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Hearing Music - Live or Recorded
Listening to music depends a lot on the environment in which you experience it. The ambiance and environment of a live concert in an auditorium differs greatly from the experience you may have in the close comforts of your home. The warmth of an intimate live concert in a living room setting does not compare with the music rendered with digital perfection through an expensive stereo system. It also depends on the type of music. Hearing music from India in concert is indescribable while hearing American rap is not as amazing. Nevertheless, different folks have different strokes.
Quite often we talk about the difference between the enjoyment of listening to a concert and later on listening to its audio or video recording. We realize that the experience is not the same. Apparently, there is something missing in the recording that was there in the concert.
Recordings are excellent documentations and the invention of these devices and their advancements can be considered a technological boon to the modern civilization. But, it hasn't yet come up to the level of capturing the whole experience of a live concert. Let me ascertain at this point that we are not talking about music which we have always heard on recording. This is about music that was performed live and recorded.
The difference between the two listening experiences may not be exactly as big as between live and dead, but quite close. At every step of advancement in the recording technology we hoped or even boasted that we would be able to capture the original. But, within no time we came to realize how wrong we were. The experience of live music can never really be captured in totality at least with the technology that we have now, be it audio or video.
The simple reason behind this is that while listening to live music, that is music performed in front of us, we perceive it through all our five senses. We listen, not only the music but also the sound of the space part of which is audience response. We see, not only the musicians but also the surrounding atmosphere which includes the space and the people around us. The musical frequencies physically touch us mixed with several other elements floating in the air. We also feel the touch of our neighbors and everything else that contacts our body. We smell it, mixed with the surrounding environment. The existing smell of the space, the fragrance of our neighbors, and smell of the burning incense inevitably become part of our perception. We even taste it. The lingering taste of anything that we had eaten before or that could be in our mouth at the moment also becomes intermingled with the listening experience. That is why sometimes listening to some music after many years we feel nostalgic of the taste, smell and feelings of that time of our lives. It is a mysterious and romantic process and above all a very precious experience of life. We are also much more forgiving while listening to a live concert.
In stead, while listening to an audio recording of the concert we only listen to the music, which can be pretty close to the original. But the other elements of sound in a live concert could be missing and substituted by different sounds. Furthermore, our listening could be more analytical and critical than in a live situation. While watching a video recording of it we can watch only a portion of the whole set up, wherever the camera was focused and listen to the sound that will primarily be that of the music. Everything else will be entirely different, irrespective of good or bad. We have our imagination, which may not always work and lead us in the right direction. But, some good music can take an experienced, sensitive listener to places. Those are exceptions.
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