The Logic Off Topic list

>Dennis wrote some sad but funny stuff about the Jap Music biz,
>and...........
>
>"The listener is lucky if they all come together within
>a semitone of the melody and a 16th note of the beat.  "
>
>have they never heard of Auto tune or Vocalign??
>
>(Or does he record them and get sick of leaving the above two permanently
>"plugged in")
>
>:-)

It's truly bizzare but they just don't seem to care.

I have worked twice with the one who can "kind of sing".  Once I was 
playing guitar in the band on their weekly TV show.  The other time I 
wrote lyrics for a commercial he sang and was asked to go to the 
session and help him with the English pronounciation.

When I was was on the TV show he and I were the only two things that 
were live and I was pretty surprised how well he actually could sing 
because their records *always* suck.

Then I when I went to the commercial session I saw how things worked.

They recorded basics of the song in a kind of high key and had me 
sing it so that this kid could have an idea how the lyrics were 
supposed to fit to the melody.  I make most of my living as a studio 
vocalist and I have a very broad range.  It was definitely high but 
it was a problem for me.  I was pretty sure it was going to be a 
problem for him though and I suggested that they lower the key.  Also 
I am an American, a native English speaker but this song was fast and 
the lyrics were pretty much a mouthful even for me.  The had the band 
stick around for the express purpose of redoing the tune in case the 
key was not right.  But did they lower it.

The "producer" (means a completely different thing here) was much 
more interested in speaking at length on his favorite topics: his car 
and himself.

So after a while in comes this poor asshole to the session.  He's 
heard the melody but hasn't seen the lyrics and does not really have 
much of a command of English.  I read through the lyrics with him a 
couple of times then off he went.  He was straining and cracking and 
shouting out is best near misses of the high notes but he just could 
not quite reach them and his distress was exacerbated by the fact 
that he was trying to do this stuff in very fast English with some 
kind of tricky syncopations.  He almost pulled it off but it was just 
too high.  He kept at it for about an hour but of course his voice 
was getting more and more tired with each take.

Every one could see by the second attempt (of many) that the tune was 
too high so I once again suggested to the producer that they lower 
the key.  He stopped his monolog about cigars and the vintage SG he 
was going to buy long enough to give me the polite "no fucking way am 
I going to take you seriously peanut" smile and said "I like the way 
it sounds like he is straining and can't quite do it".

So once again this poor yuk sucked in front millions of Japanese fans 
for no discernable except perhaps that the dumbassed producer didn't 
like being interrupted by uppity foreigners wanting to talk about 
work when he was discoursing on how highschool girls liked the sexy 
way his stomach dribbled over his belt.

At the end of that day I was actually in the strange position of 
feeling sorry for that poor jerk who at that point was richer than 
the pope and at any given moment has 100 thousand nubile Japanese 
babes getting their shiny spandex thongs all wet and melting into 
little blobs of hello kitty fuzz at the thought of sharing bathtub 
with him.