Today's Singers

Today’s singers

Amazing technology; has replaced human intervention in singing nowadays.

All we require today is a few lyric that has to be rendered by a male or female voice sample. Rest is technology.

Let us analyze the process.

Compression and expansion:

We have pre and post compression processors that are outboard or plugged into software.

With this, while recording the voice itself, one can process the peaks and dips in the voice of a singer and even out the unwanted variations. Many recording engineers do not prefer doing Pre mode corrections if they are unsure of what the final mix demands. In this situation they process the voice during mix using the post mode. The post mode helps in tweaking on the flat signal that is recorded live. So, what does a compressor do? In simple language compressor is just like the voltage stabilizer. It helps in correcting the sudden thrust of vocal energy and stabilizes the signal to give a soothing and even effect even if the singer does not even understand, what happened to his or her voice. They think, they have done the job themselves.

Expansion is just the opposite process that opens up the throw of the voice. For a person having more comprehensive knowledge on sound processing these tips might help:

The threshold decides on the input levels, The ratio controls the amount of compression you need to apply, The attack varies the throw of the voice, holding the signal decides on how long the process applies and release of the notes can help in decay time. For sounds like the base drum kick we have to increase the attack and decrease the release to make the signal very tight. This is how the voice is controlled by breaking the signal into various segments.

Equalization:

The frequency enhancement or reduction is done using spectrum Equalizers. In simple terms it is Boldness, sharpness and huskiness of the voice that can be controlled. Have you wondered why the voice used to sound more natural in olden days recordings? It used to sound as if it was sund before us. On the face, is more appropriate as the band width of voice control used to be only effective between 100 hertz to 9000 hertz. The analogue and optical technology permitted frequency control in this bandwidth and therefore the voice was treated for corrections only in the range of the mid frequency between 1 Kilo hertz to 3 Kilo hertz making it sound prominently over orchestration.

With software intervention, people are experimenting to tweak the voice even at frequencies above 12 Kilohertz adding air like sounding to get that whispering tones and enigmatic effects.

                 Helpful tips: For those who are into home recordings, to avoid external noises and pop sounds and blows, give a deep cut for frequencies below 100 Hertz as shown in the image above by the descending red line.

Now comes the most interesting part. The Autotune Plugin. Just apply this gadget to the recorded voice, do a couple of required settings and you transform a non singer into a singing sensation. Many a times, we have saved several professional singers on the mixing table by correcting the flats and sharps in their voices. There are specialists who are musicians, who offer services of pitch correction using the software. Their job is to remove all wrong notes in the voice and pitch it perfectly to the scale of the song and return the wave for mixing.  So how does this amazing thing work? As you can see in the image, the green line indicates the original singers recorded wave, the red line is reconstructed new pitch. You could actually alter the notation of the song and the software helps in giving you a new tune without the singer having to sing again. You must have often observed listening to songs with a sudden variation of the singers tone especially on higher notes that starts to sound as if the voice is morphed with a wah wah effect. This happens if the tweaking is too high on the auto tune.

We have only discussed some of the basic stuff and many more such processors help in creating singers today.

These processors existed even before the software decoded them onto easy to use desktop versions. They used to be known as outboard processors which used to be stacked up by the side of the Mixing console in the studios. They existed right from when recording technology evolved. But for certain latest plug ins like the auto tune. Only experienced Recording engineers used to use such devices in olden days, because in a live recording they had to control signals from a 100 piece orchestra and that is a 100 people’s job.

So, is it the same even in live performances today? Are singers getting away with their flats and sharps? Processors like EQ, compression etc are common in all Live Gigs. These certainly help them sound like Ultra Pro. But auto tune is not effective in live situations yet.

This is not to claim that all singers of today have to use software to be what they are. But mediocre singers are also able to survive because of software, which was not the situation earlier.

A new crop of Human machine mutant software singer has definitely evolved.

No wonder even if techies come out with Mohd. Rafi software, Kishore Kumar software and so on. A five year old, might sing into the microphone to sound like Mohd. Rafi ????

Just as there is a code of not cloning living beings, there should be an ethical law that can prevent to stop technology freaking with throats.