If you think about it, we really experience the live music of Billy Strings and his band in a variety of ways – live in an arena (or back in the day a normal venue), streaming a soundboard recording from nugs.net (or perhaps a tape on Archive1 or a live stream), or listening to Live Vol. 1. Given that Live Vol. 1 won a Grammy this year, I think it could be interesting to dig into why it sounds so different, in my opinion, from the nugs boards. I think it’s interesting how different the same show can sound from these various sources, and I’m curious to see how you all feel about these differences.
It’s Hard to Make Arena Grass Sound Good
As we all know, bluegrass was originally played in small, intimate settings, relying on the acoustic design of the instrument itself for amplification. But these days we are in uncharted waters! 20,000+ person venues, massive festivals – this level of success by a bluegrass band has simply never been achieved before, and it’s incredible to watch happen. But amplifying these instruments to a level that 20,000 people can hear with a clear mix is really, really hard for a number of reasons.
Unlike a typical band of let’s say, electric guitar, bass, vocals, and drums, bluegrass is comprised of a number of instruments that place heavy emphasis the same mid-range band of frequencies. There is a lot less distinction in general of the timbre of these instruments (i.e. the character of a sound). These qualities make it really hard to mix well in the first place, and even harder to mix well in a giant arena. This is the time to give a massive thank you to Andy Lyttle, Billy’s head FOH Engineer, who has done an incredible job in figuring out how to bring the band’s sound to more and more people. If you listen to shows over the last few years (since they’ve been playing these giant venues) you can hear a very clear improvement in mix clarity and quality. It’s honestly incredibly impressive.
That said – it still doesn’t sound great sometimes. Billy’s FOH team has done excellent work adapting the sound for arenas, but the natural acoustics of these big ass venues are simply difficult to control. The fast-picked acoustic notes reflect off the large surfaces, and sometimes the natural reverb of the room starts to dominate, creating an echoey or diffused effect, or in general making the mix feel a little more muddy. This is especially unfortunate for a genre like bluegrass, which relies on crisp ryhthms and speedy melodies. Now they have done some cool stuff to try and fix these issues, and like I said, the improvement is clear in the recordings.
However, there are certainly some benefits to the live (in-venue) sound. I think it’s possible the best thing about seeing Billy Strings in person is getting hit by the Royal Masat train, that driving bass that you feel in your chest and gives the band such a sense of power. The overall volume level, of course, adds to this experience as well. Because of how our ears work, music just sounds better at high volumes.2 I think they have found a nice volume too as well – it’s not ear bleeding like some bands but it feels nice and loud.
Unfortunately one part of listening to the show is also listening to the damn chompers3 all around you. Sometimes you get lucky and everyone nearby is dancing and having a good time and respecting the band on stage. Sometimes you get surrounded by drunken assholes who can’t stop talking about how many shows they’ve been to. Luck of the draw, it seems4. There is a way to avoid this, though: couch tour.
Couch Tour and the Nugs.net era
Couch tour, is well, awesome.5 You can enjoy the music along with everyone else while chilling on the couch, eating and drinking for cheap, smoking whenever you want – it’s certainly not as good as actually being there, but it’s awesome. And no chompers!
The audio is different, though, than a live show. First of all, it’s not going to be nearly as loud and is colored by whatever you are listening through – headphones, the TV’s speakers, a stereo. So there’s that. If you have a bad listening system, it’s going to sound bad. But the mix is pretty different than how it sounds live. It’s direct from soundboard, so no audience noise which is great, but for some reason I find there is usually a bit of a hiss in the high end on the vocals and just not enough bass. Let me hear Royal make that thing thump!
However, once the show gets a proper mix and is uploaded to Nugs, the audio undergoes another transformation. In my experience, the nugs mix tends to be a lot more balanced, with no vocal hiss, no “arena sound”, much louder bass frequencies, and a wider stereo field (i.e. the instruments sound a little more spread out from left to right). It’s kind of a fun experiment to stream a show on your stereo, then listen to the nugs mix ASAP on the same stereo and listen for the differences. See what you like better!
Live Vol. 1: A Unique Approach
Now onto the main topic of today’s article, Live Vol. 1, which presents a markedly different sonic profile compared to both the live arena experience and soundboard recordings. One of the most noticeable differences is the bass. Compared to the full-bodied presence of Masat’s bass in live shows and soundboards, Live Vol. 1 significantly reduces the low end. The upside of this is that the mix is certainly less “muddy,” and the clarity of each note played is better. In some songs, though, I think this decision to reduce the bass really hurts the mix, such as in “Heartbeat of America.” Another fun exercise: first, go listen to the Heartbeat from 2/25/24 on nugs. Around 2:35, Royal does his classic bass breakdown before the first verse. Now listen to it on Live Vol. 1 (the same show). The bass is significantly lower, and I think it really hurts the energy of the song, especially one like Heartbeat that really gives Royal the spotlight at times. If you are a visual learner, here is an interesting diagram that shows the differences:
These graphs are called spectrograms, and they plot the magnitude, or amount, of each frequency band (from bass at the bottom to high frequencies at the top) by making it darker or lighter (lighter = more energy in that frequency). The x-axis is time. The screenshots I took are from the bass breakdown in Heartbeat. The funny patterns of bars at the bottom there are the notes Royal is playing, and the big spike in the middle is when the band hits all together; the spikes at the end are when the rest of the band come in. As you can see from these charts, there is significantly less energy overall, but especially in the bass frequencies (not as bright). However, the bars themselves (notes being played) are much less blurry in Live Vol 1, and everything looks sharper in general. This is what I meant by adding “clarity” to the notes being played – sound blends together less and the individual instruments come through cleaner. So, it’s a give and take. At the cost of losing some bass, Live Vol. 1 cleans up the mud that might be present on the nugs mix.
On the more positive side, Live Vol. 1 enhances the high-end frequencies, making the acoustic instruments sound more natural and vibrant. Soundboards can sometimes give an overly sterile direct-input feel, especially since it is not typical bluegrass where each instrument is mic’ed up, but instead goes through a pickup and big pedalboard. The new mix for the album captures a warmer, more organic quality. They really do sound more like actual acoustic instruments, and that is pretty cool.
However, they also decided to incorporate more audience and venue noise to recreate the live atmosphere. I won’t lie, I hate it when bands do this for live albums. I think it’s distracting, detracts from the sound quality, and makes things sound thin. Because of this “venue sound”, the album also has a noticeable reverb presence, adding a spacious quality to the mix. It reminds me of Live from the Ryman Vol. 1 by Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, which similarly leaned heavily into the “venue” atmosphere in its mix and came out pretty poorly, in my opinion. Interestingly, Isbell’s Live from the Ryman Vol. 2 refined this first approach and sounds much, much better with very little venue sound. Hopefully Billy’s Live Vol. 2 will take a similar approach!
Final Thoughts
Let me make this clear: I don’t think Live Vol. 1 is a bad album, I don’t even think it’s mixed badly. There some pluses and some minuses to the mix, for sure, but it’s a killer collection of the BMFS live experience for those that don’t have nugs or want to incorporate some jams into their Spotify playlists. And for what it’s worth, I think it deserves every bit of the Grammy it won, and it’s an incredibly cool moment for this kind of music – to see a live jamgrass album win in the “Best Bluegrass Album” category is a big deal, even if you don’t ascribe too much importance to the awards. But it is an important recognition of the genre as a whole and the current reigning king. Hope you guys found this interesting and let me know if you’d like to see more technical kind of stuff like this!
- If you don’t know about Archive.org, it’s great. Got live tapes from pretty much every great show ever [link]. Of course, they come with their own unique sound quality, but I honestly don’t listen to them much and as such won’t get into it in this article. ↩︎
- Here is a Wikipedia article that explains this phenomon. ↩︎
- Chomper: someone who won’t shut the fuck up and let the band play. ↩︎
- I’ve found that strategic positioning is important too. I think the most appreciative fans are in the back by the soundboard. It’s where the mix sounds best, it has some room for dancing, easy access, easily the best place in the venue. ↩︎
- Read about my full appreciation for the best thing to come out of COVID here. ↩︎
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