"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

Dunno if you heard the recent R4 prog about Bing Crosby, but he refused
to be placed in a vocal booth or work with a pre-recorded track which
ruled out over-dubbing. He insisted on being 'in there' with the orchestra
despite some recording engineers later in his career telling him it
wouldn't work. His reply was 'it always used to'...

About 20 years ago there was a TV documentary about the making of the DG
album of West Side Story with opera starts such as Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose
Carreras and conducted by Bernstein himself. I still have my off-air
recording of the documentary.

What surprised me was that although it was a multi-track recording using
many microphones, and in short takes subsequently edited together, it was
recorded with all the musicians, including the singers, in the same space
and performing at the same time.

I've long been a lover of the recorded 'all in one' warts and all - when
it works well it usually has far more of a sense of occasion than the
sanitized multi-track studio stuff.

Agreed.

David.