I enjoy listening to live music, and one of the reasons why is because I don’t sing very well myself. And while recorded music can have a lot of post production shine applied to it, I’ve always thought live music lives and dies in the moment.
So imagine my surprise when I found out that really isn’t the case. An online video dissecting performances by K-pop stars alleged that, sometimes, live shows use – gasp! – autotune.
For those who don’t know, autotune is a bit of electronic wizardry that can change the pitch of your voice. So if you naturally sing out of tune, you can now use software to correct that.
I asked a friend who is involved in the music industry, and he confirmed that while it’s normal to use autotune in studio recordings, singers have also been known to use the technology to fix live performances.
Let’s take one step back here. All studio recordings go through some aspect of post-production. Humans aren’t perfect, and a singer’s voice is tweaked here and there to be better or corrected. I was told that this happens even more now than decades ago. Compare what the Beatles sound like on their recordings with modern pop performances. My friend said that modern listeners are now “tuned to perfection”, so older recordings sound “wrong” when it’s even a little bit off.
Meanwhile, many performers have long lip-synced while performing live, especially if they have complicated dance routines. This is when the music and singing are all pre-recorded, and the performers just mime singing while grooving on stage.
What is happening a lot now is that a lot more live performances are being fixed. I am told this is especially pronounced in K-pop and in China, to the point that fans have largely accepted it, and even ask questions on forums like, “Do K-pop idols ever really sing live?” or even “Why do some K-pop fans dislike lip-syncing?”
They are really fine that a lot of their idols either use technology to tune their singing in real time or they sing along to a loud backing track that partially masks or drowns out their natural voice, or they just flat out lip-sync. It’s not uncommon to even record a special “live” version of a song so that it’s distinguishable from their recorded version, and then lip-sync to it.
Why does this happen? One readily accepted reason is that the pop industry now puts a premium on good looks (and perhaps good dance moves), more than on singing talent. And the problem is so prevalent that even singing competition shows fine-tune their contestant’s singing.
I watched a video in which footage recorded live by audience members at a Korean singing talent show was compared with what was broadcast on TV later. Some of the changes are quite obvious and there’s clearly been effort to smooth out the bumps.
Bear in mind that a lot of the time at these shows the public votes for the winner, who will go on to win a recording contract or join the next hot boy or girl group. If they are already fixing poor vocals at this early stage to fool the public, then what hope is there after that?
The music industry of course understands why this can be controversial. People expect their musical heroes to be naturally talented because that’s what separates them from us mere mortals. If everybody (including I) could sing perfectly at the flick of a switch, then what is there to admire?
Well, my friend related a tale where he had tried to help polish a particular artiste in the recording studio. He said he tried every trick in the book and in the end, technically speaking, the vocals in the final mix were in tune. But because she didn’t have a nice tone and couldn’t get across the right emotion, it had to be thrown out. There is more to singing than staying on pitch.
I argue that, in fact, it is the mistakes in live singing that can make a performance emotionally engaging. Somebody who holds back tears at a crucial part of the song, for instance. Or who pushes a note to the edge till it cracks, and they’re barely in control of it. Take Adele, for example: Some have accused her live performances of being a little off key. An article in The New Yorker magazine observed, “Her voice is not a crystal stream. It is a gust of wind that’s picked up some grit.”
Even people who make autotune tools know this. A promotional video for one audio correction software spends most of it highlighting how wonderful its technology is at keeping singers sounding “natural” while you slide the notes up and down or lengthen or shorten them.
At the end, the video points out one key feature: that the software only corrects the crucial part of any individual note rather than trying to cram the whole into a predefined “correct” range: “Any fluctuation before or after doesn’t much matter,” it says. “On the contrary, it adds life – and sounds natural.”
As the saying goes, “To err is human”. And the truth is that although we currently prefer our entertainers to be human, the key to making good entertainment might be to keep “good” human errors while quietly polishing out the more uncomfortable ones. Or to even introduce mistakes, like how minute “errors” in synth drum sequences are believed to be important to not make it sound too robotic (although the evidence is still out on that).
And while we are effectively accepting fake realities when it comes to singing three-minute ditties or watching special effects-laden blockbusters in the cinema, what about when it begins to creep into the other parts of our lives? What if politicians had some sort of “autotune” that would change their speeches in real time so that what you hear depends on which audience segment you belong to?
Of course, a skilled politician would know when to let his human side shine through in the crucial moments, even if they are mostly manufactured. Perhaps, like K-pop music fans, we know that we are being manipulated – but we’re completely OK with it.
In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at lifestyle@thestar.com.my. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
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