VellaJ wrote:
To an extent, I could think that this is possible in the studio. However, how can this be possible during a live gig? I'm not aware of any method that could make this possible outside of the noise-free environment of the studio. Or am I wrong?
Surely it's a question of signal V noise.
I recall years ago (80s some time) reading an interview with Frank Zappa. Zappa was famous for taking tracks that had been recorded live and using them as a basis for something new in the studio. The interviewer said something like "but those tracks don't SOUND live, you don't hear the drums bleeding through onto the guitars, you don't hear the audience." FZ said "well do you understand signal to noise? What I do is mike the amps very, very close and then the signal, the bit that I want, is so much louder than the noise, the sounds that I don't want."
Mics are not all unidirectional and some have a small zone in which they are efficient. I've noticed singing at TJs that there's a sort of "hot zone" around the mics (I think they use SM57s) , and if you pull an inch away from that zone then the vocal volume drops off very noticably. So mics have a range, and may only react to what's quite close to them.
It seems to me that this is a desirable way to operate actually, because you have lots of headroom to get louder if you want to and so that gives you scope for dynamics. I've noticed this with Steve Newman, who, as Alan recently pointed out, is a real master of volume and dynamics. He tends to play quite softly but amplified, but that means that when he wants the extra oomph he just digs in a bit harder.
Ha! I say "just".... I'm not trying to imply that there's no skill involved here, but if you're playing or singing flat out all the time then you don't have a lot of room left for using volume for emphasis or to dynamic effect.