I'm glad I'm not the only one noticing that Haruna's singing is softer now compared to before injury. It may not be so noticeable if she's singing alone, but once Tomomi starts singing, the difference in the vocal power is really noticeable. Sometimes this makes me wonder if she has really fully recovered. Like in Wonderful Tonight, I wonder if she's saving her voice or is it because it hurts singing with stronger vocal. Maybe she's still adjusting with a new way of singing, seems she's singing in higher voice now.

I don't want to sound like a "hater" but here is what I think:

I agree with "TGE", she sounds pretty weird when she sings high notes. I'm really worried when I think about Haruna's vocals future because in the last performances she doesn't sing that good at all. As in the live performances of "Awanai Tsumori no, Genki de ne", in the chorus part, it seems that she's is in a hard moment.

 I really want to be positive and maybe I can be wrong, but I think actually there's no a single song that Haruna can sing properly at live. Even on the last singles like "Over Drive" she doesn't sound "that good" at live performances.

At "Wonderful Tonight" performance, Tomomi sings really good, specially in her solo part of "One Piece", she sings pretty good even if she is almost crying.
I can't even imagine how much epic would be the "Wonderful Tonight" performance with the Haruna's old voice(Best SCANDAL - Temptation Box).

Personally I don't think Haruna is going to get a better technique for sing and much less she recover her old voice.

I can't think what the producers were thinking when SCANDAL recorded: "* ~Asterisk~" , "ALONES" and "HARUKAZE" because Haruna sounds pretty bad in all these three songs.

That's my personal point of view and I apologize if I was hard with the girls.

thoseguiltyeyes wrote:

ichiruki! wrote:^^In Budokan, her voice wasn't recorded and she didn't lipsync whatsoever

Unfortunately, that is not true. It's true that she did not lipsync at all during the first half, but the latter half of Budokan was a bit riddled with her lipsynching/them playing her recorded vocals. She definitely lipsynched the choruses of "Aitai" and "Pride" (listen to the first 2 choruses & the last choruses; it's pretty obvious that those are what she lipsynched because they sound exactly like the album versions.

Are you sure you're not mistaking lip syncing for editing and processing done afterwards by the mixing engineers?  To go onto a stage and lip sync parts of a track and do others live would be a crazy approach for them to take.  It's more likely that the engineers used other vocal recordings to replace parts of the live recording after the performance was finished.  

I analyzed some of the songs from Wonderful Tonight with a beat per minute tempo analyzer.  Some of them have notable shifts in tempo as they play through the track, which is not insult to Rina and Tomomi, it always happens with music not played to a metronome or electronic drums.  This proves those tracks were not played to a metronome.  That would make lip syncing on the stage out of the question.  

There are also considerable discrepancies in tempo between the Wonderful Tonight versions and the studio album versions of the songs so they couldn't have taken a vocal track from the recordings made for those albums and synced to it.

I've never sat and intensively analyzed it but there could well have been overdubs done in a studio, which would explain why, as you say, parts of it sound like the studio recording.

ichiruki! wrote:There is such a huge volume gap between Haruna's and Tomomi's voices, e.g in Taiyou Scandalous.

Again, that's really something the sound engineers have to take a certain amount of responsiblity for.  If the two vocal tracks were optimally gain staged and compressed, it shouldn't matter which vocalist has the louder voice.

But in all honesty, this is why albums are recorded in studios and not live.  There is no such thing as a perfect recording and there never will be.  If I were to post links to the live sound recordings I've done, you'd all be commenting on how rough my workmanship is and how many snags there still are in my mixdowns.  Sometimes, you just have to settle for getting it as good as it can be made.  None of us were there, so we don't know what problems the people who created Wonderful Tonight had to face.

Even in the studio it's all about compromises.  You want the bassline to pump, you have to take the bottom end off the guitar.  You want to make a vocal track sound less sibilant, you lose some clarity.  You want vocal tracks auto-tuned to zero semitones, you have to accept the side effects of phase-vocoding.  It's all trade offs.

^^ But that's the thing. Haruna's voice never used to be softer than Tomomi. If it was, it was a tiny bit, but it wasn't to the extent like now. I'm not sure how sound engineering works here: whether there are a few people who are constantly SCANDAL and SCANDAL's alone or whether it changes depending on the venue. Either way it's always the same ever since the voice problems for Haruna occured.

I don't know if this has crossed anybody else's mind, but Haruna will be in a stage performance soon; a type musical I presume. This means she is bound to get some sort of vocal training. The cast and singers in those types of shows can really sing, like, really really sing. Like she said, Haruna wanted to bring some things back to SCANDAL; hopefully this is it. I love Haruna's voice, don't get me wrong here, but there is room for more improvement on her technique. Perhaps professional guidance might be good for her and teach her something about her own voice she never knew about.

ichiruki! wrote:^^ But that's the thing. Haruna's voice never used to be softer than Tomomi. If it was, it was a tiny bit, but it wasn't to the extent like now. I'm not sure how sound engineering works here: whether there are a few people who are constantly SCANDAL and SCANDAL's alone or whether it changes depending on the venue. Either way it's always the same ever since the voice problems for Haruna occured.

Who's to say that louder equals better?

It could be pushing her voice to try to make it sound as loud as Tomomi's that caused her trouble in the first place for reasons I'll outline in this post.  Haruna is only in her mid twenties so she really wants her voice to last for another fifty years yet.  It's important that she sings comfortably and does not strain her vocal chords.  I know a singer who had a promising career that is now ruined by stressing her vocal chords.

Tomomi has a voice with much higher key frequencies than Haruna's.  Haruna seems most comfortable singing contralto, although I'm sure I've heard her sing higher than that, which is the lowest normal female register.  I'm sure there are probably female Olympic athletes who've been on steroid regimens who have an impressive five o'clock shadow and can sing a baritone, but this is not normal for women.

Singing contralto means the fundamentals of Haruna's singing would be down as far as 200 to 700Hz and that her singing has Lower key frequencies than Tomomi's.  Now, below I've included a phon curve for perceived human hearing.  Below is the graph of how healthy ears and brains perceive the world through sound.  It's in the decibel scale which is a logarithm to the bass ten, so ten decibels is a doubling of sound pressure level in the graph.  You can see that to perceive a note at 20 Hz at the same volume as you perceive a note at 3500 Hz it has to be a billion time louder.

You're probably asking yourself by now why I'm posting this drivel.  If you were to record both Tomomi's voice and Haruna's with the standard one to three decibels of headroom for the peaks, Tomomi's voice being higher in it's key frequencies is going to be perceived as though it's two or three decibels louder than Haruna's, as you can see in the graph below.  That does not necessarily mean that Tomomi has a better voice than Haruna, and I would expect that a sound engineer would level the two tracks out using compression and the if necessary the volume faders.

That said, I really don't hear any big problems with Haruna and Tomomi's voice.  They just have very different vocal ranges and singing styles.  Frankly though, I think Haruna is the one with the magic voice of the four of them.  That's why they have her doing most of the lead vocals.

As a point of interest, you can see on the graph below that the most acute range of human hearing is 3000 to 4000 Hz.  This is where the presence frequencies of the human voice are.  Our hearing is configured to give preference to key presence frequencies of human voices.

climate might be a factor also, when the environment is too cold or very warm.

James MacKnight wrote:Are you sure you're not mistaking lip syncing for editing and processing done afterwards by the mixing engineers?  To go onto a stage and lip sync parts of a track and do others live would be a crazy approach for them to take.  It's more likely that the engineers used other vocal recordings to replace parts of the live recording after the performance was finished.

I considered that, yes, but switching off between pre-recorded vocals and singing live is actually something they used to do all the time in 2011 when HARU had her vocal problems.

When they came over to the US for the AM2 Convention in early July, which I had gone to, HARU lip-synched off and on for the majority of the show. Of course it's near impossible to tell live (and I sure couldn't tell then), but when I listened to a bootleg recording of it afterwards, it was very apparent and obvious that they played the pre-recorded vocals while she lip-synched for many parts of the songs. I say it was obvious because her voice did not sound good at all during some parts and then suddenly would sound great/exactly as they do on the studio recordings. As the live recording was taken by a fan (AKA myself, hah), there was obviously no post-processing done to it.

One example that stood out in particular of lip-synching to parts of a song was "SCANDAL BABY." She lip-synched up until the bridge ("Hontou wa itsumo anata ni wakatte hoshii..."), which she sang herself, and then continued lip-synching for the remainder. She also did the same exact thing later that month during their Mezamashi Live (there's actually a video of that which can be found in the Media section, although you don't have access to it yet).

I've compared them and the lip-synching was the same for the AM2 and Mezamashi lives. She sang the verses but lip-synched the choruses for "LOVE SURVIVE" and "TaiKimi," and also lip-synched the intro for "Haruka."

So, yes, I do believe that she lip-synched along at Budokan as well.


Also, could you please be sure not to double post? If you wish to quote and reply to 2 people, you could actually do so by combining them into one post. Thanks.

Well I'm no expert at the technicalities of sound and its ranges etc. but I know what you're trying to say. In more of a musician's knowledge, it's more like playing two notes of different pitch e.g a low and high note. When you play those two notes together, the one higher in pitch will stand out more than the one that is lower. The higher note is just what your ears pick up first and what your brain registers first and foremost; well that's what my teacher said anyway haha.

About Haruna lipsyncing, yes she did do that for a period of time like Jade said and it was very obvious, especially in her solo parts without the girls all singing together. The Mezamashi live is on the previous page too if anyone wants to see. She did this in other events too like GF as well which did eventually lead to a blogpost by Rina who addressed the issue and did admit that they did things that were considered 'taboo' but still asked for fans to support them, which they did.

thoseguiltyeyes wrote:
So, yes, I do believe that she lip-synched along at Budokan as well.


Also, could you please be sure not to double post? If you wish to quote and reply to 2 people, you could actually do so by combining them into one post. Thanks.

I apologise for my double posts, please forgive me, that was truly out of place.  I'm new here and still learning the posting etiquette, so thank you for keeping me right and for your forbearance on this matter.  I will not do it again.

On the other matter, believe it or not I actually want you to prove me wrong, because if there's a simple method I can use to fake up live vocal performances that cover up the lines I find difficult to sing, I guarantee you that whatever it is I'll happily learn to love using it.

I don't know anything about their 2011 live performances and it's certainly not impossible that on the 3/3/2013 Wonderful Tonight performance that they were being fed time-domain information that would have made this possible through the in ear monitors they were wearing.  That said, I remain unconvinced for reasons that I'll adumbrate.  

Why fake some parts of it but not others?  That just makes it absolutely certain you're going to be caught.  In any case, if there was something fundamentally wrong with her voice, how would a Pro Tools studio have cured it?  Recording studios aren't magic wands and sound engineers aren't healers.  

How would they have triggered the tapes (in sound engineering parlance meaning whatever format the recording was tracked on) of Haruna's pre-recorded vocal tracks to come on and off at just the right time?  There's nothing digital about any of the Scandal Members.  It's not like you can plug in the band members and take a MIDI TIME CODE feed from them to trigger a digital workstation.  There's a long period at around 45 minutes where they stop and chat to the audience for several minutes.  Is that all scripted with click tracks running in their ears?

As I say, I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's an allegation that for that particular event on 3/3/2013 that having listened to the whole thing I'm very skeptical of.  Before I'd be willing to accept such a claim, I'd have to have the methods they used to pull off such a forgery explained to me in detail.

ichiruki!

About Haruna lipsyncing, yes she did do that for a period of time like Jade said and it was very obvious, especially in her solo parts without the girls all singing together. The Mezamashi live is on the previous page too if anyone wants to see. She did this in other events too like GF as well which did eventually lead to a blogpost by Rina who addressed the issue and did admit that they did things that were considered 'taboo' but still asked for fans to support them, which they did.

I honestly wouldn't like to comment on that because I haven't heard those other gigs you were talking about so it would be outrageous for me to make sweeping generalizations.

James MacKnight wrote:
How would they have triggered the tapes (in sound engineering parlance meaning whatever format the recording was tracked on) of Haruna's pre-recorded vocal tracks to come on and off at just the right time?  There's nothing digital about any of the Scandal Members.  It's not like you can plug in the band members and take a MIDI TIME CODE feed from them to trigger a digital workstation.  

I think it's quite common these days for band to include backtracks in their live performance to come on just at the right time, be it for additional instrument (e.g. accordion in Overdrive), backing vocals, and sometimes lead vocal. I believe the mechanism is the same whether it's instrument or vocals. I can't speak on how it's done technically, but it's pretty common things for band now, it's not just Scandal.

And I thought the original post by TGE only mentioned Haruna lipsyncing in some part of Budokan concert, not the Wonderful Tonight. I believe she's singing live in Wonderful Tonight.

This is a good conversation, we could learn a lot of things from each others' point of view. Now, Re. topic. Regarding the Budokan show, I honestly couldn't tell if any of it was lipsynced to be honest. After Jade posted her reply, I actually dug up my Budokan DVD and listened to the two songs. I couldn't tell to be honest. The last chorus for Aitai was definitely live, that much I can confirm. Short of someone ripping/running the tracks from the DVD and the tracks on the albums through some software and analyzing wave forms, it's difficult to tell.

It could be possible, this coming at the end of the time when Haruna was having *that* problem. A heads up for Mr. McKnight, throughout the months before the Budokan show (in 2012), the band's sound people have routinely added vocal backing tracks for Haruna to some songs during live shows. I have no idea how they do it either, and like you said, it seems awfully risky. Too many things could go wrong. When this thing first cropped up earlier in 2011, that was what I initially thought and that's what I *still* think. I think a click track is used to preserve the timing to ensure the vocal part comes on at the correct time, that to me is the most plausible explanation.

Still, I could never understand why the band or their people didn't just down tune the songs Haruna was having trouble with at the time. It seems so much simpler to do that rather than risk being caught or risk technical faults. Too many moving parts, never a good thing.

Is it a cultural thing? Is this normal in the Japanese music industry? Was it executive meddling? We'll never know for sure but at least now we no longer need to worry since Haruna's fully recovered now.

And as for Haruna's singing nowadays, it's no surprise that people will have differing opinions about that. Some people won't like it while some people (like myself) actually like how she sounds now.

And by the way, Merry Christmas to all of you!

macdyne73 wrote:After Jade posted her reply, I actually dug up my Budokan DVD and listened to the two songs. I couldn't tell to be honest. The last chorus for Aitai was definitely live, that much I can confirm. 

I did the same, and I personally can't tell either, and normally I find it easy to tell. To me the whole concert sounds 100% live, and I'd like for it to stay that way. So I will not try harder to look for any lip syncing in that. Yes, I like to be oblivious at times :p
But as already mentioned they have done it before. For example, Shunkan Sentimental was completely lip synced in the girls factory 11 lives. 

But I think most, if not all of the lip syncing is gone now. Haruna's voice seems to have recovered mostly. As for me, I LOVE the way it is now. I do miss her old voice at times, but I can't turn her new one down with songs like Metronome and 24 Jikan plus no Yoake Mae.

Baymon wrote:I think it's quite common these days for band to include backtracks in their live performance to come on just at the right time, be it for additional instrument (e.g. accordion in Overdrive), backing vocals, and sometimes lead vocal. I believe the mechanism is the same whether it's instrument or vocals. I can't speak on how it's done technically, but it's pretty common things for band now, it's not just Scandal.

And I thought the original post by TGE only mentioned Haruna lipsyncing in some part of Budokan concert, not the Wonderful Tonight. I believe she's singing live in Wonderful Tonight.

That I don't dispute.  Evanescence famously used pre-recorded elements in their live performances when their guitarist had a strop and left them in the lurch.  The Who did this with Baba O'Reilly rather than trying to carry around a large, clunky, early 1970's Synthesizer around with them.  The Sisters of Mercy had tapes as a contingency plan in case Doctor Avalanche failed.

What I find a strain on my credulity is the contention that there was a situation where in the course of live songs being performed you had Haruna then a tape then Haruna then a tape then Haruna then a tape...

You can't even put light autotuning on a live performance these days without every armchair critic in internet land going off heads about nuts about it.  I don't see how they could have gotten away with alternating between studio and live vocals in the middle of a song.  It's absurd.

macdyne73 wrote:This is a good conversation, we could learn a lot of things from each others' point of view.

Yes it is...  

macdyne73 wrote: I have no idea how they do it either, and like you said, it seems awfully risky. 

That's the thing, I do know how to do it and it's extremely risky.  

There are a number of ways you could do it.  

You could play the songs rigidly to a metronome and use MIDI code to trigger the playback for all the bits of vocal you wanted to lip sync all with millisecond precision and all in the correct order and if you'd made one mistake when you were setting all this up, she'd be singing all the wrong things at all the wrong times.  You'd need a sound engineer with a death wish to do that in a televised live performance and it would take the band not to go off the click track they were playing to once during the entire performance.

Another way you could do it, and this is probably how I'd do it if I was given the contract would be to pre-record all the bits of vocal you want replaced for a song on one track with the appropriate amount of silence between them and bring the band in at the right time to play along with a click pre-count.  That would mean you could be reasonably sure the vocal replacements would all trigger at the right time and the onus would be on the band not to make one single timing slip in the entire performance.  This could be done, but again it would take uncommon precision on the part of the musicians not to go off a click track once during a sixty minute set.

The one thing that you could never get round though is that the timbre of her voice would change noticeably between the recorded parts and the parts that she sang live.

macdyne73 wrote:Short of someone ripping/running the tracks from the DVD and the tracks on the albums through some software and analyzing wave forms, it's difficult to tell.

I did that with Wonderful Tonight.  I'm pretty certain it's a live performance.

Reachie wrote:But as already mentioned they have done it before. For example, Shunkan Sentimental was completely lip synced in the girls factory 11 lives. 

Lip-syncing the whole thing, that I can believe.  That's a fairly widespread practice.

James MacKnight wrote:What I find a strain on my credulity is the contention that there was a situation where in the course of live songs being performed you had Haruna then a tape then Haruna then a tape then Haruna then a tape...

Get 50 posts, go to the media section and take a look for yourself. Lots of videos from 2011 where this was being done.

If you can't wait, you can look up Mezamashi Live 2011 on Youtube. That was when the band started doing it big time. There are others, there was one from a show at a mall with a *glaring* example, complete with Haruna struggling to sing Shunkan Sentimental, their manager coming on stage to whisper something to her (in the middle of the song, mind you!), then voila! pitch perfect playback vocals. I forgot which video was that, I downloaded it, then deleted it due to the pain it was causing me.

I agree, it *IS* absurd. There are other ways to deal with the problem they were having at that time. But the band or their management chose this way.

Also, they made no attempts to hide it from the crowd. That was what I also meant when I said it could be cultural, in the West and elsewhere a band caught playing back vocals will get crucified. But not SCANDAL and from what I notice, it's apparently not that big a deal in Japan. Colour me surprised, my incredulity was pretty much the same as yours right now.

You can't even put light autotuning on a live performance these days without every armchair critic in internet land going off heads about nuts about it.  I don't see how they could have gotten away with alternating between studio and live vocals in the middle of a song.  It's absurd.

Yes, that was the surprising thing to me too. They WEREN'T trying to hide it. Maybe this is normal in Japan, or maybe SCANDAL fans are really understanding and chose to cut Haruna and the band some slack during the time?

Your guess is as good as mine...

EDIT: It seems that most of the Mezamashi 2011 videos are gone from Youtube and the ones that are still there don't show the thing we are talking about. There's one on Youku but I can't load it. Maybe someone on the forum still has the video. You can put in a request.

macdyne73 wrote:EDIT: It seems that most of the Mezamashi 2011 videos are gone from Youtube and the ones that are still there don't show the thing we are talking about. There's one on Youku but I can't load it. Maybe someone on the forum still has the video. You can put in a request.

Yeah, I've been looking for it.  I can't find it either.

macdyne73 wrote:Yes, that was the surprising thing to me too. They WEREN'T trying to hide it. Maybe this is normal in Japan, or maybe SCANDAL fans are really understanding and chose to cut Haruna and the band some slack during the time? 

This is in no way aimed at you macdyne, I find you a very thoughtful and likeable person, but the reason I'm banging on about this is because I can imagine how much some of the things that have been said here would hurt Haruna.  Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but hopefully I'm allowed to go to bat for Haruna without stepping on anyone's toes.

I've been in the unfortunate position that I've had songs I've written and performances I've done being annihilated by armchair warriors.  It can be very painful. The most important thing anyone who wants a career in the music industry has to learn is how to ignore people.

James MacKnight wrote:

macdyne73 wrote:EDIT: It seems that most of the Mezamashi 2011 videos are gone from Youtube and the ones that are still there don't show the thing we are talking about. There's one on Youku but I can't load it. Maybe someone on the forum still has the video. You can put in a request.

Yeah, I've been looking for it.  I can't find it either.

macdyne73 wrote:Yes, that was the surprising thing to me too. They WEREN'T trying to hide it. Maybe this is normal in Japan, or maybe SCANDAL fans are really understanding and chose to cut Haruna and the band some slack during the time? 

This is in no way aimed at you macdyne, I find you a very thoughtful and likeable person, but the reason I'm banging on about this is because I can imagine how much some of the things that have been said here would hurt Haruna.  Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but hopefully I'm allowed to go to bat for Haruna without stepping on anyone's toes.

I've been in the unfortunate position that I've had songs I've written and performances I've done being annihilated by armchair warriors.  It can be very painful. The most important thing anyone who wants a career in the music industry has to learn is how to ignore people.

Oh no worries mate, when necessary I defend the band doggedly as well. They have been situations right here in the forum where I had to do things like that. Just ask Jade

I do completely understand how you feel about excessive criticism as I feel the same way. There are subtle, polite, ways to express disappointment and unfortunately, this being the internet, there have been things that have been said about the band that I thought was unnecessarily harsh even here on what is supposed to be their fan forum.

Anyway, this is going off topic. Once you get your 50 posts and gain access to the media section, you'll probably be able to dig up old videos during the height of Haruna's voice problems in 2011. You'll immediately notice the switching especially during performances of Shunkan Sentimental, Love Survive and Haruka to name the three songs where this was usually done. This is not criticism by the way, just relating to you what happened then. From my observation, they no longer (need to) do this anymore.

The topic off Haruna having to lip-sync is actually an old story, you should've been around during 2011 when people were genuinely worried about them and what her voice problems could've meant to the band.

Then the Budokan show came around and all was well again ^_^ Thankfully.

These days, we might get one or two fans pining for adolescent Haruna and how she was then but that's just personal preference, not really a problem. I like adult Haruna more actually :PAnd for the record, I like how she sounds now. More than before.

macdyne73 wrote:The topic off Haruna having to lip-sync is actually an old story, you should've been around during 2011 when people were genuinely worried about them and what her voice problems could've meant to the band.

Then the Budokan show came around and all was well again ^_^ Thankfully.

I only discovered the band a few months ago.  I'm so into them it's unbelievable, as if I was a teenager again.  My friends think I'm having a mid life crisis...  lol

macdyne73 wrote:These days, we might get one or two fans pining for adolescent Haruna and how she was then but that's just personal preference, not really a problem. I like adult Haruna more actually :PAnd for the record, I like how she sounds now. More than before.

I agree, although I won't say I didn't like the school uniform...  

What was quite atonishing for me about this Mezamashi Live and Haruna being sick is that they still wanted them to perform whereas she was completely sick, it really makes me pain to see her struggling with her voice T_T I don't know if it was Haruna's choice to sing, maybe she felt responsible for the band and that she really wanted to do this live but it was a really bad move, when you are that ill you go to rest whatever it might implies (a little break for the band until she recovers but i think that solution was unconceivable for them, and for their staff production in particular, in the view of what are their schedule since they begin; it would have meant to lose money and unfortunately it is the way it goes around in those times).
Anyway, it really gives me the feeling that they didn't care a bit of Haruna's voice and made her sing whatever happened to her -.-,
sorry to be so bitter ^^"

^^ That's also what has a lot of us baffled. It would've been smarter to just let her rest and use other necessary means to get her back to 100% instead of letting/making/forcing (whatever case scenario, we don't actually know, nor should we really speculate IMO) her to continue to sing. But if I do remember correctly, Rina said that pausing for a while and being on hiatus wasn't a favourable choice or something of that matter. Instead, they merely continued their schedule: touring, promotions and new releases; specifically HARUKAZE which had B-sides that really pushed her abilities at that time. Something that really caught me offguard though, was when in the NHK documentary, Haruna mentioned something along the lines of '"they were getting impatient". I am curious who she meant but I'm slightly leaning towards their management. And it's quite sad to hear that people relied and depended on her so much for perhaps the wrong reasons, maybe even too much, to cause her that much pain, (there were times it was so bad that she couldn't even talk at all) but at the same time it was her wake up call to do something.

But Haruna was -IS- strong. She knew to not feel sorry for herself, she knew that all she could do was fix it. And so she did. Slowly, she fixed her mentality & perception of the whole situation first and then as she said herself, it just came back. By the way, Mr. James, if you manage to find the NHK BS Artist Documentary subbed, I assure you it'll be fascinating and insightful to watch, if you haven't already that is.


As for the backing vocals and the lipsynching, I know this might sound incredibly shallow and simplistic of me, but is it possible to just use cut out the parts where it was planned she would sing live and then someone that knew the song like their life depended on it could just pause it for that time being until perhaps a certain word would be sung to let the sound engineer know to begin the prerecorded vocals again?

With the harsh comments, I do see some of them pop up here and there sometimes and I think us fans are the most guilty of them instead of some person who happens to chance upon this gifted band by luck and only watches/listens to them once. And as fans, it's ok to not like something, but there's a thin line between sharing your opinion (which everyone is always entitled to) and rudeness, and you have to know not to cross. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the mods though, especially Jade, and other members like macdyne for their input in these sorts of situations and discussions.

ichiruki! wrote:As for the backing vocals and the lipsynching, I know this might sound incredibly shallow and simplistic of me, but is it possible to just use cut out the parts where it was planned she would sing live and then someone that knew the song like their life depended on it could just pause it for that time being until perhaps a certain word would be sung to let the sound engineer know to begin the prerecorded vocals again? 

It's possible, yes.

The engineer wouldn't do it manually because it's impossible to give an iron-clad guarantee of the kind of accuracy needed doing it manually.  The way you do it in this day and age is to use MIDI code as a syncing tool, using the Most Significant Bit as an on / off switch... Well anyway... The point being that it can be done.

The thing is, it would produce noticeable side effects.

@James McKnight: I have also felt the same way when I first got wind about Haru's voice problems. But yeah, her lip-syncing is very noticeable in their Mezamashi Live in 2011, and also in Girl's Factory 2011, especially in their performance of Shunkan Sentimental. I still have the videos, though it's really painful to watch, but I believe that if I am to introduce SCANDAL, they should also be knowledgeable of this. Surprisingly, most people whom I discuss this problem with that are new to SCANDAL and impressed with them doesn't seem to mind this. I guess for them, what matters is the present and future.

SCANDAL isn't perfect. Well, nobody is. Logically, I should have stopped myself from being a fan ever since I saw her do it (I became a fan around late 2011), but I completely did a 360. Instead, I was cheering for her. I was hoping she'll get better (well, she did). Strange, isn't it? Maybe it's because I was deeply touched by her voice. I have never been completely touched by a vocalist before I got to listen carefully to Haru's voice. Her voice may seem ordinary at first, but the more I listened to her singing, it always left a bittersweet feeling in my heart.  .love. 

A friend of mine, fellow SCANDAL fan and a great singer told me that Haru sounded even better after the loss and recovery of her voice. I do trust her judgement though, since she really knows how singing works. A song in which I like Haru's current voice over her voice in 2008-2010 is Rock 'n Roll Widow. I listened to the recorded version in R-girls rock, and I still prefer how she sounds in their collabs nowadays. I do love her voice in the past as well as her present voice. And I know she'll sound even better in the future.

Wow, pretty enlightening stuff. Did not expect such in-depth discussion as to how/what happened to her voice. Definitely learnt something new about music (Y)

anchiel wrote:@James McKnight: I have also felt the same way when I first got wind about Haru's voice problems. But yeah, her lip-syncing is very noticeable in their Mezamashi Live in 2011, and also in Girl's Factory 2011, especially in their performance of Shunkan Sentimental. I still have the videos, though it's really painful to watch, but I believe that if I am to introduce SCANDAL, they should also be knowledgeable of this. Surprisingly, most people whom I discuss this problem with that are new to SCANDAL and impressed with them doesn't seem to mind this. I guess for them, what matters is the present and future.

SCANDAL isn't perfect. Well, nobody is. Logically, I should have stopped myself from being a fan ever since I saw her do it (I became a fan around late 2011), but I completely did a 360. Instead, I was cheering for her. I was hoping she'll get better (well, she did). Strange, isn't it? Maybe it's because I was deeply touched by her voice. I have never been completely touched by a vocalist before I got to listen carefully to Haru's voice. Her voice may seem ordinary at first, but the more I listened to her singing, it always left a bittersweet feeling in my heart.  .love. 

A friend of mine, fellow SCANDAL fan and a great singer told me that Haru sounded even better after the loss and recovery of her voice. I do trust her judgement though, since she really knows how singing works. A song in which I like Haru's current voice over her voice in 2008-2010 is Rock 'n Roll Widow. I listened to the recorded version in R-girls rock, and I still prefer how she sounds in their collabs nowadays. I do love her voice in the past as well as her present voice. And I know she'll sound even better in the future.

I only discovered the band in the last few months, so I've not been affected by her problems with her throat.  All I hear is that she has a beautiful voice.  I listened to parts of that Mezamashi 2011 performance and I could hear there was some strain on her voice, but it didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the performance.  

She's not the first singer this has happened to and she won't be the last.  I just feel sad that she's been unkindly treated when she'd been through a hard time.

I'm glad to you supported her when this happened to her.  Imagine Scandal with a different singer standing in her place.  It's not the same band.

Hey guys I made a video comparison.
I uploaded to YT but it's already blocked for a reclaim of Sony so...
it's on daily motion

the change it's really noticeable:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x18xped_haru-s-voice_music


NOTE: It's not about  lip-syncing , it's about the change of HARU's voice

sorry for my bad editing XD