People may have the impression that the long-lasting dispute over the authenticity of Cascio songs is a purely musical matter and doesn’t have anything to do with vindicating Michael Jackson and cleaning his good name from false allegations.
Indeed, where is MJ’s posthumous album and where are the allegations against Michael? Most will shrug their shoulders and say that they have nothing in common.
But the truth indeed runs marathons, and 14 years after the marathon started (in 2010) the truth is finally revealing to us that there is a direct link between the two.
Initially the mess over the “fake” Cascio songs looked like an over-exaggerated fans’ concern that the three songs were sung by a soundalike. Then the dispute turned into a war of certain activists against those who didn’t believe their “fake songs” theory. The confrontation led to banning those who disagreed and closure of one of the MJ forums (Maximum Jackson) due to a split in the forum’s leadership.
By the time more serious events emerged the MJ fan community had already been in disarray. The first serious event was Conrad Murray’s trial and conviction (2011), which was then followed by a trial of the AEG Live (2012) – the company responsible for arranging Michael Jackson’s concerts in London.
Both trials looked into the final days of Michael Jackson, filled with anxiety and frustration over the 50 shows forced on him despite his will, and the impossible day in/day out schedule which he couldn’t have managed even when he was young …. however the anti-Cascio activists couldn’t care less. The focus of their attention was on the three Cascio songs which they were still highly suspicious of.
Randy Phillips of AEG demanded that Michael Jackson sang and danced at every rehearsal but admitted at trial that it was no part of their agreement and generally rehearsals are no obligation for celebrities – they usually join the crew at the last moment. Michael Jackson himself repeatedly said to the insistent Kenny Ortega that Kenny should “first build a house and then he would come and paint the front door”, but no one listened to him then and people like Damien Shields, the author of “Faking Michael” series, never listen at all.
How do I know?
Michael didn’t sleep because of all the anxiety and injustice to him, and Randy Phillips added more to it by threatening to take MJ’s children away from him if he didn’t rehearse, and at some point even admitted that he had slapped Michael for not being ready for a public event. Everyone was in shock at those revelations, except Damien Shields. So right in the middle of the trial he triumphantly announced that he had managed to interview Randy Phillips (apparently about issues of his own) and I remember my own interaction with Shields asking him why he chose to speak to Phillips after the latter admitted that he had slapped Michael Jackson.
Shields’s offhand response revealed that he either didn’t follow the trial or was indifferent to how Phillips ill-treated Jackson. The answer was something like “so what of it?” (I don’t remember the exact wording) but it did make me shudder and wonder whether he ever cared about Michael at all. Now I’m told that his reply has been edited to make it look more appealing to readers.
The year 2013 brought even more problems – Robson made false allegations against Michael Jackson which certainly overshadowed the noise around the Cascio songs. So the attention to those tracks had to be kept up somewhat artificially and Damien Shields regularly commented in his blog on every new detail in this respect, often twisting facts or reporting fake sensations in order to rekindle the interest in the matter.
And 2014 was even worse – in May that year Robson’s tales were joined by Safechuck’s lies, which almost buried the subject of those songs, however it was at that very moment that the “fake songs” activists chose to remind everyone of the Cascios and their tracks.
They filed a class action lawsuit against Eddie Cascio, James Porte and their Angelikson company for the alleged fraud of the customers, demanding refunds and damages for the three songs on the album, incl. punitive damages, the coverage of attorneys’ fees, expenses and the cost of lawsuit, etc.
And as if the Estate hadn’t their hands full with Robson & Safechuck already, the anti-Cascio activists put on them another load by also filing a class action lawsuit against John Branca of the Estate, MJJ Productions and Sony who were allegedly complicit in the Cascio “crimes” as they offered to customers a MJ album which hadn’t been properly verified before the release, so all Californians covered by that lawsuit were in for the refunds, damages and the like.
The complaints were made on the basis of a report by forensic specialist Dr. George Papcun who used to work for the CIA (!) and on his opinion about two Cascio songs – “Monster” and “Breaking News” (the third song “Keep Your Head Up” was mentioned only in passing).
The conclusion of the report was as indefinite as it could possibly be – in “Monster” the dialect was found to be somewhat different than in other songs, while in “Breaking News” the dialect was OK, only the name “Jackson” was slightly different from the way it was pronounced by MJ in spoken speech. Also in “Breaking News” the vibrato was faster than the vibrato “in a sample of Jackson recordings” and his “tremolo was smoother and better controlled than the tremolo of the singer in Breaking News”.
In other words, the overall conclusion was totally inconclusive – essentially it concerned only “Breaking News” and abided in uncertain statements like “more likely”, “less certain” and “appears to be”. The glaring omission was the absence of an overall conclusion about “Monster”.
As to “Keep Your Head Up” this song seemed not to be an issue at all.
Now it’s even interesting to observe how the forensic audiologist’s cautious opinion about 1 song eventually turned into a definitive statement about 3 Cascio songs.
Dr. Papcun says:
- “For these reasons, I am led to reject the hypothesis that the singer in Breaking News is Michael Jackson. That singer appears to more likely be Jason Malachi, though that conclusion is less certain.”
The legal papers present the same as if it is about all three songs:
- “Dr. Papcun concluded that it was very likely that MJ did not sing the lead vocals on the Cascio tracks. Counsel subsequently had Dr. Papcun’s expert report peer-reviewed by another well-credentialed independent audio expert who concluded that Dr. Papcun’s methodologies and conclusions were reasonable”.
And the “FM” podcast, which finally reveals the name of the second expert, announces that it is the probative conclusion of both experts on all three Cascio songs:
- Papcun came to the conclusion that the voice on the Casio tracks does not belong to Michael Jackson. Dr. Papcun’s report was peer-reviewed by another expert named Dr. Durand Begault, a veteran forensic audiologist who works for NASA (!) and Dr Begault opined that Papcun’s conclusion was probative, which means that in Begault’s expert opinion it has indeed demonstrated that the Casio tracks were not sung by Michael Jackson.”
However all this rhetoric boils down to the fact that the first expert made a cautious conclusion about one song (okay, one and a half) and the second expert says that the first conclusion was “reasonable” but not “probative” (i.e. not proving anything).
Actually, bold generalizations like the above run like a red thread through the “FM” podcast and their whole anti-Cascio story, each time starting with some nit-picking and finally turning into a massive “fraud” which deserves to be investigated by no other than the FBI in the opinion of Damien Shields.
So much for the “objectivity” of their investigation.
WARRIERS OF LIGHT VS. FORCES OF EVIL
In the last episode of his “Faking Michael” podcast Damien Shields says that on the basis of so much “compelling” evidence, he wanted to file a lawsuit, but after discussing it with another diehard MJ fan he ceded this opportunity to a lady – Vera Serova (my compatriot and a recent immigrant from Russia).
As far as I know she came to the US on a work visa sometime in 2011 and possibly wasn’t even a US citizen at the moment of complaint (the lawsuit referred to her as “an individual residing within the state of California”).
The timing of Serova’s class action lawsuit couldn’t be chosen better even by the worst MJ haters – it came a year after Robson’s lawsuit and was filed in June 2014, a month after Safechuck’s allegations in May the same year.
As you already know, despite Mr. Papcun’s cautious conclusion regarding only one song on the album, the lawsuit boldly stated that Michael Jackson wasn’t the lead singer on all three Cascio songs, that Cascio and Porte defrauded the purchasers and that Sony and Estate were “engaged in deceptive business practices” as a result of which “Plaintiff and other subclass members suffered damage and lost money in that they paid for goods that were not as represented.”
To double check myself , I looked up the back side of the “Michael” album again and found that it doesn’t say that Michael is the lead singer on all (or any) of its songs. All it says is that he “performs” on 9 previously unreleased vocal tracks, and the whole text sounds to me even as a kind of a disclaimer.
- “This album contains 9 previously unreleased vocal tracks performed by Michael Jackson. These tracks were recently completed using music from the original vocal tracks and music created by the credited producers”.
The back side of the album
The litigation process lasted for 8 (eight) years, involved the Californian Court of Appeals (twice) as well as the Supreme Court of California – not to mention high-profile lawyers and various consumer protection agencies who took the side of the poor customers robbed of their money.
In August 2022 it ended in a settlement on undisclosed terms, removal of the Cascio songs from the CDs and all streaming platforms, and a huge amount of publicity and new career opportunities for the lawsuit initiators.
Damien Shields, for example, who previously had a minor job in a marketing firm and was selling tickets to concerts in Australia where he himself was imitating Michael’s dance routines (general admission $34.90, pensioners $29.90), has now proclaimed himself “an investigative journalist” who readily gives interviews and is working on books on the basis of what he investigates.
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As to plaintiff Vera Serova, the brainy girl used the litigation period to a huge benefit for herself – she entered and finished the Law school at California University, became an attorney, and was taken on board a well-established law firm, apparently after bringing them an impressive resume of a winner in a heroic fight against a powerful corporation.
In other words, the epic battle of the warriors of Light against the forces of Evil was won for almost everyone – except the Cascios and their brother-in-law James Porte, of course. This family not only lost their money and reputation of honorable and upstanding people but also a chance to “work in the music industry ever again” (as the activists threatened they would).
Jason Malachi is another exception, of course. Once a budding singer who is also a deputy-sheriff working in law enforcement for 15 years had to move to another home to avoid stalking, and said that no one could imagine what he and his family had to go through during those years – spite, hate and harassment to name only a few.
The Estate isn’t a winner either because they were not only trashed by MJ’s fans on every corner despite everything they did for rebuilding Michael Jackson’s fortune, but they also lost a massive amount of time and money during the 8-year long litigation forced on them by the fighters against evil embodied to fans by those horrible Cascios.
But the biggest loser in the battle is of course Michael Jackson himself, because when/if the Robson & Safechuck trial takes place in 2026, the Cascio children, who were brought up practically by Michael’s side and were his best friends until his last day, and who could testify to his complete innocence at the trial, have been gravely discredited, intimidated, character-assassinated and unspeakably tarred (all in the name of truth of course) and are now considered totally untrustworthy, while the so-called honest people who did it to them are being applauded.
Of course these people are celebrating now – their vilification job has indeed been “well-done”.
However the end result is far from being the truth because their so-called investigation is full of half-lies, one-sided stories, misrepresentations and extreme cherry-picking. It silences the key factors that don’t fit their narrative but blows out of proportion insignificant trifles. It presents opinions as proven facts, and it is only their excessive repetition from one episode to another that makes them stick to your memory as something really solid.
The “Faking Michael” podcast claims that the opposite side has been offered an opportunity to tell their story too, but provides only a couple of statements from Eddie Cascio’s interview to James Bull (Damien Shields’s collaborator) taken as early as 2010 but now effectively hushed up – apparently for fear that if its listeners hear the whole interview they will find answers to their questions, and the carefully built myth around those “fakes” may fall apart with a big bang.
In other words, this so-called investigation is made up of a whole gamut of propaganda elements, and why this propaganda is being given so much attention and why now, needs an answer.
THE WAR OF FANS
According to the report of the esteemed Dr. George Papcun, the main complaint about the “Breaking News” song is the vibrato which is faster than the vibrato “in a sample of Jackson recordings”. The fast vibrato was noticed by almost everybody and sounded not only faster but also somewhat unnatural and even digital to some listeners.
Later on the three Cascio songs on the album were supplemented by nine more songs allegedly from the same package which were leaked by some “well-wishers” and ridiculed by MJ fans even more.
No one can guarantee that these songs were the ones that were presented to the Estate by Cascio and Porte and that they were leaked to the public in their original condition, though many fans take what they are given at their face value.
Most of those songs also have a fast vibrato but in some of them it is so exaggerated that it doesn’t sound even like Jason Malachi’s voice, not to mention MJ.
So due to my lack of trust in the leaked songs I can express an opinion only about the three official Cascio tracks, and will admit that when I first heard them in 2010 I noticed the fast vibrato too, but attributed it to the fact that the songs were unfinished, had to be processed, and contained the side-effects of the post-production manipulation (called “artifacts” in sound-engineering) — all of which is unpleasant of course, but unfortunately unavoidable considering the circumstances.
To my big surprise many diehard fans on the MJJ Community forum who didn’t fall for the “fake songs” story thought along the same lines and as soon as the first track (“Breaking News”) was released said that the song was over-processed but was nevertheless sung by Michael Jackson.
One of them is a guy from Germany, known to MJ’s fans as Korgnex (real name Alex). He is a long-time collector of Michael Jackson’s demos and unreleased songs, a person who made it his business to acquire only “the real thing”, and this specifics turned him into a sort of an expert on MJ fakes – and it was this person who insisted that “Breaking news” was authentic, was sung by Michael Jackson and Jason Malachi had nothing to do with it.
Here are some quotes from Korgnex:
Guys, please wake up.
Well, if you don’t like the song, that’s up to you, but as a contributor to “For The Record” and as an audio expert of Michael Jackson’s singing voice (and owning a collection of unreleased songs as well) I can confirm that “Breaking News” is sung by Michael Jackson, the King of Pop.
There’s no connection between Jason Malachi and “Breaking News”. Jason’s voice on his tracks can easily be distinguished from the King of Pop.
Jason Malachi sounds COMPLETELY different. You’ll realize this sooner or later.
I was amongst the first people who have reported about the sole existence of Jason Malachi some years ago as many fans have been fooled with those fake songs like “Mamacita” etc.
I even made a thread which explained it all as I wanted (and still want) to protect the artistry of Michael Jackson.
I’m hating fakes from the bottom of my heart. At JacksonVillage I’ve created a “Beware of FAKES” thread many years ago. I was always up-to-date with the fake stuff that has been flooding the internet since.
Again: ALL songs are 100% Michael Jackson.
The whole fake allegation is bogus and it splits the fanbase into 2 camps. Don’t let that happen.
However the “fake songs” conspiracists were screaming louder, were omnipresent and attacking everyone who expressed a different opinion. Eventually every subject on MJ fans’ forums turned into a hate thread against the Cascio songs and against “not real” fans who dared to have a different opinion.
At one point Korgnex asked the activists’ leader Damien Shields to please stop it. Shields left of his own free will, but a certain “Stella Jackson” (who is actually a man) appeared and the hatred against everyone who disagreed continued at an even bigger scale.
You can see how bad things were from the comments of the same Korgnex and Ivy (the forum moderator and author of the “Daily Michael” blog) just half a year later. What’s interesting is that the war was one-sided only as it was waged only by the anti-Cascio activists against everybody else.
KORGNEX: Hello,
to cut the matter short: There’s currently much hatred towards the Cascio’s, Sony Music, The Michael Jackson Estate, the producers and other participating people.
Fans are conducting some kind of war – against themselves. I had to face that on Twitter, Facebook, on the forums, virtually everywhere, only accusations are being made by those that believe the Cascio songs to be fake and that Jason Malachi shall be the singer towards all fans that have a different opinion.
Due to the fact I’m also best-known on the forums for many years now and I’m known as well for not believing into a conspiracy, I became the target of these attacks, too. Yesterday, for the first time ever I was heavily publicly attacked by a user on this forum (MJJC). Even some reference to the “KGB” was made. I understand nothing at all of this (why mention the KGB???)
The remaining Cascio songs will most likely be leaked soon by people that don’t care about the future and the law, so you can enjoy them.
However they will only be leaked in order to further proclaim their frustration and anger towards Jason Malachi and to limit the forums on one topic only once and for all.
I run out of steam because of this garbage. For me there goes the Michael Jackson forums, the crazy fanatics can stuff it.
Take care,
I’ll be staying here but as of now I’m inactive only.
Alex (Korgnex)
Ivy:
I wish Korgnex change his mind. I too have been at the receiving end of hate due to this topic both on this forum and on twitter as well. It’s a sad time when people cannot respect difference of opinion and feel like their hate is justified just because you think differently.
The “fake songs” activists were also outraged that that Sony and Estate didn’t disclose the names of the two forensic musicologists who, same as Dr. Papcun, analyzed the Cascio songs but came to the opposite conclusion – that the songs were authentic and sung by Michael Jackson.
This “secrecy” was seen by them as a sure proof of the fraud, however given that the hate and craze around those songs was getting completely out of control, it was obvious that the two experts did indeed require anonymity.
Here is one of the most polite excerpts from that discussion.
BUMPER SNIPPET: Well, what’s the easiest and the simplest explanation for not giving the names of the official analysis by the “top forensics”?
ivy : Simple answer – because they would be stalked/followed and harassed. Weren’t and aren’t Cascio’s followed/stalked and harassed? Cursed? How many people sent curses to Frank on twitter? Do you remember the debate we had about comments about Cascio’s mother and how inappropriate it was to bring her into this mess?
And let me tell you that for 4 years a small group has even been cursing, stalking and harassing me – because of my opinion on these songs. Merely opinions, I had nothing to do with these songs. (I have hundreds of screenshots to prove it.)
So it makes all the sense in the world to preserve anonymity of the people – regardless of who they are. Even aside my personal experience, we have seen harassment Frank, Teddy Riley, Executors received. Vogel is still being harassed on twitter for being “pro-estate”.
Due to this description we can imagine what amount of hatred was targeted at ordinary people for simply voicing their opinion about those songs. But I cannot imagine what the Cascios, James Porte, Jason Malachi, Teddy Riley and their families had to endure day in day out for 14 years from 2010 until today – because the “FM” podcast is resurging it all over again now and is preaching its religion to a practically new generation of people and MJ’s fans.
Apparently, the matter of smearing the Cascios is really so pressing and relevant for today that it needs to be taken to a new level of publicity and be solidified into a permanent and unquestionable myth.
Korgnex noticed this mythology-building tendency already a year after the whole thing started and was saddened to see how the fixed ideas of some “crazy fanatics” were turning into well-established so-called “truths”, even despite the fact that they were based on lack of knowledge, lies and pure speculation.
Michael surely didn’t want any “war of the fans”. Unfortunately such fan wars are quite common nowadays.
I could explain how myths such as “$ony killed MJ” or “Ca$cio betrayed MJ” and a lot more of this type have initially developed from and how (conspiracy) theories and rumours have surprisingly turned into well-recognized so-called “truths” (by some fans only though), based on lack of knowledge, pure speculation and the telling lies……but people that really want to seek the truth, have to do it themselves and won’t listen to me anyway.
Ironically those fans that attack other people and tell themselves they would do what MJ would have appreciated, are actually – without realizing it – doing the same things that Michael had to face for most of his life: PREJUDICES.
SOME of you doubters have no respect for opposing views of other individuals. You’re declaring yourself and other doubters to be the sole authority who knows everything about Michael Jackson and his friend Eddie Cascio and dictate for the rest of the fan community that you know everything about the songs and that there wouldn’t be any chance that you’re totally wrong due to a simple lack of knowledge. You know NOTHING about these tracks.
This is called propaganda. Many fans (including me) do not support propaganda.
The above diagnosis is perfectly correct. Led by the dubious goals of some activists many Michael’s fans are guilty of exactly the same that Michael himself had to face all his life – PREJUDICES and PROPAGANDA, both of which are based on lack of knowledge and someone’s desire to dictate their will to others.
So let’s help people to get some knowledge on the subject and look at what this vibrato is all about, especially since the conspiracists regard it as their “most compelling evidence”.
“THE MOST COMPELLING EVIDENCE”
As you remember the first to announce the Cascio songs “fake” due to the vibrato were the Jacksons who tweeted it around the world without giving it a second thought.
TJ Jackson:
Sounds like Jason Malachi to me too. The vibrato is a dead give away that it’s not my uncle. Fans, I am so sorry you were put through this.”
Prior to that Taryll Jackson and Cory Rooney attended two listening sessions arranged by the Estate and Sony and also raged about the vibrato, as well as some other things. Here is what episode 4 of “FM” says about that discussion:
“Taryll and Rooney pointed out that the singer on the Casio tracks was pronouncing certain words differently to how Michael would pronounce them, but in the same way that Jason did on his songs. They also pointed to the vibrato as one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that Jason and not Michael was singing the lead vocal.”
“Taryll started getting really upset at the fact that the conversation even was necessary because of just how crazy the record was sounding. Taryll pointed out that Casio and Porte stood to make millions of dollars if Sony and the Estate believed these songs were real. That in itself Taryll said would be more than enough reason for them to lie.
According to Lawanda Taryll was going ballistic threatening that if the Estate didn’t scrap the Casio tracks he would go to the media and expose the entire thing.
“At that point Teddy [Riley] got mad and left the meeting, and at that point Teddy had flipped and was like he wasn’t going to stand up for Taryll or Mrs Jackson”.
Other faults found with the songs were the absence of Michael’s trademark finger snaps and foot stomps as well as the copy-pasted parts in some of the tracks.
Engineer Michael Prince recalls how obvious the copy and paste edits became when they heard the a cappella vocals without any music behind them. “They played a lot of a cappellas because we said we need to hear the voice naked. And you could hear all the edits, I mean it was just edited to shit, you know”.
But despite all the red flags including the lack of Jackson’s trademark finger snaps, hand claps and foot stomps, the badly controlled vibrato and the obvious cut and paste edits Prince was still on the fence regarding whether or not the King of Pop was actually singing on the tracks.
Michael Prince: “They’re playing it for you, and you know, it’s like I’ve never heard him sing these lines before [so] it’s possible it could be Michael. Cory, I’ll be honest with you, it sounds like him in parts, there’s times it sounds like him, but I’m not going to confirm that it’s him. And now I listen to that vibrato and it’s just … it just sounds so fake.”
Michael Prince said that while it sounded like Michael to him he couldn’t say for sure one way or the other. “It’s what I told the Estate. It sounds like Michael. I said I can’t tell you 100% it is and I can’t tell you 100% that it isn’t.”
Lawanda explains that her approach was simple – go to the people who performed and recorded with Michael their entire lives and ask them what they think. “I only trusted his brothers because they know his voice. I really didn’t care about what other people felt. And his brothers didn’t think it was him.”
Regarding the opinions of the engineers Lawanda recalls: “And then you go and get all the engineers that work for him and they all said, we can’t say it is, but everybody agreed that something was wrong with the vibrato.”
Sound engineer Matt Forger believed that it was Michael but even he wasn’t willing to say it definitively, because “definite” for him meant sitting beside Michael and directly hearing his voice.
Matt Forger: “When I say something definitively, it’s because I sat in the room and I did the work, and heard Michael’s voice in there. I know people can copy Michael very well and I can’t say that it’s impossible to fool people, and I think that’s why it is unsettling. Unfortunately there’s going to be this difference of opinion there. Without Michael being here it’s someone’s word against someone else’s.”
So in a situation when it’s the word of one against the word of another, the big question is why there was so big a difference of opinion between the hesitant sound engineers and the adamant Taryll Jackson whose ears were telling him that it wasn’t Michael and who went ballistic at a mere thought that the matter needed a discussion?
This is because sound engineers realize that nowadays you can no longer believe your ears as they know how unbelievably a singer’s voice can be changed by a DAW.
Note: DAW is an acronym for Digital Audio Workstation. DAWs cover every part of the music-making process from recording digital audio through creating beats and melodies with virtual instruments to adding effects to make everything sound great and perfecting the final mix of all the tracks.
So when the sound engineers were listening to that vibrato the biggest puzzle for them must have been not the vibrato itself but why it hadn’t been removed before presenting those tracks to the Estate. DAWs were perfectly able to eliminate any such defects in the recordings even before they reached Teddy Riley and other producers.
This is why the vibrato could look to them as being left there almost intentionally, and I bet that the only real puzzle for them was the circumstances in which that vibrato appeared and why it had to be left there at all.
In fact, if someone wanted to make a “perfect” MJ fake by inviting a singer who sounded almost like Michael except for the vibrato, they could have easily removed the defect because in 2010 there were numerous possibilities for doing it.
The DAWS could have slowed the speed of the vibrato or removed it altogether, and this could be done without changing the pitch of the sound and other characteristics of a human voice!
The anti-Cascio activists will claim that at that time there was no known technique to do that but these people either don’t know or are telling you a BIG FAT LIE.
To see what the situation was really like then, we’ll need to make a short dive into the miraculous world of sound engineering.
THE WORLD OF MIRACLES
So what is a vibrato?
Vibrato can be produced not only by a human voice, but by almost all musical instruments to make the sound more expressive. Its effect consists in a regular, pulsating change in pitch which can be described as a ripple in a pond, only in its audible version.
The opposite of vibrato is a straight tone – a note that stays constant in pitch, without any fluctuation. When the straight note starts wavering slightly up and down in pitch at a regular speed it turns into a vibrato.
Here is what experts say about it:
- Vibrato is a regular fluctuation in pitch and intensity. It is important to consider two things when analysing vibrato. One is the extent of the pitch variation, how far off the central note the sound goes. A vibrato that goes far off the central note is a ‘wide’ vibrato and one that doesn’t go far off is a ‘shallow’ vibrato.
The extent of the vibrato may be shallow (A) or deep (B). Shallow vibrato is close to a straight sound and looks like a flattened wave.
- Then there is the speed of the vibrato, whether the pitch fluctuations are fast or slow. A desirable vibrato is controlled, pleasant to hear, and feels very free and natural.
The rate (speed) of the vibrato may be slow or fast. Sometimes the fast vibrato is called tremolo, but it isn’t quite correct.
When the vibrato is too fast it produces a bleating, shaking sound which isn’t very appealing to the ear unless it is a gimmick meant to produce a comic effect. I hear that singer whose name is Post Malone turned a fast vibrato into a “shtick” of his own which is even called “the Post Malone effect” now.
Jason Malachi’s vibrato is closer to that bleating sound but is actually not that bad, otherwise it wouldn’t be so easily mistaken for Michael Jackson’s voice.
The voice coach below will show you the different rates of vibrato, and when she exaggerates it she calls it even “ridiculous”.
The first of her illustrations is a fast vibrato (with a bleating sound), then comes a slower one, then a straight tone (without any vibrato and looking a little boring) and then the vibrato with inconsistent fluctuations (which are hardly noticeable to an average listener).
Pop singers generally don’t use vibrato unless they want to add a little embellishment at the end of a long drawn, sustained note.
For opera singers, conversely, vibrato is a must, and the fun fact here is that it is used by them not only to make the sound fuller and more expressive, but it also helps them to survive the several hours of singing over the orchestra and without a microphone, because the vocal cords relax during the vibrato, and singing becomes easier – if their breathing technique is correct, of course.
Another fun fact is that the “early opera” singers (who sing in Baroque style) are requested not to use the vibrato, because it is generally considered that women’s roles during that period were performed by boys who had clear and non-vibrato voices.
Anyway, this is what a sound engineer sees on his monitor when he hears the vibrato of a professional opera singer (above) and “an early music” opera singer/or pop singer who adds vibrato only to the end of a sustained note (below).
Opera singers always sing with a vibrato (above graph), but pop singers and “early music” opera singers use it rarely and mostly to embellish the end of a long sustained note (below graph)
In case a pop singer wants a vibrato, but is unable to produce it, sound engineers can easily add it to their vocals.
They can also change the depth and rate of the vibrato, or remove it altogether – and do it without changing the pitch of a sound!
Vibrato rate and vibrato extent. The straight line up above is the center of the pitch
And all these miracles are done not only by DAWs themselves, but by supplementary plug-ins which may be added to the existing DAW. By now there is a whole variety of such plug-ins and before we see which of them were available in 2010 let us first look into how this magic works.
Here is the illustration of the process by a sound engineer named Thales.
Thales explains:
Do you want to add vibratos to your vocals in post-production? I’m about to show you how to artificially add natural sounding vibratos in Ableton Live with a simple trick.
Note: Ableton Live was launched in 2001, so this equipment could easily be used by sound engineers in the period we are interested in.
Hey, I’m Thales, pop music producer, and this fake vibrato technique works on every DAW — even without Autotune, Melodyne, Waves tune or any pitch correction software. All you need is a delay and a tremolo effect.
Just so we’re on the same page, a natural vibrato is a slight variation in pitch, going up and down, with a shape that resembles a sine wave, and it happens pretty quickly, at around 6 hertz. And to recreate that in your favorite DAW, we’re going to load a delay plugin, and automate some parameters during the words we want the vibrato to happen.
The technical side will be omitted here, so let us fast forward right to the miracle-making part of it at 3:29. Forget the explanation and focus just on the effect it results in:
Thales: “Pick the words to which you want to add the artificial vibrato, turn automation mode ON, click your new macro and draw curves like this one. I find it to sound more natural when you don’t start the automation at the beginning of the word.
I prefer to draw a fade, like the vibrato is getting stronger as I hold the notes. That’s usually the pattern of a real vibrato.
Notice I keep it discreet to sound more natural, but if you go back to your mapping controls and make those values higher, you can exaggerate this. If you want to get freaky, this is how you do it.
Also, depending on the singer’s technique, the vibrato can be faster or slower than that. Sometimes it’s a much faster rate. If you listen to Post Malone, you know what I’m talking about. Something around 8 Hertz seems to do the trick for a cool fast vibrato effect.”
Another lovely sound-engineer explains that it is equally easy to remove the vibrato if you don’t want it any more:
This video looks at how to artificially create vibrato and also how to remove vibrato from a vocal track.
Fast forward to 5:56 and here we are:
Removing Vibrato
“Now there may be some times where there’s just too much vibrato on a vocal and this makes the vocal sound weak and wavery which is normally not what we want and so we’re going to have a look now at how we can remove this.
And like with adding vibrato we can use software like Flex pitch or Melodyne or we can use an Auto tuner plug-in. I just quickly wanted to do an example of Flex pitch removing vibrato. It’s pretty much the same way you add vibrato. You use the middle bottom circle but this time you drag it down and as you can see the line gets straighter. Here’s the before and after [Music].
You can hear that there was much less vibrato on the final note and it sounded less wavery than before.”
And at 7:03 we learn how to remove the vibrato with Auto-tune:
An Auto-tuner can be used to reduce vibrato because it eliminates that pitch variation that the vibrato introduces into a vocal but you do have to be very careful as using Auto-tune can really easily make your vocal sound unnatural. But that may be the effect you want.
Here I’ve loaded up the Auto tune plugin and have set the key signature and a fast response time this will make the vocal sound very unnatural but it will show how you can’t really hear the vibrato anymore. So here’s the before and after [Music]
You can hear the vibrato is gone but as I said it has that robotic characteristic to it now that it didn’t have before.
Now that it’s clear that doing away with the vibrato is no problem at all, which of the equipment mentioned here was available in 2010 and probably even 2007 when the Cascio recordings were made?
To find out we are heading for a site called gearspace.com (“The No.1 Website for Pro Audio”) where sound engineers exchange their tricks and expertise on how to reduce vibrato in a vocal which is exactly the subject of our little research here.
The discussion dates back to May 2011 which is not as early as we need, but is not recent either. This is what they say:
- I prefer Melodyne for vibrato reduction. The only thing you can’t do is alter vibrato speed.
- I’ve recorded some singers with excessive vibrato, and I’ve gotten very good results from Melodyne, nearly inaudible. The process I use is very painstaking though…
- To be honest I find Melodyne’s ability to deal with vibrato pretty limited. You can only increase or reduce the existing vibrato. You can’t do anything about speed.
- I agree too that Melodyne isn’t good at removing vibrato. It remains somewhat present. Antares Auto-tune may be better at that. I feel like it’s better for that perfect/steady type of pop sound.
- The Roland V-Vocal tuner that comes with Sonar Pro has a vibrato reduction control that works fairly well.
- I agree regarding V-Vocal. I’ve used V-Vocal to tame or move vibrato and it works surprisingly well. Simply highlight the area you want to affect, scroll up/down to increase/decrease vibrato, left/right to change speed of vibrato. And you can impose vibrato of varying periods where there isn’t any, as well.
- I don’t know if you have access to Digital Performer, but the “Scale Expression” process in the Audio Pitch Correction menu does WONDERS.
The above discussion makes it clear that back in 2011 Melodyne wasn’t very effective at reducing vibrato as it mostly changed the depth of it, but not the speed. It means that a fast vibrato couldn’t be made slower, but what it could do though, was minimizing the depth of the vibrato so that it became virtually inaudible because the tone got almost flat.
In comparison with Melodyne Digital performer was “doing wonders” with every aspect of the vibrato, and it was available already in 2004, however the plug-in ran only on the Macintosh operating system, so there was a certain limitation for its use.
However the best choice was Antares Auto-tune for Roland VS Recorders. Firstly, it did the job of manipulating the vibrato “fairly well”, and secondly, its updated version was available already in 2004.
Antares Auto-Tune VS was registered in 2004
The most inquisitive can get familiar with a manual for Antares Auto-tune, dated 2005 which explains in great detail how to change every possible characteristic of a vibrato, not to mention changing the pitch and adding various effects to the vocals – and attention please – also doing it in real time, during a singer’s performance on stage!
No wonder that Auto-tune is sometimes considered a killer of real music, and live music in particular.
Vibrato Auto-Tune VS
You can program vibrato depth and rate, as well as a delay before full onset of the vibrato. You can also choose the shape of the variation of the vibrato (sine, square or sawtooth).
By combining a fast Retune Speed setting with Auto-Tune VS’s Vibrato settings, you can even remove a performer’s own vibrato and replace it with Auto-Tune VS’s programmed vibrato, all in real time. Also, unusual combinations of Vibrato Waveform, Rate and Depth settings can be used for some interesting special effects.
Here are the variants of vibrato you can choose from:
SHAPE selects the shape of the vibrato. The choices are:
- NO VIBRATO: Pretty self-explanatory
- SINE WAVE: Changes smoothly from minimum to maximum and back again. The most common choice for a conventional vibrato.
- SQUARE: Jumps to maximum where it spends 50% of the cycle and then jumps to minimum for the remaining 50% of the cycle.
- SAWTOOTH: Gradually rises from minimum to maximum and then drops instantaneously to minimum to start the cycle again.
DEPTH sets the amount that the pitch changes. The range is from 0 (no change) to 100 (maximum change). The default setting is 18.
RATE sets the rate of the vibrato over a range of 0.1 Hz to 10 Hz. The default Rate setting is 5.5 Hz.
To wrap up our little crash-course on sound-engineering here is a short note from Wiki:
Auto-Tune is audio processor software released on September 19, 1997, by the American company Antares Audio Technologies. It was initially intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned.
The 1998 Cher song “Believe“ popularized the technique of using Auto-Tune to distort vocals. It has since been used by many artists in different genres.
Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for digital audio workstations used in a studio setting and as a stand-alone unit for live performance processing. Auto-Tune has become standard equipment in professional recording studios.
In other words the so-called “Cher effect” of distorting vocals has become so popular since 1998 that there wasn’t a single sound-engineer who didn’t use Auto-tune in his studio.
Which means that even if a soundalike had been invited to sing a MJ song, the unwelcome vibrato could have been easily slowed down or removed, and no one would have ever doubted that the singer is Michael Jackson.
And the anti-Cascio activists perfectly know about it too.
Therefore the drama created by them around those songs is purely artificial because instead of explaining other possibilities to the crowd they outright declared the songs “fake” and sung by Jason Malachi, screamed about it on every forum, and for 14 years kept shutting up anybody who voiced a different opinion about those songs.
Why these people were doing it is a subject for another post.
As to Taryll Jackson… Well, he is a singer and not an audio professional, same as other Jacksons, so they could be totally unaware of all that technical wizardry which had to be applied to Michael Jackson’s last songs for the simple reason that he was no longer there. But the huge fault of these people was that they involved everybody in this mess without thinking twice and without even trying to look into other possibilities and origins of the problem.
This is why Teddy Riley who attended those listening sessions was really angry with Taryll and Cory Rooney and asked everyone in his tweets to “read between the lines”:
- Cory is a liar and when he came to my session he was the only one on Taryll’s side. The people who were in that room didn’t want to argue and go back and forth with Taryll who spoke the whole session. What I said in that meeting was it don’t make me no difference whether these songs get use or not. It’s the estate’s decision. We let Taryll talk cause he was very hostile in the meeting. We let him talk as we nod our heads cause you can’t tell an adamant person anything.
- Cory produce and manage Taryll. Connection there…ask why he don’t said that about Sony? Read btw lines.
- They came together prep to convince everyone and it didn’t work.
- James is backgrounds only!!! None of the leads. It’s all mj very processed and it is mj. Truth!!
- We have fbi is on this with a forensic musicolegist. You will see if it goes that far..
Oh, so Sony or the Estate involved the FBI forensic musicologist(s) in the analysis of the Cascio tracks? Then it explains why we haven’t been given the names of these people…
~
So here is the bottom line:
“The most compelling evidence” over which a team of certain activists ruined the songs and lives of many people was Michael Jackson’s vibrato that sounded faster than usual. But that vibrato could be easily removed by the producers of the songs by means of Auto-tune.
If this technique had been used “this most compelling evidence” would have simply vanished with the first breath of wind, while the rest were mere trifles or routine professional tricks done on all singers’ recordings.
And every sound engineer knew about that elephant in the room but preferred to keep silent as it was impossible to argue with an adamant person who didn’t understand their profession.
The only thing they most probably couldn’t figure out was why the Auto-tune technique had not been employed to deal with that vibrato.
So the big question now is WHY the vibrato wasn’t dealt with and WHY it appeared there in the first place.
And to be able to answer these questions we need to dig even deeper.
As for now, the brilliant “Why” by Michael Jackson and his three nephews seems to be precisely the song fit for the moment.