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Beyonce's national anthem performance: Was it lip-synced?
Beyonce's rousing performance of the Star-Spangled Banner during the presidential inauguration Monday has become a lightning rod for speculation: Was it lip-synced or not?
The U.S. Marine Band confirmed in a statement that the musical accompaniment was pre-recorded, explaining that "there was no opportunity for Ms. Knowles-Carter to rehearse with the Marine Band before the Inauguration so it was determined that a live performance by the band was ill-advised for such a high-profile event."
Master Sgt. Kristin duBois earlier told news outlets that the band had been informed that Beyonce would be using a pre-recorded vocal track, but the Marine Band seemed to back off the suggestion that it was a straight lip-sync by Tuesday afternoon, saying in the statement that "regarding Ms. Knowles-Carter's vocal performance, no one in the Marine Band is in a position to assess whether it was live or pre-recorded."
Beyonce sings national anthem at inauguration 2013
A source very familiar with the situation tells CBS News that Beyonce performed the national anthem live, but she pre-recorded a track of the song to sing over. The source said this is a standard performing practice.
The source added that her microphone was on and her voice was audible and the pre-recorded track was for backup/safety purposes.
The Marine Band also said that all inaugural music is pre-recorded in case weather conditions or other circumstances could interrupt the program.
A representative for Beyonce did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Kelly Clarkson's representative said she sang live to perform "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." A rep for James Taylor also confirmed he sang "America the Beautiful" live.
The use of a recording is typical in big events. In 2009, cellist Yo-Yo Ma was questioned about "hand-syncing" for Obama's first inauguration. Ma said instruments weren't functioning properly in sub-freezing weather.
Even in good conditions, producing good sound can be a challenge in a large open space.
Some artists choose to lip-sync. Whitney Houston's memorable performance of the national anthem in 1991 at the Super Bowl was sung to a track.
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I am a choir teacher. Here is what is going on in the video:
1. She was introduced incorrectly. He should have said that she was being accompanied by "a recording of the band and her own voice". To say that she is being "accompanied" by an ensemble implies live. The band was clearly not live.
2. Although tacky, she was singing along to her own voice. Her prerecorded voice and the prerecorded band were on one track. Like a karaoke track that gives you the lead vocal so you can learn the song before you use the track without vocals. She is very clearly singing live - but it is confusing people because they are also hearing her recorded voice. (The introduction didn't help, either). She did a very nice job, mind you - but she sounded like she had no reason to sing along to her own voice. I heard no vocal fatigue or wrong words, or anything. Maybe some staffer started the wrong track and should've played the one without her voice (if that one existed).
I can tell she was singing live along with her own recorded voice (and NOT lipsyncing) because there are several places where she is out of tune with herself. Non-musicians may not be able to hear this until it gets really bad - so many people will miss this point. Being in tune means that each note is in the center of a designated pitch (for there are infinite pitch levels - and no two human-made sounds will ever match up exactly b/c we're humans). We humans have chosen to add names to certain frequencies (A = 440 beats, or oscillations of the sound wave, per second). If you are a little too high, or sharp, you may be producing a pitch that sounds really close to A440, but you might be a little too high and be at A460. The better trained your ear is, the more sophisticated your pitch discretion. Many times, you can hear that her recorded voice is on one pitch, and her live voice is slightly off of that pitch - a tiny bit too high or too low. If she had sung without recorded voice, this effect would have pretty much disappeared unless she was so out of tune that you could hear it between her and the band on the track. Instruments + voice = a little pitch forgiveness because the sounds are so different.
Another clue is that she sometimes did not match up her vibrato perfectly with her recorded voice. Vibrato is that tremor/wobble/wiggle that you hear come into the voice - for pop singers, it's usually as they get towards the end of a long note - for classical singers, it's all the time and is indicative of healthy breath support/sound prodcution.
Also, when she sings the word "the" right before "brave", she holds "the" for a split-second longer than the recording.
Finally, I know the "other voice" I am hearing is not speaker feed-back from catching farther-away speakers appearing to project their sound later due to the fact that sound is slower than light. When you watch someone sing the Anthem at a big arena, you might notice that what you hear seems to be a moment behind what you see the singer's mouth doing. This was not happening for Beyonce because the timing is lined up. There was no distance-delay. At one point, she took out one of her in-ear monitors (the earpieces that play her recorded track dirctly into her ear so she can be as precise as possible). I am not sure why she did this. Maybe to hear the applause at the end so she could experience the moment more clearly? I would not have done this as it then puts you in danger of singing along to the speaker-delayed sound that would have gotten to her ears too late because those speakers were farther away. I suspect she left one in to avoid that - and took one out to hear the crowd at the end.
Anyway - she DID sing live - but the band and her own voice were on a recording backer her.
Thanks for reading!
Cheating? Almost all big live acts utilize some kind of "sampled" music in the background or vocals.
It's her voice and its the sound...so no big deal.
IF no one had noticed and she had received amazing praise, would that have made it ok for her to accept that praise with a smile as if to agree she in fact did an amazing job? I could understand using a pre-recorded performance for something like the Super Bowl. I guess that would not be that big a deal, after all that whole arena falls under the category of entertainment.
Whats worse and really just bad here is ... This was the inauguration of a President of the United States. Have the dignity and courage to be real and sing it live. Some mistakes would have been overlooked with praise, and been something to remember. The irony here is that, her attempt to hide it and deliver a perfect performance, in the end turned out tarnished and forgettable anyway.