Tom Petty Playing to Backing Tracks

[dbbubba]

Originally Posted by infopimpster

Unless we are talking about their "live" albums.... no punch-ins on that.

If anyone insisted that it be 100% live then they'd get another band pronto.
...or no band at all!

That TV production didn't NEED Tom Petty!

[Heartfelt]

"LEAVE BRITNEY ALOOOONE... err, i mean TOM... Leave Tom aloooone..."

You're lucky he performed for you!!!!

[MOFO PRO]

Originally Posted by loujudson

Did they let the children out onto the field or did they hire extras? Or were they prerecorded too?

Pre-recorded... notice not one Patriot or Giant emblem on the lot of them... pretty unusual for a crowd at the super bowl that rushes the stage just overcome with the moment

[Master Tang]

In all this debate of lip sync, and fakery, one has to wonder if Janet Jackson's lawyer had explained to the FCC that her hooter was fake, would have gotten away with it?

[Sofa King]

Originally Posted by Beyersound

Sofa, you need to talk to more satellite guys, the performance is not what you think. There is much you don't know............

Dude,
What the hell does that mean?

Anyway, im sure there is more for everyone to learn, but there are some things I do know a bit about.


I’m not quite sure what your background is.
But, in my 20 years of recording and mixing music, the last 8 of those years have almost been exclusively been working on music for TV.
[And FWIW, its been my experience that the truck EIC deals with the bird [satellite], not me the music mixer.]



So I stand by what I said, that it was my opinion, that there were pre-recorded tracks going on.

Not that was a good or a bad thing.
Just what I felt.

No slagging, no demonstrative attitude, just an opinion.

all the best,
Sean

[True North]

Originally Posted by dbbubba

You want to know how I knew it was a "studio" vocal almost immediately?

The vocal sound sounded extremely suspect to me as well.

[FFTT]

In a world with so much artificial talent it's hard for some people to grasp
that true professional artists like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers actually are capable of performing every single one of their songs live with this degree of quality.

Aerosmith is equally capable and I've seen both bands live recently.

They really are that good.

[JDN]

Originally Posted by FFTT

In a world with so much artificial talent it's hard for some people to grasp
that true professional artists like Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers actually are capable of performing every single one of their songs live with this degree of quality.

They really are that good.

I don't think people are questioning their tallent or capability, you're kinda missing the point. It's more about the logistics of getting something of that size on and off stage(putting the stage together nonetheless) without a problem in the alloted time. What if there's a bad cable, or a guitar mic that goes out. This is a huge event, and it's shown live and there's no do overs or time for troubleshotting....I really don't think it's the band being lazy or even wanting too for that matter, it's just the way it works.

[Sofa King]

Originally Posted by FFTT

In a world with so much artificial talent it's hard for some people to grasp
that true professional artists like [......snip......]
Aerosmith is equally capable and I've seen both bands live recently.

They really are that good.

yes and no.......

i dont want to throw anyone under the bus, but there are very visible members of this board that have first hand experience with recording and or mixing of that band, and he told me about racks of DA88s with gtrs, vocals, and percussion.

not saying that the practice is wrong, just saying that its pretty common place.



best,
Sean

[FFTT]

You might want to read this post.

Seems wireless cameras also have latency issues.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/1814956-post19.html

[Beyersound]

Originally Posted by Sofa King

Dude,
What the hell does that mean?

Anyway, im sure there is more for everyone to learn, but there are some things I do know a bit about.


I’m not quite sure what your background is.
But, in my 20 years of recording and mixing music, the last 8 of those years have almost been exclusively been working on music for TV.
[And FWIW, its been my experience that the truck EIC deals with the bird [satellite], not me the music mixer.]



So I stand by what I said, that it was my opinion, that there were pre-recorded tracks going on.

Not that was a good or a bad thing.
Just what I felt.

No slagging, no demonstrative attitude, just an opinion.

all the best,
Sean

It's Ok Sean, I'm feelin your love. I never doubted the prescence of tracks, I was just trying to get people to think about how "live" a live performance really needs to be. I also have many decades in this business and have done TV audio all the way from ENG to Stage A2, to FOH Mixer, to Truck Mixer. Past the EIC there is the actual satellite truck uplink guy. A good friend of mine is a chief engineer for one of those companies. What I meant by talking to those guys was the relative delay problems between audio and video and how they differ from analog tv to digi tv. I understand you might have seen things that didn't match at all, but the HD broadcast I saw had massive delay problems also. Many providers don't consult with the guys who send them their signal, and many times the A/V sync sucks! To simplify my point: Let's not be too hard on the band, I have done many a music awards show where artists had so many studio tracks that it was embarassing to call it a live performance(Spice Girls..........Sorry, was I thinking out loud?). Hey, where is your studio anyway? Your site doesn't list it!

[Sofa King]

Originally Posted by Beyersound

To simplify my point: Let's not be too hard on the band

That is my point.

I wasnt too hard on the band.
I didnt say anything about them.


Nor was I making judgments about the use of backing tracks, I just offered an opinion to the original poster and the original topic, as to if there were backing tracks.

and I got some sort of "youve got alot to learn" comment from you.
[ in the future, you might want to see your target before you pull the trigger]
also thanks for the info about there being an actual guy in the sat truck manging the hop, i never knew that.


[sarcasm off]
For the record, I saw no sync issues with the production audio.
And if there were issues, like encode or decode delays, or problems with the satelite hops, [which again I did not have].....
those issues have nothing to do with the tonality of a vocal mic changing when a guy is singing to when the guy talks to the crowd.

Nor does it create phantom tom fills.

Lastly, and this might be better explored and confirmed in the Post forum, but i think the Dolby E encode delay is 2 frames, but its always compensated for.


best,
Sean

[fenderbender.]

I can't believe some of you people! Blah, blah, blah... How many of you were drunk, watching the superbowl with a room full of people, in standard def., thru a shitty sound system with its own delays, etc.???

I was watching in HD, and I did pause and rewind quite a bit. I won't claim to know it all, and I have no inside information, but I think this shit about things being out of sync is just...well...shit! Would you evaluate a mix that was put thru 6 different random mp3 compressors? Given how much everybody bitches about mp3's, and then to turn around and 'critically listen' to the audio while ignoring the fact that the audio has been thru who-know-how-many-and-what-the-**** various boxes along the way from the FOH rig to your TV... What a joke?

And you, (see below) - I watched carefully and time shifted quite a bit. There was a 57 on the snare, beta 98's on the toms, a beta 52 in the kick, and beta 52's or beta 56's on some of the amps. That's all I could make out.

... Not live. There were too many sync issues that were random. ... didn't see many mics on the drums except for the OH and I didn't see mics on the GTR amps...

You're all SPECULATING, so quit acting like you're all ****ing experts on the subject. I'm not saying any one person is right or wrong, and I'm not trying to insult anybody, but unless you were there - you don't know jack!

(now go watch it on youtube and come back and pretend to now be certain in your speculations. what a great discussion we have going on this forum for audio professionals!)

[Jesse Miller]

Originally Posted by daryllh

Jordan Sparks was all over the lip-syncing folks.

Petty was good I thought. I had forgotten Ron Blair was back playing with them. Would have been cool to have Stan Lynch up there too. Course, I'm more of an old school Heartbreakers fan than newer.

I do beleive it was Howie Ebstein back on bass and not Ron Blair. Howie toured last year with them as well. I also beleive it was Stan Lynch on Keys, although he passed on last years tour he is now back on board as well.

These guys are now and always have been at the top of there game. If there were backing tracks ( and i for one highly doubt it) it was likly for automation purposes and not for "spicing" up there live sound.

Seen them live up close, from FOH and Monitor land and it is what it is. LIVE music by PROS who can play.....

[vernier]

Howie died five years ago. RIP.

[FFTT]

Would serve a few of you well to buy the Runnin' Down The Dream 4 disc set.

[trippy]

Originally Posted by Jesse Miller

I do beleive it was Howie Ebstein back on bass and not Ron Blair. Howie toured last year with them as well. I also beleive it was Stan Lynch on Keys, although he passed on last years tour he is now back on board as well.

unbelievable....


anyway, I wanted to bring up something interesting which no one else seems to have mentioned, and that is the fact that they played the first song, "American Girl" in C# (a half-step lower than the original key) and then-without changing guitars- played "I Won't Back Down" in G (the original key) and continued to play the remaining two songs in their original keys. If you play guitar, it's easy to watch Mike and Tom's hands on the guitars and see that they are playing the regular first-position chords in both songs, which would be impossible without either re-tuning between songs (which they didn't take the time to do), using a capo on one of the songs (which they didn't do) or running the guitars' signals through a pitch transposing device on the first song (not out of the realm of possibility, but my instincts say uh-uh...)

(before you jump all over me for the capo comment, yes I know Tom used a capo for "Free Fallin"...I'm not talking about that, just about the apparent tuning paradox in the first two songs)

So clearly there was more going than meets the eye....

[jammybastard]

Originally Posted by fenderbender.

You're all SPECULATING, so quit acting like you're all ****ing experts on the subject. I'm not saying any one person is right or wrong, and I'm not trying to insult anybody, but unless you were there - you don't know jack!

(now go watch it on youtube and come back and pretend to now be certain in your speculations. what a great discussion we have going on this forum for audio professionals!)

As for the HD sync issue.... It can happen at the station in the IRD or at home in your set...or both. May also happen at the production truck, uplink, downlink at network, uplink at network, downlink at the satellite service provider, downlink at the cable head end or wherever the data is processed.

Fox and all the networks spend alot of time doing sync tests the day of the show but most affiliates have several frames of audio delay in at all times. That way they have more pad for error.

If I had to guess what happened at the half time show it would be something like this: There was a separate truck producing the half-time. When the main truck cut to that truck, or when network switched to that trucks feed there was a break in the data stream. This caused the a/v buffers to get out of sync. with the video writing out behind the audio in time or your set choked on the glitch and it's buffers got out of sync. In either case this would be seen at home as the stick hitting the drum before you heard it.

Now is this what happened?
No idea, I wasn't on the show so I don't have a definitive answer.
Watching it via OTA HD w/ 5.1 I defiantely saw sync issues and it looked to me like it was the players and not a broadcast issue.

[Plush]

I saw live

Don't know what the doubters saw.

[joeq]

with the degrees of separation being what they are, and the amount of people on Gearslutz who know somebody who knows somebody WE ought to be able to get it from the horse's mouth, if anyone can.

[Master Tang]

You guys are all bagging on the wrong Tom for phoning it in.

[snüzz]

anyway, I wanted to bring up something interesting which no one else seems to have mentioned, and that is the fact that they played the first song, "American Girl" in C# (a half-step lower than the original key) and then-without changing guitars- played "I Won't Back Down" in G (the original key) and continued to play the remaining two songs in their original keys. If you play guitar, it's easy to watch Mike and Tom's hands on the guitars and see that they are playing the regular first-position chords in both songs, which would be impossible without either re-tuning between songs (which they didn't take the time to do), using a capo on one of the songs (which they didn't do) or running the guitars' signals through a pitch transposing device on the first song (not out of the realm of possibility, but my instincts say uh-uh...)

(before you jump all over me for the capo comment, yes I know Tom used a capo for "Free Fallin"...I'm not talking about that, just about the apparent tuning paradox in the first two songs)

So clearly there was more going than meets the eye....

[/quote]

interesting! AND he was spotted behind the grassy knoll.

[jammybastard]

Originally Posted by snüzz

interesting! AND he was spotted behind the grassy knoll.

I saw his headstock go "back and to the left", "back and to the left", "back and to the left", etc...

[jammybastard]

Originally Posted by snüzz

interesting! AND he was spotted behind the grassy knoll.

I saw his headstock go "back and to the left", "back and to the left", "back and to the left", etc...

[area51recording]

So I guess after 5 pages what we can agree on is that it's a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma....

[joelpatterson]

I'm certain that someday-- there will a deathbed confession.

[Sounds Great]

Seems that this comes up every year now.

At least we know for sure that Janet's boob was real, er, well... actually

[tINY]

Whatever the 1/2 time show was, we know that the game was fake.

They act better than the WWF, though...





-tINY

[gtrman100]

Originally Posted by allencollins

They sounded so bad I find it hard to believe they had any help.
Those guys are such terrible musicians it's pathetic.

The only guy in the Heartbreakers who could actually play his instrument
was the original drummer. Then they kicked him out cuz he eventually
played worse than the rest of them over time

go figure

This is one of the stupidest comments I've ever read in any blog. You might not like their music, but to say they're bad musicians?

Congrats man, you've really acheived a new low of stupidity.

[trippy]

he's actually really smart...just ask him.