Remote recording
Encyclopedia
Remote recording, also known as location recording, is the act of making a high-quality complex audio recording of a live concert performance, or any other location recording that uses multitrack recording
Multitrack recording
Multitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...

 techniques outside of a recording studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...

. The multitrack recording is then carefully mixed
Audio mixing
Audio mixing may refer to:*Audio mixing *Audio mixing *Live sound mixing...

, and the finished result is called a remote recording or a live album
Live album
A live album is a recording consisting of material recorded during stage performances using remote recording techniques, commonly contrasted with a studio album...

. This is in contrast to a field recording
Field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...

 which uses few microphones, recorded onto the same number of channels as the intended product. Remote recording is not the same as remote broadcast
Remote broadcast
In broadcast engineering, a remote broadcast is broadcasting done from a location away from a formal television studio and is considered an electronic field production . A remote pickup unit is usually used to transmit the audio and/or video back to the television station, where it joins the...

 for which multiple microphones are mixed live and broadcast during the performance, typically to stereo. Remote recording and remote broadcast may be carried out simultaneously by the same crew using the same microphones.

One important benefit of a remote recording is that the performers will respond to the audience; they will not be as distracted by the recording process. Another reason for a remote recording is to capture an artist in a different acoustic space such as a church, ballroom or meeting hall.

To make a remote recording, studio-quality recording equipment is trucked to the concert venue and connected to the concert microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...

s with a bank of microphone splitter
Microphone splitter
A microphone splitter has an input from a microphone and provides multiple output. Also known as a rathouse due to the large amount of cabling involved. A splitter is often used at larger venues to provide feeds from microphones or other sources to both a front of house mixing desk and a monitor desk...

s. Other microphones may be added. The individual microphone signals are routed to separate tracks.

A remote recording is often made using a specially built remote truck: a rolling recording studio carrying a mixing console
Mixing console
In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...

, studio monitor
Studio monitor
Studio monitors, also called reference monitors, are loudspeakers specifically designed for audio production applications such as recording studios, filmmaking, television studios and radio studios where accurate audio reproduction is crucial....

s and multitrack recorders. Beginning modestly in 1958, recording engineer Wally Heider
Wally Heider
Wally Heider was an American recording engineer and recording studio owner - History :After a distinguished career as an engineer in the 1940s and 1950s, he was instrumental in recording the San Francisco Sound in the late 60s and early 70s...

 developed and popularized the use of a remote truck in California in the mid-1960s and throughout the 1970s.

History

Remote recording developed out of the practice of making field recording
Field recording
Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. The recording is typically recorded in the same channel format as the desired result, for instance, stereo recording equipment will yield a stereo product...

s with high-quality equipment. The earliest such recordings were crude, undertaken in the 1920s and 1930s, beginning with Ralph Peer
Ralph Peer
Ralph Sylvester Peer was an American talent scout, recording engineer and record producer in the field of music in the 1920s and 1930s...

 in 1923. Peer carried a disc-cutting machine and recorded musicians directly to disc. From 1941 Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...

 became known for the field recordings he made of the various musical traditions carried to or created in the United States. In the 1950s, advances in microphones, mixers and tape recorders allowed more sophisticated equipment to be carried to a concert location, including more microphones, tape recorders with more tracks, and possibly a mixing console
Mixing console
In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...

 to mix multiple microphones down to fewer recorded tracks.

Not all remote recordings were well received by the public. For instance, in 1963 Chess Records
Chess Records
Chess Records was an American record label based in Chicago, Illinois. It specialized in blues, R&B, soul, gospel music, early rock and roll, and occasional jazz releases....

 hauled their monaural tape recorder to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Myrtle Beach is a coastal city on the east coast of the United States in Horry County, South Carolina. It is situated on the center of a large and continuous stretch of beach known as the Grand Strand in northeastern South Carolina. It is considered to be a major tourist destination in the...

, to capture the Fourth of July
Independence Day (United States)
Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain...

 weekend concerts including Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...

's electrifying performance in front of 2,000 excited fans. The resulting album, Bo Diddley's Beach Party
Bo Diddley's Beach Party
Bo Diddley's Beach Party is the eleventh album by rock musician Bo Diddley. Recorded live in concert in July 1963 at the Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, it is one of rock music's earliest live remote recordings...

, did not sell well in the U.S.

In 1958, American recording engineer Wally Heider
Wally Heider
Wally Heider was an American recording engineer and recording studio owner - History :After a distinguished career as an engineer in the 1940s and 1950s, he was instrumental in recording the San Francisco Sound in the late 60s and early 70s...

 mounted recording equipment in a truck, reportedly the first to do so. The next year, engineer Reice Hamel
Reice Hamel
Reice Hamel was an American Audio Recording engineer. He is considered, along with his colleague Wally Heider, to be the pioneer of complex live remote recording. He recorded under the company name, Reice Hamel Recording USA.- Early Years in New York :Reice Hamel was born in the lower east side of...

 did the same. Both men used new techniques, bringing many microphones to a concert and mixing the performance as it happened—in the manner of a remote broadcast—recording onto stereo tape recorders for release as stereo and mono records. Hamel's first truck grew from simple to more complex in the first seven years. He started with stereo, obtained a three-track machine on which he taped a Barbra Streisand
Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand is an American singer, actress, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, four Emmy Awards, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy,...

 concert, then in 1965 he configured the truck as a complete recording studio. In 1966 he installed a four-track machine, then moved to eight-track, and by 1971 was recording on sixteen tracks.

Many of Heider's recordings became hits or critical successes. One of them is the classic album Live in Concert
Live in Concert (Ray Charles album)
Live in Concert is a live album by Ray Charles released in 1965 by ABC-Paramount Records. The recording was made at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California in September, 1964 following a tour of Japan....

 by Ray Charles
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records...

, captured in 1964 at the Shrine Auditorium
Shrine Auditorium
The Shrine Auditorium is a landmark large-event venue, in Los Angeles, California, USA. It is also the headquarters of the Al Malaikah Temple, a division of the Shriners.-History:...

 in Los Angeles. Heider recorded the Monterey Pop Festival
Monterey Pop Festival
The Monterey International Pop Music Festival was a three-day concert event held June 16 to June 18, 1967 at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California...

 in 1967; its many musical acts and the increasing importance of high quality sound for a concert film signaled a major shift in scale and importance for the remote truck operator. After that, other recording studios assembled their own remote recording trucks and more concerts were saved on multitrack tapes. The Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Festival
Woodstock Music & Art Fair was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music". It was held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in the Catskills near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969...

 was recorded on 12-track by a remote truck and then mixed at the Record Plant studio in New York. In August 1971, the Record Plant used its first remote truck to make its first remote recording, The Concert for Bangladesh
The Concert for Bangladesh
The Concert for Bangladesh was the name for two benefit concerts organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, held at noon and at 7 PM on August 1, 1971, playing to a total of 40,000 people at Madison Square Garden in New York City...

 held at Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...

. In preparation for the concert, Record Plant co-founder Chris Stone
Chris Stone (entrepreneur)
Chris Stone is an American music industry businessman and writer, the co-founder with Gary Kellgren of the Record Plant recording studios. Stone founded Filmsonix in 1987, sold the Record Plant in 1989, and is the founder and CEO of World Studio Group...

said that remote recording had several key advantages to studio recording: "It is really not as expensive as studio time when one considers that the concert is two hours long, perhaps twice a night for two days. It is a spontaneous music that is recorded live. This makes it more flavorable . And it is usually easier on the musician, who gets paid for the concert and gets the recording done for his next LP at the same time. Everyone wins."
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