toolish

One question: does NIN play with tapes? I saw them at Werchter and was
wondering how Trent's singing and especially Norths guitar can sound
so great while especially North is just hopping around. Help?

tranquil_demon

I remember around the time the Lost Weekend gig (2000 or 2001 I think)
was canceled because Jerome was ill, Trent was asked if it wouldn't of
been possible to play with the drums on DAT, he said it wasn't
possible because they didn't have anything pre-rerecorded.

pez

If you download a handful of concert recordings, you'll find that
there's plenty of times where someone in the band screws up, or Trent
mis-sings something, etc. It happens often enough that I'm sure that
they don't use any major backing tapes. (Though there's definitely
some drum-machine magic going on occasionally, in addition to the live
drums.)

That said, it *does* sound like they may have occasional tapes - the
backing chorus vocals in "Gave Up," for instance, always seem to be
dead on pitch-wise. Then again, maybe Alessandro's got a really good
singing voice.

Anway...

-CJ

matthew dunphy

While there are occasionally samples triggered by the drummer or the
keyboardist, there is no guitar on backing tape, ever. Likewise, 95%
of the vocals are live. I think that for the first few performances
of Survivalism, the chorus vocals were reinforced with a backing
track. Yes, Aaron can jump around like a maniac -and- play guitar.
Yes, Trent has actually learned to sing on stage (as opposed to the
screeching he did over a decade ago) -- he even hits the falsettos on
the songs that call for them now.

CJ's totally right about the backing vocals in Gave Up, too. They
sound the same for the current lineup as they sounded with Finck &
Lohner. However, Alessandro does also sing quite well, and does a lot
of backing vocals.