WORSHIP LEADERS
SONIC SOUP - WORKING WITH “ PITCHY ” VOCALISTS ( PART 1 ) | Grant Norsworthy
Maybe you ’ re part of a large church , with loads of outstandingly talented singers at your disposal . Perhaps there ’ s an auditioning process that only allows great singers with great pitch onto the platform . Lucky you ! But for the rest of us , that ’ s not the case .
In
last month ’ s article , I wrote about making sure our musical instruments - especially our guitars and bass - are in tune . In this article ( and my next ), I ’ ll address the somewhat more complicated issue of helping our vocalists to be in tune . This is an important topic . Thanks for joining me for this first part of two on how to work with ( and help improve ) pitchy vocalists .
Poor tuning - especially from singers - is a major source of the dreaded Sonic Soup . “ What ’ s Sonic Soup ?” you might be asking . If you haven ’ t been reading my recent articles , you ’ ll need to know that Sonic Soup is the nasty , sloppy , overbearing sound that muddles our band ’ s music and makes it much more difficult for the congregation to engage and participate as we lead them to sing as an expression of worship .
Maybe more than a little sometimes . I ’ m not a great singer . But even great singers will miss occasionally . The most highly regarded voices singing today have slip-ups . Take a look on YouTube and you will find that some haters seem to love posting videos of professional , superstar singers hitting some rather cringeworthy microtones .
And we live today in a world full of armchair , often non-singing critics of the human voice . Through the astounding popularity of TV shows like The Voice , American Idol ( and all 55 other “ Idol ” shows from around the world ) it seems that almost everyone ’ s an expert and can tell when someone ’ s singing is even a little off .
Add to that the invention and wide-spread use of Auto-Tune and other , similar , pitch-correcting plugins for audio recording . Most professionally produced recording of a human singing voice in popular music over the past 20 to 30 years or so have used a computer program to artificially correct the pitch of the vocalist ’ s performance . The pitch we hear from singers on Spotify is perfect ! live performances as well as in the studio . Even at the concerts of some of the music industry ’ s more highly regarded singers and artists , we ’ re not always hearing their voice . We ’ re hearing a computer ’ s real-time rendering of their voice .
So where does all that leave you and me ? We probably don ’ t have access to live performance , real-time pitch correction technology . Many of our teams include amateur , volunteer , often relatively inexperienced , usually untrained , underdeveloped singers . And even the better singers among us should recognize that our pitch is not perfect . At least , not all the time . If pitch-perfect vocalists are as rare as idiomatic hen ’ s teeth , then they sure as eggs aren ’ t on our rooster roster . We don ’ t want the Sonic Soup of out-of-tune vocals , but we ’ re not capable of singing perfectly in tune !
Here ’ s the good news . In the context of leading our church congregations to worship God through songs , we don ’ t need perfectly pitched vocals . We ’ re not shooting for perfection . We aspire towards excellence , but we need to work with what we ’ ve got .
Pitchy . Out of tune . Off key . These terms ( and others ) describe when a singer ’ s notes are flat ( lower than the correct note ) or sharp ( higher than the correct note ). Badly off-pitch singing from any of our vocalists on microphone will be a major distraction . It won ’ t matter how wellrehearsed , in tune and musically together the band is . If even one singer in the mix is bad , it ’ s pretty much all bad .
But let ’ s be clear . Singing perfectly in tune all the time is almost impossible . Personally , I know that my singing pitch is a little shaky .
Today , digital pitch correction is often used in a way that can be heard by the listener as a desired effect - especially in pop and hip-hop . But more often than that , pitch correction is used in a way that is completely transparent . It ’ s there , but you can ’ t hear it . It just sounds like a recording of a great singer . It hasn ’ t always been this way . Some of my favorite 1960 ’ s recordings from The Beatles ( well before digital pitch correction was a thing ) have pitchy vocals . But today ’ s listeners - including a church congregation of “ listeners ” - are accustomed to hearing computer-pitch-perfect vocals . The bar is set impossibly high .
The pressure to sing with perfect pitch has many singers using computer pitch correction during
Even the best version of ourselves is going to have some vocals that are a little pitchy - a little out of tune - and we have to be okay with that . To me , this is not lowering standards , compromising , or settling for less . This is being authentically happy with who we are as singers . In fact , I am going to suggest that a small amount of “ pitchiness ” in our vocal performances is actually a strength , rather than a weakness .
Here ’ s what I mean : We are not performing vocalists . We are not trying to enthrall a listening audience nor impress a panel of TV show judges . We are not asking our congregation to listen to us at all ! We are asking them to sing with us . We are simply showing them how the song