Miming instrument playing is the equivalent of vocal lip sync, that is the musicians pretend to play their instruments to a prerecorded track of music. I was wondering--on so many mimed music videos on YouTube, musicians really seem to be playing their musical instruments that would create a sound. For example, the keyboard players such as Sergio Mendes are shown pressing his fingers down real hard on the keys and drummers are shown hitting the symbols real hard with their drumsticks. Wouldn't this cause an audience to hear additional sound while musicians perform in unison to the prerecorded music? If the answer is yes, do studio engineers afterwards wipe clean and delete the miming instrument playing for let's say a later television broadcast so all that you hear is the prerecorded track?
Miming Instrument Playing
- Thread starter lj
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I have often wondered the same thing. Just what is a live studio audience hearing?
I could understand perhaps an acoustic piano rigged to make no sound. Or an electric instrument not plugged in or turned on. But surely the drums have to be making sound.
I could understand perhaps an acoustic piano rigged to make no sound. Or an electric instrument not plugged in or turned on. But surely the drums have to be making sound.
I can tell you how its done when shooting a music video, as I participated in a few of those back in the 80s and 90s...
The actual song is played over a loud speaker. Quite loud, too, so the whole band can hear it -- especially the drummer as (short of a few pads to deaden the sound) they still generate he most noise. You're right about the electric instruments being unplugged (or at least turned down). Acoustic instruments are simply "lip synched" (blowing air, picking strings, sliding a "slick" bow over the strings. Naturally, there's still a lot of noise generated despite this, particularly with percussion instruments and acoustic strings. When it comes time to edit, the video track only is edited to the existing audio track of the song for which they are making the music video.
There's a lot of technical advances that have come along, mainly to retain synch better. In my day if the band mimicked playing to a cassette, or (rarely) a record on a turntable, there was a good chance that if a shot ran more than 10 seconds you'd risk losing synchronization. This is why a lot of music videos from the early days have short, quick shots or why you may have noticed synch problems at either end of a shot.
Nowadays, the audio recording the band "plays to" most likely comes form a timecoded video source and the video being shot carries the same timecode as a "slave." This makes the editing much easier (frame number for frame number) and virtually can never lose synch.
In the old days of variety shows it would depend on many factors. Was the audience actually there for the performance? When you look at those shows you can usually tell. Something like The Midnight Special or Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, were actual performances captured with the utmost attention paid to the audio. But if you look at something like the Baja Marimba Band's performance of "Brasilia" on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, no audience is visible, it was clearly "lip synched" indicating it was probably "pre-produced" for that segment of the show. In that case the audience probably watched it (as you would a movie clip or preview) on the studio monitors/TVs.
Sometimes the band would play along with the record and the technical crew in the control room would just fade from the studio mics to the recording for the performance, then fade back at the end of the song from the record to the studio. This can be apparent on songs that fade out and is usually the way it was done of the host walked on stage to greet the performer at the end of the song. The biggest tell when this is done is a stray drumbeat or a momentary hint of "discordance." There are a few TJB clips online where this is apparent.
Keep in mind that when you watch a "classic" musical film, the actors/singers are lip synching a pre-recorded track. The Sound of Music, West Side Story (the original), Mary Poppins, South Pacific... You are not hearing that actor's/singer's voice live on the set. That's not to say they weren't singing on set, but that the singing wasn't recorded (or if it was it was not used or usable). Exceptions are notable (and have had their own technological challenges), such as the Les Miserables film a few years ago. And Modern technology has made things like Disney+'s Hamilton easier to so as it was confined to a stage and in the actual theatre where the play is performed which has its own dedicated audio system.
Hope this answers a few questions. Of course there are exceptions and variables to a lot of this.
--Mr Bill
The actual song is played over a loud speaker. Quite loud, too, so the whole band can hear it -- especially the drummer as (short of a few pads to deaden the sound) they still generate he most noise. You're right about the electric instruments being unplugged (or at least turned down). Acoustic instruments are simply "lip synched" (blowing air, picking strings, sliding a "slick" bow over the strings. Naturally, there's still a lot of noise generated despite this, particularly with percussion instruments and acoustic strings. When it comes time to edit, the video track only is edited to the existing audio track of the song for which they are making the music video.
There's a lot of technical advances that have come along, mainly to retain synch better. In my day if the band mimicked playing to a cassette, or (rarely) a record on a turntable, there was a good chance that if a shot ran more than 10 seconds you'd risk losing synchronization. This is why a lot of music videos from the early days have short, quick shots or why you may have noticed synch problems at either end of a shot.
Nowadays, the audio recording the band "plays to" most likely comes form a timecoded video source and the video being shot carries the same timecode as a "slave." This makes the editing much easier (frame number for frame number) and virtually can never lose synch.
In the old days of variety shows it would depend on many factors. Was the audience actually there for the performance? When you look at those shows you can usually tell. Something like The Midnight Special or Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, were actual performances captured with the utmost attention paid to the audio. But if you look at something like the Baja Marimba Band's performance of "Brasilia" on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, no audience is visible, it was clearly "lip synched" indicating it was probably "pre-produced" for that segment of the show. In that case the audience probably watched it (as you would a movie clip or preview) on the studio monitors/TVs.
Sometimes the band would play along with the record and the technical crew in the control room would just fade from the studio mics to the recording for the performance, then fade back at the end of the song from the record to the studio. This can be apparent on songs that fade out and is usually the way it was done of the host walked on stage to greet the performer at the end of the song. The biggest tell when this is done is a stray drumbeat or a momentary hint of "discordance." There are a few TJB clips online where this is apparent.
Keep in mind that when you watch a "classic" musical film, the actors/singers are lip synching a pre-recorded track. The Sound of Music, West Side Story (the original), Mary Poppins, South Pacific... You are not hearing that actor's/singer's voice live on the set. That's not to say they weren't singing on set, but that the singing wasn't recorded (or if it was it was not used or usable). Exceptions are notable (and have had their own technological challenges), such as the Les Miserables film a few years ago. And Modern technology has made things like Disney+'s Hamilton easier to so as it was confined to a stage and in the actual theatre where the play is performed which has its own dedicated audio system.
Hope this answers a few questions. Of course there are exceptions and variables to a lot of this.
--Mr Bill
Mr Bill--Thanks for the excellent description of the process. I can see why the prerecorded music blasts out loudly to the miming musicians--that way you won't hear any inadvertent sounds that may come out of mimed instruments. For a mimed acoustic piano --does the pianist play the keyboard in the usual way with actual sound emanating from the piano's keys/hammers/strings, knowing that the earlier prerecorded music will be married up to the video in the final studio edit?
JOv2
Well-Known Member
To Mr. Bill's point...remember that Hollywood Palace episode from '67 where it's basically a 60min commercial for A&M Records (wonder how Herb & Jerry pulled that one). I recall the show opening with the brass miming With A Little Help From My Friends. Later in the show, however, when Burt is at the piano you hear Herb struggling through a few bars of Alfie -- which was totally live.
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