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Dali Group: Members Posts: 31 Joined: May 2002 Posted: June 02 2002, 04:17 Hi all, I just got the DVD of the Berlin Concert. I agree, it's awesome! I really love it, allthough I escpecially love the 'classics'. TB is really great!!! Anyway, what I was wondering is why they choose to let the singers pretend they are doing some stuff wich they in fact do not - in Holland we call it playback, I don't know if that is the correct term - but I mean just pretending you sing, while the audience listens to a tape. I can see this with Anna Frank's remarks on Liberation, the 3 or 4 verses of Sunlight shining trough Cloud (not the chorus), Mastermind, and probably other small parts as well. I mean, Pepsi is a great singer, and I really love her in Mike's party, but pretending she does Anne's childlike voice is just stupid! Why? Dali Back to top

Olivier Group: Super Admins Posts: 1868 Joined: Nov. 1999 Posted: June 02 2002, 11:06 It's hard to understand. It seems Mike does more and more things that go against nature: saxophone sound on guitar, guitar sound on keyboard, etc. It's like he is completly detaching the sound from the instrument. (And at the same time, he dares to say that what counts is the emotion you put when playing...) It would be cool he talks about it in some interviews. He sems to like a lot surrealism, so I'm wondering if that's some kind of musical surrealism (flying pianos and guitars in his 3D world, guitar with saxophone sound in his music, fake singers in his concerts). Back to top

oblique Group: Members Posts: 411 Joined: Mar. 2005 Posted: June 02 2002, 11:29 Dali was just ahead of me. I had planned to write the same. (bought the DVD 5 days ago, and also wondered about the singing of Liberation) But what I did not know was that to my surprise Moonlight Shadow was sung by Miriam Stockley, instead of Pepsi during the '99 tour. -------------- "While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past." - Jack Vance Back to top

Mark 1 Group: Members Posts: 65 Joined: June 2001 Posted: Aug. 02 2002, 20:37 Generally, I dislike playback and would rather hear a 'smaller' version of a song than one that's partly taken from tape or sequencer. Having said that, there are situations, I guess, where the whole is more important than the parts and in de Berlin concert I felt there was more of an empasis on visual and audio spectacle than on keeping everything live. I liked the concert very much (having watched it on DVD) and while some things are playback (like the singing on some parts and I guess the string section on The Doge's Palace) I don't feel that detracts from the concert. The important things, Pepsi's singing, Mike's guitarplay and from what I could see, everything the band played and such, were clearly live. You've also got to keep in mind that sometimes outside influences like weather, bad acoustics and such, do not allow live performance to sound as good as an audience expects. I guess Berlin 2000 - The Millennium Bell - is more of a show than a 'concert', and a great show it was by the looks of it. Back to top

Spinne Unregistered Posted: Oct. 18 2002, 17:29 Hi I think that all this playback has more to do with Mike's problems at the moment to play live not having total control over the music. This is a way to control everything on stage. Spinne PD: Sorry for my english   Back to top

TOBY Group: Members Posts: 1562 Joined: May 2002 Posted: Oct. 23 2002, 16:51 I'ts probably just a lot easier for them to mime, not that it excuses anything. It thought it was a bit naff that they so obviously mimed the tubular bells during the various performances of FATC from TB3 aswell. Back to top

TheMan Group: Members Posts: 105 Joined: July 2002 Posted: Nov. 07 2002, 08:38 Quote (Guest @ Oct. 18 2002, 17:29) Mike's problems at the moment to play live What are you referring to? Back to top

Korgscrew Group: Super Admins Posts: 3511 Joined: Dec. 1999 Posted: Nov. 09 2002, 20:23 I imagine that Spinne is referring to the way that Mike has been frustrated in the past by the fact that playing live has meant doing things which he feels compromise the music, taking it away from the way he wants it to sound - using sampled parts obviously allows him to get it to sound far closer (though it can get to a point where it's just someone playing over a backing track created from the master tape...). Back to top

SCprogfan Unregistered Posted: May 28 2003, 10:18 I see that this is an old thread, but we just got this DVD in the U.S.  I thought is was really silly that some of those vocal parts were played back, because they seemed like parts that were easy enough for someone to actually perform.  I ultimately have no problem with the decision to play back some of the parts from recordings, but I do have a problem with the bad attemps at miming or 'lip syncing' to those parts.  Just let them play back by themselves. Back to top

Spinne Group: Members Posts: 397 Joined: May 2003 Posted: May 31 2003, 12:35 As I have said before, and Korgscrew has explained so well, it isn't a matter of doing playback on those parts that are difficult to perform live. It is a way for Mike to control the music and to make it sound very close to the studio version. Back to top

SCprogfan Unregistered Posted: June 02 2003, 16:52 Yes, the playback is OK with me.  The horrible 'lip-sync' is not. Back to top

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