Pre-recording Vocals to be Played Back During Performance — Page 3

"As for Christine's high notes at the end of that song being pre-recorded, it also doesn't bother me. Webber wrote it in a merciless way for a soprano. She stays up around high C, singing all those "ahs" for about 12 bars, which would kill any soprano anywhere. I'd rather hear a pre-record than listen to a performer completely wreck her voice. She turns upstage for it anyway. I thought it was very effective, not as singing, but as a 'special effect.'"

Don't forget the ascension up by a *major third* from the high C natural to the high E natural, which has to be held for several seconds, at the end of POTO's title song. I asked a friend of mine who's covered the Queen of the Night at the Met and she agrees that singing in that tessitura 6-8 times a week can be punishing even for opera singers, who have it easy schedule-wise compared to musical theatre folks that do so many shows in a week. So I've no issues with Christine's vocals being prerecorded there. What bothered me was the last time I saw POTO, the Christine's mid-voice was pretty bad that she was flat in the notes sung in her middle register. That woman could have used some sweetening in the performance I saw because the awful intonation was stuck in my head for days.

More importantly, folks today no longer take an active part in listening to performers. Audiences are now so passive partly because we are so used to having everything amplified - from the sounds heard in our home entertainment and automobile audio systems to iPods cranked up etc. - and that laziness has made us just sit back and wait for the amplified sounds to hit us as we recline on our seats generally speaking.

It also doesn't help that the instruments used in a Broadway pit these days are likewise using their own amplification and there's no way the human voice can compete with that absent a microphone. It's a necessary evil in theatre today. (Though I remember reading that even back in the original production of "South Pacific," floor microphones were already in use because Hammerstein was so concerned that the audience would not be able to understand every lyric he wrote. I'd also heard stories/rumors of singers at the Met who needed to wear a microphone during performances.)

It's always a constant challenge to find the right balance between a Broadway pit's accompaniment and the singer's voice.

"Mozart wasn't sadistic the way Webber is"

I sang Evita six times a week and then went down to Les Mouches and did it all over again, and nobody offered me any sweetner.

--Patti Lupone

---

I don't know if it's been mentioned but the voices of the ballet girls in "Shine" (Billy Elliot) are enhanced by the voices of 3 adult women in a sound booth under the stage. I don't know if they ever recorded this but I do know that at the beginning of the run, the additional voices were live.

---

No one is doing an apples-to-apples/note-for-note analysis/comparison between the Queen of the Night's arias to the title song in POTO. The point is that there is a necessity to pre-record Christine's High C's and High E because musicals are performed 8 times a week whereas operas have a looser schedule in comparison as they are not performed as frequently and opera singers therefore have more time for vocal rest unlike their musical theatre counterparts.

Yes, today's 440 A was at least 1/2 step lower in the past. IIRC from school, instruments back then were tuned at 425 Hz, not 415 Hz, so they were at least 1/2 step lower than today's tuned instruments. But either way, a High E-flat is still difficult note to sing beautifully 8 times a week.

More importantly, composers like Mozart cared about the voices/vocal types they wrote for and orchestrated accordingly. Orchestras in the past were not massive and did not use electronic guitars, synthesizers etc. so the balance between voice and accompaniment back in the Baroque and Classical periods was easier to achieve. Acoustics also play a big role in creating this balance.

In today's Broadway scores and shows, B12B is right because composers do have ridiculous demands of the human voice especially when they write songs/roles that have such wide-spanning ranges but singers are not allowed to sound like they are using Bel Canto technique. It also doesn't help that composers today go with orchestrations that are way too loud and have too many electronic instruments for the human voice to compete with.

Updated On: 10/7/11 at 03:11 PM

"I'm not taking anything away from the demands of singing Evita, but Patti didn't hit the same crazy high note for one solid minute."

She has claimed in the past that ALW hates women because of the music for Evita.

I think she was refering to the belting in A New Argentina - "He supports you, for he loves you, understands you..."

---

Goth, Eva is only up there belting the passage you mentioned for less than 2 bars before she comes back down in the melody. Then she can rest for a few measures during the chorus. It's a hugely difficult passage, but it's not the same thing as singing continuously at the absolute top of your register for approximately 1 minute with no break and no lower notes. It's just too much of a demand all at once. That's the difference.

And Gaveston2, as far as excusing the composer ... he may have been an "early adopter" of that trend of thinking, but he's far from alone now, sadly. I think you can look at many of the shows today that require extremely high belting, especially from the female principle performers. It's what the audience wants. More than acting or star presence. They want a "high Q belted and held for six weeks." That's what they cheer about.

I'll say this much, though. Webber doesn't really care in general. I was in "Evita" back in the mid-'80s, and I'll never forget our first rehearsal when we started working on the opening Requiem. The first tenor part starts on a high C-sharp. Higher than Henrik's "B" in "Later," a part I also played. "Requiem aeternam Dona Evita." We were all laughing at that one. Not as much when we had to sing it 8 shows a week. Nothing like ripping your throat out in the very first measures of the show and then pressing on to sing the rest of it for another 90 minutes.

---

The tenors start on a high C-sharp?!? I'm surprised you have any voice left at all.

The big difference is that the great composers wrote in the classical and jazz idioms, which relied on melody and chord structure for energy and excitement. Rock and pop may do the same, but they are a much more physical genre of music in their vocal construction, in which vocalrowess is as important as phrasing nuances.

When Tommy toured originally I was invited as part of a pre matinee lunch and tour of the show. The sound designer who was leading the event mentioned that on Broadway there was a string quartet in a room somewhere upstairs and that their part was ommitted entirely from the tour score.

---

Well if you watch the making of Miss Saigon, you can see them with the Kim hopefuls standing there during the auditions saying "push PUSH!" and then later when you see them discussing the people they'd seen earlier than the day they say stuff like "Well, she has a nice voice, but I'm afraid whatever voice she has will be shot in six months." Exactly, because they are asking them to do something that isn't exactly human. There is a reason for vocal training.

---

Proof of a Click Track!

See, Gypsy4! "Click tracks" are not nearly as exciting and scandalous as some people would like to think.. just literal clicking.

Thank you so much for posting that video! I was on YouTube trying to track down those videos and could not for the life of me remember what they were posted under and they perfectly illustrate the use of the click track at certain moments in the show to establish tempo and keep it steady enough to sync with automated scenic and lighting cues.

Since you posted a video with the use of the click track track, I will respond with another video, taken from the show's final performance, where you see Motormouth kids ensemble backstage providing live sweetening for "I Can hear the Bells".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4FF00_BjmI


jsg,
I always compare it to teachers in a classroom. Each of the automated fixtures and winches and the theatre's a/c system are like individual students whispering. Each individual is quiet enough for the teacher to speak over, so if one or two are whispering, there is no problem and it is still quiet enough to be heard. When they entire lot of them are whispering, that quiet din is enough to drown out the teacher's voice to where it is inaudible.

Once again, we still can not forget, composers aside, the other HUGE "offenders" creating a need for vocal sweetening - choreographers and cast breakdowns!

In the days of the original production of Carousel, Oklahoma! and the like, casts were able to be quite large and you could have two separate ensembles. A singing ensemble and a dancing ensemble. You could send the dancing ensemble out for a big dance sequence, and then you had the separate singing ensemble members for when the vocals resumed. Then you have the musicals of today where economics, union rules about space backstage and the exploding quantity of scenery and equipment backstage all contribute to a shrinking of cast size, the integration of the singing and dancing ensembles and therefore, the necessity of the triple threat, and choreographers create increasingly more complicated, dynamic, demanding and flat out exhausted dance sequences in shows. "Jellicle Ball" from Cats anyone? They now expect performers to go out and dance a 12 sequence of such intensity and with the skill of the Met's corps de ballet and then IMMEDIATELY begin to sing in perfect split harmonies while still panting? Do you really want to know how awful that would sound without sweetening?

Once again, it is all about maintaining the illusion.

I remember seeing performers who had appeared on stage singing off-stage at Spring Awakening. And I'm pretty sure they used pre-recorded vocals for In The Heights because a lot of the ensemble dancers from the original Broadway show aren't good singers.

I think it's fine if shows use this method, but I think that Tony voters should have this in mind come nomination time. Shows should be rewarded for their creativity using the performers that they cast to be on stage and said performers' hard work, and that should be weighed against big lush shows using tools such as pre-recorded tracks and off stage singers to enhance the look and sound as opposed to the actual work of the actors onstage.

---