[Dixielandjazz] "Patching" recordings

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

I think the original point of this thread was making a "silk purse out of 
sow's ear".  Taking musicians and singers who are not very good and making 
them something they are not.

It looks like it's the degree that is objectionable since everyone seems to 
do it using the technology available today.  If this technology had been 
available years ago I'm sure that they would have used it.

About 40 years ago I was at Missouri School for the Blind and we had a 20 pc 
band.  We were recording a march and try as we might the second half just 
never came off very well.  Finally we got a good recording of the second 
half but the first half was bad sooooooo..... I took out my trusty scissors 
and tape and presto we had a good performance.  We have come a long way 
since then.

I think you have to understand that true one take perfection is pretty 
difficult to come by and live recordings may have some glitches.

Sometimes performances are memorable because of their glitches.  Some years 
ago a high school friend who was a percussionist with the St. Louis Symphony 
was doing the theme from 2001, Thus Spake Zarathustra.  They were using a 
synthasizer which was a new gadget at the time and my friend was front and 
center with an enormus drum set.  Now drum set wasn't his suit.  The 
performance promptly got more and more out of sync but he bravely hammered 
away.  No engineer could have fixed that.

I recorded a recent concert and one of the cuts was pretty good except the 
singer forgot her words and got lost in one small segment.  Since the 
section repeated I was able to cut out that part without any seam.  You 
can't tell where the cut was made and no one except a real enthusiast or 
someone with a score would ever know.  IMO this saved a pretty good tune.  I 
see that as more or less like skipping a chorus or taking a cut from A to B 
to shorten a tune.  I would have no problem lopping off a bad note out in 
front of a tune.
Larry
StL