"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Iain Churches" wrote in message
i.fi...

There were a number of very interesting new releases on
vinyl last year. One of the most important of these
is the double album "Ray Sings, Basie Swings",which is
especially significant because it sounds like a genuine
collaboration, although it never actually took place.


Reminds me that nearly 50 years ago my grandfather once told me 'Don't
believe half of what you see or anything of what you hear!'

- And that was long before 'digital anything'...!!!

This has long been so in film television and now the ability to
produce silk purses from sows' ears in digital recording makes
this old adage even more relevant to music.

A large format digital workstation may have an infinite
number of virtual tracks, which means than one can
record a vocal or a guitar solo over and over, for days
on end, and then if none of them is totally satisfactory,
one can build a composite track, with cut and paste
(just like a word processor:-) to make a complete, but
usually not homogenous, take.

The most common problem that singers have is intonation,
particularly in recording when wearing headphones. Their
sense of pitch is greatly affected by the balance between
the backing track and the vocal, and many need to be able
to hear their own voice "naturel" (Remember the famous
record sleeve of folk singer Ewan McColl with one hand
cupped around his ear?)

One can tune a piano, a guitar, a saxophone, but
tuning a voice is not so easy:-) I am currently involved
in a project where one of my colleagues has the unenviable
task of "re-pitching" parts of a composite vocal track to
get them in tune. In digital, it is possible to pitch shift
without affecting tempo. This will take him about a week!

But the Ray Charles/Count Basie project does not fall into this
category at all. The vocals, brilliant performances from the 70s
when Ray Charles was at his peak, are an entity in themselves, and
the band has been added to turn this into one of the best albums I
have ever heard.

Iain