More recently, Konstantin Wecker has also been playing pre-recorded recordings during his concerts. These can now also be found on his numerous live albums. The recordings are absolutely identical, except sometimes they have live applause mixed in.
Should they be treated as separate recordings?
When this problem first occurred, I decided to treat it as the underlying original recording and merge. Konstantin Wecker and his father sing Parigi, o cara, recorded in 1959 in his parent’s kitchen. The versions differ in the applause that is appended at the end (slightly different total length).
The second is a recording of a radio broadcast from 1930, an anti-war text written and read by Ernst Toller. It hasn’t a specific title. One version has 2 secs fading applause mixed in at the beginning.
Otherwise they are identical, but we treat DJ-mixes as separate recordings, even if the recordings only slightly overlap.
If each recording is the same, release-wide technical credits are likely inaccurate and must be removed. This would also affect producers and mixers, even if applause was mixed to the original recording.
If they are different recordings, should they be marked as live? The pre-recorded recording was “performed live” - that’s were the applause comes from. But one recording has no applause included at all and there’s hardly anything live.
The relationship between recording and its work is absolutely not live, indeed.
If it’s played during concert, I guess there is not only the applause au the end but any sound from the audience are also hard during the piece. So it’s not too be merged, anyway.
Many concerts have pre-recorded intros, outros or interludes, and often the same, but we don’t merge them as all the live sounds around it or the MC are different.
But of course I don’t know anything about this specific case you’re mentioning.
This is the version with mixed in applause¹ → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO4Ti4551EM
There’s no ambience noise apart from the applause at the beginning. The other version is the same without applause.
I don’t think, this was recorded when played live on stage. That’s what was originally recorded.
When someone plays a sample through a keyboard live on stage they are said to “perform” that sample “live” using the instrument.
When someone plays a tape on stage, is the tape deck not just an instrument that is being performed live?
Yeah - tricky.
I tend to lean towards separate recordings as some days the tape may run slow or get someone heckling over it. Even the clapping over the top makes it a different recording.
By definition, it sounds like they are not the same MB Recording. And if the audio was actually recorded at a venue on a date, then the place-recording relationships shouldn’t be shared as well.
In this case, it’s not played from a device on stage. It’s started by a technician from elsewhere and only comes from the speakers. It has an ETI “Zuspielung”, that would translate to “playback”, but in German this means say “transmitted from an external source”.
Until there’s nothing in the recording that was recorded at this place. One version contains only the original recording with no applause or additional noise at all.
(As said, I don’t think it was recorded from the speakers then. I suppose they used the original recording for the CD)
However, if they are separate, they will need a (live) disambiguation to distinguish them. They have the same length and share acoustID (not surprisingly, the first example has differences b̶e̶y̶o̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶2̶ ̶m̶i̶n̶u̶t̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶k̶¹ and the second one only at the beginning, cropped from the fingerprint).
¹) no, it’s not: the first one is only 48 and 51 seconds long, but the applause is not different enough to cause a new acoustID. However they have different fingerprints: Compare fingerprints #97500098 and #90463842 | AcoustID ← the different applause is visible at the end, but it’s still the same acoustID
Disambiguation: “live playback, 2024-05-10: Stadthalle Gersthofen, Gersthofen, Germany” - would that be appropriate?
And what would you recommend for the recording-work relationship?
Is it a recording ofParigi, o cara from 2024 or 1959?
Or should it be 1959 – 2024-04-08?
Or omit the date?
It looks a bit strange in every variation. However, the recording date of the music cannot be completely ignored as it’s primarily about the music and not the applause. On the other hand, the reason why it is separate was recorded recently.
This means recorded in 1959, doesn’t it? Anything else would look wrong from the perspective of the work.
There’s no detectable noise while the music is playing and it would have been extremely inappropriate to disrupt the performance by shouting.
Here’s what it’s about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAQBTwDvfA (50 seconds including applause)
I agree with the contributors above that the recordings cannot be merged when they have differing acoustic content. Hence the tracks with crowd noise should remain separate.
Furthermore, I had to deal with a similar case at some point, where a prerecorded mix was played during a live show. This was handled, as any difficult case, by adding an annotation explaining the situation.