Madonna drives fans wild in Rio de Janeiro with the biggest show of her career
At the show for 1.6 million people on Copacabana Beach, the use of recorded sounds worked well, but the presence of voices covering Madonna’s damaged the vocal performance in songs like “Everybody”.
On social media, many people made comments that are common when a mega pop show takes place. These are phrases like:
- “Madonna is not singing, she is lip syncing”
- “Madonna is using playback”
- “Everything was recorded before and nothing is live”
To understand these criticisms, it is necessary to explain some questions:
- Even rock bands, like Iron Maiden, use pre-recorded sounds, which are not played live;
- Almost every artist does playback at mega shows, if we consider that the term refers to these background sounds, previously recorded in the studio;
- But that doesn’t mean artists pretend to play or sing. Most of the time, they are supporting, complementary sounds and voices. Dubbing or pretending is bad;
- 100% fake and dubbed playback is only more accepted on TV programs or specific events, such as the Super Bowl halftime, the American football final in the USA.
In big pop shows, like Madonna’s, the most common is the alternation between two actions: singing 100% live and just holding the microphone without singing, to the sound of previously recorded backing vocals (from the artist himself and backing vocals). ).
There are pop divas who prefer to make this feature clear: they remove the microphone from their mouth when a voice recording is being used and only use the microphone when they are singing live. Madonna is not like that. The queen of pop acts like she’s singing almost 100% of the time.
Producer has already explained tour without a band
Tour music producer Stuart Price commented, at the beginning of “The Confessions Tour”, about fans who used to ask if some of the vocals were pre-recorded. Is it true that Madonna only lip syncs at various times?
“That’s a huge compliment because it’s all live vocals. There are ‘spoken word’ sections where we use recorded sounds. But all the vocals are live. There are backing vocals – there always have been – but the lead vocals are all live. I hope you hear a humanity in the vocals as well,” Price responded.
He added that the decision for Madonna to be in the center of the performance, without the presence of musicians, was hers.
“Although I love having a band on stage, I thought it was an interesting idea,” he explained. From this idea of not having a band, he suggested that the studio recordings be “deconstructed, manipulated and reinvented.” The mission was accomplished.
Pabllo Vittar participates in Madonna’s show in Copacabana
In 2019, g1 spoke to experts in using pre-recorded bases in shows to a podcast that is a kind of “playback class”.
The following professionals were interviewed:
- Andreas Schmidt, owner of Áudio Biz, the company responsible for the technical side of events such as all editions of Lollapalooza in Brazil
- Victor Pelúcia, sound engineer and technical director of festivals and shows (including Anitta)
- Zegon, DJ, producer and member of the duo Tropkillaz, with a resume that ranges from Planet Hemp to Anitta
Listen to the podcast g1 heard with explanations on playback usage:
Tags: Madonnas show Rio playback Understand dismissed band recorded sounds dominates events Pop Art
