Between Live Performance and Studio Recording

With concerts from home and recording more commonplace than ever, I wanted to reflect on my own recent experiences of live performance and studio recording. Glenn Gould famously retired from live performance in the ‘peak’ of his career and turned to the studio to escape the non-artistic pressures of live performances, including the audience’s constant expectations focusing on accuracy, errors, and “authenticity”. Gould viewed the studio as the ideal artistic space, eliminating hierarchies between musicians and listeners, and allowing for maximum artistic creativity.

In my experience, my opinion of live performance versus studio work has seemed the opposite Gould. To me, live performance seemed more creatively free, because in recording, the aim always appeared to be eliminating as many mistakes as possible - hardly a creative process. My history of recording, I should say, has mainly consisted of preparing audition and scholarship application tapes, with a few professional orchestral CD recordings thrown in. I hardly viewed the aesthetic aims of these two processes differently (audition tape vs. orchestral recording), and until this reflection, I probably would have continued to see things the same way. I always viewed recording as representational. The goal was to produce as ‘perfect’ a simulation of live performance as possible. Albeit, in a setting where I can listen to takes, adjust my approach, and try as many times as I can to make it ‘ideal’.*

If anything, live performances felt creatively free because I only had to perform once. The quickness through which the performing musician experiences the live performance requires maximum concentration in the shortest period of time, and constantly changing conditions require awareness outside oneself (as my live performances, until recently, were rarely solo). Recording, on the other hand, is more often than not (for me) a solo experience. When playing solo, I think it is easier to become acutely focused on the ‘non-creative’ aspects of one’s playing, for instance focusing on a ‘mistake’ you think you made rather than staying present and thinking ahead to the coming phrase.

Having said that, I have always believed that I make the largest improvements in my playing when I record. In the past, this was always in January-March of a given year. I would often have summer festivals to apply for, as well as audition tapes for scholarships and pre-screening tapes for competitions and entry to university/post-graduate programs. While exhausting, I always noticed that I came out these periods playing at a ‘higher level’, with greater focus and security in both sound and technique. I would go so far as to say that these intense recording ‘periods’ improved my overall artistic ability, at least soloistically, more than periods when I was doing a lot of live performance in orchestra. While I always attributed it this to ‘recording’, I think the reason has more to do with critical listening and focus. Listening back to my takes I heard aspects of my own playing I might not have noticed playing live, and could change them. And having a finite time to record, and a deadline, was a focus training that is hard to simulate in the practice room or even in live performance.

This past September, I had the opportunity to both live-perform and studio-record Ville Raasakka’s work ‘Everyday Etudes No. 1: Garden”. The live performance took place on my second doctoral concert, “Elollinen”, and the recording took place a couple weeks later. As my third doctoral concert will be a CD of all works with electronics, I started thinking about how live performance relates to performance for a recording, more specifically how I want to approach recording for my own album next year.

the creative act

What are the essential attributes of the creative act? They are simply processes of re-ordering and re-distributing, of focusing anew on details not previously presented in context together, of re-examining and ornamenting some long quiescent trait of the culture.” (Gould 6)

Gould’s comments in 1994 were an effort to explicitly explain the creative act as that between imitation and invention. In the context of my current inquiries, it made me think of the ‘details’ one focuses on in a live versus recording environment.

When performing Ville’s piece in ‘Elollinen’, my focus was predominantly on acoustics and on timing. As the work was with electronics, levels, balance and microphone placement were crucially important to prepare for the performance. And during performance, I was acutely aware of trying to project my extended techniques (slap tongue, air sounds, etc.) towards the microphone, rather than the audience (knowing they’d be amplified). During rehearsals, there was a high level of chamber music in relation to Ville playing objects, and between both of us and the tape. This carried into the performance, where at certain times I felt very rhythmically “locked in”, for example when he was pouring the water in the bucket. We were both highly aware of the tape, not in a rhythmic sense, but in terms of relating temporally to cues in the tape. Also for bass clarinet, there was an awareness of when the bass clarinet was meant to blend with the tape sounds and when it should not. However, because of the amplification, it was difficult at times to ‘blend’ with the tape, and to relate my sound to the electronics.

The ‘Elollinen’ concert was performed twice on Saturday September 12, which was always the plan. As it was originally supposed to be in Talvipuutarha, it was important to be able to experience the concert twice, to make changes in the second concert and adjust to unexpected acoustic or musical issues. I think it was equally important in Organo, where the concert was moved to, particularly for the pieces with electronics (there were 2). For example, the sound engineer Tuukka Tervo was still adjusting the balances in the solo piece/world premiere by Jack Hughes in the second performance. Interestingly, despite the second concert having the best performance of most pieces on the concert, I felt strongly listening back to recordings from both that the performance of Ville’s piece was actually better in the first concert rather than the second. Here is audio from that concert:

The audio has been edited slightly in post production by Tuukka (arguably, then, also a recording, but we’ll consider it a live recording for argument’s sake), mostly for the balance between the contact microphones and the amplified sound. I preferred this performance for two reasons - timing and my own performance. Besides having fewer ‘mistakes’, there was a freshness about my approach that combined a musical approach to notation with a certain flexibility in my reactions in the moment. I also felt the overall sound was more cohesive and natural, the timings did not feel rushed and the relationship between electronics, objects and bass clarinet were better balanced.

In contrast, the creative experience of recording the piece was entirely different. I initially approached recording my part the same way I would approach performing it live - play the entire thing as best I can. This approach was in large part to my limited personal experience of recording, which was the intention to get the best possible ‘take’ in one ‘chunk’. This was completely inappropriate, in many ways, to the nature of recording. The object and bass clarinet parts were recorded separately in the studio, and so during my recording, I had the electronics part (with click track) on headphones, and performed only the bass clarinet part. Aside from the acoustic nature of a studio being very different from a live performance space (a entire subject in and of itself), playing with headphones was an adjustment, in my ability to hear myself as well as how I heard myself (as a wind player).

Whereas my focus in live performance had a lot to do with reacting to the sounds around me, the artistic focus in the recording was entirely on the bass clarinet part. This is completely different than in live performance. The tendency when I focus on my own part tends to be a reduction to focus on note accuracy and exaggeration of what is written in the score (detailed dynamics, articulations, etc.). While this is not necessarily wrong, and the composer and sound engineer were very pleased with the recording I produced, I felt unsure listening back to the raw audio. I was not sure how I should be judging my own performance - should I be focusing on mistakes? After all recordings are supposed to be perfect! I wanted to focus on musicality, but it is hard to do so when you only have one third of a piece to go off of.

This simple shift of creative focus between live performance and recording, not to mention the elements of postproduction that I will lead on my own CD next year, was a huge mental shift. What is will mean for my preparations, I cannot say yet. But understanding recording as a performance type distinct from live performance at least makes me realize I cannot treat them the same.

recording as representational

I always understood that recording, or at least all the recordings I have ever made, should be representational - meaning they should simulate live performance, acoustically, musically, and technically. In reading Tim Hecker’s article on Gould’s work in the studio, I came to realize that this does not necessarily need be the case, as he writes:

[Gould] vigorously opposed the idea of recording as representation, arguing that important values such as analytic detail or precision need not be tucked inside the cloak of naturalism, acoustic fidelity or the artificial reconstruction of live recordings through space-simulated reverb. (Hecker 79)

The aesthetics of recording, its history and practice, is surely a topic unto itself. But just the notion that one has a choice in the matter is new for me. In working on Ville’s CD, the recording session was really just the beginning, one piece of the puzzle. With my own recording, I am more aware of the number of decisions that can be made both in recording and postproduction, beyond deciding, for example, whether I record the electronics with the clarinet part or not (for the works with fixed electronics). There are so many levels of artistic decision-making that are unique to the recording process, and I think the thinking beyond representation recording is very important when considering works with electronics.

recording as artificial

The ‘artificial’ nature of recording - postproduction, editing, splicing - was an uncomfortable notion for me. Like the tendency to view live performance as more vital than recording (Hecker 79), so has the tendency been to disguise or ignore the technological non-live aspects of performance. I, for one, think of the number of “live orchestra concert recordings” I have participated in that have included a trip back to the office the next day to make short patches. Is this dishonest, false advertising? Why the need to have the recording declare as “live” to begin with?

Of course, more questions for new research projects down the line… And zero judgment on the practice of patching live recordings, seriously. But my background, the tendency to consider ‘patching’ as ‘error-covering’ and the need to bill the performance as live implies an inherent artistic discomfort with the idea of splicing, editing, etc. Take my own example in Ville’s recording - there was one very tricky bar that I just could not get exactly right. It was the only measure we cut down to a short section, with multiple takes, ultimately splicing the bar from three different cuts. And I felt awful! I thought, and to some extent still think, it exposes artistic weakness. In the live performance, while the bar is not perfect, it does not bother me because I like the timing of the bar and the way it transitions perfect with the tape to the next session. But in a recording, the focus entirely on making my part ‘as perfect as possible’, it became a disproportionately big deal.

I was comforted by the following, again from Hecker’s article, on Gould’s recording of The Well-Tempered Clavier:

…a recording in which he was not completely satisfied with any of the eight takes of a certain movement. He decided to combine portions containing the ‘Teutonic severity’ of take 6 with some cuts from the ‘unwarranted jubilation’ of take 8, the result being a hybrid of two distinct moods and a creatively acceptable postproduction editing decision. In doing so, Gould was asserting the notion of recording as artifice, one that recognized the process as inherently artificial and viewed his role as the public advocate of that fact. (Hecker 79)

Besides making me feel better (if Glenn Gould can splice proudly, so can I!), Gould’s approach emphasizes the artistic possibilities afforded by technology, rather than considering the technology merely an enhancement of live performance. Recording are inherently artificial - they are made or produced by human beings and not occurring naturally - but they do not have to be considered a copy of ‘real life’. It was a creative choice with specific artistic intent to take excerpts from different takes. “Live recordings”, to me, aim to capture on film or on tape impromptu, unplanned and spontaneous artistic moments inherent to live performance. Recordings can never simulate a live performance, the “vitality” of the live performance. I do not mean that we ought to value live performances over recordings, to the contrary, I am becoming more aware of the equal and distinct value of both.

*though experience has shown that usually if I don’t ‘get it’ in the first 3 takes, it turns into the law of the diminishing returns…

Sources:

Glenn Gould. 1996. "Forgery and Imitation in the Creative Process." Glenn Gould, Spring 1996, 4-9.

Tim Hecker. 2008. "Glenn Gould, the Vanishing Performer and the Ambivalence of the Studio." Leonardo Music Journal 18: 77-83. doi:10.1162/lmj.2008.18.77. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25578126.