Yeah, that was not the greatest slide playing.
I have been playing bass for about 16 years now, and so naturally I watched what he was playing closely. His fingers definitely were moving on the fretboard. This guy is a really good bass player, probably underrated, and if he wasn’t playing live he would surely want to make it look that way. His fingers were moving.
That being said, it seemed to me that his picking hand wasn’t really playing in sync. with the bass line being heard.
I don’t care if it was recorded or not, simply because Sir Paul has proven himself over 30+ years. He is a great singer, songwriter, and bass player, and last night won’t change that. This is the difference in his possible lip syncing, and that of Ashley Simpson or guys like Rob and Fab.
Rancid
I saw something in yesterday’s paper about some online bookie having a betting line on what songs Paul would play, in what order. The first thing that came to my mind when I heard the opening notes to Drive My Car was “Wow, betcha coulda made a bundle on that!”
As to the lip-synching, I’m not 100% positive on this, but I’m pretty sure he messed up the words to Hey Jude, singing “the minute you let her under your skin” the first time around, instead of “remember to let her into your heart.” If I’m remembering this correctly, then it would seem odd to have the wrong words in a pre-recorded track.
And now a question: I tuned in in the middle of “Drive My Car” (and to someone above who was wondering at this particular choice of songs, Paul seems to love opening with this one- at least as far back as the late 80’s/early 90’s)- were the cars and trucks shown on the runway screen of a particular make? I’m sure that in an event as big and choreographed as the SuperBowl halftime show, EVERYTHING is done for a reason, but was this a giant product-placement ad? That kind of took the fun out of seeing Paul at the “Ameriquest Mortgage Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Show”.
Absolutely incorrect. I’m a professional cameraman, I have shot dozens and dozens of live events, including the Opening and Closing Ceremony of the 1996 Olympics, the 1995 and 2000 Super Bowl Half Time Shows ( ahem… ) and the 2001 Emmy Awards. Hope this is enough of a “cite” for ya. 
Light travels at 186,000 miles a second. Sound travels at 56,000 miles per hour. However, at the distances we are talking about, you are physically unable to percieve any difference. Why? Because unlike a baseball bat striking a ball from far away where there really IS a slight delay percieved between the hit and the smack sound, the sound is picked up inches from the person’s mouth and the camera has them in frame at the same moment. They are as one, and from the truck out to the Uplink Truck, dish, to satellite, to network, to outgoing feed from Master Control, to your provider to you is typically less than a second. You would never see a synch problem unless the remote trucks on location actually had a synch issue. I have seen it twice on jobs I was on. Once on a rehearsal day, and once during a live event when I looked up a the DiamondVision screen and beheld a seriously bad lag on sound.
It is in point of fact highly unusual to have the sound and visuals arrive out of synch.
Now, as to the half-time show. As I said, I’ve shot a lotta live t.v. I stood there and witnessed a conversation during which time it was made crystal clear by both Ms. Streisand and her Producer, that a playback track would be used during her big number at the 2001 Prime Time Emmy Awards show. She had been ill, her voice was not strong, and she had them use it at the very start, and very end of the song. She was extremely clear- they were to blend her in a few seconds in…15-20 seconds?..and then blend the track back in ONLY at the very end, to sweeten her a bit. It ran just as she demanded. ( I know it did because on my headsets, I could hear the command for audio to sweeten in, fade away, then reverse at the end of the song. )
Didn’t shoot this show, and so did not hear anything on headsets. The only way to truly know what happens in a life show is to hear the traffic over your headsets. Nobody lies, covers or fakes out. It’s live t.v. folks, what I hear is what you get. 
In 2000 I was So close to Tina Turner as she sang her song and danced her dances, that as a first-hand witness I can promise ya’ll that that woman sang live. Sang hard, with great voice that was struggling as she danced. God, she’s something else.
Cartooniverse
Ummm… when did that happen? I’m guessing that’s a typo or something? The last I knew sound traveled at around 780mph through air give or take depending on temperature. It is faster through solids, but not that fast.
The rest of the information was very interesting though. Thanks!
Thanks for mentioning this. I couldn’t believe I screwed up the words when I was singing along. I feel better now. I don’t think this proves anything about lip-synching though.
Wow - Cartooniverse - great education. Thanks. I have been involved with production work at a much smaller scale and just want to chime in that everything Cartooniverse speaks to is true - I watched a multi-million dollar corporate sales conference play out - actors, dancers, folks at the podium, closing act was the Barenaked Ladies - the whole bit. And listening in to the tech crews over the production in-house mikes was amazing, hilarious and exhilarating. All the flaws of the “talent” were on full display and dissected mercilessly as the techs figured out ways to compensate for flat voices and not hitting marks.
Man - that should be a reality TV show…
I am inclined to think that there was a little sweetening on Macca’s voice - as a semi-pro musician, I didn’t hear the ambiance in the sound I would’ve expected, as a few other posters have noted…
This thread is ridiculous.
Just because YOU overlooked the keyboard player doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist. 90% of the time the camera was on Paul, because he was the main attraction.
There was a quick pan over him, he had two keyboards. I recognized him from the Back in the U.S. DVD that was put out after McCartney’s last World Tour. The same band on that tour played at the super bowl. The rhythm guitarist plays bass when Paul doesn’t, just as he did on the world tour. You only need one guitar when the piano is the principal instrument.
Are you telling me you’re not going to have the best goddamn sound technicians you can get on the U.S.'s most watched program of the year? What are you going to ask next? Why wasn’t there reverb from the stadium on the live feed?
Okay, so it wasn’t just me.
Anyhoo… I was watching carefully and overall thought it was just a very good mix. I also thought they had floor mics so that when the audience sang those mics were brought up in the mix. I was dubious for awhile, util he went to say “Thanks Superbowl” and kind of boggled it. That part seemed live to me.
I remember when Gwen Stefani and Sting played a few years ago they sounded like poo! Gwen was so out of breath from dancing that her pitch got all wonky, and Sting wasn’t exactly spot on either. That was fun! I like hearing the live sounf of breath noises and minor screw ups.
EEeeek :eek: Please accept my apologies, I sit corrected. And, for those not living at sea level ( and to make amends ), I offer This Speed of Sound Handy E-Z Calculator Online !!
wordman, the comments made and heard over headsets are actually tempered carefully. One never is aware of who is listening. Careers can be lost.
The really good shit is saved for the lunch line. 
A lot of McCartney’s critics here keep saying that it must have been lip-synced because the powers that be would not want any mistakes. This is rediculous logic.
Imagine two scenarios:[ul]
[li]McCartney is lip-syncing. He falls over. As he’s falling and hits the ground, the singing continues. Everyone discovers he was lip-syncing. Huge backlash, enraged fans, McCartney is compared unfavorably with Ashlee Simpson.[/li][li]McCartney is singing live. He falls over. As he’s falling and hits the ground, the singing becomes a strangled yelp. Everyone says to himself, “Oh crap, Paul just took a dive!” Nobody gets angry at anyone, because we all fall once in a while.[/li][/ul]
So, which of the above is the better scenario in the eyes of the bigwigs? How much work does it take to make the lip-syncing spot on? How much work does it take to actually get the sound right and have McCartney sing live? If he screws up and is lip-syncing, the repercusions are huge. If he screws up and he’s doing it live, no one cares.
Which would you choose? I know which scenario I’d go for.
Sure, why not?
ANY live mic is going to pick up ambient noises that there is no time to get rid of on a live feed, even with a tape delay. They are a simple fact of performance, hell, John Cage made a career out of including them in his pieces.
So, yes, I would like to know why the sound coming out of my television set sounded, whenever a song was actually being played, EXACTLY like the product of a recording studio, rather than a stadium full of people at a once-in-a-lifetime show, singing along and screaming their approval at odd moments, like, oh, the sound from every single live show I’ve ever heard.
Is there any reason, technologically, this couldn’t be done? Especially with the amount of money likely at the promoter’s disposal. I’m not a sound tech, I’d like to know.
I think something could be set up similar to the way my old car stereo used DX circuitry to filter out low-amplitude, distant FM signals in favor of nearer ones broadcasting at close frequencies. It would take a hell of a setup, and I imagine you’d need the world’s best engineer riding the output to make sure you didn’t lose important information your primary signal. The technololgy might exist to make it happen, and they certainly have the money.
But, and here’s where Occam’s Razor comes in, ASSUMING the technology exists, and ASSUMING they had it on hand, we must also assume their purpose in putting it to use was to eliminate any and all evidence in the sound signal that the music was, at that time, being listened to and enjoyed by a huge stadium crowd. Where’s the logic?
We already have eyewitness evidence that on at least one occasion, a major vocalist demanded a backing track be used. Is it too much to assume that Paul McCartney, a showman of the highest order, wanted to use one to give the best, most reliable sound quality he could to one of the biggest single-event audiences of his career, not subject to the vagaries of weather or an aging man’s vocal chords? Trouble is, if you feed his live mic with, shall we say, a heavy dose of “sweetening” out to the sound system, the stadium’s acoustic properties will do a lot of work for you in naturalizing that mix. Not so if you feed the same signal directly to the TV crew.
Concerts in big, open spaces sound like crap. Concerts in gigantic stadiums are that much worse. If I was running one, I’d want it to sound good.
You are the pro, Sir, so I am sure what you say is so. In my case, what you say was true for the actual performance, but during some early run-throughs, there was a little loose talk happening - mostly “okay - is she going to be flat on that note everytime? If so, we have to mix the band bigger to cover - the note is too out there on its own” type of comments - this would lead to a stop in production with the stage director talking to the vocalist (who didn’t know she had been discussed over the tech comm system) about staying in key, etc…it was just that sometimes the discussions included a little editorializing, too…
Well. Of course. One treads a fine line. After all, if you are shooting a live show with, say, 12 cameras all of whom share the Camera Bus line, well…uh…who’s to know who said what, as long as one is a bit cautious.
I’ve heard howling like a wolf while an off-tune superstar walked through their shit on dress rehearsal. Everyone brings their A game to the live show however, and that almost always includes keeping camera bus chatter to a minimum.
I do believe what you said !!!
Since I was at the SB and witnessed Paul’s performance first-hand: The stadium speakers at the Eagles end zone weren’t working during the game. If Paul was running his sound through the house system instead of his own, it wouldn’t sound quite right. To me, it sounded okay. As far as the lip-syncing, I couldn’t tell. There were light towers and smoke in the way so I could barely even see Paul on stage.
I know this doesn’t clear anything up. I just wanted to point out the sound was only so-so in the stadium.