Freddie White Live @ Hot Spot Music Club 

100% His voice just gets richer with time

100 Cement!!

I stumbled across that video a little over three years ago, and it’s just one of those rare occasions where an amazing live performance was flawlessly captured. I spent many years studying music, and even have a 4-year degree for studio recording and audio production but that other video he did for some contest is literally a perfect recording and one of my all-time favorites. There is literally nothing I would change on that recording. The timbre of his voice, and the emotion behind his vocal performance and guitar playing were simply magical. His performance in this video was certainly good, and something I would be extremely proud of if I were the guy recording and mixing it-but that other one was better, and there are things about this one I would change. If you want to know what those are, listen to the begging of the song on this one and you will hear a little bit too much string noise from his right hand as he strums, because the gauge of those strings are fairly hefty, and any lateral movement while muting will cause that. It’s right in the middle of the most important frequency range, that if you tried to fix it with EQ or other tools it would only ruin it. I would ask him to take another pass, and I could have him try tighten up his playing, or swap out the guitar and/or the strings for a slightly lighter gauge-but the best solution would be to reposition and/or swap the mic so that it’s not picking it up as loudly. I also would have dialed back the reverb a little bit, because the one he was using sounded like the cheap, fake sounding digital reverb from the mixer/PA, which is fine for a live performance in a bar-but if I’m trying to capture the best sounding recording, I would have used a different reverb that was modeled after a real space, because I would prefer a smaller room with more early reflections and a warmer sound, to match the intimacy of the performance. Obviously, those are purely technical choices with the engineering that in no way reflect negatively on Freddie or his performance. That said, I did notice that this performance lacked the same emotional intensity of the other one, because he was clearly trying to put on a good show for an audience this time around and you could hear and see how he playing to the energy of the audience in the room. That’s why you sometimes have to clear folks out of the studio or at least dim the lights much lower in the booth than it is out in the studio so they can’t see you or anyone else in there with you. Lowering the lights in the studio where they’re playing helps their vibe a bit, but if you paint the walls with warmer, darker colors and use filters or smart colored lights you can maintain the vibe and visibility in there and you won’t have to dim the lights in the booth as much. You really just want to replicate the same effect of what happens at night when you’re inside your home and look out the window, where it’s much harder to see anyone outside looking in while they can see you. It’s also something that happens the more someone plays a song, because the stronger your muscle memory the more concentration it takes to focus on conveying the same emotional performance-and I bet that after getting almost 2 Million views on that other video means that he’s getting asked to play it more often. But that’s just something that happens all the time with working musicians. Every artist likely spent years touring around the songs they recorded for their first album, so they’re not really tweaking too much and they usually sound just like the album when they perform it live, but the second that they wrote all or part of the song while they were in the studio recording and arranging it, and depending on how much they thought ahead about playing it live when they were in the studio will determine how well they can pull it off on tour, but by the end of their rehearsals before the tour and certainly be the end is where it will sound it’s tightest, but it might be a little different. They sang it on way in the booth, because they could punch-in to re-record a section of it at a time, while at a show they have to do it in order without any time to rest. Sometimes all that practice leads to an even better version, and that’s why Peter Frampton’s live album sold way more than the original studio recordings did. My favorite example is actually on a song by “Weird” Al if you can believe it. He always asks the artists he parodies for permission and when he asked if he could parody the Dire Straits song “Money for Nothing” and Mark Knopfler gave him permission, but only if he could come and record it with them in the studio. He was fresh off a massive tour and after playing it for countless times, his guitar tone and playing were way more aggressive with the way it cut through the mix. If you’ve never heard it or never really paid close attention, I highly recommend giving the original a quick listen and then listen to “Weird” Al’s “Beverly Hillbillies” and if you like the way Mark Knopfler plays guitar you will love the way he played on that track. If you want to try the same exercise with this video and the other one, I would suggest listening to this one first while paying close attention, and then going to watch the other one he did 4 years ago, and you’ll see the nuances between them and why I love that other one so much, and only think that this one sounds pretty good. If you have nice headphones or an actual stereo (that isn’t a sound bar or a mono Bluetooth speaker) or even a car stereo when you try it out, you’ll get the full experience of what I’m talking about. Think of this like a wine tasting where an expert guides you through smelling and tasting all the subtle stuff you may not have noticed, but then immediately taste once you’ve been told what to expect.