post poduction thought...

[gravity0]

I know that pictures are post processed to make models look better. Blemishes dissapear. I've seen before and after shots of some models that I couldn't believe. From old an d busted to new Hotness. How much goes into post production when singing? In all seriousness. I mean there has to be touch up to everyone in the cut room right? No-one is perfect.

 

[bigboi3]

for singing I don't think there is... but I know for a fact that if they make a mistake they can just start a couple measures where they did the mistake and so on and so forth.

 

[Torus34]

The gentle art of retouching is almost as old as photography.

And, while we're at it, do you think the painters of oil portraits paint precisely what they see?

Or that the Egyptian statues of the Pharaohs are completely accurate depictions?

Then there's the realm of autobiographies.

'Nuff said.

 

[craig]

Not sure what you are trying to say here. I can say that photography and art is about creating your own personal vision. Wether that means straight from film or 4 hours in Photoshop and Illustrator it is up to YOU. There is no right or wrong.

Love & Bass

 

[Garbz]

As much as needed. I have seen people with perfect skin where touchups would just be a case of a few colour and contrast tweaks. Then I've seen other "models" with crowsfeet under the eyes already. They will take significantly longer to bring to magazine quality.

 

[Dwig]

There is a lot of post processing done in audio recordings. Small noises (lip smacks, breaths, ...) are removed tonal balance (the audio equivalent of color balance) is adjusted, echos reduced or created. Some of this is done in post and some is done "live" with inline audio processors. Also, its been standard for nearly a half century to use multi-track recording techniques where each performer is recorded on a separate track even though they perform together in the same studio. The balance between the tracks (8, 16, 32, ...) can be experimented with while mixing down to a stereo pair, both the relative volumes and the stereo placement can be changed and edits and effects can be diffferent on each track.

 

[Garbz]

Oh you are talking about audio?

Well let me tell you on a high end hifi you can hear pitch adjustment working on many modern albums, mostly voices often get in my opinion destroyed by much of what goes on in the mastering studio these days.

 

[skieur]

There is a lot of audio editing and mixing that goes on with singing. That is why some singers sound better on cd than live and why some lip sync as opposed to live singing takes place at some concerts.

skieur

 

[Mike_E]

Scads. If it weren't for producers now days, there would be few stars at all.

I call as witness American Idol where stars are made yearly.

 

[pplsearch]

I think there is a lot of touch-up work that has become standard nowadays. If you walk down the grocery aisle where they store all the women's magazines, you'll see so many covers with models that you can tell were touched up. It's even to the point where it doesn't look as real. Not that it's good or bad, just that that's the industry (of image).

 

[rufus5150]

How much goes into post production when singing?

For mainstream music, some require a lot, some require very little at all. Today's tools can correct pitch, move entrances around, shrink or lengthen phrases. Many tools in use can correct these in line rather than in post.

But just like images, even the perfect 'out of camera' images ('studio live' is what we called them... often one of our vocalists would insist on doing the entire song that way), you touch it up in ways you couldn't or were extraordinarily difficult. You add a bit of reverb in post, maybe some analog delay, post-process compression, perhaps some eq, maybe you split-track it and play with the panning to position the audio. Like photo editing, you've an infinite amount of tools with which to screw things up, but you can also make pretty cool results as well.

Back (ages ago, we were using 24 track digital, protools and the like were in their infance) when I was cutting a guitar track on a song for a local act, I ended up doing 32 takes. They kept the first take except for the last 2 bars or so.

Many years later I was doing a bass track for a friend and we were just having a terrible time with one particular entrance. The engineer gave up on us and said 'okay, play the notes', recorded them completely out of context and moved them into place.

I've also worked with vocalists who will (need to have the engineer) piece together entire lines from different phrases.

 

[adamwilliamking]

Top 40 producers or any producer trying to emplify a top 40 producer puts a crazy amount of post process into everything. You won't hear a song recorded in the last 5 years (pop.) that is not dynamically engineered. The human ear + brain can pick up timing changes that we wouldn't recognize during the listening experience but will greatly effect the overall listening experience. For this reason many (I want to say ALL serious producers) artifically warp the timing of a full session to recreate something that would be technically impossible live off the floor. Many other things but I would also disagree with the above poster about only "some" new artists using an autotune. Everything you hear on the radio has been autotuned, the extremities obviously change from Coldplay to T-Pain but rest assured that no producer is taking the chance of even a millisecond of pitch slip up to appear in the song.

 

[musicaleCA]

Hmm, and then there are singers who can actually sing...say, oh...Sophie Milman.

 

[rufus5150]

Many other things but I would also disagree with the above poster about only "some" new artists using an autotune.

Not to pick nits, but I just said some use more than others. I didn't say 'some need it and some don't'.

 

[wadesworld]

I'm not an audio guy, but I've heard some talented artists (like Barenaked Ladies) talk about the technology used in the studio these days. They literally will take a word from this take, a phrase from that take, etc, and stitch the whole song together to come up with the "perfect" song. Of course they sound good live too, so it makes one wonder if it's all really necessary, but that's apparently where the recording world is today.

I do suffer from some of the same "ethical" dilemma regarding photography though. If I took a picture of a sunset that was red, and decided it was much more striking if I made it purple, is it really OK to just change it and pretend I'd captured a purple sunset? I understand a painter can look at a red sunset and paint purple, but then again, he's not a photographer. In theory, photographers capture reality - not reality then altered to look like what you wanted it to look like. (Obviously fashion and weddings have their own dilemmas - who wants to buy wedding photos where you look crappy?)

In the end, I think it comes down to "do what makes you happy." I'm just not sure what the line is for me.