That of live sound is a debate that reappears every so often and that divides both critics and the public, although perhaps it does not matter as much to the artists. For example, during Rosalía’s last big tour, in the summer of 2022, Fernando Neira (music critic for this newspaper) said in his X account that the show that the Catalan gave at the Wizink Center, without a single musician on it, stage, it was more karaoke than a concert. Julián García, head of Culture at elPeriódico, defended that that staging was “experimental and futuristic” and that those who missed the musicians did so from a conception of live music that was too “purist and archaic”, when not “stale”.
Taylor Swift, who has almost never raised suspicions of playback During his tours, he has escaped this type of criticism thanks to a band that is not very visible but strategically placed in the corners of his stages; But about the other great blonde star of universal entertainment, that is, about Madonna, everything has been said lately. Some videos of the singer and hundreds of testimonies from fans who complain, paradoxically, that her voice sounds too good live, raise something more than a suspicion: that there is in her shows too many parts with prerecorded voice.
In somewhat smaller settings, the discussion flares up in certain genres (there are those who wonder if what Sleaford Mods or La Elite do, without guitars in sight, can be considered punk) and disappears among fans of urban music and hip. -hop, accustomed to the rapper plus DJ or producer format and, more recently, to having their favorite artist release their songs from a mixing console, vocal track included. In the latter cases, ragpickers and drillers like Tommy Cash, they only deal, on stage, with singing choruses to their own voice, adding “ad-libs” (those little onomatopoeias characteristic of each figure, like “praw” for Cecilio G) and to encourage the public. Charli XCX did something similar during the last Primavera Sound according to many attendees: playing her songs and singing over her sometimes, sometimes not.
For Aarón Sáez, member of Varry Brava and Carey (a project, precisely, more organic and artisanal), it does not make sense to measure what percentage of what is played during a live performance is being interpreted at that moment, and that, according to him, is also composer: “Music is live because you live it live. Going into discussing what degree of programming stops making music real or not is like discussing how many parts of your body you can change until you consider yourself a cyborg.” Of course, reflecting on these questions can help us know what we are going to see—or hear or feel—when we go to a concert and how it has evolved as the technological means and the material conditions of the artists have changed.
Media economy and digitalization
In Stop Making Sense, the Talking Heads concert recorded in 1984 by Jonathan Demme, if something sounds it’s because there is someone making it sound on stage. It is the same logic that Neil Young follows when, when interpreting Harvest Moon, He has one of his musicians sweep the stage (in this song, the sound of a straw broom is part of the percussion). But if several decades ago it made sense to try to reproduce before the public everything that had happened during the recording of the song in the studio, today the computerization of these studios (which have been reduced to the point of becoming, in many cases, a laptop with the software appropriate) has changed everything and opens doors to very different actions. “I have seen how the path between production and publication has been shortened,” says Dani Cantó, co-founder of the Snap! label. Clap! Club. “Many times production is done without the intervention of real instruments, through synthetic processes. “Before, bands were forced to reinterpret what they had done on a computer using real instruments because if not, something failed or they thought it wasn’t music, but that no longer makes sense.”
The British critic Simon Reynolds has dedicated his latest book, Futuromania, to electronic music. In the introduction to his essay, Reynolds writes about how music programmed or created using synthesizers, drum machines or sequencers generates in the listener the illusion of being in front of something “inhuman, alien or posthuman”, but nothing could be further from the truth: Behind that “inorganic appearance and shine”, there are always the ideas and hands of a person. The use of autotune in contemporary pop (the debate around it can be considered overcome even by the most recalcitrant) illustrates this idea well: it is precisely the decisions of each artist about when and how much to use it that turn it into another tool and a trait. of style.
The computerization of live music, therefore, responds to two reasons that often converge: on the one hand, it makes economic sense, because, as Cantó recalls, “it is very expensive to have a large group, to have a backline, manage caches… and very complex to play all your elements through a band. Digitization helps the artist not to have to repeat things that have already been made perfect in the field of production and do not need to be touched again”; and, on the other hand, it allows the development of new sounds and aesthetics or gives freedom on stage. “There are groups that like to reinterpret their own songs with more musicians and playing with other sounds,” says Javier Aguilar, from the group Chill Chicos. “There are others who prefer everything to sound more similar to the recording and use more of the original tracks. We can easily give it that more classic band touch. But we always throw in all the synths and choruses that aren’t the lead vocals to support. In the end our project does not stand out for its musical purity, quite the opposite, and we do not have that rock modesty either.”
Virtuosity versus feeling
In 2011 there was a small scandal in Madrid indie circles. John Maus’ performance, part of the Primavera Club festival, was greeted with boos and throwing objects. Maus did what he used to do at all his concerts at that time: play his songs and shout over them, showing something more like a performance than to a rock concert. The public did not take it well at all and the artist, years later, acknowledged in an interview with Mondo Sonoro that that bad experience marked him to the point of “having a lot to do with why I have three guys playing with me right now.” . Then he already spoke of a surprisingly intransigent public, but today a situation this unpleasant would be unthinkable. “Now there are rappers or artists who are dedicated only to encouraging us, that is, to making us experience music in a certain way,” explains Cantó. “We can consider them however we want: hotel entertainers or monitors of spinning“What does it matter, the important thing is their task: that there is communion with the public, that they have the ability to create a vibration and that our heart rate accelerates.”
So, if almost no one comes to see musicians play or hear a well-tuned voice anymore, what exactly do we expect from live pop music? Cantó begins by explaining what he is not looking for: “There are artists who are very good at playing, but they don’t know how to transmit. What good is it to me to have a group with three guitarists if they are looking at the ground, they don’t communicate with the audience and I don’t have a different experience than what I have at home. To have high fidelity I already have a CD or a vinyl that is more than enough, and if I want expertise I go to the conservatory; What I’m looking for live is something much more thuggish.” Sáez agrees and adds: “Placebo hid the musicians who were not in the band behind the curtain. So they wouldn’t see them. Is that live music? Maybe the people who sequence all the music are more real, because in truth, music is now made more like that, all the people playing at the same time on a stage is something that no longer happens in studios or almost in venues. rehearsal”.
The author of topics such as Raffaella either Don’t turn Do you think that musicians are beginning to tire of certain demands that have little to do with their true way of working or with how they understand their sound: “The discussion about what matters or not, or what is real or what is pretended in music, does not matter.” It stops being something to fill conversations, because the only reality, for me, is what people feel when listening to music or watching a concert. If it works for you, if it excites you, if it makes you vibrate, go ahead,” concludes Sáez. “Vibrate” and “get excited”: we are finally getting closer to the reasons why we turn off our headphones, queue in the rain or shine and are willing to pay an entrance fee that is not always affordable. “I want to enjoy the songs, turn up the volume and share with others the experience of hearing in a community space what we had heard in our personal spaces. “What matters to me is the face-to-face meeting with the artist,” explains Cantó, who has attended thousands of concerts in recent years, both as a professional and from the dance floor.
So a concert is more of a face-to-face meeting with an artist than an examination to check how he performs his songs. Compared to cantankerous fans, professionals are clear that pop music is, above all, about collective emotions. And where is the sound, whether live or not? Cantó is not very optimistic: “In order for there to be good sound, the first thing is that there should not be performances in stadiums that are impossible to provide sound. Just as it is impossible to provide sound in many of the rooms we enter. In the end, a person singing a cappella with an acoustic guitar sounds much better than the highly compressed Taylor Swift concert. We can cry all we want, but not even the Bruce Springsteen show, no matter the price of the ticket, is going to work at the sound level. We see it in clubs or festivals where stages overlap and it seems that the musicians are arguing.”
That, and not the scenic proposal of each artist, could be problematic. Aguilar, who also runs the small label 4ea, sums it up like this: “I like simple or minimalist projects for artistic coherence, but if you pay an expensive ticket, the normal thing is to ask for a show that is up to par in all factors.” And many times, in shows with several changes of scenery, dozens of dancers, several costumes and pyrotechnics, the sound, whether programmed or live, is not there.
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