about live albums

are hillsong/hillsong united albums truly live? now, i know practically every secular live album put out nowadays has been "studio enhanced". but i guess i never really thought about worship albums in the same way. i know the passion artists do this frequently with their live albums (on a particular matt redman album some rather cheesy timed-delay effects have been applied to his vocals at certain points), but i suppose i assumed, "surely a church worship album would be a document of a real worship experience."

then i stumbled upon this amateur (bootleg) recording of a hillsong united performance of "desert song":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwDyxJlmck

it's a good performance, but there are moments when brooke's vocals are out of tune, a natural occurrence in live performance. and i suddenly realized, i've never heard anyone singing out of tune in a hillsong album (please feel free point out an exception), which is quite an anomaly considering the quantity both of singers and of albums hillsong has.

compare that performance with the recent "tear down the walls" "live album" performance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlgUUeQh0CQ

and now compare this with a live broadcast of hillsong's annual conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QiiuhFHi4k

take particular note of brooke's prayer that "You hear the song of our hearts greater than the song of our lips...that our praise to You would be authentic and genuine." what follows is a true live performance, broadcast live before any studio doctoring could be done. brooke's vocals are buried in the mix, so you have to listen carefully; but what's there is incredible. her vocals are more authentic and genuine than i've ever heard on an official hillsong release. you can tell she's caught up in the moment, not trying to "sing good", but merely singing honestly. her voice drifts in and out of the range of the microphone, and her pitch trails off at certain points. towards the end she improvises the melody (5:08-5:22). the usually photogenic brooke looks completely oblivious of the multiple cameras. this recording has the excitement of discovery and revelation and unpredictability of live music, of live performance.

i'm not saying it's completely the studio work and producers who smooth out these rough edges. i imagine it's mostly the producers' musical aesthetic, choosing the performances that are most presentable, most flawless, and the worship teams' professional attitudes towards rehearsal and performance, augmented by studio re-recording. however, they let one slip through the cracks with this undignified, undone performance.