Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Reporter Hu Guangxin
The band Mayday has recently fallen into a storm of suspected lip-synching. The video blogger "Farmer in the Wheat Field" released three videos one after another, and identified the real singing and lip-synching of the Shanghai Concert and the London Concert in May 2023, and thought that some songs lip-synched on May Day. The incident has been fermenting since December 3, causing many concerns. On the evening of December 4th, Mayday Brokerage Company believed that Music issued a statement saying that Mayday did not have any lip-synching during the tour, and said that it was actively cooperating with relevant law enforcement departments to carry out the investigation. It is reported that the original video and audio of the Shanghai concert on May Day have been submitted to the local cultural market inspection department, and the relevant departments will make a scientific evaluation and analysis of the audio and video content provided and publish the survey results.
Claiming that professional singers lip-synch is a very serious accusation. Lip-synching is not only against professional ethics, but also suspected of breaking the law. While waiting for the survey results, we might as well clarify four questions first: Is the identification method of video blogger "Farmer in the Wheat Field" reasonable? Is it possible to lip-synch on May Day? How to distinguish the concepts of lip-synching, half-opening wheat and cushion sound? How to judge lip-synching in law? To this end, the Yangcheng Evening News reporter interviewed people in the industry and lawyers.
It’s hard to explain why the sound changes so much in a song.
According to the blogger "Farmer in the Wheat Field" in the video, the material of his true and false singing identification video comes from the video taken by fans at the concert, from which he extracts the human voice and imports it into Melodyne’s sound modification software for analysis. He found that the pitch and intonation of some parts of some songs were close to accuracy, thus judging that there was lip-synching in the Mayday concert. The blogger "Acoustics" further explained the judging principle in Weibo: "We use our own eyes to see whether his voice waveform is accurate or not under the scale of software. ….. (sound-repairing software) The standard of’ quasi-and-non-quasi’ is Hertz level. In this standard of Hertz level, live singing can also be accurate, which is not something that human beings can do at all-it is absolutely impossible for a singer to sing well, and it is far from possible. "
A musician who has served as the music director of many concerts told reporters that the identification method of "Farmer in the Rye" is reasonable: "Most singers will have a certain degree of deviation in pitch if they don’t fix their notes. For example, Eason Chan’s pitch will be habitually low, but it is relatively stable, and he will not go up and down. There are also some singers who are really accurate, but there will still be deviations when they pronounce words quickly, and there will be cases where one or two notes can’t be reached. Judging from the analysis video released by the blogger, some places in May Day are outrageous. "
"Farmer in the Rye" questioned the mixed singing of truth and falsehood in the Mayday concert, that is, some parts of a song were actually sung and some parts were lip-synched. The musician thinks: "judging from the live video of Mayday circulating on the Internet, it is difficult to explain: why does the voice in a song change so much?" Moreover, it is often that the part with low difficulty sings poorly and the part with high difficulty sings well, which is not reasonable. "
As for the question whether there is the possibility of instant tone correction, he said that there is indeed technology to deal with the singer’s intonation in real time, but it is difficult to achieve such perfection: "Tone correction is a meticulous work, including the frequency of sound vibration, tail sound processing and so on. That is, the sound from the scene is not pleasant to listen to, and it is accidentally changed. "
Lip-synching is not common in concerts, and singers sometimes choose "half-baked wheat" or "help singing"
Is lip-synching common in concerts? The musician gave a negative answer. "When doing a concert, we will let the singer audition during the rehearsal and make a mix according to the sound and acoustic environment of the scene, specifically adding reverberation and adjusting the equalizer. The purpose is to make the sound comfortable, but it will not involve pitch and rhythm, which is something that singers need to grasp themselves. "
He said that lip-synching used to mean playing recorded audio directly, but now few people can completely lip-synch, and singers have other ways to ensure the quality of performances. Half-turned wheat is more common, which can also be said as pad sound: "Half-turned wheat is to play a pre-recorded track, but the volume is weakened to 30% or 50%. Concert performers have metronomes in their headsets, and everyone is synchronized. Singers can listen to the pre-recorded track and sing along, so it is not easy to get out of tune. This is a bit like singing with the original song when we sing K, but the volume of the pre-recorded track is relatively low. " Another way is to ask the live harmony singers to help sing: "In some paragraphs, let someone in the harmony group sing the main theme directly." In the musician’s view, both of them are reasonable practices recognized by the industry. "When the wheat is half open, the singer also sings, and the singer’s voice can be heard at the scene. Some singers’ songs are generally difficult, and a concert is very tiring. In some places, it is understandable to let the harmony group help. "
In his view, lip-synching is difficult to judge. The sound of the performance site should be divided into two parts: input and output. "In some cases, the singer sang all over the audience and his microphone also received radio; However, when the live output, the singer’s voice was eliminated, and the audience heard the pre-recorded track. In this case, if the live audio handed over to the cultural inspection department contains the singer’s singing track, it will be more difficult to determine whether it is lip-synching. "
It is also controversial to put the Program on the performance site (referring to the timbre accompaniment that has been done before the band performs). The musician said: "It is normal to put the Program on the performance site. Some songs need more musical instruments, which cannot be presented by several performers on the stage. It is very reasonable that some sounds need to be pre-recorded by Program. But if the musician just poses on the stage but doesn’t really play, it’s a fake play. "
The May Day tour was intensive, and A Xin, the lead singer, took oxygen on the stage.
This year, the schedule of the Mayday concert tour is very dense, which has aroused people’s doubts about whether Mayday’s health can be eaten. First of all, there are many touring cities: Mayday has visited Hong Kong, Beijing, Quanzhou, Xi ‘an, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other cities this year; There are also concerts in foreign cities such as Sydney and Melbourne in the middle; After the Shanghai concert, the last stop in the mainland, ended on November 21st, they started their European tour non-stop, singing in London on November 28th, Berlin on December 1st and Paris on December 7th. Secondly, there are more games in large cities than in previous years: six in Hong Kong, six in Beijing Bird’s Nest, five in Guangzhou and eight in Shanghai. During this year’s tour, A Xin, the lead singer, was unwell. At the concert in Xi ‘an on September 8th, he sang while inhaling oxygen, looking haggard.
The song "Abandoned Voice" in Mayday has a great loss on vocal cords. The musicians interviewed frankly said that in the field of pop music, it is not that the standard singing method is right. Sometimes you can’t sing that feeling by using the method of scientific vocalization. The musician said that the lip-synching storm should wait for the legal judgment and avoid using emotional judgment.
A professional singer admitted to the reporter that it is inevitable to encounter poor physical condition during the performance. What the singer can do is to do good exercise at ordinary times: "Singers are not like musical instruments, and sometimes they really can’t sing if they can’t sing. Vocal cord is a thin organ, and sometimes it will go wrong if you are a little tired. You can only take medicine, do atomization treatment and drip to ensure rest and drink plenty of water. You should keep exercising at ordinary times, know your own state, and allocate the concert repertoire and your own energy reasonably. For example, arrange some songs that are not so difficult in front, slowly open your voice, and put some songs that show off your skills behind. If you feel really tired, don’t arrange too difficult songs. It’s really no good. It’s okay to ask two guests to help and take a break. "
Lawyer’s opinion: There is no clear regulation on "half-opened wheat" in law.
According to Article 26 of the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Regulations on the Administration of Commercial Performances, commercial performances are not allowed to deceive the audience by means of lip-synching, lip-synching and lip-synching. The term lip-synching and lip-synching as mentioned in the preceding paragraph refers to the act of an actor replacing live singing and performance with pre-recorded songs and music during the performance. According to Article 47 of the Regulations on the Administration of Commercial Performances, if the audience is deceived by lip-synching, the audience has the right to demand the performance organizer to compensate for the losses in accordance with the laws and regulations on the protection of consumers’ rights and interests after the exit; The performance organizer may claim compensation from the responsible performing arts groups and actors according to law.
According to the current law, is it illegal to half-open the wheat and pad the sound? Lawyer Hu Xue of Shanghai United Law Firm analyzed that there are two key points in the legal definition of lip-synching: one is "pre-recording" and the other is "substitution". "If it is simply lip-synching, it must be lip-synching. However, the situation of half-baked wheat is more complicated: although it was recorded in advance, the performer himself still made a sound, which did not achieve the substitution behavior. "
He believes that with the development of the music industry, some performance forms do need to be half-baked, but it does not mean that pre-recorded tracks are exempt. "For example, rap, singing and jumping, etc., the industry recognizes that half-opening wheat is allowed to achieve better performance results. However, if the first sentence is really sung, and all the words behind it are replaced by pre-recorded tracks, or only those with low difficulty are sung, but not those with high difficulty, I think it should be regarded as lip-synching. The bottom line of half-baked wheat is that people must make a sound, but as for the proportion of volume, the law has not yet stipulated that fine. I think, at least the audience should hear the sound from the scene. Consumers spend money on tickets, naturally hoping to see good performances, rather than hearing about’ the scene of the car accident’. I think it’s acceptable to put the sound on the spot properly. But the singer itself can’t rely on the sound, or it should be based on real singing, supplemented by sound, and there is no need to deliberately create perfection. "
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