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Can You Hear Me Now? The Evolution of Vocal Mixing in Popular Music

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Are lead vocals in popular music getting quieter? A new analysis of 300 top songs shows a significant downward trend.

Popular music’s lead vocal tracks have gone quiet, according to a recent analysis of top songs from 1946 to 2020. Mixing soundtracks so that the lead singer’s voice is prominent is a standard practice in music production, but it’s unclear how this practice and the related lyric intelligibility have changed over the years.

Scientists from the University of Oldenburg in Germany conducted a study of hundreds of popular song recordings to determine the lead vocal-to-accompaniment ratio or LAR.

Surprisingly, their results showed that the LAR for popular music decreased over time, meaning that lead singers are getting quieter relative to their bands.

The study’s findings, published in JASA Express Letters by AIP Publishing on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America, also revealed differences in LAR across musical genres.

Previous research proposed that lead vocals were mixed at a louder level than other instruments, but it focused on songs that did not fully represent popular Western music. To address this limitation, the current study analyzed the four highest-ranking songs from the Billboard Hot 100 chart for each year between 1946 and 2020.

“Due to their diversity, the Billboard Charts are considered independent and representative,” points out author Karsten Gerdes.

After compiling a database of 300 popular songs, the researchers needed to isolate the lead vocals from the complex mixture of sounds in each recording. However, since most of these recordings did not have multiple tracks available, they utilized specialized software to split each song into four individual tracks: vocals, bass, percussion (drums), and all other sounds. In cases where background singers were present in the recordings, the team devised a method to eliminate the influence of these backing vocals and solely analyze the lead singer’s contribution.

“Our analysis showed a significant downward trend in the LAR from about 5 decibels in 1946 to approximately 1 decibel in 1975, after which time the LAR remained constant,” adds Gerdes.

The researchers aimed to identify the reasons behind the changes in LAR values over time, specifically whether the changes were intended to enhance the clarity of lyrics or were due to advancements in music technology. They considered that electrical amplification of instruments and multitrack and stereophonic recording technology may have been factors in the decline. Ultimately, their findings indicate that changes in music technology were the primary drivers of the observed decrease in LAR, up until 1975.

“Another possibility,” according to author Kai Siedenburg, “involves the stylistic evolution within popular music.”

The researchers further explored the stylistic evolution of lead vocals by examining Grammy-nominated songs in various genres such as country, rap, pop, rock, and metal. Not surprisingly, country had the highest LAR, followed by rap and pop. However, rock had an LAR near zero, while metal had a negative LAR. Additionally, the study found that solo artists had significantly higher LAR compared to bands. It’s worth noting that sound amplitudes were computed by subtracting them from the maximum of the lead vocal, which explains why some results were negative.

“Guitar riffs are a distinctive feature of rock and metal, with guitars taking a position comparable to lead vocals,” Siedenburg adds.

The study confirmed this hypothesis by calculating the guitar-to-accompaniment ratio (GAR). Interestingly, for metal, the GAR was found to be a positive number, which was almost equivalent to the LAR for pop music.

Source: 10.1121/10.0017773

Image Credit: Getty

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