February 27th, 2007 by Jemaleddin Cole

Stop hold­ing them so close to your face. You look stupid and ill-​informed about the capa­bil­i­ties of modern sound equipment.

10 Responses to “An Open Letter to American Idol Contestants, Re: Microphones”

1. Caveat: I have never watched Amer­i­can Idol.

   Qual­i­fi­ca­tions: I have done sound for five years for a live band. I was trained by a man who has done the sound for such dis­parate artists/events as Kiss, AC/DC, Lawrence Col­lege, the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, and the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. We use a pro­fes­sional system cost­ing sev­eral thou­sand dol­lars which is very much like that of smaller venue pro­fes­sional musi­cians. It was built upon his advice.

   Com­ment: Over Christ­mas the man men­tioned above came back from Park City, Utah to visit his family. While here he tweaked our system (sounds even better than before) and gave instruc­tions for use of a micro­phone to all our vocal­ists. He said that they should hold the micro­phone so close to their mouths that their lips would occa­sion­ally brush it and no fur­ther away from their mouths than the dis­tance of their out­stretched tongue. He com­pared using a micro­phone prop­erly to eating an ice cream cone.

   Since then I have seen shots of sev­eral record­ing artists both in the studio record­ing and in live per­for­mance fol­low­ing his advice. Of course, they use state of the art equip­ment.

   Why would this be impor­tant advice to follow? It has to do with the inverse square law, vocal strain, and dis­tor­tion and feed­back caused by hold­ing a micro­phone at arm’s length. Sound pick up is con­sid­er­ably cleaner the closer the micro­phone is held to the mouth. I know that when mixing a band it is much easier to get good sound when vocal­ists prop­erly hold and use a micro­phone. I sus­pect that AI con­tes­tants have been coached by the net­work sound techs in the best way to use a micro­phone if they vary fro the above rec­om­men­da­tion.

   You do see excep­tions, of course, like “artist” Brit­ney Spears who often uses a wire­less head­set that enables here to have more free­dom of move­ment. But the sound suf­fers as a result.

   — skank February 28th, 2007 at 5:40 am #

2. Oh, I get that you’ll have better sound by keep­ing the micro­phone closer. And I’m cer­tainly not sug­gest­ing that they hold the micro­phone at arm’s length. That would just be silly.

   But the dif­fer­ence in sound qual­ity between lick­ing the micro­phone and hold­ing it at chin level so that the tele­vi­sion audi­ence can see your face is neg­li­gi­ble (except to audio­philes and sound wee­nies like your pal), and com­pletely out-​weighed by the fact that the show isn’t a singing com­pe­ti­tion where a bunch of experts will listen and re-​listen to your per­for­mance to ana­lyze its merits and then put you through to the next round in a fair and equi­table manner. This is a pop­u­lar­ity con­test decided by people with no taste (like me) who base their deci­sions more on a contestant’s looks than his or her vocal abil­i­ties.

   I’ll give you an exam­ple. Kellie Pick­ler couldn’t sing her way out of a paper bag. Heck, I don’t think she could find her way out of a paper bag. But here she is in her prom dress:

   

   She fin­ished 6th in the com­pe­ti­tion, beat­ing out tens of thou­sands of other con­tes­tants. Also, she didn’t hold the mic directly in front of her face:

   

   As opposed to this guy, a MUCH better singer who is almost com­pletely obscured from view:

   

   I’m just saying.

   — Jemaleddin February 28th, 2007 at 9:39 am #

3. The pri­mary dif­fer­ence between the two photos is camera angle. They both appear to be hold­ing the micro­phones close to the sweet spot.

   Kellie Pick­ler looks anorexic to me.

   — skank February 28th, 2007 at 3:26 pm #

4. As a person who is mildly embar­rassed to say that he’s seen those per­for­mances live, trust me - you can tell who’s hold­ing what how. Watch­ing these idiots hide behind the micro­phone night after night, I get very frus­trated.

   And yes, she’s too skinny. I was always more of a Kather­ine McPhee fan:

   

   — Jemaleddin February 28th, 2007 at 7:04 pm #

5. You’ve really seen AI live? This is incon­ceiv­able. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with it, but what­ever for? I’d rather watch paint dry. Kidz these daze.

   — skank February 28th, 2007 at 8:06 pm #

6. Not live in person, live on TV. I’m not going out to Hol­ly­wood to watch some TV show. That would be crazy. Well, unless Melinda or Lak­isha make it to the finals. =-)

   — Jemaleddin March 1st, 2007 at 7:21 am #

7. It’s the camera angle. They aren’t swal­low­ing the mike.

   — Rachel Cohen March 4th, 2007 at 8:53 pm #

8. Look, I watch the show - the pic­tures could be camera-​angle-​impaired, but the live show clearly illus­trates all sorts of con­tes­tants who have starved them­selves (to pre­vent those camera-​added 10lbs.) to the point of think­ing micro­phones are food. Really!

   — Jemaleddin March 5th, 2007 at 11:39 am #

9. 2 to 1.

   — skank March 5th, 2007 at 5:22 pm #

10. Sock puppets….

    — Jemaleddin March 5th, 2007 at 5:42 pm #