Tonight with Deborah Norville
Producing and editing for MSNBC’s nightly show — and sitting on the other side of the camera when the network wanted pitch correction explained to a national audience.
- 820,000+ views on YouTube
- MSNBC national broadcast
Singing or Synching?
At some point in the 2000s, the general public worked out that the singing on their favourite records had been fixed in software, and reacted roughly the way you would expect. Was it cheating? Could anyone actually sing any more? MSNBC ran the question as a segment, and needed somebody who did the work to explain it on camera.
That was me, in a studio, in front of a console. The answer I gave then is still the one I give: the tool is not the argument. Pitch correction had been in Nashville sessions for years by that point, doing quietly and quickly what tape splicing and punch-ins had been doing slowly and expensively for decades. What changed was the speed, not the ethics.
The segments have passed 820,000 views on YouTube.
Why it keeps happening
I have now had a version of this conversation on television three times across twenty years, and only the technology in the question changes. In 2023 NewsChannel 5 and WPLN asked the same thing about generative AI in music: is this cheating, and is it the end of the job. It is the same segment. Being the person who had already answered it once about pitch correction is most of why they call.
Related
The book on the same subject is Multi-Platinum Pro Tools: Advanced Editing, Pocketing and Autotuning Techniques. The other television credit is Presleys’ Country Jubilee.