12.6.13 Glee Tidbits

You make a good point that technology has advanced greatly and we are gifted with archived performances of much greater quality than in the past. Having said that, the criteria here can be noted regardless of the video and audio quality of the recordings. Range is not altered by a recording. If the singer can hit a G5 in full voice, it will still be a G5 in full voice, even if the sound quality is crappy. The note doesn't change. The fact that it is full-voice, not head voice or falsetto, is still discernable. The listener may not be able to accurately judge the quality of the tone or timbre due to limited frequency response of a camera and a recording device, but she can determine the pitch.

When someone talks about a singer's control, I think about their ability to make the notes sound consistent throughout their range, and throughout a musical phrase. The notes are equally strong or tender, sustained or clipped. The pitch doesn't wobble, notes are not flat or sharp, the singer does not run out of breath, but takes breaths where it makes interpretive, lyrical and musical sense. The singer does not have to strain for some notes while other notes are too brash or wimpy. The song does not rule what the singer does. The singer is able to produce an intentional and compelling interpretation, regardless of the difficulty of the tempo, range, and complexity of the melody and harmonies. The singer is consistently in charge. I think one can note this ability in videos of singers done as far back as the 1920s and 1930s. 

The singer's power may be a bit harder to determine with poor video and audio quality, but it still shows through. And the singer's versatility, meaning the ability to sing in a number of different styles, genres, tempos, and moods and sing them authentically can be noted regardless of whether the recording is in high def, or shot with an elementary 8 mm film camera. 

Where the high quality of today's videos has the greatest impact is on the clarity of the voice and the tone/timbre of the voice. Today's videos have a much broader and more balanced frequency response, so they can more completely capture the resonance and richness of a voice, or, conversely, the dullness and thin quality. Early videos of singers and musicians lack much in replicating a live experience, but we can still learn a lot about the performer by watching them.