Technology entered every sphere of human life very quickly. In many ways it was beneficial, speeding up the movements of daily life. Its continued advance has left no field in which it does not take part, and it has made people's work far easier. Yet this convenience has often shown us a beautiful, polished face that is far from reality — and the user benefits from it in whatever way they like: retouching photos, filters, changing backgrounds and any other alteration the user, or the client, desires.
Music and song were not spared the wave of change that technology brought to artistic work. Where once recording a song or a piece of music involved a large number of musicians, all present in the studio at the same time and playing the work together, today this is done in studios with only a few musicians. It also allows the tracks of a work to be recorded at different times and then mixed and mastered. The software available in studios today has made recording relatively easy, and gives producers, composers, musicians and singers the room to take plenty of time recording their work. This has had a good effect: they can pay attention to the quality of their productions and be patient until they achieve what they want. Working this way, with the help of studio software, has made the technical side relatively easy, and often — through technology alone — good studios in other countries are used to improve artistic productions.
But as in every other field, in sound studios this technological progress has also been used for corrections and alterations — presenting to our ears a work whose natural voice and character have been manipulated so heavily that we hear a voice and a feeling that do not actually exist.
By analogy with Photoshop, we can call this way of working in studios "Soundshop", because, just like it, software can fix every off-key note and every deviation in pitch and rhythm. In the end, the one being deceived is the listener: a color, a voice and a feeling become fixed in the listener's ear and mind under a singer's name — one that does not really exist and is the handiwork of sound engineers in the studio. So it is not at all shocking when we see a singer and hear their voice live, and hear a feeling, color and voice very different from their recorded work.
These alterations and corrections made to the voice in studios have encouraged many people to become singers in pursuit of fame.
Beyond that, listeners are deceived once again when, at concerts, on TV programs and at artistic events, singers present their work as playback — which is entirely unnecessary, since a listener who wants to can hear a recorded track anywhere. The pleasure of a concert comes from the variations, techniques and different deliveries presented live to the listener, distinct from the recorded version — not merely from seeing a singer on stage or on a TV screen alongside a recording we have already heard many times.
So, were it not for technology, some of today's singers could never have emerged as artists in this field, and the stage would belong only to those who are truly talented artists with naturally beautiful, deeply expressive voices…
Translated from Kurdish, where the article is titled "ساوەندشۆپ" (Soundshop). Read the original article in Kurdish.