Although "Mayday was accused of lip-synching" was still inconclusive, the problems of concert cultivation and half-open wheat surfaced and attracted attention.
For concert consumers, should it really be a choice whether to be exquisite under "technology and hard work" or true under flaws?
Identification methods known in the industry
Mr. Ka, a veteran music producer, told the Beijing Youth Daily that the identification method of Bilibili Up’s "wheat farmer" is at least known in the industry. "He uses a professional sound repair software called’Melodyne sound repair tutorial ‘. After the audio files are put in, they are all on the standard line, so they are all very accurate. It is definitely impossible for them to be completely sung by people, and they have all been fixed."
"Singing without cultivation, the accuracy is accurate with human ears, but if you put it in the software, there will definitely be music notes floating up and down, not all neatly online, this is a very natural phenomenon."
Software can automatically repair sounds in real time
But fixing the sound doesn’t mean that the singer who is analyzing the audio is lip-synching the original song. According to Mr. Ka, at some performance sites, professional musicians use a software that automatically adjusts the pitch and processes it in real time. This means that you can hear the effect immediately when the audio is output and grasp the overall effect of the song. It can monitor the audio signal in real time and correct the pitch according to the set parameters to adjust and strengthen the sound to make the singing more perfect.
"Usually when doing post-mixing, I mainly manually pull the inaccurate place, but it is definitely not realistic to manually tune it at the performance site. At this time, turn on the automatic mode of the sound repair software. As long as all the sounds go through that software, you can directly fix them."
That is to say, individuals from non-authoritative organizations can only draw conclusions about whether the singer’s singing has been tampered with through professional software, and cannot make a conclusion about whether he lip-syncs. Even if it is a first-hand concert scene, there is no guarantee that the human voice heard is untampered.
Whether lip-synching requires a professional organization to determine
Mr. Ka said that professional producers can tell whether the real-time sound repair software is used at the concert site, based on personal experience and ear power. "Unless you open his engineering file and see if he hangs the software or not, if he is very natural, you have no evidence to determine whether to repair the sound. You must have a professional research institute to analyze it to determine whether to lip-synch."
According to Article 28 of the "Regulations on the Administration of Commercial Performances" formulated by relevant state agencies, actors shall not deceive the audience by lip-synching, and the performance organizing unit shall not organize actors to lip-synch. No unit or individual shall provide conditions for lip-synching. The performance organizing unit shall send a special person to supervise the performance to prevent lip-synching. What people usually call lip-synching is simply that the singer plays the recorded audio on the spot and lip-syncs on stage. Whether you play the public original version or re-record it in private, this is a lip-synching behavior.
At present, there is no clear rule on whether a singer’s live voice repair is considered cheating. In addition to this, there is another way of singing that is widely used by many artists at present – when performing, the backing track retains the human voice part, and the singer sings with the human voice pad at the same time, which can not only cover up the mistakes that occur on the spot, but also make up for the lack of voice strength when singing. This "half-open mic" method originally appeared in singing and dancing idol groups, but more and more singers are beginning to use it.
Does on-site sound cultivation weaken the collective singing skills of artists?
It is not a secret to fix the sound in the concert scene, but it involves the knowledge blind spot of the general audience. It is to improve the quality and tone of the sound when posting productin audio for a better listening experience. It also includes operations such as removing noise, balancing volume, and enhancing timbre to make the audio clearer and purer.
Although it was different from lip-synching, Refinement and Half-Open Mai were like "technology and hard work" in concerts, which also caused a lot of controversy. In fact, it was not uncommon for artists to deteriorate their singing skills in concerts.
Both the agency and the artists themselves should recognize their own positioning. Marketing false "singing myths" cannot touch the audience, and do not let the audience pay for the "special forces itinerary".
Our reporter, Shou Penghuan, intern, Wang Jiayi
Courtesy of Visual China
Coordinator/Man Yi