The magic of mixing audio
- Thread starter Zensteve
- Start date
Nice....laughed my ass off
I knew they were talented.
The truly frightening thing is that this is a completely accurate representation of what music engineers have to do for about 85% of the pop artists out there.
And people wonder why I love my old Beatles and Motown stuff.......
And people wonder why I love my old Beatles and Motown stuff.......
Come on it can't be that accurate ?
You really can turn such bad singer (I don't even think the word "singer" is appropriate) into something that good ? She's not even on rythm..
Vocalign fixes the rhythm; you sync the singer to an instrumental melody line. Melodyn or AutoTune takes care of the pitch problems. In fact, it is not unknown for the producer to have a talented session singer come in and sing the entire track, then the "star" artist is coached to copy it as well as they can doing dozens of takes. After that someone like me "tweaks for weeks" (sometimes literally) - comping the best takes into a semi-solid performance and then with editing down to the last detail, and using every single tool in the arsenal (Melodyn, AutoTune, etc.) to make it as close to perfect as possible.
Yes, it is possible, but it is extremely time consuming and very expensive.
That was really damn funny! Love some of the expressions from the guy on the boards.
Love some of the expressions from the guy on the boards.
My wife once heard an interview with a veteran sound engineer who commented that the only vocalist he'd ever worked with whose pitch required no adjustment was Steve Perry.
Sad to say it but I have to agree with Alcove. The only thing really inaccurate about the clip is all that correction couldn't be done in real time by a recording engineer, it would take days.
Thanks for the thread Zensteve
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Love how this confirms what we all already knew. A pop star is just a pretty face with a host of engineering tricks during the recording. They don't need to know how to sing any more.
Whether or not anyone is a fan of Journey's music, Steve Perry could sing like it was nobody's business but his. Dang.
Was listening to a radio interview with a local ex-soapie star the other day. She's doing okay in an acting career here, but she started out in her younger years on a soapie.
She relayed the story of when she left the soapie at about age 18 in the early '00s. She received a call from a British A&R exec. He asked her if she'd like to come and record an album. She said no, 'I've never sang in my life, I can't sing'. He replied 'that doesn't matter, we can fix that'. She eventually decline the offer, deciding singing was not something she wanted to do, and focussed on her acting career.
Turns out the A&R guy was Simon Cowell.
I guess we all already knew that all you needed was a pretty face and the ability to sell records, but it makes you really cynical about all artists. I'm sure there are many that are really talented....
What happened to the good ol' days where musical talent and songwriting talent were the ways to become a successful artist...
A pop star is generally manufactured by a producer with engineering tricks and a marketing department. As pretty much anyone can be made to sound like a decent singer, the reason why one person is chosen over anther is their marketing potential. This is a real shame, because there are some few stars who are truly talented and that true talent is greatly devalued by all the manufactured illusion of talent.
I was lucky enough to record and produce a few tracks for Bjork many years ago, it needed absolutely no correction whatsoever and one track didn't even contain any edits! Even as a professional engineer, I did not realise Bjork was that talented until she started singing into the mic in my studio. I was also in the control room one time many years even earlier, when Freddie Mercury was recording. In contrast to Zensteve's video clip, the recording engineer was sitting there with his arms crossed and a big smile on his face! Wow, what a voice that guy had.
G
If you really want to know about the talents of any artist put them in a room with a mic and acoustic instruments.
Back in the summer of 1987, when I was playing with The Del Vikings, we played a pool party in New Jersey - a rather exclusive pool party. The guy throwing it was a high-powered sports and entertainment lawyer; there was a dizzying array of celebrities, including MTV personalities and execs.
We got rained on during our first set. After the rain let up we broke everything down, and loaded out. However, we were asked (for a substantial additional fee) if we could continue the set inside. I played on the acoustic grand and my melodica, the bass player and guitarist shared a practice amp and the drummer used his snare and hi-hat with brushes. The singers sang without any amplification at all. We did two one hour sets. The reception was amazing, and we all had a lot of fun playing in the casual format.
It was less than 18 months later that MTV aired it's first episode of MTV UnPlugged. I'll never know, and there's a very different "origins" story on Wikipedia, but I've always wondered if that particular afternoon and evening was a major part of the inspiration for MTV UnPlugged.
Back in the summer of 1987, when I was playing with The Del Vikings, we played a pool party in New Jersey - a rather exclusive pool party. The guy throwing it was a high-powered sports and entertainment lawyer; there was a dizzying array of celebrities, including MTV personalities and execs.
We got rained on during our first set. After the rain let up we broke everything down, and loaded out. However, we were asked (for a substantial additional fee) if we could continue the set inside. I played on the acoustic grand and my melodica, the bass player and guitarist shared a practice amp and the drummer used his snare and hi-hat with brushes. The singers sang without any amplification at all. We did two one hour sets. The reception was amazing, and we all had a lot of fun playing in the casual format.
It was less than 18 months later that MTV aired it's first episode of MTV UnPlugged. I'll never know, and there's a very different "origins" story on Wikipedia, but I've always wondered if that particular afternoon and evening was a major part of the inspiration for MTV UnPlugged.
I think you mean Katy Perry.
Part 2 is pretty good too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74dMts1NMwA
I've always been curious about this - to what extent can this stuff be done in real time these days? I mean once you've successfully constructed a pop star in the lab like this, how do you handle live performances? Is lip-syncing the only option, or if you've got someone who's at least somewhat close can you do enough fixing live to keep them sounding good? I tend to imagine someone on keyboards backstage playing the melody as a guide for real-time pitch correction, but I'm not sure if that's really practical or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74dMts1NMwA
I've always been curious about this - to what extent can this stuff be done in real time these days? I mean once you've successfully constructed a pop star in the lab like this, how do you handle live performances? Is lip-syncing the only option, or if you've got someone who's at least somewhat close can you do enough fixing live to keep them sounding good? I tend to imagine someone on keyboards backstage playing the melody as a guide for real-time pitch correction, but I'm not sure if that's really practical or not.
I'm guessing that's an inside joke, but I don't know who Katy Perry is.
I read that as a joke too, I know who she is in only the most superficial way. Can't comment on her music as I've never actually heard it.
Steve Perry on the other had, well, I at least hope Nick knows who that is.
Lip-sync is used A LOT! How can you tell in a big arena? And most of them dance so much they would have to be olympic class athletes to have the wind to dance and sing like that all night.
Many of the shows work directly off of a multi-track computer feed - actually there's a back-up synced to the primary in the case of a (highly embarrassing) computer crash. BTW, did you know that they record new vocal performances for stage use? That's so you (hopefully) don't notice the lip-sync. They also tend to use overly large headworn mics so you can't see their lips. A large portion of the instruments are usually real players working with a click track. There are very good live versions of AutoTune and Melodyne, so fixing pitch live when the pop star actually has to sing isn't a big deal.