Why would this be done to a recording??

[Joe Higley]

To tapers, traders, and live-music-recording enthusiasts in general, I pose a query:

I recently experienced something entirely new (for me) in my long history of listening to live music recordings. I listened to:

09/14/2004: Glenn Miller Ballroom - University of Colorado: Boulder, CO - 3 mic matrix
Set I: Lotsa Sox, Fear of Falling, From the Gecko> Paper Birds, Gilberto Gil, Reddish Moon, Poor Boy, Even Rats, Get Me with Fuji, If One of Us Should Fall, Children of December
Notes: [ robert - Fri Sep 17 2004

I was at this show and I wanted to hear it again, all these years later. There were a lot of segues in this show, and at all of these points whoever did the post on this faded out each track while the music was still going, often really still going, totally omitting some unknown number of minutes from the ends of songs. Likewise, the songs being segued into are faded in, "starting" the songs at some point past the true beginning. I've been trying to figure out why a taper would choose to do this, erasing some of the music at the ends and beginnings of songs by using fade-out/fade-in. I think the only time fade-out was not used was on songs that had definitive endings (i.e., no segues).

Does anyone have an opinion about this or know why it would be done? If you give the first few tracks a listen you'll hear exactly what I'm describing right away. Thanks.

[johnhk4]

here's a stab in the dark but were there any programs that would've done it automatically when exporting the files? like a setting that was left on by accident? Either that or they were trying to fit all of the tracks onto 2 discs instead of 3, and made some edits to what they felt was "dead space"… whereas I am in your camp and love all of the little nuances, textures, sounds and space between songs at the older slip shows.

[Joe Higley]

Not that I'm aware of. I could buy your theory about trying to cut "dead space" to fit the show onto two discs instead of three, however, the stuff I'm talking about in this particular show is not even that ambient stuff to which you refer (and I love all that too). This is real happening music, substantial ongoing jams and not the fading/trickling/almost-silence that sometimes constitutes a segue. It's kinda startling. It's like, okay the music is still really happening, and then...fade to silence obviously in the middle of the music.

I appreciate your feedback!

[Joe Higley]

And of course (I almost forgot), the fade-ins are just as startling. Start a track and expect to hear the beginning of it but no. On a few the music fades in to some point beyond the beginning, with the music already in full swing. Weird.