Recording Studio by S.A. Ring
The recording studio plays a vitally important role in the music business today. Yes, live performances is usually wonderful, but these days, most fans not have the extra money already there to shell out for a concert–that is, if their most favorite bands or singers are even coming to a major city near them. However, this maybe a good thing for music lovers around since it is not always that one can observe a live music act, television or on stage and felt disappointed and disgusted through the performance as sad as this may seem. Performing live with all its stresses and expectations can throw off even the most talented and a lot seasoned music artist. It can possibly put off music artist like Ashlee Simpson who been “caught” attempting to sing along (or possibly even lip-synch) to a recording of her very own voice on Saturday Night Live before.
The truth is, the recording studio is where bands and singers usually create the sound that their fans want to hear. The studio permits them to do take after take, discarding pitchy vocals and the takes with flat guitar notes and keeps the best sounds. Onstage, performers often expend a bunch of energy strutting, dancing, playing instruments, changing costumes, or crowd-surfing. This explains why a lot of the end up lip-synching as some vocals struggling to keep up with their physicality. (Ashlee Simpson actually, was just the first one being caught in bringing her own vocal backing track which is not new for musical acts on Saturday Night Live.)
From the recording studio, however, bands and singers are in a cushty environment in which they could stay (relatively) still, take breaks, and drink plenty of throat-soothing hot tea. (Or cold vodka, with respect to the band.) That music recordings you hear with high-quality is not just a product of well-rested music artists. Many engineers and producers plus some have several tricks that work in the recording making recording sound perfect. Being among the most useful are:
1. Auto-tune: Auto-tuning corrects for inaccuracies in pitch in a vocal or musical performance, making an off-key note sound right in tune. Auto-tune is usually used in a subtle manner, to ensure listeners have no idea that they’re hearing an altered performance. (It can account for us being disappointed in hearing certain singers live.) Recently it’s been used very obviously and deliberately, creating a virtually robotic sound. (Consider T-Pain, or Cher’s “Believe.”)
2. EQ – EQ, or equalization enables you to eliminate or accentuate certain frequencies in a recording, just like when turning up a bass, or removing distorted treble sounds.
3. Compressors- Compressors be sure that there aren’t jarring alterations in volume by letting you control the dynamic array of the performance.
Hence the next time you download a brand new MP3 or pop in all CD, take a while take into consideration all the hard work that occured in the recording studio.
