FRONT OF HOUSE
BAD? YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD IT WITHOUT MAKE-UP | Kent Morris
Photo by Clement Felix on Unsplash
A thing happened some years ago outside the doors of the recording studio world as live sound adapted the studio techniques focused on modifying the vocals beyond reality into the realm of serious enhancement where the original doesn’ t align with actuality. To illustrate, on the classic sitcom, The Brady Bunch, when Greg Brady, wishing to become pop star Johnny Bravo, realizes the studio brass have altered his voice to the point of unrecognition, he refuses to go along with the charade simply because he“ fit the suit.” Today, church techs find ourselves in a similar situation as we now have the tools at hand to turn an off-pitch weak vocal into a concert worthy performance while the nagging question,“ But should we?” bounces around in our mind.
In the past, the“ should we” aspect tended to be time based effects such as the common reverb and delay along with dynamics control such as compression and expanders. The answer was generally positive, since there was little downside if something went awry and the effect on the raw vocal was minimal. Then, as technology progressed, more elaborate software plug-ins came on the scene to mold the vocals into a polished product which culminated in the adoption of real-time pitch correction starting with Antares Auto-Tune and Waves Tune Real-Time and then Ableton’ s later introduction of Auto Shift, which has a zerolatency live mode, and the stellar Celemony Melodyne and Nectar 3 Plus from IZotope. These packages work from chromatic scales and key assignments to either add digital packets of data to lower pitch or remove packets of data to increase pitch toward a target.
The answer of whether to use pitch correction is not uniform nor simple to address. On the one hand, our role is to improve the signals sent to us from the platform as much as possible to present the best sonic image for both the horizontal( human) and vertical( divine) audiences. On the other hand, though, authenticity and veracity matter and if Aunt Edna sounds suspiciously like Taylor Swift, we have“ jumped the shark”, so to speak with our technology. The only two logical answers, then, are“ it depends” and“ YMMV”( Your Mileage May Vary).“ It depends” is the most common phrase in pro audio used when addressing a question of technique and is spoken due to the wide variety of circumstances and environments present within the local church. For a church emulating the style and approach of Elevation, but lacking the skillset associated with it, delivering off-pitch vocals can be offputting and distracting while a church with the more blended style of First Baptist Atlanta can likely present well-intentioned, but slightly off vocals without taking away from the service.
On the YMMV front, the first attempt should always be made in a specialized rehearsal time where the correction is introduced to the vocal team in a safe environment void of judgment. As a singer, to have your instrument earmarked as“ defective” can be disconcerting, so taking time to walk through the pros and cons of the software and how to work with it in song is essential to success, both musically and mentally. The correction should be used as lightly as possible and only in a live service once the entire team is onboard and the programming has been dialed in properly. One wrong key selection and the entire event goes down the tubes and ends up on WorshipProbs, so the tech has to be right. When accomplished well, though, the results are impressive, with
vocals on pitch and the congregation confident to sing along.
It should be noted there is, in some churches, pressure to use pitch correction as a shortcut to clean vocals, but there is a cost to the use of software in the form of loss of discipline. A vocalist striving to be on pitch will practice and rehearse with an eye toward achieving the goal naturally without the use of digital aids. A vocalist accustomed to having the techs“ fix it in the mix” can become lackadaisical since there is no longer an incentive to hit the notes on their own and no penalty for not doing so since the software will take care of the problem. Once the software is removed, the raw vocals are worse than when the process started.
Pitch correction then, in its best use state, is a temporary solution used as part of the larger goal of having the team’ s vocalists organically progress toward becoming the best singers they can be for God’ s glory.
Kent Morris Kent Morris is a 45-year veteran of the AVL arena driven by passion for excellence tempered by the knowledge all technology is in a temporal state.
94 December 2025 Subscribe for Free...