Can you ID this mic?

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Well - one of the good examples of this particular song is this version by Lea Salonga who I first heard in the original Miss Saigon. You will also see hear throat muscles working very hard in the crescendo - something missing from the video. Nothing in this video rings warning bells at all - just a solid performance. The video we started with is a girl with a good, but not great, voice and I still suspect the audio and video come from different sources.
 
rob aylestone said:
Well - one of the good examples of this particular song is this version by Lea Salonga who I first heard in the original Miss Saigon. You will also see hear throat muscles working very hard in the crescendo - something missing from the video. Nothing in this video rings warning bells at all - just a solid performance.
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Lea is a solid singer.

rob aylestone said:
The video we started with is a girl with a good, but not great, voice
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That's an...interesting assessment.
 
Sorry. I would need to hear her in an audition room, live. Lots of the colleges churn out nice singers, but can she sing two shows a day for months? Nowadays, newcomers for dance and MT do showreels which get them access to the audition room, but until they have the MD and just a piano, you cannot tell. Especially as they knock out videos like the one we were talking about. I cannot tell if this girl has it or not from a video that could be comped from twenty takes and then mimed to. She could of course be wonderful, and perfect for MT, but frankly, we just cannot tell. It is perfectly fine to like what you hear, but is it real, or as we used to say, is it memorex. Compare Lea Salonga’s carefully controlled vibrato, how it comes in and out always in the right place, how in some places it is totally missing? Different league. I have not looked this girl up. I do not know if she is is a new amateur or an already successful performer. I hate auditions. Nowadays, I often get to see and hear people where the jury is hung. A producer wants one, the director wants another, and they use me as the arbiter. That is not nice. So far this year its happened three times to break deadlocks and I hate it. However, I am not too bad at it. It’s actually worse with the dancers. The producer, director and choreographer all looked at me. Which one. That one! They all looked at me in amazement. She’s ginger!! I said I’d read the forms, she is also a qualified physiotherapist. Very unfair world. I would not stick my oar in for this girl, based on what I saw and heard. Good, not great.

I should probably also mention that I also said no to a girl, who is now on UK TV and radio, theatre and magazines. A career in shows like Saigon, and a popular girl band. I guess that makes me good but not great too?

I was in London, going to see a show myself, and I popped in the office in the West End. I was having a coffee with the boss, when he asked if I could just sit in with him for a few minutes. A very famous lady came in to audition for the lead in the very show I’d booked to see. He wanted to hear her American accent. She did it. He caught my eye, I gave a slight nod. She got the job. I like that one. My knowledge of US accents is very poor, but it sounded good to the UK ear.
 
We're kind of comparing apples and oranges here. Lea is a 50 yr old professional vocalist who has been singing for over 40 years. Li3D are 3 siblings who first started singing together about 4 yrs ago, strictly amateur singers who are learning their craft on their own. They are college students (studying biochemistry and engineering) who found out they can sing nicely together. They tarted singing in church and small local events. Who knows if any of them will try to make a career of music.

Its funny you mentioned Lea's throat muscles. My mother used to love Johnny Mathis' singing, but couldn't stand to watch because his jaw would vibrate.
 
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That's kind of how I saw it Rich - people at the start of their career with growing to do - that said, It was a VERY long time ago she was in Miss Saigon as a newbie. The girl in the video has a good voice on the recording, but not really stand out in the crowd. Loads of people are this standard in college nowadays.
 
So someone is only an outstanding vocalist when they audition for and win a Broadway/West End starring role? That would cut out a bunch of fantastic singers. Dunno Rob you seem loathe to give her her due for some reason. She's not the only outstanding singer but she's one of them.

Making that On My Own Video the way they did makes little sense if they weren't video'ing the actual performance. If they were just going to make a studio recording to be sync'd as some of their videos are why not show her in some setting suggested by the lyrics - walking in the woods or down a rustic street or something? I say two family members either her brothers or parents were standing strategically placed so they wouldn't be in each other's shot and just recorded her singing live. If you'll notice the video cuts are almost exclusively during sustained vowel sounds. The breath sounds, lips, tongue are just too consistently perfectly-matched. They recorded her in that particular spot because it's visually nicer than in a booth. You really think they're going to record her, then set her up with a mic, headphones, pop-stopper and keep trying to match a recording she already made? It would make more sense to just record her where she is. Recording her singing would look exactly like that video.

Yes, she's that good. Calling them amateurs is a misnomer. Daura and her brothers do superbly live.










Here's an isolated vocal from a recording by a different young lady I know for an absolute fact was done live, one take in an untreated room. She's just sitting in front of her computer. She's no one famous, has never done a paying gig in her life, she's just really talented.



Samples of my own vocals I assure you were done in an untreated room.




https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bor9n9C9X7QK6W6uGTmQhUxLqnb9I5lk/view?usp=sharing


If anyone's interested here's the complete recording of "How Deep The Father's Love".


https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FnXCKSVFWJ2dpOtywlRgKhcM7Ti8n1gH/view?usp=sharing
 
This is getting silly! The example of you singing in an untreated room sounds like what i expect the room sounds like. The kids in the car park magically have cathedral reverb on them but not the backing piano, and the acapella kitchen sounds like a kitchen. I am NOT saying they are bad singers, but they are NOT special. Some have clearly been tweaked.

Lets say you want to record cleanly to a track, at a distance from whatever mic is in use. You have to give them the backing to sing to if its live. At a distance, this will be picked up by the mics if it is a speaker, or you will see in ears.

These are nice recordings but I am deeply suspicious they are real. The car garage is just them miming, as are some of the others. I simply dont believe I am seeing what really happened. If the young girl singer is a friend, I understand. However, is she is good enough to earn a living as a singer? Perhaps, she sounds OK. I would not pick her based on what see and hear. I just do not think she was singing live. She is a good mimer, and her voice has been polished. That’s my view. I might be wrong? I often am, but I don’t think so. So many social media singers and groups are massaged to appear better.

I would struggle to get a good recording in a car garage. I have never heard church style reverb in one. They always sound like, well, car garages! I think I am out now, it really is unsolvable without the sort of facts we will never get. People deny cheating all the time. Have you watched wings of pegasus on Youtube? So many cheaters.

EDIT, wings of pegasus has looked at some of the ones above and proved its a cheat. Pitch corrected and fiddled with.
 
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