or movement) 3 times. I find the performance which musically I find the best take (many times this "perfect" musical take has the most mistakes...). While I am recording each take, the producer is sitting with the score, armed with 3 different color pencils. Any time there is a buzzed note/out of tune/issue/etc... they mark the measure (for example Blue is take 1, Yellow take 2, Green take 3). If any measure/section has 2 marks I'll do a punch in take, it doesn't mean I'll use it, but at least there is a 2nd example to use for a "fix".

The are tons of different reasons for edits, anywhere from a mistake to just liking an alternative take better. I think judging recordings because on average they have 300 edits is a bit ridiculous. Again, in todays industry, they want "perfect recordings". A CD is not a live performance. Whether or not you like it, this is how it goes.

[Praeludium]

A great CD can be a live perfomance : just have a look a Richter. He was a fascinating musician, a true piano genius of the XXth century, and there are many live recording of him.

In my opinion, a great musician is someone who first play "live" (it doesn't matter how much person listen), and then sometime capture his playing at this moment, at this place, in order to keep a record of what happened there. It's much more interesting. I don't like neither this standadised "perfect" boring way of recording pieces, nor the idea that the person who records it is able to hide behind all this technology - and I love technology, but I think that music has to stay human. Music is an Art it shouldn't have anything to do with industry. And ironically, nowadays, when it is possible for a lot of persons to record and to spread music indenpendently and easily, we are more than ever locked in an industrial way of considering the music.

By the way I grow tired very fast of "perfect" recordings, and I'm also getting bored with the state of mind, the ambiance there is in a great part of the classical world : everything has to be smooth, perfect, standardised, as if music was a product of entertainment which has to fit in a very strict canvas. And the way recordings seem to be done today follows this trend.

[Denian Arcoleo]

Great post NewModder. I found this particularly interesting:

...everything has to be smooth, perfect, standardised, as if music was a product of entertainment

Most people today would be astonished by the concept that music is, or can be, something more than just a form of entertainment. Is it more than that?

[Tiago]

It's much more than entertainment just like literature is, music is parallel to literature, they are two instances of the same object, so to speak.

There are tons of great books whose purpose is solely to entertain and there are many profound works also, the same happens in music. Music has it's philosophers too.

There was a time when music was synonymous of entertainment, and I'm thinking mainly of Antiquity, it didn't have the power per si to make us better persons as literature had and has, which is why, for instance, Seneca dismissed music as being part of education. But not today.

[Valéry Sauvage]

I recently get a CD (early music) with NO editing, NO reverb. And it is really "perfect" no squeaks or anything. Just recorded "live" in a church (so the reverb is only natural) So why not also possible for classical guitar ?
(just for reference here is a link to this CD, even not classical guitar, browse down the page for sound extracts) :
http://tresordorphee.free.fr/cd.htm