Are the contestants from the Masked Singer singing live?
As season 2 of The Masked Singer started a few weeks ago, I can't help but notice that some of the contestants' performances (eg. The Ice Cream) sounded that they're being tweaked with auto-tune.
Thus, are all of their vocals recorded live during recording and simply processed afterward or do they used pre-recorded vocals and the contestants just lip-synced them during the performance itself?
Granted that there are efforts made in the costumes to allow for the contestants to project their voices, but since their mouths are covered, it is not as obvious to know exactly either. Plus, it will be a huge technical effort to not make the contestants' voices sound muffled with all the dancing and singing on stage.
Best Answer
Yes but it's enhanced.
From Reality Blurred
Craig Plestis said,
“The great thing about the show: everyone had to sing live, and they only had one take each. So it really was a monumental feat for everyone to do this and with the masks. It was really difficult designing the masks and getting that great audio level. So it really was all about singing live on the stage. And what you hear, a lot of it is what they got. If there was a big mistake that happened, you’re going to hear it on the stage, you know, in the TV show itself.”
Executive producer Izzie Pick Ibarra said that putting mics in the masks was a challenge: “Some of the masks were very echoey, so we would have to put foam inside so the sound didn’t sound so echoey. We had a lot of audio testing that we did with the masks beforehand. But, as Craig was saying, they all sung live and they had one shot at it.”
That’s when Nick Cannon stepped in and basically said, yes, the performances are enhanced:
“You gave a good example about the song ‘I Gotta Feeling.’ If you listen to the original version, the way it was produced, it has a lot of auto tune and a lot of effects in it.
So the choices that a lot of the acts get to make with their songs kind of lend themselves to it. I mean, there’s certain songs, especially nowadays, every song has auto tune it.
So if you want to be accurate and sound good and sound like the song, you’re going to have the vocal effects.
So we had a great team of producers and mixers that kind of made them sound exactly or as close to the record as possible.”
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All Contestants Singing Unmasked | Masked Singer | SEASON 7
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