Are most music videos (that aren't live performances) lip-synched?
January 21, 2022 3:05 PM Subscribe
I'm want to make music videos of me singing my own songs.
I've already recorded myself singing my songs in "live performance, " e.g. me singing and accompanying myself on the guitar. But now I want to expand into me acting out stuff, moving around, while singing. Is the only way to do this lip-synching? Is that how it's done?
I'm working with my iPAD: I've tried recording myself singing (with headphones on) along to a recording of the back-up tracks (using midi-type instruments in GarageBand for iOS), then putting that video into iMovie for iOS, then putting another, audio-only track of the back-up into the project, but it doesn't sound very good.
I guess the "real" way to do this is to lip-synch, right? But that looks so false. Is that because I'm bad at lip-synching? [are these people lip-synching? but they're just really good at it? (song starts at 1:52)] (or any movie musical?)
Is there another way to do this, so that my voice is really me doing stuff and singing, and then I combine it with the back-up track without my voice? Except I think I just said that I did that and it didn't sound good.
Is There Another Way???
I've already recorded myself singing my songs in "live performance, " e.g. me singing and accompanying myself on the guitar. But now I want to expand into me acting out stuff, moving around, while singing. Is the only way to do this lip-synching? Is that how it's done?
I'm working with my iPAD: I've tried recording myself singing (with headphones on) along to a recording of the back-up tracks (using midi-type instruments in GarageBand for iOS), then putting that video into iMovie for iOS, then putting another, audio-only track of the back-up into the project, but it doesn't sound very good.
I guess the "real" way to do this is to lip-synch, right? But that looks so false. Is that because I'm bad at lip-synching? [are these people lip-synching? but they're just really good at it? (song starts at 1:52)] (or any movie musical?)
Is there another way to do this, so that my voice is really me doing stuff and singing, and then I combine it with the back-up track without my voice? Except I think I just said that I did that and it didn't sound good.
Is There Another Way???
Best answer: Yeah, even in movie musicals they're often lip synching - enough so that it's remarkable when they do sing live.
It's because, like you say, it's hard to get good studio-quality singing sound from someone NOT in front of a big studio mike, probably in a room that isn't acoustically optimized, moving around and not really able to concentrate, without a monitor to hear the music and possibly scratch vocals.
The way you make it look good is a) practice b) lots of takes so you can cut the best-looking pieces together.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:16 PM on January 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's because, like you say, it's hard to get good studio-quality singing sound from someone NOT in front of a big studio mike, probably in a room that isn't acoustically optimized, moving around and not really able to concentrate, without a monitor to hear the music and possibly scratch vocals.
The way you make it look good is a) practice b) lots of takes so you can cut the best-looking pieces together.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:16 PM on January 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Oh and yeah, you don't have to just mouth along, you can actually sing. You just need to focus on singing it exactly like the recording more than it sounding good. But yes, that is how you get a more natural-looking breathing and mouth/face movement.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:17 PM on January 21, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Lyn Never at 3:17 PM on January 21, 2022 [5 favorites]
Play around with the recording and mixing until you get audio that sounds good, and then look to this video to give you good hints about how to make a music video.
Also the answer to your title question is largely yes. There’s an Alanis Morissette video (Head Over Feet) that’s a single take that shows pretty clearly what kind of thing happens when you shoot a music video (and then just use one continual take). The parts where she stops lipsynching and the overall disjoint between the video and audio made it feel eerie and wrong the first time I saw it.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:37 PM on January 21, 2022
Also the answer to your title question is largely yes. There’s an Alanis Morissette video (Head Over Feet) that’s a single take that shows pretty clearly what kind of thing happens when you shoot a music video (and then just use one continual take). The parts where she stops lipsynching and the overall disjoint between the video and audio made it feel eerie and wrong the first time I saw it.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 3:37 PM on January 21, 2022
Having worked on sets with musical playback of various sorts, my answer is yes, they're almost always lip-synced to playback. But I've frequently also see the performer singing live along with the track, even though the live singing isn't used.
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:10 PM on January 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:10 PM on January 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
From the perspective of a viewer, it is very (VERY) clear when someone is just lip-syncing without actually pushing air over their vocal cords. However you wind up mixing it, if you're filming for video I think you should be actually singing while you film.
posted by Lexica at 4:36 PM on January 21, 2022
posted by Lexica at 4:36 PM on January 21, 2022
Agreed. As a singer, it is pretty obvious when a song is being lip-synched. And, as a singer, negative points for that.
And the other way is:
"DO IT LIVE!"
posted by Windopaene at 5:08 PM on January 21, 2022
And the other way is:
"DO IT LIVE!"
posted by Windopaene at 5:08 PM on January 21, 2022
To make a cool video, try slowing down your song considerably (2-3x) and singing along at that weird speed. Do normal-speed stuff like dancing, throwing confetti, splashing water, wind machine in your hair, people waking past, jumping, etc., but sing it slow. Then play the footage at the right speed (and use the studio audio you recorded beforehand). Your lips will move at the right speed but everything else will be super fast- It will look really cool.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 8:47 PM on January 21, 2022
posted by nouvelle-personne at 8:47 PM on January 21, 2022
Response by poster: Windopaene, when you say "DO IT LIVE!" how do I put the mix of instruments into it? I did a video where I sang along to the instrumental track that was playing live in the background, and it sounded terrible. Actually here it is. See (hear) the problem?
posted by DMelanogaster at 8:13 AM on January 22, 2022
posted by DMelanogaster at 8:13 AM on January 22, 2022
Best answer: Instead of singing live over that backing track in your video as above, sing live over a recording of the track with vocals, and try to match the vocal performance as much as possible. Then, in your video editing software of choice, keep the video but mute the audio track and add the audio track you sang along with. That's basically how it's done.
posted by emelenjr at 9:32 AM on January 22, 2022
posted by emelenjr at 9:32 AM on January 22, 2022
Response by poster: emelenjr why is it better to sing along with the vocal track in the recording than eliminate the vocal track in the backup recording rather than just to sing the song live over the everything-but-vocal track and keep that track as the only audio track? Obviously I would have to wear headphones while recording vocals as I do my activities, because I would not want the recording of the backup that's my guide as I'm singing in the room to remain (?) - which is a drag, (having to wear headphones, I mean -- I wonder how I could hide them) --- and I don't really understand how that's done when they shoot music videos.
Yeah, I really don't understand that. You see a singer in a park or something, and they're not wearing headphones, they're, I guess, singing along to a recording that's being played in the park that the singer can hear to guide them, but then somehow all that noise miraculously disappears when they edit it and you hear just the singer singing perfectly to the backup tracks?
So Mysterious!
posted by DMelanogaster at 11:39 AM on January 22, 2022
Yeah, I really don't understand that. You see a singer in a park or something, and they're not wearing headphones, they're, I guess, singing along to a recording that's being played in the park that the singer can hear to guide them, but then somehow all that noise miraculously disappears when they edit it and you hear just the singer singing perfectly to the backup tracks?
So Mysterious!
posted by DMelanogaster at 11:39 AM on January 22, 2022
Response by poster: oh I guess because they have Ph.D.s in lip-synching, I forgot! Maybe I have to accept that a back-up track of "canned" (not live) instruments is always going to have a completely different quality of sound than my voice in a room, and mixing them is always going to sound weird. perhaps that's the True Answer.
posted by DMelanogaster at 11:47 AM on January 22, 2022
posted by DMelanogaster at 11:47 AM on January 22, 2022
Best answer: Okay, when they shoot music videos, no audio from the set is used in the final product.
The song is played out loud for the band/singer/whatever so they have something to mime to so their movements are correctly timed with the recorded song, and that visual performance is recorded on video with a camera. The video files are given to an editor who synchronizes the video clips and the movement of people's lips to an audio file of the professionally-produced song that was recorded in a way that sounds good.
So you want to first make a full recording of your song that you consider to be the final audio product so you're not going to change it again. Take a boombox to the park and play that finished track and perform to it. Sing out loud to it, just mouth the words, whatever you think LOOKS best. Feel free to fart at will because only the video part of this file is actually important to the final product. Import the files in iMovie, inactivate or delete the audio track associated with the video, bring in the mp3 (or whatever) of your song, and do whatever edits necessary to make your mouth in the video move to the singing in the audio.
If you want to do this more pro-style, you'll actually record yourself performing the song several times over so that you can pick and choose between every version and cut in the best-looking time you sang "hey hey this is line one of my song" over those same words in your audio recording. Because in Take One you may look super badass on that line but got a hair in your mouth during "and this is line two of my song whoa-whoa", so you can cut in video from Take Two where it was perfect.
That's it, that's how music videos are made.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:31 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
The song is played out loud for the band/singer/whatever so they have something to mime to so their movements are correctly timed with the recorded song, and that visual performance is recorded on video with a camera. The video files are given to an editor who synchronizes the video clips and the movement of people's lips to an audio file of the professionally-produced song that was recorded in a way that sounds good.
So you want to first make a full recording of your song that you consider to be the final audio product so you're not going to change it again. Take a boombox to the park and play that finished track and perform to it. Sing out loud to it, just mouth the words, whatever you think LOOKS best. Feel free to fart at will because only the video part of this file is actually important to the final product. Import the files in iMovie, inactivate or delete the audio track associated with the video, bring in the mp3 (or whatever) of your song, and do whatever edits necessary to make your mouth in the video move to the singing in the audio.
If you want to do this more pro-style, you'll actually record yourself performing the song several times over so that you can pick and choose between every version and cut in the best-looking time you sang "hey hey this is line one of my song" over those same words in your audio recording. Because in Take One you may look super badass on that line but got a hair in your mouth during "and this is line two of my song whoa-whoa", so you can cut in video from Take Two where it was perfect.
That's it, that's how music videos are made.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:31 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Well, here's a follow-up question that has arisen: when I record myself singing, accompanying myself on the guitar, it sounds perfectly natural. My voice is "live" and the guitar is "live." So why doesn't it sound that way ("live") when I accompany myself with a recorded track of midi-instruments via GarageBand, etc.? THIS is what I don't understand (and this is really what I want to do, but, as in the example I provided above, it sounds awful. Maybe it just sounds awful because the SOUND QUALITY coming out of the iPad is so terrible/remote/artificial?).
MIGHT a solution be to hook up my backing track (i.e., my iPad, or my PC, or whatever) to a really good SPEAKER that would then serve as my accompanying "instrument"? Maybe the problem is that the sound coming out of my iPad sucks? And I could do a "live" recording, if only my "instrument" (OUTPUT of my backing track) were of better quality?
(I am trying to eliminate what I've been calling "lip synching" but what is really singing along to my own vocals -- but still, not that different -- in both cases, I'm *pretending* that I'm doing the singing on the *vocal track* but I'm not, really, for all intents and purposes, that's not what you're hearing, you're hearing another audio track etc blah blah).
posted by DMelanogaster at 7:36 AM on January 24, 2022
MIGHT a solution be to hook up my backing track (i.e., my iPad, or my PC, or whatever) to a really good SPEAKER that would then serve as my accompanying "instrument"? Maybe the problem is that the sound coming out of my iPad sucks? And I could do a "live" recording, if only my "instrument" (OUTPUT of my backing track) were of better quality?
(I am trying to eliminate what I've been calling "lip synching" but what is really singing along to my own vocals -- but still, not that different -- in both cases, I'm *pretending* that I'm doing the singing on the *vocal track* but I'm not, really, for all intents and purposes, that's not what you're hearing, you're hearing another audio track etc blah blah).
posted by DMelanogaster at 7:36 AM on January 24, 2022
Response by poster: now I'm wondering if, when I saw Hamilton on TV (the musical), if they were lip-synching. I don't think they were! Somehow they got a great recording of a live musical (?) I guess millions of dollars buys you this possibility!
posted by DMelanogaster at 7:42 AM on January 24, 2022
posted by DMelanogaster at 7:42 AM on January 24, 2022
Response by poster: HERE:
An amazing performance by Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, and Audra MacDonald singing Sondheim, accompanied by piano. They all sang separately and their performances were joined later -- BUT they are singing LIVE to a piano accompaniment. I wonder how this was done. So now that I've read all your answers, I'm going to guess that they each sang to a piano track that was then eliminated for the final mix?
posted by DMelanogaster at 7:47 AM on January 24, 2022
An amazing performance by Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, and Audra MacDonald singing Sondheim, accompanied by piano. They all sang separately and their performances were joined later -- BUT they are singing LIVE to a piano accompaniment. I wonder how this was done. So now that I've read all your answers, I'm going to guess that they each sang to a piano track that was then eliminated for the final mix?
posted by DMelanogaster at 7:47 AM on January 24, 2022
In the case of Hamilton and most "live performance" recordings, every single component is professionally mic'd with microphones (you can see them in Hamilton, it's in their hair/wigs in most cases, or here's Burr's ear-mounted monitor and microphone rig) designed for recording a very narrow cone of space, so that you and I may be singing together in front of a piano which is mic'd on its own in a way optimized for piano noise, but there are three different tracks being recorded with (ideally) no bleed - my voice doesn't show up on your track. Those microphones are connected to a sound board that makes/records a separate track for every single microphone. Live, there are soundpeople mixing and doing some amazing skill stuff to make it all sound right. Or if this isn't being broadcast or performed for a live audience, there are people who will mix the sound in post-production to make it sound great in the final product.
If you just really want to play and sing live you can, but you will need to mic (or connect, in the case of electric instruments) to a soundboard/mixer to capture each channel if you want professional sound. Otherwise you're going to get bad sound. If you can't hide a mic in your clothes or hair with clean wireless transmission to a sound recorder*, you could hire someone to hold a boom mike above you but out of shot, which is how TV dialogue is generally recorded - but know that this isn't optimized for singing, singers are not normally mic'd that way, and it won't sound like studio sound. And yes, backing track playing live recorded with a single room mic like on a phone or tablet will always sound like a TV in another room. You would want to play the backing track in a way it won't get picked up (headphones, in-ear monitor, special microphone) by your microphone and you can edit in a clean audio track to replace it, OR you'd have to output your playback to the sound mixer - like with a cable, not just atmospherically, as you would if you had a live band with you.
*Which is not radically expensive, at least for talking-quality sound. My husband is a (tv, film, doc, podcast) producer and editor (and sometimes sound guy, camera operator, director, catering, and boom mic-holder) and has a pair of wireless lavalier microphones where you wear the mic on your clothes near your mouth and clip the transmitter to the back of your pants or on a pocket and the home base records the sounds. It works fine for podcasts and documentaries, but I have no idea if it would drop out, pop, or otherwise get unpleasant artifacts in it if you were to sing into them. You may know someone who has some to loan you, or you can rent them.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:54 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you just really want to play and sing live you can, but you will need to mic (or connect, in the case of electric instruments) to a soundboard/mixer to capture each channel if you want professional sound. Otherwise you're going to get bad sound. If you can't hide a mic in your clothes or hair with clean wireless transmission to a sound recorder*, you could hire someone to hold a boom mike above you but out of shot, which is how TV dialogue is generally recorded - but know that this isn't optimized for singing, singers are not normally mic'd that way, and it won't sound like studio sound. And yes, backing track playing live recorded with a single room mic like on a phone or tablet will always sound like a TV in another room. You would want to play the backing track in a way it won't get picked up (headphones, in-ear monitor, special microphone) by your microphone and you can edit in a clean audio track to replace it, OR you'd have to output your playback to the sound mixer - like with a cable, not just atmospherically, as you would if you had a live band with you.
*Which is not radically expensive, at least for talking-quality sound. My husband is a (tv, film, doc, podcast) producer and editor (and sometimes sound guy, camera operator, director, catering, and boom mic-holder) and has a pair of wireless lavalier microphones where you wear the mic on your clothes near your mouth and clip the transmitter to the back of your pants or on a pocket and the home base records the sounds. It works fine for podcasts and documentaries, but I have no idea if it would drop out, pop, or otherwise get unpleasant artifacts in it if you were to sing into them. You may know someone who has some to loan you, or you can rent them.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:54 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
And in your Ladies Who Lunch video, note they all have earbuds in. So they can hear the track they're singing to. The microphone is picking up only them singing. The producer would be adding in the music that we hear.
With a well-rehearsed piece of music, it isn't impossible to sing to a sort of teleprompter/visual metronome, but I'm sure they were listening to music in their ears.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:58 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
With a well-rehearsed piece of music, it isn't impossible to sing to a sort of teleprompter/visual metronome, but I'm sure they were listening to music in their ears.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:58 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
And if you're going to ask about the music in Hamilton, yes the band/orchestra is recorded with an array of microphones so that a) it can be amplified in the theater b) recorded from the sound board for editors to insert in post-production so the rebroadcast/distributed package has essentially perfect sound.
What you would hear sitting in the room sounds like an open room, it's far worse quality than the sound in the sound board because it's a big room full of air and bodies and weird surfaces and stuff.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:23 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
What you would hear sitting in the room sounds like an open room, it's far worse quality than the sound in the sound board because it's a big room full of air and bodies and weird surfaces and stuff.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:23 PM on January 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by aubilenon at 3:15 PM on January 21, 2022 [4 favorites]