I’ve just been to see the Hannah Montana concert film (it’s my job. Really!), and I have a hard time believing that she, or anyone else, could sing so well while running and dancing at the same time. When I try just to hold a note while hopping or even walking, the shaking of my body creates noticeable breaks in my voice, despite my best effort to maintain control. Now, I grant that my body mass index (31) maybe slightly higher than Miley Cyrus’, and that many things are possible with training that an amateur wouldn’t imagine possible.
But even so, I strongly suspect that she’s not really singing, but lip-synching. But I recall the furor around Milli Vanilli admitting that they lip-synched, and cases in which concertgoers sued other musicians for lip-synching in concerts. So I would have thought that there was pressure on performers not to lip-synch. I would certainly feel ripped off if I paid $50 or more for a concert ticket and found they had lip-synched.
So what’s the straight dope? Have expectations been relaxed, and is lip-synching now accepted in some cases, or is Ms. Cyrus (and Madonna, and many others) just that good?
I’ve heard that it is common for dancing acts to lip synch at least some of their live shows. Not their studio recordings, but the high energy dance stuff. It makes sense that you might have to.
The big problem with Milli Vanilli was not the lip-synching per se - though that did trigger the questions - but that they never sung the actual songs in the first place. Someone else recorded those vocals.
I heard on NPR that during Hannah Montana concerts they have actually used a body double so that Miley Cyrus can leave the stage for a costume change without notice. Cite Do you think that replacing the singer with a duplicate is more duplicitous than having the singer pre-record the songs?
Countless performers have lip-synced. The New Kids on The Block got busted for it years ago for example. It isn’t possible to do what they do and sing at any quality. Regardless of how people react, high energy dancing acts have to lip-sync to sound reasonable at all. Bands that don’t lip-sync tend to sound like absolute shit when they don’t have a recoding studio to correct their flaws. I wish that bands did lip-sync for some of the concerts I have attended. It gets ugly out there.
As noted, Milli Vanilli’s biggest problem wasn’t that they lip-synced. They weren’t even the real band. The conspiracy involved getting talented musicians to do the recording and then getting some good looking, buff black guys to dance and lip-sync at the concerts. That was a real case of deception.
I would go so far as to say that any acts that sound live almost like they do on the radio lip-sync. There may be a few that approximate their radio sound live but they aren’t the norm. A proven live act will generally sound pretty bad in concert. There is no way that Tom Petty was singing live at the Superbowl half-time for example. It sounded way too clean and similar to his recordings.
As per the link, there is a body double – but it’s for less than a minute.
I haven’t seen the show, but I don’t have much of a problem believing it can be done. Folks have been doing stuff nearly as physical on Broadway for years.
On a personal level, in high school I participated in show choir. Shows were about 25 minutes long, and we were probably “very active” for at least 15 of those, while singing throughout. We coped and we were only in high school, so I’d guess someone doing it for a living could be trained to do a lot better. See here for an example (A – link has sound, obviously, B – ignore the girl oversinging at the very beginning, the rest seems pretty good, C – note this isn’t their first song, so they’ve been doing this for at LEAST 4-5 minutes already, D – no, I’m not in there, it’s just an example I found on Youtube. Search on “show choir” if you want more, there are very good ones and very bad ones)
I suspect that what these sorts of performers do to both (a) sound reasonable and (b) be able to say they are singing live is to sing, but mix it with a recording.
In other words, they have a backing tape of the song being sung. They also sing. The latter is turned down in the mix so that any mistakes or pauses or jerkiness caused by dancing aren’t audible. But they can say with a straight face that they really do sing live.
It’s like those Irish dancing shows: when I saw one it was noticeable that the basic tap rhythm during the big chorus set pieces was extraordinarily (incredibly?) machine-like in both volume and sound. Subsequently it was in essence admitted that there was a backing tape. Their excuse was that the dancers did (of course) actually tap dance and produce the same sound, but they just received some “help”.
Garfield226, what is noticeable about the linked video is that the solo singers do not do high impact dancing while singing. The chorus do dance moves while singing, but over a whole group, the imperfections that would arise while trying to hold a note steady while jumping etc are going to average out.
before my current job, I worked in musical theatre, where we did eight shows a week. for like, 50 weeks a year.
There was often a conversation between the lead female role, and the front-of-house audio guy, she’d say “in need a little help in song x tonight, please”.
The vocal track of each lead role was recorded, and played back during each song (triggered by the musical director, who ran off a Mac G4 in the pit). It was up to the FOH guy to choose if that signal was included in the mix, and at what level. I’d say it was used often in the big (as in, lotsa dancing) numbers, and occasionally in the others.
I would imagine a similar kinda thing happens for concert gigs, but I agree with others who say, sometimes, you wish they WERE lip synching…
Thanks, all for the replies. I had a feeling it was one of those “too good to be true” situations.
I remembered a second or two after posting the OP that Milli Vanilli’s problems were larger than lip-synching in concert. I never paid too much attention to them at the time.
I mixed sound for bands back in the 1970s and '80s, just before everything went digital. I look at the technology these days and marvel at what’s possible in recording and performing thanks to digital tech. And I regret not having the opportunity to play with the toys that are available for sound and lighting these days. I didn’t much care for Hannah Montana’s music (bland, predictable), but it was still interesting to watch the stagecraft, at least for about an hour.
That’s dispicable, frankly. There is absolutely no justification for that kind of deception on the part of the … heh, I almost said “artist” … performer. I can’t even imagine why they would think they needed to do that.
Granted, that explains why she has to be off-stage. The inexcusable deception that is still unexplained is why they need a look-alike on-stage while she is off-stage.
Are they of the opinion that their audience is so stupid that they’ll see her leave the stage and think the show is over and just start milling toward the exits?
On the current Montana/Cyrus tour, the newspaper said she did part of the show as Hannah, and part as Miley. The double was used during the quick change because the Hannah character’s makeup is different from Miley’s. I couldn’t tell you the difference, I’m not a fan. Maybe they stencil on different eye shadow :eek:
I can accept as a valid excuse dramatic effect. I was unaware that this person performed as different characters, and I guess (and indeed am guessing here) if there is a need to suddenly and dramatically transform from one to the other, that’s valid.
They’re trying to entertain tens of thousands of girls age 4 to 14 for two hours, that’s why. It’s not deception, it’s showmanship, like a magic trick. Look there she is, and now, presto! She’s in a different costume! Wow.
Considering that the tour title acknowledges that Hannah Montana is a character played by Miley Cyrus, the body double is not a big deal, IMHO.
I imagine that most fans would be more upset to learn that the singing they’re hearing in the concert is not her performing live now, but a recording. But since, as other posters have pointed out, they can claim that she is singing live (even if that’s not what’s coming through the speakers), most of the kids don’t get the subtle distinction.
ETA: I didn’t see the posts after KTK’s before I posted this. Sorry for the redundancy.
From what I understand, it’s almost impossible to sing well live in a stadium setting because you’re hearing your voice from multiple speakers all around you, each with its own slight delay. If so, I’ll cut Jordin Sparks some slack. Also, just because she’s so darned cute. I guess you could set up an earphone where you could hear nothing but a monitor.
That’s what virtually all pro musicians do these days, from what I can tell. The earpieces are custom molded to their ears. You can see them in the Hannah Montana film, you can see Paul Shaffer (on David Letterman) take them out to talk with him sometimes, and most of the time when I see musicians performing on TV or films, they have them.