Labrie on 'Chaos in Motion'

[adastra]

yeah, it sounds kinda bad.
Worst live dvd i've ever seen.

[Mladen]

I'm surprised that the vocals were auto tuned, they still sound off pitch in so many spots.

Overall, I really enjoy this DVD, because it's the only one so far that features raw footage, which is kind of fresh and different. And it says so on the cover, so if anyone expected Score or Budokan quality, they should have read what the cover says.

[TAC]

so if anyone expected Score or Budokan quality, they should have read what the cover says.

Yup!

[puppyonacid]

I had CiM on the other day and I think it's quite enjoyable.

Perhaps it was a little expensive in terms of what we got but I think it's a valid release. There were plenty of extras on the DVD that made it worth while I think. As a show, it's not of the highest quality but I think the set we got rocked! I don't see too much wrong with it in context.

And to hark back a few comments ago on the notion of live releases that feature no tampering or over dubs.....Queen "Live Killers". Not an overdub to be found anywhere.

[cramx3]

Its a poor DVD in terms of video/audio but they captured a lot of that tour which makes the DVD still have value as a DT fan.

[Ben_Jamin]

Its only worth the backstage footage.

[Ħ]

The only good things about CIM is that the setlist has lots of songs that didn't have official live versions, and the backstage footage. Other than that, CIM is really really bad.

[TheAtliator]

But we're forgetting one thing... The after-effects added on CiM made JLB's voice go from TERRIFIC to ABSOLUTELY MIND-BOGGLINGLY BAD.

That's backwards in direction from all other live releases.. and quite extreme in that wrong direction too..

So of course MP didn't purposely do anything wrong to his great friend, but it doesn't take away the slight possibility of the following theory: MP wasn't the hugest fan of JLB's voice anymore, and made it much worse in attempt to fix it up. Much like how it was probably his idea, and not James's to edit Take The Time and Voices in the live setting.

Except that MP cut those sections in an effort to preserve JLB's voice for the night, so that he could remain in top form for a grueling 2+ hour show.
That actually supports that he wanted JLB to sound GOOD, not that he was trying to sabotage anything to make him sound bad.

I was a litle unclear, you misunderstood what Im trying to say. I was trying to use the TTT and V edits as an example or comparison of trying to fix something, but only making it worse. It was probably a bad example because it is more complicated than the actual thing I was talking about, CiM vocals. Anyway, I was trying to say that MP, in attempt to make JLB sound as enjoyable as possible, edited those two songs. The problem is that most of us (or at least me and my DT friends) would have rathered hear that part, and James just do what he can or sing it with a lower counter melody than not hear the part at all.

So yes, bad example because it's a more complicated scenario, but I'm clarifying now that I never accused MP of EVER purposely sabotaging his own band mate. EVER.

I'm surprised that the vocals were auto tuned, they still sound off pitch in so many spots.

I agree with both of those statements. it's very surprising and very sad coming from a band like Dream Theater (shockingly their only majorly flawed release this far in their career ), and yes auto tune can tune a voice to the wrong pitch when blindly laid on the whole thing, so it really does no good at all, and a lot of bad.

.....Queen "Live Killers". Not an overdub to be found anywhere.

I'm pretty sure there are some major overdubs on that one.. Maybe I need to listen again, but Queen is really not exactly what you'd call the most tight, well-oiled band when it comes to live vocals.. (ONLY LIVE!! Queen has the most incredible vocals in the studio)

Unless you have bootlegs of the shows they recorded for CiM, it's complete speculation that his vocals sounded terrific before being tinkered with. Singers have off shows. If the vocals sounded terrific, they wouldn't have edited it so heavily.

To say that JLB was terrific or not, the right thing to do would be check some bootlegs from dates close to the ones of the shows displayed in CiM. I don't think James can sound as bad as he does in CiM, but I can't call it all on the autotune without listening to him from raw recordings of that time.

Ive heard a million recordings from that time, AND untouched fan footage from one song actually on the DVD!! All of it is DRASTICALLY better than CiM... To put it lightly  .
Just listen to Lines in the Sand at the Gibson/Universal in LA

Its only worth the backstage footage.

The backstage footage is awesome. DT is better than any other band I've ever seen at extras. If you notice, the guys give us something new to do/watch/listen to almost every day. AWESOME.

[adamack]

On the big, long, huge "WAAAALLL" part of it, the autotune actually tunes him to the WRONG NOTE! He was singing the right note, and AMAZINGLY at that... And the auto tune picked up his vibrato and tuned his B4 to a C4 for part of it.

WOW! Just went back to listen to this...sounds terrible!

I don't understand why they couldn't have used something like Melodyne. I use it sometimes when I'm mixing vocals, and it gives you full control over every note. You can turn the "snap to step" off, so you can raise any parts of the vocal up or down a few cents if you don't want to raise/lower it by an entire half-step.

I guess they had it done lazily, and just applied tuning to the whole thing without fine-tuning it. Ugh.

[BlobVanDam]

But we're forgetting one thing... The after-effects added on CiM made JLB's voice go from TERRIFIC to ABSOLUTELY MIND-BOGGLINGLY BAD.

That's backwards in direction from all other live releases.. and quite extreme in that wrong direction too..

So of course MP didn't purposely do anything wrong to his great friend, but it doesn't take away the slight possibility of the following theory: MP wasn't the hugest fan of JLB's voice anymore, and made it much worse in attempt to fix it up. Much like how it was probably his idea, and not James's to edit Take The Time and Voices in the live setting.

Except that MP cut those sections in an effort to preserve JLB's voice for the night, so that he could remain in top form for a grueling 2+ hour show.
That actually supports that he wanted JLB to sound GOOD, not that he was trying to sabotage anything to make him sound bad.

I was a litle unclear, you misunderstood what Im trying to say. I was trying to use the TTT and V edits as an example or comparison of trying to fix something, but only making it worse. It was probably a bad example because it is more complicated than the actual thing I was talking about, CiM vocals. Anyway, I was trying to say that MP, in attempt to make JLB sound as enjoyable as possible, edited those two songs. The problem is that most of us (or at least me and my DT friends) would have rathered hear that part, and James just do what he can or sing it with a lower counter melody than not hear the part at all.

Speak for yourself. If you can't sing it how it is, don't even bother attempting it, or tune down. There's nothing I hate more live than a poor representation of the album (such as LTL's high section on LSFNY). I'd feel cheated to have that section and have a low melody over it, much more so than not having the section at all. I think MP made a good compromise there.

[TheAtliator]

Interesting little known fact: It was confirmed by the band that the vocal track for this whole CD was accidentally deleted from the recording engineer's hard drive, and his assistant had to send him a backup from the his other hard drive. Unfortunately, yahoo mail only lets you send 25 megabytes at a time, so instead of email, the assistant had to call the recording engineer on the phone and play the isolated vocal track over the answering machine. After the recording engineer recorded the track off his answering machine, he knew this made it lose some quality, so he imported the track into garage band and dragged the "auto-tune" function to 85% before bringing the vocal track into the final mix.

[wasteland]

Interesting little known fact: It was confirmed by the band that the vocal track for this whole CD was accidentally deleted from the recording engineer's hard drive, and his assistant had to send him a backup from the his other hard drive. Unfortunately, yahoo mail only lets you send 25 megabytes at a time, so instead of email, the assistant had to call the recording engineer on the phone and play the isolated vocal track over the answering machine. After the recording engineer recorded the track off his answering machine, he knew this made it lose some quality, so he imported the track into garage band and dragged the "auto-tune" function to 85% before bringing the vocal track into the final mix.

My god... You should have put the *GRAPHIC* tag before this

[KevShmev]

This DVD should have never been released.

Agreed.  I never bought it, but saw at my brother's several times and was always shocked at how below average it is overall.  I'm not sure why they'd release a live DVD where JLB sounds that consistently poor.  I just rewatched Blind Faith from it on YT and, just, wow.  It's unbelievable to me that they'd put that on there given how bad he sounds during the chorus. 

[theseoafs]

Interesting little known fact: It was confirmed by the band that the vocal track for this whole CD was accidentally deleted from the recording engineer's hard drive, and his assistant had to send him a backup from the his other hard drive. Unfortunately, yahoo mail only lets you send 25 megabytes at a time, so instead of email, the assistant had to call the recording engineer on the phone and play the isolated vocal track over the answering machine. After the recording engineer recorded the track off his answering machine, he knew this made it lose some quality, so he imported the track into garage band and dragged the "auto-tune" function to 85% before bringing the vocal track into the final mix.

... *snip*

[Ravenfoul]

Interesting little known fact: It was confirmed by the band that the vocal track for this whole CD was accidentally deleted from the recording engineer's hard drive, and his assistant had to send him a backup from the his other hard drive. Unfortunately, yahoo mail only lets you send 25 megabytes at a time, so instead of email, the assistant had to call the recording engineer on the phone and play the isolated vocal track over the answering machine. After the recording engineer recorded the track off his answering machine, he knew this made it lose some quality, so he imported the track into garage band and dragged the "auto-tune" function to 85% before bringing the vocal track into the final mix.

This should NEVER have happened.  There are so many options for sending files from one computer to another -- that the recording engineers thought to do this at all is completely inexcusable.

On the other hand, it explains why JLB sounds so weird, which has always bugged me.

I was under the impression he was being sarcastic.

[theseoafs]

   Then again, it says a lot about the poor quality of the album that I believed that.

[Kotowboy]

Yahoo Mail.

[Architeuthis]

I enjoyed the dvd personally being a die-hard fan and all, but I would NEVER show it to any friends or newbies. The vocals are consistantly cringeworthy throughout due to the recordings. I saw James sing on that tour in Seattle and he sounded amazing, so i know it wasn't him that made the dvd sound bad. I really like the extended version of Surrounded on that tour, yet is was poorly represented on the CIM dvd.

[Rodni Demental]

Trade secret: Nearly EVERY official CD (Live or Studio), still has mastering and one of the first things that gets altered is a vocalist (overdubs are less common). Hetfield on S&M is very flat lined sometimes, it's a bit over the top. Besides, I wouldn't want to single out JLB here, it's very common practice to correct some of the frequencies, and make sure the wavelength stays within a certain range of the pitch. And engineer can do this delicately and no one will ever know, or can rush it, and you'll probably end up with Chaos In Motion. Some performances are corrected during the performance, but ironically enough, it requires a fairly accurate singer to control their voice through an autotune live, unless you're tuned to a certain scale, then you're gonna have to at least hit the right semitone or else you'll get pulled into a higher or lower note. This is why it's uncommon to use it live as it can be messy.

I think the CIM DVD could have been a lot better with a bit more care. It does have a great set of songs. In fact, I thought the Chaos in Motion Tour overall had very strong setlists so it's a shame some of the songs didn't get a great representation (especially the ones that haven't been on other releases: PA/CM/BF most of SC) . Also, normal autotune is not exactly what's being done here, it's normally some kind of software that manually lets you alter the wavelength (Melodyne). If you just filtered it through something like autotune I wouldn't expect good results, a lot of sharp breaks in the vibrations, makes it sound like a modern pop song. So yeah, definitely a release for die hard fans only. The extras are great, songs are great. Quality is lacking.

[TheAtliator]

Interesting little known fact: It was confirmed by the band that the vocal track for this whole CD was accidentally deleted from the recording engineer's hard drive, and his assistant had to send him a backup from the his other hard drive. Unfortunately, yahoo mail only lets you send 25 megabytes at a time, so instead of email, the assistant had to call the recording engineer on the phone and play the isolated vocal track over the answering machine. After the recording engineer recorded the track off his answering machine, he knew this made it lose some quality, so he imported the track into garage band and dragged the "auto-tune" function to 85% before bringing the vocal track into the final mix.

This should NEVER have happened.  There are so many options for sending files from one computer to another -- that the recording engineers thought to do this at all is completely inexcusable.

On the other hand, it explains why JLB sounds so weird, which has always bugged me.

I was under the impression he was being sarcastic.

Sarcastic? What are you talking about? It's a common practice; recording engineers have often played 2.5 hour concerts over their cell phone answering machines when other means of file transferring have failed. Especially in the 70's when the internet wasn't around, cell phones were the first thing turned to in times of trouble!

If you just filtered it through something like autotune I wouldn't expect good results, a lot of sharp breaks in the vibrations, makes it sound like a modern pop song.

This is what Chaos in Motion is. Sharp pitch snapping (and often to the wrong pitch, I might add). Not this-

...it's very common practice to correct some of the frequencies, and make sure the wavelength stays within a certain range of the pitch. You can ... rush it, and you'll probably end up with Chaos In Motion.

This DVD should have never been released.

It should have just been released with my favorite vocalist's performance untampered-with.

[Grizz]

Interesting little known fact: It was confirmed by the band that the vocal track for this whole CD was accidentally deleted from the recording engineer's hard drive, and his assistant had to send him a backup from the his other hard drive. Unfortunately, yahoo mail only lets you send 25 megabytes at a time, so instead of email, the assistant had to call the recording engineer on the phone and play the isolated vocal track over the answering machine. After the recording engineer recorded the track off his answering machine, he knew this made it lose some quality, so he imported the track into garage band and dragged the "auto-tune" function to 85% before bringing the vocal track into the final mix.

...thank god someone pointed out the sarcasm here. I was about to go on this lecture about T-carriers and cellular carriers' arbitrary compression methods.

I think that I did read that Fantasia's soundtrack was transmitted over the POTS, back when it was all analog.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

Interesting little known fact: It was confirmed by the band that the vocal track for this whole CD was accidentally deleted from the recording engineer's hard drive, and his assistant had to send him a backup from the his other hard drive. Unfortunately, yahoo mail only lets you send 25 megabytes at a time, so instead of email, the assistant had to call the recording engineer on the phone and play the isolated vocal track over the answering machine. After the recording engineer recorded the track off his answering machine, he knew this made it lose some quality, so he imported the track into garage band and dragged the "auto-tune" function to 85% before bringing the vocal track into the final mix.

Holy crap, that sounds...not good.

...And not very convincing.  It's not like file sharing services like dropbox weren't available back then. That thing came out in 2008, not 1982.

[Tis BOOLsheet]

Obviously he had especially bad performances regardless of what effects they did or didn't use on his voice thereafter.

I bought the product, but I find it unlistenable/unwatchable.

[TheAtliator]

He didn't. This was a great tour for him just watch bootlegs and youtube videos. I've even seen some fan shot footage of a song or two from the actual performances on the DVD and his voice sounded TREMENDOUSLY better than on the DVD. The post production clearly made it sound worse. And with all my knowledge they were great performances to begin with. Every single piece of evidence shows me they were great to begin with.

[jingle.boy]

Geez... were none of you at the shows that tour?  I remember specifically commenting right after the DVD came out that James DID NOT sound that bad the night of the recording - I was in the crowd for Blind Faith and Surrounded.  While he wasn't on fire like he has been the last two tours, he didn't sound even 1/2 as bad as the DVD portrays.  It's the worst of their DVDs by far... but they didn't budget anything for the production or mixing of it as I recall.  I also recall an interview with MP that they did in fact misplace or mis-label the audio tapes, so they pieced together what they could, knowing the audio and video was not from the same show.  Can't remember if that was specifically for the two Toronto songs, or if it was a problem with other shows as well.  This I'm not bullshitting.

None-the-less, it's their worst DVD, and I can't remember the last time I felt the need to go and watch it.

[cramx3]

It really is their worse DVD and it's sad because I saw them three times on that tour and they were always great and the set list is great on the DVD plus the extra footage is good as well. I was there for repentance and percussion nation which was amazing.

[GasparXR]

The extras on the DVD honestly make it more than worth owning though. The band and crew documentaries are very well-done and enjoyable.

[Nel_Annette]

What really bums me out is that when the special edition with the CDs was pretty much sold out or hard to find around here, my parents went out of their way to find that edition for my birthday. Then I actually listened to it, and... yeah...  Still enjoy the extras though.

Still love'em for doing that for me though. 

[?]

This DVD should have never been released.

This. I'm actually surprised RR wanted them to put out a DVD after just one album, considering that they would've had way more RR-era songs to include in the tracklist after two or three albums. I'd rather they had waited and filmed some show(s) on the BC&SL tour with better equipment (I know for sure that LALP would've been released anyway because of the line-up change).

[BlobVanDam]

The extras on the DVD honestly make it more than worth owning though. The band and crew documentaries are very well-done and enjoyable.

That. It's definitely not one of their stronger live performances, but as an overall set, I'm glad they released something from the tour.

[nikatapi]

This is probably the worst live album DT have put out, unfortunately, both in sound and video quality. James sound like a chipmunk due to the overcompression and autotune applied. It's a shame really, because he had some great nights during this tour, and he was amazing when i saw DT live in Athens, which is documented in the videos that exist on Youtube.

The extras were amazing though, you can tell Mike wanted to make a kickass package.

[mikeyd23]

The extras on the DVD honestly make it more than worth owning though. The band and crew documentaries are very well-done and enjoyable.

Totally agree, in fact I think I've gone back and watched the DVD extras more than I've watched the actual concert performances.

[hefdaddy42]

The only good things about CIM is that the setlist has lots of songs that didn't have official live versions, and the backstage footage. Other than that, CIM is really really bad.

This, I don't even remember the last time I watched any of it.

[RoeDent]

Judging by some of the comments, CiM should be regarded as a documentary DVD with bonus concert.

[nattmorker]

This!

I enjoyed the dvd personally being a die-hard fan and all, but I would NEVER show it to any friends or newbies. The vocals are consistantly cringeworthy throughout due to the recordings.

Although lately I've found a new way to enjoy this DVD: I hadn't notice that when the 5.1 mix is selected one can hear the almost "isolated" keyboard track in one of the rear speakers, I have come to appreciate more what JR is playing in those songs!