Typically, when we think of a live musical performance, our understanding of it is well grounded in the realm of the visual. When we go to a musical performance, for example, we see the musicians on a stage which acts as the locus of our attention. This attention to the visual presence of the performers offers a certain measure of validity to the uniqueness of the live event, and can direct our attention to aspects of the music's production that we may otherwise be unaware of. Yet this same visual engagement can call attention away from qualities of the sound being heard that reveal themselves only when they are attended to in their own right. Such visual engagement can also distract us from the way that music is behaving within the performance space itself.

The use of recorded sound as the basis for live performance blossomed in the second half of the twentieth century, and has raised many issues concerning the idea of what a musical performance should be. When performers began using recorded sound, many argued that a certain level of authenticity was removed along with the removal of conventional musical instruments. When we can no longer see what a performer is doing to create the sound we hear in a live setting, the notion of performance can be called into question. Nowhere is this more evident than the laptop performances that are so prevalent today in which, as Philip Sherburne has sardonically observed, ‘a twitch of the wrist becomes a moment of high drama’ (Sherburne 2002: 70).