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Madonna Studio Vocals Appreciation Thread


Arckangel
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Following Mariah Carey's remarks (that are not, IMO, a shade but just some technical information) and listening to some of Madonna's song, this thread came to mind.
Let's keep in mind that there was usually no digital pitch correction at the time.

Some manners of pitch correction were possible (for instance, by selecting a portion of a song, and then playing the tape slower or faster, or by using specialized and sometimes expensive digital effects units or digital samplers), but not all studios were equipped for that.  More details:  A Brief History of Pitch Correction in Music.

Yes, digital pitch correction was sometimes performed, but not all studios were equipped w/ all of that. Singers really had to be able to sing on key.


Here's an explanation by Debbie Gibson:

Are you similarly critical when you listen back to some of your earliest hits, like "Only in My Dreams"?

It's like ... I remember who that person was then, so I understand where I was at, but I would never [sing] it that way again. What I hear when I listen to "Only in My Dreams" is I was so concerned with being pitch perfect – we didn't have Auto-Tune – that I can hear myself "placing" the notes a little bit, instead of letting things "roll" a little more. Back then, I would go for the note a little more than the emotional impact. Now, it's completely different.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/news/debbie-gibson-talks-music-healthy-living-secret-taylor-040000760.html



And yes, there were different techniques such as reverb, delay, echo, tremolo, multi-tracking, etc., but most of the credit goes to the vocalists who provided the vocals, performed the songs. No effects or filters could have made Madonna sound so great, so good, so amazing, so real on her records without her raw talent and true performance. Did she suck so much, no engineer would have made her sound so brilliant and clear.

Madonna started to sing professionally in 1979 (she had lessons in Paris). Two years later:
 

 

Later on:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


The vocal quality of all those records is on par with all those other records by other acts. Madonna's a real vocalist, above average, and that's G*D spoken truth.

 

Note: Digital pitch correction is totally fine. If the vocal performance/technique is truly bad, it's always going to sound so. Most recording artists nowadays use some manners of pitch correction, and that's totally fine. If the artist sounds good, it means they have some talent at least. My point is, Madonna could sound so good pro on her records without it, which shows great singing talent.

 

 

Edited by Arckangel (see edit history)
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Most recording artists nowadays use some manners of pitch correction, and that's totally fine

it is and madonna uses it too.

Quote

My point is, Madonna could sound so good & pro on her records without it, which shows great singing talent.

absolutely! at the same time, i think it is fair to say that nowadays she cares less about her vocals than she did on previous records.

Edited by nodoman (see edit history)
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I love this thread and post!

I adore Madonna, primarily and mainly because of her VOCALS and VOCAL EVOLUTION. It still mystifies me how she can go/she went from those raw seemingly-high-pitched vocals from 1981-1983 ("Everybody" and "Borderline"  and most of  The First Album vocals are definitely not altered!), to the questionably altered pitched-up high pitch vocals on "Material Girl" and "Like A Virgin" to the crisp, crystal Karen Carpenter-like vocals on "Crazy For You"... 

...then would suddenly have that deeper, much more mature head to chest voice on the True Blue album! I would go on and on about how for even each song in each album has a different vocal style than other songs on that same album. 

It's like WOW! 20 years of being a megafan and what I just described still is a beautiful mystery to me but it's just as fascinating. MADONNA has a God-given unique voice: raw and guttural, emotion-filled and operatic too! She has so much range, quality, and timbre... It's just a lot to talk about when it comes to her vocals and vocal evolution. 

But one thing is true: Madonna is indeed a Vocalist, and a very fine one because she uses her emotions and doesn't try to be technically perfect! Madonna is about quality, persistence, and versatility... and this is why she is a true gem in music history!

 

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10 hours ago, kingcarlo818 said:

I love this thread and post!

I adore Madonna, primarily and mainly because of her VOCALS and VOCAL EVOLUTION. It still mystifies me how she can go/she went from those raw seemingly-high-pitched vocals from 1981-1983 ("Everybody" and "Borderline"  and most of  The First Album vocals are definitely not altered!), to the questionably altered pitched-up high pitch vocals on "Material Girl" and "Like A Virgin" to the crisp, crystal Karen Carpenter-like vocals on "Crazy For You"... 

...then would suddenly have that deeper, much more mature head to chest voice on the True Blue album! I would go on and on about how for even each song in each album has a different vocal style than other songs on that same album. 

It's like WOW! 20 years of being a megafan and what I just described still is a beautiful mystery to me but it's just as fascinating. MADONNA has a God-given unique voice: raw and guttural, emotion-filled and operatic too! She has so much range, quality, and timbre... It's just a lot to talk about when it comes to her vocals and vocal evolution. 

But one thing is true: Madonna is indeed a Vocalist, and a very fine one because she uses her emotions and doesn't try to be technically perfect! Madonna is about quality, persistence, and versatility... and this is why she is a true gem in music history!

 

So true. And just think of how many artists have signature voices. One signature voice.... and that's an achievement. Now think of how many distinct Madonna voices we have. (Some are not distinct and could potentially be anyone) EVEN SPEAKING VOICES! Think of her Blond Ambition hoarse voice. :Madonna006:

But she also literally could have been 40 different singers throughout her career and no one could have known it was the same person unless someone pointed it out. 

and just now thinking about it... Think about Erotica... The first four songs have ALL different voices. 

 I think something that sets her apart is she becomes the character singing the song and the voice changes with it. Sorry to bring this person in... and no shade... but for instance Mariah... mostly sounds the same and its always Mariah singing a song. Now Mariah sings this song. and now that one.  Madonna becomes something other than herself and emotes, and brings the song to life. Not just a voice recital of technicality. AGAIN! No shade. 

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M is a wonderful session singer. Listen to the first album acapellas (hardly no tweaking), listen to I'm Breathless, listen to the Blond Ambition tour and The Girlie Show. And listen to the Mirwais demos from the American Life era (I'm in Love with Love, one of her rare rock songs, proves she can deliver very strong and straight vocals, without effort and effects). It's probably when her vocals were the best, solid yet relaxed, and it's funny given how they ended altered, chopped and screwed on the album! Don't take me wrong,, it's one of my favourites and I absolutely love Nobody Knows Me as much as X-Static Process. The sound recording and engineering on AL are really top quality.

As a major pop star, she has worked with A-list studio people and she's made the best of it. Remember the Like A Prayer version we hear is the first take. Obviously they had rehearsed it a couple of times, hopefully we'll hear the demo recordings someday.

M is also one the first major stars to have used digital studios and processing. She isn't a recording console nerd but many of her producers were and she sounded better than her competitors for a long time with the successful combination of technical innovation and skilled collaborators. Her spoken vocals on Justify My Love and Rescue Me were unparalleled for a long time. Even George Michael sounded like a health insurance advertisement in comparison.

In the 80s, when she became big, there was though something frustrating about her regarding Michael and then Janet Jackson, GM, Whitney Houston, Prince: their studio vocals were much "in your face". She never got the chance to be considered as the singer she is: like David Bowie, she is more a plastic vocalist, who can blend into whatever musical genre she is into at the time and still make the whiteness in her voice interesting. Kylie Minogue has that quality too, with a narrower, maybe less bold, register.

I love the husky and raucous M, I love the sad and the emotional, I love the cheeky and the bouncy, I love her lower voice, I love her whispering and humming. I love the powerful, raw vocals on Ray of Light. I love her harmonies, that's something she paid an unnoticed attention to for a long time and it came back on Madame X. I love her early high-pitched choruses. Not the latest ones, like Medellin or Living For Love, an example of the things she can't sing anymore (not judging, the voice is a muscle that evolves throughout a career, she and DIplo should have come up with something else than Up Up Up, yuck).

In the end, what I like the most are her funky / rnb-ish vocals. This song has been a staple for a long time:

 

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Her voice is magic. 

I was so surprised to hear Vogue raw vocals, she sounded amazing, so much power and gut...

Also, on Deepak Chopras Rumi Poems album, Madonna's Bittersweet is really by far the best reading of all the bunch...it gives me goosebumps each time.

I think that the reason for all of this is that she never got to be a 'singer' in its true sense...I see her as a modern kind of a philosopher/artist/healer/guru who uses music and her voice as tools to explore all aspects of existance...its like...she writes about sex, or love, or pain, or fun...and then uses her voice to paint the full picture, which is a much deeper process than just a singer singing a song...

 

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It's a bit rich from Mariah who has never released any live DVD or Video that Hasn't been Re-Dubbed in The studio.

She even re dubbed her X factor performance from one coast to another. If anyone is using studio trickery, its her and I love her music as well. But I digress.??‍♂️ You should hear her Live 8 Performance of Hero and then any other performance of that song. She is gasping for air.

She is struggling.

 

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55 minutes ago, Craigypants said:

It's a bit rich from Mariah who has never released any live DVD or Video that Hasn't been Re-Dubbed in The studio.

She even re dubbed her X factor performance from one coast to another. If anyone is using studio trickery, its her and I love her music as well. But I digress.??‍♂️ You should hear her Live 8 Performance of Hero and then any other performance of that song. She is gasping for air.

She is struggling.

 

In her defence though she was struggling a lot in that era and her vocals were exhausted. She sounded fantastic in the Charmbracelet era.

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4 hours ago, RUADJAI said:

So true. And just think of how many artists have signature voices. One signature voice.... and that's an achievement. Now think of how many distinct Madonna voices we have. (Some are not distinct and could potentially be anyone) EVEN SPEAKING VOICES! Think of her Blond Ambition hoarse voice. :Madonna006:

But she also literally could have been 40 different singers throughout her career and no one could have known it was the same person unless someone pointed it out. 

and just now thinking about it... Think about Erotica... The first four songs have ALL different voices. 

 I think something that sets her apart is she becomes the character singing the song and the voice changes with it. Sorry to bring this person in... and no shade... but for instance Mariah... mostly sounds the same and its always Mariah singing a song. Now Mariah sings this song. and now that one.  Madonna becomes something other than herself and emotes, and brings the song to life. Not just a voice recital of technicality. AGAIN! No shade. 

THIS THIS THIS! 

She's such a character performer, even within her own albums! Great point about Erotica! Now I've got to relisten to it thank you!

SO TRUE ABOUT HER SPEAKING VOICE! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that. She has so much... color tone and variations even when it comes to her speaking voice omg!

We have so many Madonnas to choose from yet there has only been one. WOW that's the magic of being a Madonna megafan.

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17 hours ago, Enrico said:

It would be interesting to collect those bit where her voice has clearly been corrected.

Do you already have some in mind @Arckangel?

A friend of mine (who's a vocal engineer) hears no pitch correction on her older records. Some of the vocals on Madonna's first two albums were reportedly sped up to sound higher, but I couldn't tell for sure where actual pitch correction was used if ever used.

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She didn't have pitch correction on the lead vocals of her earlier stuff, but certainly on the harmonies - well some. I was listening to Something to Remember yesterday, I Want You is incredible her vocal delivery and listening to the multi only confirms this - but then on other tracks like One More Chance her vocal delivery isn't as good - it's interesting, she's not consistent, not a bad thing, just something I noticed. 

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I strongly strongly believe that "Like A Virgin" and "Material Girl" were pitched up, altered vocally comparing to all the songs on Like A Virgin and The First Album. They just sound really unnatural lol. One would think "Dress You Up" was pitched up which I thought it was, but that's actually her unaltered vocal too!

This video lays it out well:

 

Un-pitched "Like A Virgin" sounds amazing! 

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33 minutes ago, Arckangel said:

@kingcarlo818Yeah. Those songs were probably sped up, but there's the possibility Madonna sang higher. What about the Get Up demo? Mo sounds pretty high there, but it sounds natural to me.

It does sound natural and that’s good. It seems as though Madonna’s head voice gets too “high pitchy” as evidenced by The Gotham Tapes & some Emmy songs — especially when she pushes for that “voice” ... maybe it was truly her natural unaltered voice for a lot of the songs in her early years which we have to give major credit for.

However, LAV & MG (especially) sound altered even if just a tiny bit. Although there’s a huge possibility too however that THOSE were her actual vocals and she has fooled us all along yet again lol. Proves yet again the versatility and amazing vocal talent Madonna has if that’s the case

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If the 1984 MTV awards were live, she sang LAV in the same original (higher) key, so there is not a real need to think her vocals were pitched in the album. It's just her younger voice, similar to the Emmy and Gotham phase, as someone already said. When taken down a tone or semitone, the song sounds more RHT but not necessarily more natural.

On the opposite side, Levitating really sounds pitched to make M sound like Dua Lipa. She can't sing so high anymore. I'd love to hear the rough vocals for Madame X to better understand the mixing process.

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7 hours ago, Enrico said:

If the 1984 MTV awards were live, she sang LAV in the same original (higher) key, so there is not a real need to think her vocals were pitched in the album. It's just her younger voice, similar to the Emmy and Gotham phase, as someone already said. When taken down a tone or semitone, the song sounds more RHT but not necessarily more natural.

Not to mention pitch shifting vocals wasn't a simple thing back in the 80s.  If you pitched her vocals up it would make it faster as well. Pitch and Speed were intertwined. 

 

IFFFFFF they did.... it coulda been done only one way and its way too much work

 

1. Make the music for Like a Virgin in a lower key and slower.  Have Madonna sing down there and at that speed. Then pitch shift her vocals which also speeds up the song. Then recreate the music in the new key and speed created by the pitch shifting. 

 

And not to mention she sings in the same key as the record on The Virgin Tour and sounds the same. 

It's also apparent she had trouble singing Angel because the melody is written so low. 

 

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4 hours ago, RUADJAI said:

Not to mention pitch shifting vocals wasn't a simple thing back in the 80s.  If you pitched her vocals up it would make it faster as well. Pitch and Speed were intertwined. 

 

IFFFFFF they did.... it coulda been done only one way and its way too much work

 

1. Make the music for Like a Virgin in a lower key and slower.  Have Madonna sing down there and at that speed. Then pitch shift her vocals which also speeds up the song. Then recreate the music in the new key and speed created by the pitch shifting. 

 

And not to mention she sings in the same key as the record on The Virgin Tour and sounds the same. 

It's also apparent she had trouble singing Angel because the melody is written so low. 

 

 

I see your point and it's very logical and understandable.

Here's my thing though:

In the studio version of LAV it just sounds very... idk how to explain it... HIGH PITCHED and GIRLY. When she performed it on the 1984 VMAS, it is the same key but it seemed she was forcing, vocally gutting it it to sound like the studio recording. It must mean that the vocal for LAV was probably recorded in a lower key, then "pitched up" or "sped up" to match the studio track instrumental's key, idk if that makes sense. So then, Madonna's key probably wasn't the instrumental track's key? IDK. It's very complex lol.

On the Virgin Tour, the vocal delivery definitely isn't the same as on the 1984 VMAs and definitely not like the studio recording. It's during this tour she stared showcasing her deeper chest registers even on higher key songs like "Dress You Up" and "LAV"... idk, the timbre was just different lol. It's not as girly anymore, which I love! The only time on that tour she matched that "girly pitched up" vocal was during "Everybody" which is very impressive!

 

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On 10/11/2020 at 3:00 PM, RUADJAI said:

It's also apparent she had trouble singing Angel because the melody is written so low. 

 

You have to take into consideration that at that point in the show, she had powered through Dress You Up, Holiday, Into the Groove and Everybody, songs that all came with a lot of choreography. So of course her breathing and technique is going to be off by Angel. It's harder to hit lower notes when your breathing is off. 

Edited by Husam Elzien (see edit history)
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Her studio vocals sounds like her talking voice in many songs. Maybe she just talk the lyrics in the studio and than they speed it up/makes it fit to the audio? Okay maybe not..

But I always wondering how she can sing and sound so different live compared to her album vocals. Not saying I don't like that.

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I love her voice in almost all it's varieties but the vocals on so many of the MDNA tracks I did not like she sounded really tinny - Girl Gone Wild, turn Up the Radio, Masterpiece I think were the worst offenders for not sounding like her and so over processed and or badly handled by the engineers. She sounds pretty good and more like herself on some of the other tracks like Beautiful Killer and Falling Free. The live version the MDNA tour DVD for Girl Gone Wild her vocals sound so poor something much have gone wrong with the recording if that was the best they could get them to sound almost sounded like a computer/robot singing and vocals recorded into a phone. I think for the Rebel Heart album some of the tracks had the same problem Living for Love was really shrill in parts, Unapologetic Bitch grating  - I think has more to do with the engineers than Madonna but her voice was much better for Madame X.  I did read someone who said they thought the engineer Castellon was the problem in how she sounded on those records doing something to the vocals that did not work

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39 minutes ago, MDNA22 said:

I love her voice in almost all it's varieties but the vocals on so many of the MDNA tracks I did not like she sounded really tinny - Girl Gone Wild, turn Up the Radio, Masterpiece I think were the worst offenders for not sounding like her and so over processed and or badly handled by the engineers. She sounds pretty good and more like herself on some of the other tracks like Beautiful Killer and Falling Free. The live version the MDNA tour DVD for Girl Gone Wild her vocals sound so poor something much have gone wrong with the recording if that was the best they could get them to sound almost sounded like a computer/robot singing and vocals recorded into a phone. I think for the Rebel Heart album some of the tracks had the same problem Living for Love was really shrill in parts, Unapologetic Bitch grating  - I think has more to do with the engineers than Madonna but her voice was much better for Madame X.  I did read someone who said they thought the engineer Castellon was the problem in how she sounded on those records doing something to the vocals that did not work

What? "Masterpiece"? Do you not mean "Love Spent"? She sounds REALLY good, unfiltered and clear on "Masterpiece". It's actually one of my fave M studio vocals, along others like "Drowned World", "Live to tell", "Mer girl", "Gone", "American pie", "Easy ride", "X-static process" and "Rebel heart". 

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