SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the your-lips-move-but-I-can't-hear-what-you're-saying dept.
Lead Vocal Tracks in Popular Music Go Quiet:
A general rule of music production involves mixing various soundtracks so the lead singer's voice is in the foreground. But it is unclear how such track mixing – and closely related lyric intelligibility – has changed over the years.
Scientists from the University of Oldenburg in Germany carried out an analysis of hundreds of popular song recordings from 1946 to 2020 to determine the lead vocal to accompaniment ratio, or LAR. Their results appear in JASA Express Letters, published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, and show that, contrary to expectations, the LAR for popular music decreased over the decades in question. This means that, relative to their bands, lead singers are getting quieter.
An earlier study suggested that lead vocals were mixed at a higher level than other instruments, but it looked at songs that were not fully representative of popular Western music. The current study rectified this by considering the four highest-ranked songs from the Billboard Hot 100 chart for each year from 1946 to 2020.
[...] "Our analysis showed a significant downward trend in the LAR from about 5 decibels in 1946 to approximately 1 decibel in 1975, after which time the LAR remained constant," Gerdes said.
The investigators wished to determine whether LAR values changed over time to improve the intelligibility of lyrics or if changes in music technology were involved. Electrical amplification of instruments might, for example, be a factor, as could multitrack and stereophonic recording technology. They found that changes in music technology appear to be behind the observed decrease in LAR until 1975.
"Another possibility involves the stylistic evolution within popular music," author Kai Siedenburg said.
Journal Reference:
Karsten Gerdes; Kai Siedenburg; Lead-vocal level in recordings of popular music 1946–2020 [open], JASA Express Lett 3, 043201 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0017773
If you felt that you couldn't understand indie/grunge 90s rock vocals, that apparently was by design:
Beck spoke with NPR to give his own insight on the volume knob turning down over the years.
"I came up more in the indie rock genre, alternative music. And the ethos of that time was to really bury the vocal ... You didn't want people to hear what you were saying."
The track and the rhythm has to be at the forefront if you want to move people. As soon as you put the vocal up at the forefront, the track loses its energy and its immediacy and it becomes something else, which is why I think it suits jazz or folk.
But the minute you do that on a pop song, you kind of lose people in that connection to feel the energy of a track ... It loses a kind of visceral immediacy that people are conditioned to, and it will make the song kind of feel a little dull.
So now we're in this kind of arms race of audio and sound and volume to get these tracks louder and louder. So, yeah, now I think we're at a point where, for the most part, it's the beat, a little bit of vocal, and maybe one little element of music in there. You know, this is a long way from the world of [The Beatles'] Sgt. Peppers, where there are orchestras and sitars and a million other sonic colors happening.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday May 17, @04:33PM (2 children)
Awesome, nice work. Being an EQ freak I try to make EQ space for vocals. Many beginning and intermediate audio people use EQ in a cutting / removal way, but advanced EQ is more along the lines of: "what is good in this track, and how can I enhance it".
I'm super privileged to have worked under a (literally) Grammy-winning recording engineer, who also did mixdowns, and some mastering. I'm no expert, just got to look over someone's shoulder a bit.
A great trick, not sure when they started doing this but maybe the 40s? is "side-channel" or "ducking" where you use a compressor on let's say acoustic guitar track (or any other vocal frequency range thing), but the trigger for that compressor comes from a vocal channel. This has to be done gently, but can really enhance vocal clarity.
Micing technique is huge.
Some of the biggest: singer enunciation. At the risk of saying too much, IMHO too many singers are trying to sound like Muddy Waters (bad example because he enunciated well) or someone similar, and they mumble (coolness abounds). I try to politely tell people to just be themselves. Some people can pull off the mimicking, but they'll likely lose who they are- the listeners won't get a sense of originality and consistency, but rather a copycat, and they'll fade into the "just another bar cover band". And that might be okay if that's their jam. I'm no producer and very rarely give any artistic or musical advice, unless I sense that the musician / singer is solid and maybe professional or semi-pro and is open to suggestions. Very rarely someone asks for critique, and they're usually the really good ones and there's nothing to fix. :)
When I feel they are receptive I try to encourage vocalists to "own" the microphone, learn its strengths and weaknesses, etc. But everyone is different, as are various mics, so it's quite a stew pot when you work with so many varying musicians, styles, venues, systems, etc. The most fun I've had doing live sound was when I did many gigs with the same act and system and I could refine everything each show. It got better and better, and easier and easier.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday May 17, @05:23PM (1 child)
Maybe they got to be really good by listening to critique and learning from it.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday May 17, @09:09PM
Very possible. If you watch any voice competition shows, you might know some have been singing for years, have much coaching, lessons, etc., and some are raw even to the point that nobody has really heard them sing. I work with the vast range. And then you have all the personality types- some are very sure of themselves but aren't very good, some incredibly good but lack confidence. It's fun, I enjoy it most of the time, but I'm very privileged to work with mostly top talent.