Oops... I sent the previous mail before it was ready: here the corrected version: > Tape recorders are about the worst machines you can > think of to record music. Every tape recorder has > it's > own way of colouring tones, so no 2 machines will > reproduce the tones the same. Then cheap microphones > are crappy, and expensive microphones not used well, > don't give a real image as well. Most recordings > made > in a lesson situation are made from very near, which > makes your voice mostly darker and seem bigger. > Main problems are 1stly colouration: the chain of all the > recording and reproducing things, can change all > kind > of tones for better and for worse, so beware. > The second important problem is distortion: it will add extra high > frequencies that were not there, so a smooth tone > will > become less smooth, but a tone without ping, can > sound > as one with ping! Even a tone that is not smooth, but bad placed, can sound better by adding distortion! > Your speakers will probably distort the tones the most: good ones (like Bowers & Wilkins top-line series) are quite expensive. Then: if you don't place the speakers right (like one under the table and the other on the cupboard) they will still sound bad. I think taping only gives a very limited image of your voice, if you sing relatively well, you will sound much better on stage. How do I know this? I am a kind of recording freak, and I recorded many voices, some of them professional, and of course also my own, and I taped my lessons as well, mostly using the cheap tape recorder my ex-singing teacher has. All this does not mean that if you sound well on tape, you may not sing well: some people have an incredible power of compensating for all the factors I mentioned above, and somehow hear the real sound. Other people also compensate, but only to protect their ego: they make their own voice sound much more beautiful than it is, but I thinks this is a minority. In general I would say: check everything you think you hear on a tape with people that know your voice and that are honest to you, because it might not necessairily exist in reality!
__________________________________________________
|