live music

What is live music ? In the full sense of the word. What’s the difference between performing and studio work ?

You could write a whole book about that. The first thing that occurs to me is the question of when a song comes into being or a concept comes into being, preserving the essence throughout the whole working process, managing to dinstinguish between what’s creative and matters and what can be dispensed with. Sure you can argue forever about how the original concept was. If we’re talking about live music, including music that’s produced in a studio and then the process of arranging it for performing in concert, the trick is not to do it literally. The instrumentation doesn’t have to be exactly the same, nor the arrangement. Often you need to change the arrangements totally so the music can be performed in concert. Preserve the original concept, the seed. I think that’s the trick.

Livebox interview, 2002