The Green Hornet said:
Let people sing if they want to. Many are not out to be stars or virtuosos or divas--they are just having fun and fun is a big synonym with MUSIC.
I agree 100% with that. I'm not talking about the guy who wants to get a little sloshy and sing a song or two at the karaoke bar or open-mic night. I'm talking about the guys who come in to my studio who actually join bands in the hopes of gigging out and getting paid. I even get guys in here who are dead-set of making a career out of it. Yet they have no clue that their voice sounds horrendous -- or they believe there's some studio magic that I can do to transform their voice and make it sound good.
"Isn't there some kind of effect for that?" (How 'bout the "mute" button?)
Ironically, there are a lot of people I work with who have truly wonderful voices who
should take themselves more seriously, but they don't for whatever reason, so it works both ways.
Also, reverb does make a good singer sound better.
It depends on the context. I've never heard it make a voice sound "better." Would Norah Jones' voice sound better with a big Celine Dion / Whitney Houston plate reverb? Some people might
like it better that way, in the same way that one might like milk in their coffee or tea. A voice is still a voice, and it's basic tonal characteristics aren't changed by adding accoustic reflections or other ear candy.
If you have a pro studio and you tell your clients to take a walk because you don't like their voices, well, you won't be in business very long.
I'd say that's about the truest statement you've made so far.
Now some people I've worked with have truly outstanding voices, no doubt about that. I've been lucky in that sense. Some truly kickass singers I've worked with, and they know who they are.
The problem is that most don't fall in to that category. Some are even flat-out tone deaf.
Now I try to be open-minded, but for cryin' out loud ... if you can't tell one note from another, you might want to try something else. Notes are important in music. And there aren't any studio effects that can reasonably help with that. If you have any serious aspirations in music, it's reasonable to expect that you understand things like
notes. I don't think that's too much to ask.