Adding Audience Applause To Live Recordings

[CarlCrab]

I have a live recording of a band that was recorded at a party. The recording is fairly amateur so I am trying to tart it up a bit. The audience applause at the end of each song sounds a bit pathetic so Id like to edit in some decent sounding audience applause. Is the best approach to sample some of the existing applause and multi layer it until I get a fuller sounding sound. Else is there some recorded examples of audience applause which I could edit into the existing recording. If so where can I download some audience applause in wav/mp3 file format?

[resistor man]

Originally posted by CarlCrab:
. Is the best approach to sample some of the existing applause and multi layer it until I get a fuller sounding sound?

Yes, other applause will sound fake unless you get REAL lucky.

[This message has been edited by resistor man (edited 12-03-2001).]

[jecahn]

Or, you could just ignore the idea of continuity all together. Has anyone here ever heard the "live" album of Tony Bennett with Count Basie's orchestra? It was supposed to be in Vegas. So, they dubbed in glasses clinking and such and Tony even talks to the "audience" and tells little stories before the songs. But when "they" applaud, it sounds like a fully packed Yankee Stadium. It's actually pretty funny and not realistic at all.

[tweedo]

I also had this on one of my live recording and had pretty good luck by picking out 3 or 4 sections in my tape that had the audience applauds on them , and then copy and paiste a couple of these sections on top of some weeker ones. I just mixed them all up and used them at random and the actual mix down sounded pretty good.
Of course I recorded multi-track and did have a couple mic's set up for the audience
but like your experience, they were not much into it that night. Better luck next time!

[Bob Kilpatrick]

One of the hardest things to do when mixing a radio commercial that is supposed to have an audience/crowd/group in the background is to make the 'size' of the crowd and their 'reaction' appropriate to the event that is 'taking place'. I am fortunate to have a sizeable sound effects library to work with...and there are times when I go through most of my library to find the sounds that fit. The Tony Bennett recording is a case of someone not caring to spend the time finding the appropriate sounds.

Bob K.

[snarfdudes]

radio spots are one thing, live recordings are another.....

I used to do concert promos, in fact, a piece of one is on my production demo on my web site at:
www.geocities.com/scottsnailham (http://www.geocities.com/scottsnailham)

you wanted a real live stadium type crowd, mixed in with a hit of savage garden, you mix em hot, to at least get close to creating a "theatre of the mind" ambiance with the resources you have, it's a spot, you are trying to get the message across, the message is important.

with a live music audio recording of a live event, this is a whole different ballgame. the best route to take obviously is to take as much original applause and "room tone" as possible and mix it to "sweeten" the original recording. you have to be faithful as you can because you are trying to create an ambiance, what it was like what the tape rolled, for those who could not be there. if you dub in canned applause, it can ruin it if you don't have the right applause FX and no room tone to match behind the FX...every room has a tone. take a mic and record nothing, and you will have something, unless you are in an acoustically dead room. if you don't have applause with matching room tone, it's gonna sound like crap.

here's a story......

I had two kids in a production studio one time. they were difficult to be on mike at the same time, so eventually I got one good take from each of the kids. I pieced it together to make the conversation normal. then I opened the same mic, and recorded nothing....actually the roomtone from the booth. under their tracks, I laid a separate track of the room tone and did the mixdown...you could not tell that they were done separate.

I saw watching a TV crew record room tone one time and asked what they were doing...they explained it to me, because they run it behind the audio after editing the video. I took this idea into the radio production studio....

so.....my advice, take the applause you already recorded, double, triple it up...whatever you think is right, and if you can, grab some room tone from a part of the recording that's fairly long (if you have one, if not, try looping a small portion that isn't too distinct) and run it under the mix in and out of the applause if you need it. the idea is to hide any edits or changes.

[jecahn]

The Bennett recording was released in 1959. I think it was less a question of "not caring" and more an issue of having fewer sound libraries to select from than we do.

[Bob Kilpatrick]

There are occasions where I need a 'room sound', and will find/create one as needed. I remember the rare occasions doing video on-camera work, and after each take, the producer would get room noise. I will find some way to have a 'natural' background sound to flesh out indoor conversation tracks. I have plenty of outdoor backgrounds to choose from...indoor ambiance is just as important to create the feeling of a 'real' situation in a spot _or_ a song.

I disagree with the idea that the Tony Bennett producers did a poor-sounding job because they had less to choose from. If you care to make it sound right, you find a way to underlay a proper applause bed. The only problem they had back then was a _very_ limited ability to multi-track (as in slim to none), which may have just caused them to say 'The heck with this' and let it go with a less-than-ideal finish.

Bob K.