http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=Sports&storyid=107291
Not sure - thought the music was live, but some of the vocals sounded pre-recorded. Open to learning either.
On a separate note, the amps the guitarist used were custom-made high-end amps - guys on an amp page I frequent are freaking out about how much visibility this small custom maker - the name is “Divided by 13” - got. It is being discussed as a given that the playing was all live and the frequenters of that board know their stuff so I am inclined to believe them…
Believe what you want to believe. I know what I saw, and I saw lips not-so-in-sync with voice, and I saw careful production, cutting away from the singer frequently so as to minimize the effect. I’m confident we’ll hear more about it in the coming days, especially in the wake of all the recent lip-synching controversy.
Because they don’t think they actually did it. This is what we call a bad rhetorical question.
Of course. We believe, you saw. That’s why almost everybody disagrees. :smack:
I’ll agree with Doomraisin.
There was backup pre-recorded vocals. My wife spotted it most noticeably during the transition between two songs where he had handed off his bass and was going to the piano. The piano and vocals began before he was even completely seated.
And just because they were pre-recorded doesn’t mean they used the tracks from the album recorded in the sixties. They may have been recorded last week. Thus he would still “sound his age”.
This isn’t surprising at big live televised events. The sound and the visuals take long routes through different systems and its not ununsual to see them emerge at the other end out of sync.
Yeah, yeah, heard the same thing after Aretha’s performance, it was because of TV, audio, whatever, when it was obvious that she was out there moving her mouth to a recording. Like I said, just wait for a few days. It took at least that long for Aretha’s people to admit it, and that was possibly the worst job of lip-synching ever. This one was much more skillfully done.
Having been a sound engineer for both live and recording gigs, I was confident immediately that the performance was mostly pre-recorded.
At first, I thought I was hearing digitally remastered recordings of the Beatles and Wings originals, given that on each song, Paul’s voice took on the inflection and tone that he had on each of those recordings. But, in hindsight, and with knowledge of recent successes in creating pro audio equipment that reproduces the ambience of 1970’s era recording equipment (Norah Jones used it on her first album, for instance) I could see the recordings being new.
His mic was indeed on at least part of the time, such as his intros, but I noticed that at those times there were all the artifacts of a live, open-space mic that were missing while he was singing.
The real tell-tale sign was on “Hey Jude”, not that I needed to wait that long to be convinced. He signals the audience to sing the chorus, and suddenly, we hear them singing it. Not all that loudly, of course, as they were not directly miced, but through the live mics on stage.
At that moment, what they expected you to believe is that the entire Super Bowl crowd, who could be heard quite easily, had been completely mute while Sir Paul himself was sitting in front of them singing one of his signature tune. That, until he called for it, not a single person out of the many thousand was chiming along with “Hey Jude” at the top of their lungs. Because while he was singing, you didn’t hear a peep out of them. Puh. Lease. You can go on however long you want with talk of tight cardioid patterns, but you’re just kidding yourself.
The cameras hardly lingered on any performer long enough to see what they were doing with their hands. I especially was watching during the guitar solos, but they hardly showed the guy. Not conclusive, of course, but incriminating.
Another tell-tale sign was the tendency I’ve noticed, having seen a lot of lip-synching, for the syncher to overcompensate visually for the fact that they are not producing any noise. They move their mouths and bodies in ways they never would while actually singing. Toward the end of his set, McCartney lifts his hand away fromt he piano, and, at the expense of a couple of left hand chords I heard someone playing, gave a couple of little conductive flips of the hand.
They pre-recorded it, and Paul rehearsed his lip-synching, even down to the two points during a song where he let loose with a “whoo”. I think the reason for it are those stated by other posters, given the vagaries of a hastily assembled stage in a large arena. There is huge potential for bad sound, and let’s jsut say I don’t think this year’s half-time producers were leaving ANYTHING up to chance.
Oddly enough something I haven’t seen any “controversy” about is also exactly why I think he sang live (convoluted, I know - bear with me). In “Get Back”, he sang the original lyrics. As soon as he started the song, the first thought through my head was “I bet they make him change the California grass reference”. The fact that he left that in went a long way toward convincing me that he was actually singing.
FWIW, I’m pleasantly surprised that there still doesn’t seem to be much reaction to it.
I must have seen close to 2 dozen concerts in sport stadiums during the 70’s and 80’s. They sounded fine.
I saw Wings way back in '76, and I saw McCartney when he played here in Milwaukees stadium in the 90’s.
What drew my attention was the way he had his hand completely over the neck of the instrument. I did not see his fingers move or even twitch. I’ve seen him play many times on television also, and he did not hold the guitar that way. I was specifically watching him to see if he would sync. Whether that was his live voice or not I’m not sure. But I don’t believe he was playing that bass!
I didn’t even see the performance in question, so I have no direct opinion to offer. Just a few points, though.
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It’s not an either / or question. He may have been singing and playing live. Or it was all miming. Or the vocals were live but the music was pre-recorded (so it didn’t matter whether he was actually playing his bass much). Or he was singing live to a backing track, and they had a pre-corded version of the vocal on the backing tracks too, and the producer/director could, at any time, vary the mix to determine how much what we heard relied on Paul’s live vocals and how much was from the pre-recorded vocals.
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Even if Paul’s bass wasn’t live, it’s very unlikely that he would just hold his bass and not even move his fingers the way he would to play live. Given how long he’s been playing those songs, he would very probably go through the correct fingering anyway, out of sheer force of habit. This would be easier for him than not moving his fingers!
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While I repeat that I don’t know squat about this particular performance, McCartney does have a strong track record of being committed to playing and singing live wherever possible. Take his movie, Give My Regards To Broad Street. As a movie, it’s awful. Simply dreadful. As a series of performance ‘videos’ it’s actually kinda good. And Macca insisted that he and the band were actually singing and playing and performing the songs you see and hear, i.e. what was filmed and what you hear in the movie are all actual performances. They did not use playback, and they were not miming.
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If he was miming or using playback, it may not have been his choice. As has been pointed out, the producers will have been very, very keen to make sure this year’s half-time show went without a hitch.
if you enjoyed it does it freaking matter?
:smack:
I’m just relieved Sir Paul didn’t suffer a “wardrobe malfunction.” :eek:
If he was synching, it definitely wasn’t from the albums.
If there was anything from the albums, it would be the lead guitar. It sounded exactly the way George played it. But that might just mean that the lead guitarist wanted it to sound as close to the original as possible.
It definitely looked to me like he was playing the bass.
I thought the tracklist was interesting. Drive My Car is one of my favorite Beatles songs, but I didn’t think it was one of the more popular ones.
I knew he was gonna play Hey Jude.
I remember thinking that the guitarist was definitely playing his part, because on one solo where he was utilizing the slide, I cringed at a note that didn’t sound quite on.
Also, isn’t it possible that they had mics around the stadium just to pick up the sound of the audience singing as opposed to through the onstage mics? I mean, they had that camera in the orange pylon (sp?) by the endzone. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had mics everywhere too.
It’s not so much the tight cardioid patterns as the gain. The stage mics were for the vocals, the drums, and maybe (probably not these days) the guitar amps. The piano may have had some sort of mic, or it may have been a modified pick-up.
Anyway, when Sir Paul is yelling into his mic or the drummer is slamming his snare, you aren’t going to hear much of anything else going through those mics other then a massive, close-by explosion. And don’t forget that the drum mics, and perhaps the other mics were gated as well. Naturally, you’re not going to hear any audience or other ambiant noise aside from what the audio operator chooses to have you hear.
And if they do want you to hear the audience (like at the end of “Hey Jude”) it will certainly NOT be through the vocal and instrument mics. They probably had PZM or some other sort of mics placed somewhat high up at various places around the stadium to get a perfect audience sing-a-long sound (or do you think the audience was pre-recorded too?)
If they had wanted you to hear the audience during the songs (or after, like the applause), you would have heard them-- but not through the stage mics.
Note to ianzin re: Broad Street:
I have a British TV documentary on the making of this movie. In it, George Martin explains that this was the first time a group of musicians had been filmed while playing live along with a 24-track playback and recording in sync to another 24-track machine, all of which was locked to the camera (presumably by SMPTE?). So they did those tracks as well as possible beforehand, and sang and/or played to them live during filming.
For Paul, it was a new twist on an old technology: The Beatles prepared several mixes just like this for TV broadcast, and sang and/or played live to them during the broadcast, or filming of the promo video. “All You Need Is Love”, “Hey Jude” (shown on David Frost) and “Revolution” are three.
Not if you enjoyed it, no. However, when they tell me that I, through the magic of television, am going to be able to watch Mr. PM play live to a stadium crowd at the Super Bowl, and what I get instead is a recording of him singing some Beatles and Wings songs with him and a band miming the whole thing in a way that is very obvious to me, the lie tends to affect my enjoyment of the event as well as my respect for Sir Paul and the producers.
Any of these things COULD have been the case. Trouble is, it was quite obvious to me that none of them were actually happening, for the reasons I described plus a number more. If indeed, we were hearing the sound exactly as it occurred onstage, then it was the cleanest freaking live arena transmission in the history of mankind, and you will read about it in the professional press about just how it was done. But I wouldn’t go googling any time soon. To me, it looked like what I know lip-synching looks like, and and it sounded like what I know arenas don’t sound like.
Sure, if the mics were on low gain and McCartney was “yelling” at all times, it might account for what was observed, but he was singing quite softly on"Hey Jude", so why couldn’t we hear anything else? You think NO ONE cheered loudly enough to be heard when he started singing that song? Gimme a break!
And was there a synth player? Or horns? I didn’t see any, although to be fair, they might just not have been shown on camera. Anyway, some orchestra parts on “Live and Let Die” could be heard under the guitar, and they were coming from SOMEWHERE.
Again, if you enjoyed it, no one can tell you you didn’t. But, if watching the whole thing left a bad smell for you, there are reasons you got that sensation. They had their reasons for doing it the way they did, but I don’t have to like it.
I told my gf that if Sir Paul exposed his nipple at the end of the show, I would immeditly buy every album he’s ever made.
He’s supposedly still playing his original 1963 Hofner live. And it still has the set list from the Beatles’ 1966 tour taped to its side.