Pixie Lott - is her voice completely natural?

[Kevin Nolan]

I almost do not want to ask this because Pixie Lott has one of the most incredible voices I've ever hear – I for one simply ‘melt’ listening to her - but I have to ask - are all of those little inflections and 'micro bends' in her voice natural talent or the clever use of something like melodyne?

It sounds that she creates these wonderful little bends in her voice in a millisecond time-frame - almost unnatural - and I wonder if this is her gift or is technology involved?

Apologies if I'm being trite in asking this - but as said her voice is almost supernatural and I just have to ask.

Kevin.

[afterworks]

I did lights for her the other day at her Manchester date for a radio promo gig. She surprised the hell out of me, her voice was faultless live...and it was live for sure. She seems to have had the right training though...plenty of vocal warm ups etc before soundcheck etc.

[Neil C]

It sounds that she creates these wonderful little bends in her voice in a millisecond time-frame - almost unnatural - and I wonder if this is her gift or is technology involved?

It would be interesting to know if she does that as part of her natural voice, or whether she does it to add colour and/or sound like autotune. But is it any more vocally mysterious than yodelling and the microtonal bends of Indian singing for instance?
It would be strange to think that some people growing up now might sing like autotune because they think that is how vocals should sound.

[bequick_x]

I almost do not want to ask this because Pixie Lott has one of the most incredible voices I've ever hear – I for one simply ‘melt’ listening to her

Exactly what I thought when I first listening to her!

[ProximityProduction]

i have to say i'm really really not a fan of her stuff - but i saw her live and was very surprised as her vocal performance was amazing....

still don't like her stuff though - but its fair to say she has talent which cant be said for some in the charts these days!

[onesecondglance]

i must be listening to something else... her voice is thin and she can't support the high notes she stretches for (out of her true range). when you say "micro bends" that would be her not hitting the notes...

heard her doing "Gravity" on Radio 1's live lounge and it was physically painful. on that evidence there's clearly a lot of Autotune / Melodyne on the studio work.

[adam miller]

She can definitely sing- her voice naturally sounds a little tuned and compressed before it even hits the mic- understandable if you grow up listening to and imitating records that have tuned vocals! The little inflections are part of her voice- she's done tracks with a load of different producers, and they all have the same characteristic.

Of course everything's tuned in the studio- EVERYTHING is pop-wise these days, so that's no great secret or shame. But she definitely doesn't need any heavy lifting or saving in post-pro.

[onesecondglance]

But she definitely doesn't need any heavy lifting or saving in post-pro.

that Live Lounge session needed it. perhaps she had an off day, but at points she was hitting notes a quarter-tone flat and sliding up, then drifting flat again by the end. it may well not be representative of her overall talent, but it didn't scream "i have a naturally good voice and i have been trained to use it well".

[Persuazion]

I did lights for her the other day at her Manchester date for a radio promo gig. She surprised the hell out of me, her voice was faultless live...and it was live for sure. She seems to have had the right training though...plenty of vocal warm ups etc before soundcheck etc.

Live for sure, but auto tuned real time? Quite probably!

Did anyone see an audience with Mr Buble` the other night? It was so robotic it was off putting!

That's an interesting point about today's generation trying to copy what they think vocals should sound like. God help us if this is how they'll sound.

[bequick_x]

Did anyone see an audience with Mr Buble` the other night? It was so robotic it was off putting!

Just saw some clips on youtube and it sounds absolutely rubbish. I can't believe people accept this type of thing live. I'm shocked people actually liked it.

[onesecondglance]

That's an interesting point about today's generation trying to copy what they think vocals should sound like. God help us if this is how they'll sound.

i seem to remember our own Steve Hill saying how uncanny it was to hear his daughters sounding autotuned when singing normally (apologies if i've misquoted you, Steve).

[Scope]

On her latest album, she ( Pixi ) had the benefit of decent mics and some very tasty outboard.
The monitors used are pretty amazing too.
It was recorded into Logic, (not PT) and she had minimal help from the various plugins applied.

Some people can sing, the rest just make a noise........

[Ace-Audio.co.uk]

Having a listen I think theres a bit of both happening in the studio recordings, Gravity is a good example theres almost definitely some clever autotune use going on thou, subtle enough but effective! Maybe it's only done to some layers of the vocals or maybe it's parallel auto-tuning ie autotune a send and mix it in with the original? The acoustic stuff on spotify doesn't seem to have any autotune treatment that I could notice just LOTS of reverb! lol but you can hear her voice clearly and although there are the shifts in pitch it's not got quite the same 'quality' as on the recordings, I assume the auto-tuning just brings it out a bit more, which is just a good choice in production techniques if you ask me.

Interesting to hear she sounds like that live thou should be easy enough to see if there is an auto-tune being used live I should think, as it will be in the rack maybe if anyone sees her live anytime soon just have a glance at the FOH rack

[Guest]

Pavarotti, Elvis, Marvin Gaye.......?

[Richie Royale]

Pavarotti, Elvis, Marvin Gaye.......?

...are all dead.

[grab]

I'd never really registered what songs Pixie Lott sang, so on the basis of this thread I hit Spotify last night. Turns out that I did recognise a number of them from the radio. And I'd blanked on them because they sounded like every other untrained, unsupported, manufactured pop act, so I'd never bothered remembering who did them.

She may be a good singer live, but the evidence of all recorded material on Spotify says it's unlikely. She certainly has zero training in singing - her voice is utterly unsupported. (Or if she does have training, she's chosen not to use any of it when recording.) On the plus side she does seem to have a good ear for pitch so her melisma is accurate - Autotune will obviously help there, but her recordings don't sound seriously Autotuned so if she's missing the pitch then it's not by much. But you could visit any open-mic in any town anywhere and be pretty certain that at least one singer would be better.

To reacquaint myself with good singing, I looked up Randy Crawford singing "Almaz" on Youtube. If you think Pixie Lott has a good voice, compare and contrast...

[Tomás Mulcahy]

Agreed grab...

She sings "Cry Me Out" in A on the record, but it's in G for every live performance, and she has trouble with the high notes. Check it out on youtube. I think she's using her head voice too much. Great songs.

Or maybe she's had training very recently. Makes sense, she's doing a lot of gigs and you would loose the voice if you carried on like that.

[Aliweasel]

Did anyone see an audience with Mr Buble` the other night? It was so robotic it was off putting!

Worse than that was his 'amazing' microphone technique. It seemed his voice was equally powerful when it was two foot away from the mic as it was when he was crooning right into it. I've noticed that on a lot of his live vids and wondered whether it's overdubs or some ridiculous fader riding from the live engineer!

With regards to Ms. Lott, I think she's got a good head on her shoulders and has played the pop market well so far, regardless of her natural singing talents. I've heard live performances where she's been note perfect and others where she's not; maybe all singers have good and bad days, or maybe time/budget constrictions mean not every performance can be post-ed?

[forumuser695516]

Wasn't it Hendrix that said..
"I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes. "

In a roundabouts way I think this applies here too. Autotune often has a recognisable character to it. To the point that young people starting out are unknowing imitating that vibe, whether they can really sing or not.

I couldn't say for sure if that is the case here, but I have certainly thought this many times when watching a lot of new performers these days.. Theres a slight irony about it! But there you go..

Paul

[Kevin Nolan]

Thanks for your comments. Really interesting to see how subtly technology may be affecting performance and listening in ways we didn't think about even a few years ago.

IMO, especially in "Cry me out" Pixie Lott shows a special talent for expression - by any standards. I'm no expert on vocals at all, but of all the current artists, surely she has a very special expressive voice. It reads to me here that, apart from some likely autotune touch ups (probably even used in Operatic recordings these days!) that her expressiveness is her own and not artificial (however subtle).

As an aside - am I getting this wrong or is it a golden era of amazing female singers, right now? There seem to me to be a large number of amazing female solo artists who can really write and sing - more than any other time in recorded music; while (IMO) most male acts these days seem to be a generic, bland RAP/R&B mix, with lousy writing and non-descript voices (and with rediculous amounts of autotune on vertually every track!).

Cheers,
Kevin.

[onesecondglance]

As an aside - am I getting this wrong or is it a golden era of amazing female singers, right now?

not by my count, but we've already established our opinions of amazing female singers don't really coincide

[Stratt]

It does seem like there are a lot of great female singers around at the moment. I wonder if it's the labels backing trending styles though. We've had a bunch of boy bands, then a bunch of girl bands at around the same time. Perhaps it's the girls turn.

Stratt

http://soundcloud.com/corinne-lucy/08-strange-to-the-limit

[grab]

more than any other time in recorded music

Not really.

Compare today's pop acts to the mid/late 60s with Dusty Springfield, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin and the entire Motown female roster. Or the late 70s with Debbie Harry, Gloria Gaynor, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks. Or the mid-80s with Bonnie Tyler, Sinead O'Connor, Sade, and innumerable big-haired pop singers (one-hit-wonders like Irene Cara and Alannah Myles spring to mind), plus of course the Minogue sisters towards the end of the 80s. The 90s had Courtney Love, Shirley Manson (Garbage), Skin (Skunk Anansie), Whiney, er, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey (the last two have damn few good songs though, even though they're great singers).

Of the current crop of female singers, Florence Welch and Beth Ditto are in the same category quality-wise. I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone else who'd be up there too.

Most of the others - and that includes Pixie Lott - seem to be emulating Mariah Carey for better or worse. In other words, female pop-R&B. There are some other voices who aren't following that route - KT Tunstall, for instance, or the hopefully-not-to-be-repeated chav niche occupied by Lilly Allen (who in spite of the possibly put-on attitude is a good writer) and Kate Nash (who isn't). But damn few.

I think you're right that there seems to be a shortage of interesting male pop acts, though. Mika the Squeeka and the Scissor Sisters boys are obvious exceptions to this, and Paolo Nuttini (when you can understand what he's singing).

[hollowsun]

Most of the others - and that includes Pixie Lott - seem to be emulating Mariah Carey for better or worse.

Eh??

Pixie Lott exhibits none of the typical melisma employed by Carey, Aguilera, Houston, et al. Leona Lewis and other Whitney wannabes, yes, but not a characteristic I'd attribute to Pixie (who I think has a great voice) or, indeed, Lady Gaga.

I went to see Lady G last week (a friend is working with her and got us some tickets) and bloody hell, she really CAN sing. Impressive!

I don't know why, when someone can sing well, it is automatically assumed they are using AutoTune. Some people can actually sing very well without all that. Rufus Wainwright for example.

[Kevin Nolan]

I agree Hollowsun - as said I don't follow the latest acts in any great detail but I genuinely think Lady GaGa is amazing too. IMO she's the best rock/pop performer to come along since Freddy Mercury. She's like Bette Midler, Cher and Madonna all rolled into one! Amazing voice, amazing presence and amazing songs and videos (even if they don't make sense - but hey - that's never stopped many of the greats.)

And to take a nod back to this forums name sake; the production values in her latest album are incredible (I bought it after hearing / seeing "telephone" and have given it a good listen too over my JBL 4412s and Genelec 1030A'a and there's an awful lot of cutting-edge production going on in that song).

Kevin.