The Chinese music scene has ushered in a wave of concert craze in recent years, however, many singers have problems such as out-of-tune and broken tones in live performances, which have disappointed the audience. What's going on here?
In 2023, the Chinese music industry will usher in a wave of revenge consumption - various singers are crazy to hold concerts, and the concert profits of the entire music market are unprecedented. But a year later, the phenomenon of concerts is not accompanied by the better quality of the experience of concert consumers, but the fact that most consumers have suffered more or less from the singers' low-quality performances. Professional singers are out of tune and break the sound very frequently at the concert, and the more typical ones are Huang Qishan, Liang Jingru, Tanya Cai, Zhang Shaohan, Liu Yuxin, Xiao Yaxuan, Mayday, etc.
And in 2023, there are also a very small number of singers who have won great powerful labels with their concert singing skills, such as Huang Xiaoyun, Zhang Jie, Lin Junjie, Zhou Shen, etc. Since the launch of the variety show "I Am a Singer" in 2013, and in the decade to 2023, hundreds of Chinese singers have performed with perfect post-embellishments that surpass the natural singing voice of normal humans. As a result, many singers themselves are accustomed to post-editing as their legitimate standard and right. And it is precisely the concert market in 2023 that requires live broadcast and real-time real singing, and the whole year of 2023 exposes the singing skills of Chinese music singers.
Let's just say, there are really a lot of singers who sing out of tune and break their voices, accounting for more than eighty percent! You say that people are angry or not! In fact, the key to singing well or not lies in the pitch, as well as the interval color dominated by pitch. Intonation is the key to a singer's perception of a musical melody, and it is also the most basic requirement for singing skills! So how does intonation make a melody sound good? To put it bluntly, the human ear can introduce a specific melodic pitch through the degree intervals of chromatic and diatonic tones, combined with a key vowel. You see, that's the working logic of pitch. Generally speaking, a song will have a fixed key, such as C major, which means that the piece is a natural major melody with the C note as the vowel. Then, based on the vowel C in the key of C, the derivation of other melodic pitches can be done according to a fixed pitch interval relationship. Therefore, the ability to improve the pitch is the accuracy of interval memory + muscle reflex of the vowel.
There is a knowledge point hidden in this, that is, the interval relationship of the seven tones of do, re, and mi in natural major, which is as follows: 1. Between Do (roll call) and Do is one degree, one degree is the same pitch. The scientific name is C (scientific name) = C, and the short spectrum is: 1-1; 2. There is a second degree between Do and Re (roll-call), and the second degree is the difference of two semitones in the upward direction of the pitch, and it is also the scientific name D of Re that can be obtained by raising C (scientific name) by two keys. The interval of the second order is: 1-2; 3. The third is four semitones, the fourth is five semitones, the fifth is seven semitones, the sixth is nine semitones, the seventh is eleven and eleven, and the octave is twelve semitones. The interval relationship of do, re, and mi is fixed, as long as it is a seven-tone system, then the difference between all interval relations from one degree to octave is fixed. And with this fixed formula, the singer only needs to get any vowel to know exactly how high the song should be.
The pitch steps processed by the singer's brain are:
1. The singer gets the score and sees that the beatmap is in the key of G, and the singer is the female key;
2. The singer processes the information: 1 of the short score means that it is a fixed pitch of G4;
3. The singer sees that the first melody is: 11155, then the 5 of the short score means the fifth interval relationship based on G4. The fifth interval is the ascending pitch of seven semitones. G4 plus seven semitones is the fixed pitch of D5;
4. The singer learns that the fixed pitch he needs to sing in the first sentence is: G4-G4-G4-D5-D5;
5. The singer speaks and sings. These five steps are supposed to be very quick internal processing for the singer, and even do not require active thinking, but rather a passive muscle memory opening into a melody. The solfeggio-singing ear training of vocal students is to practice timely singing. But most commercial singers either handle it with a semitone higher or a lower semitone. And the deviation of the semitone is the most unpleasant, which will cause the problem of being out of tune. Because natural major is the basic line of all popular songs, and the interval relationship of natural major is fixed.
So when a singer is more proficient in the interval relationship, then his pitch will be better. And the more indifferent a singer is to the interval relationship, the worse his pitch will be. If you don't understand the interval relationship well and don't train it every day, it will be unpleasant.
In fact, for professional singers who eat with their singing voices, they often fail to sing the correct pitch when singing live, and the main reasons for this phenomenon are as follows:
1. Intonation, which is a subconscious muscle memory. It takes daily training to maintain, and most commercial singers do not have the spirit of daily perseverance. No matter how big the coffee position is, if you don't practice pitch for a day, your muscle memory will drop by one point;
2. Before 2013, the logic of singers making money was still the recording industry chain of CD albums. The logic of CD album production is: studio and post-mixing. The singer is in an environment where he can be re-recorded many times, and if the pitch is not good once, he will record it again. And the immediacy requirements of the 2023 concert are obviously not suitable for the old batch of singers;
3. In the music market, there are very few professional singers who have received professional training in ear training, and a large number of singers who became famous before 2015 did not have ear training education;
4. At present, singers who are known to be relatively stable and do not commit basic pitch deviation problems are as follows:
- Huang Xiaoyun (Undergraduate - Bel Canto Department, Central Conservatory of Music)
- Jay Chou (Classical piano learning at an early age to gain absolute tone)
- Li Jian (non-major, but very few self-taught singers with strong basic music skills and stable pitch)
- Deng Ziqi (non-major, but probably has an absolute sense of tone)
- Tan Jing (Major, graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music, majoring in ethnic singing)
- Zhou Shen (major, graduated from Bel Canto Academy in Lviv, Ukraine)
- Zhang Jie (non-major, but with a strong ability to make progress in his studies)
- Lin Junjie (non-major, also has a strong ability to progress and study)
Tell me, why are there so many singers who sing out of tune and break their voices, accounting for more than eighty percent! Huang Xiaoyun's pitch is not bad, which is notoriously good. She implements sight-singing and ear training most thoroughly, and other singers from professional classes can't compare to her. I've been practicing this pitch since high school, and it hasn't changed until now. Huang Xiaoyun began to prepare for the high school attached to the China Conservatory of Music since junior high school, and was admitted as soon as he graduated from high school, and later won the first place in bel canto at the Central Conservatory of Music. This stable pitch is absolutely impossible to practice without the basic stability of three or five years and more than ten years of continuous improvement.
In fact, the news that so many concerts will overturn in 2023 is also a good thing for Chinese music. Because the public can already distinguish which singers are really powerful, and which singers rely on post-editing to fool people. Now the market profits of Chinese music are in concerts, so in the future, those singers who really have singing skills will gain greater commercial value, and those singers who are not strong will be eliminated by the market. I hope that every singer can take the stage and the audience seriously, and stop taking the audience for fools.