Fix It in the Mix: Anyone Can Be a Good Vocalist

Modern recording studios use digital audio technology and AI to repair and enhance vocal tracks - or even create human-sounding vocals from scratch. In this mini course, we’ll see how the “perfect take” was created before digital recording was invented, and then how the magic has evolved to the present day. How can this near-perfection achieved in post-production be matched by a “live” performance? More magic! We’ll see demonstrations of multi-track recording and editing, pitch-correction software, surgical tools applied to each note that is sung, and “sweetening” techniques. And we will meet Solaria, a very talented AI vocalist, as well as her ethically-challenged cousin, Vocoflex, who can clone any real vocalist and let them sing songs they never actually sang.

Barry Cook, Ph.D.: In spite of lots of education (some of it musical), Barry Cook really can’t sing. This deficiency may have sparked his interest in learning how to make sweet vocal lemonade out of essentially sour notes. Along the way, he has recorded choral groups and vocalists whose performances were helped, in varying degrees, by editing and post-production. He holds a B.A. in Social Relations from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Yale and applied some of what he learned to a career in media research.