Technically how do they accomplish "Playing For Change"?

Cafe Society
1

Topic says it all.
I love the very idea of these collaborative performances.

I work in live television. Satellites, fiber optic cable signals, got alla that.

It seems impossible to have musicians ALL over the planet playing without a few milliseconds of delay live, in real time. Even those few milliseconds would wreck playing truly in sync, together.

Anyone here know how this is being accomplished? Or, does one player lay down their line and then each player layers on top of it, like many musicians do in studios wherein the tracks are isolated bits and not played in the same room in real time?

Here’s an example: Fly Like An Eagle by the Steve Miller Band, performed as a Playing For Change piece.

2

According to the Wiki page this is how it is done:

Travelling the world with a small film and recording team, producers Johnson and Enzo Buono developed a mobile recording studio (originally powered by golf cart batteries) for recording and filming musicians live outdoors, and progressively editing all the separate artists, blending all into one performance as PFC travelled from artist to artist, country to country. Starting with a studio-made demo in the right key and tempo, “we would deconstruct [the track]” as each recorded musician could listen with headphones to what had been recorded before them, and playing the same song, adding into the mix their own style.[5][6] For the project Johnson has recorded and filmed music in more than 50 countries across the world.[7] - SOURCE

3

So it’s basically karaoke. Everyone adds their own vocal or instrumental, and they edit them together into a song.

4

Its close to how most albums are recorded, just not im the same studio.

5

Right, and it’s not like they only performed the parts we saw: every singer and every musician did the entire song. The producers then cut it and mixed it.

6

Sad but accurate. I’m 63. Bands I grew up listening to were in the hybrid decades. SOME bands literally ran the song en masse until they had a take they liked. Others recorded only their tracks while listening on cans to previously recorded parts.

Some bands would lay down large sections of a song all together, then sweeten and overdub parts or lines.

I used to be married into a family of well-known classical musicians. One of the guys had performed on a recording of string quartet music. This was early in the digital editing years. He told me that they’d all listen to playback and then re-record as little as one or two notes to correct a moment they found lacking. In the day I was stunned.

Now I can do it on my cell phone…