Britneyology: Britney on Headphones! Part ! - PoorBritney .

I sometimes think I take to update my database of Britney Spears vocal conspiracy theories like Symantec updates its antivirus protection. Something new arrives every day. The latest was mentioned in the comments on my last article, and was an allegation that Britney doesn`t sing the choir on "He about to suffer me". All I wish to say roughly that is_.

if people listened to music using CDs and good headphones, these theories would never arise, and if they did, nobody would trust in them.

My Sennheiser HD580 headphones and Sony XA20ES audiophile CD player make all the details transparent, and I am glad to support that there`s no cause to think that Britney doesn`t sing the chorus. Throughout most of the song, the choir is divided into a stereo pair of Britneys as is customary these days, but at the first of the final repeats, it shifts to the center "channel" for roughly 10 seconds, and during that brief period you can try a deeper voice, also in the center, behind Britney`s. If that`s of any concern to you! The "three dimensional" capabilities of headphones allow the elements of a transcription to be detached and identified much more easily.

When CDs are converted to compressed media such as MP3, much of the point in the voice is stripped out to write on storage space, but the item removed can work fine distinctions hard to detect. And formerly the item has been removed, the remaining sounds are packed together and large areas of similar sounds are "averaged" to contract and reduce file size even further, resulting in still more sound loss. The biggest loss is in harmonic frequencies, which are necessary in giving a sound, such as a human voice, its singular and identifiable character. To mind to this degraded standard of audio on the common little in-ear phones is to disgrace the listening experience even further. As one specialist audio blogger puts it, "most people aren`t enjoying their music at its best, and don`t love what they`re missing out on."

There are distinctions between backing vocals, background vocals and "additional background vocals", which are all terms you will happen in the credits on Britney`s albums. Once you`re in a position - using your good-quality headphones - to place the different "threads" in a mix, you will frequently notice that Britney is singing most of her own backing vocals, even when she`s not credited - but it may be hard in a complex mix to tell them from a multi-tracked lead vocal. The "ground" or "additional background" vocals lie even deeper in the layers of what you`re normally hearing. On Britney`s recordings they are frequently extremely insidious in effect.

In typeface you may always believe that you`re getting lost and imagining her part in places where it isn`t actually present, there are some "control" experiments available. On the "Oops I Did It Again" album, there are several tracks (such as "Satisfaction" and "What U See Is What U Get") where Britney`s voice only appears on the middle "line" and all vocals to compensate and left of center are distinctly not hers. On some tracks there are "fanchoirs" in gain to the backup vocals, and you can well tell their sound apart from Britney`s. Once your ears become accustomed to the harmonics of different voices, you can constantly keep track of hers.

Aside from the truth about conspiracy theories, what else do we see as we roam around Britneyland with our headphones? Something I find fascinating is the different ways her voice has been presented since the origin of her career. On the "Baby One More Time" album, it seemed like a straightforward feature showcase for a new, young, talented singer. On every track, her voice was planted at center, right in face of the listener, in sight of space, in a natural acoustic. She sang in a middle register that seemed born for her. There wasn`t a synthesized or vocoderized "effect" in sight. But you can find an attempt to make her voice an added physical impact in "Late in my spirit" by placing a percussive bass guitar apparently right in front of her, and in "The Beat Goes On" her voice has extra reverb to go with the initial retro-style context. It`s interesting to learn how, even at that early age, she adapts to different songs. In "E-mail my learnt" you can hear a greater warmth, tenderness and fluency than you ever notice on speakers, and on "I will be there" a much harder edge.

Another cause to mind on headphones is to clean up some of the subtleties of production, and there are lot of them here. For example, the blending of elements makes "Baby One More Time" seem pretty funky - almost gritty - on speakers, but on headphones you name a surprising level of culture and a much cleaner mix than you might have suspected. You can also strand out the different layers of sound, and isolate some strange little details, like the panting sound to good of meat at the first of Verse 1 that changes to a keyboard chord in Verse 2, or the very deep bass notes at 1:55. Note how Max Martin was doing the like matter with choruses in 1998 as Darkchild was doing in 2010.

"Soda Pop" turns out to be surprisingly interesting, although most people don`t value it as a song. Britney has three quite separate vocal lines, at left, right and center, and there`s also a voice that chimes in JUST off-center at odd and good at 1:45. But, although her part is nowadays in all directions, she isn`t involved in any of the harmonies. Eric Foster White was the producer, and he uses just the same techniques in "I will still love you".

Moving on to the "Oops I Did It Again" album, you can see that the overall A&R and production philosophy hasn`t changed much. It`s silence a case for a featured artist, but this time there is greater disparity in the styles of the productions. Some are more expensive and elaborate, with real string sections featuring on "When your eyes say it", "Dear Diary", "Heart" and "Girl in the mirror". "Don`t go knocking on my door" has an identical acoustic to most of the BOMT album - a much smaller, more intimate setting than Max Martin`s "Oops I Did It Again" (the song) which is sonically fuller, with an over-arching synth and big chords and a more reverberating, less intimate ambiance that also encompasses Britney`s voice.

Max still makes tracks to this formula, but it has never been something he`s stuck with. For example, on "Where are you now" the product is simple, acoustic, with all the necessary stillness and calm, and the elements placed carefully to provide blank for a fine vocal performance. This album finds Britney extending the compass of her vocal performance from the straightforward strength and king of "You got it all" and "Girlfriend in the mirror" through to the high, sweet, girlish voice of "Dear Diary" and the soft, breathy, sweet, affectionate treatment of "When your eyes say it". If Britney had a serious talent deficit, it would have been uncovered on "Where are you now?", but her vocal is only beautiful - smoother and better integrated than anything on her first album.

Any odd details to be discovered in going on our headphone tour? Once you`ve noticed them on headphones you can often see them on speakers too. For instance, in "Stronger" did you notice what sounds like a really deep synthesized male voice going "oh-oh-oh" in the first few bars of the poetry? It sounds still more wish that in the 2nd verse. There`s a lot more reverb than usual around Britney`s voice, and almost subsonic sounds like distant thunder here and there. On "One kiss from you" there`s a strange metallic noise that stands out sharply at odd and right during the verse, and an extremely spatially focused bassline. On "When your eyes say it" the train and choral sounds swell impressively across the virtual "soundstage".

And now, the "Britney" album before our tour takes a break. There`s a farsighted and dishonorable tradition of making disparaging remarks about Britney`s singing, and lots of it dates back to this era. The freshness of "Britney Spears the pop phenomenon" was wearing off and the media decided it was time to ask her down a peg or two. It was all too easygoing to get cheap shots based on ignorance and bias and it`s sad to speculate on how many people, even within her fanbase, accepted the generic criticisms without question. She sang a pair of songs in an innocent, childlike voice so that meant her voice wasn`t what it had been; was weak, whispery or whatever. No thing that she sang other songs with enough of force and edge.

It was an unhappy coincidence that this was the era when Britney, with typical modesty about her own condition and enthusiasm for the talents of others, began to establish the call the star, instead of herself. While only about every other singer was adapting songs to fit the characteristics of their voices, Britney was doing the precise opposite. On "Britney" she delivers her interpretations of the needs of each individual song, using a wider and more diverse array of styles than on any of her early albums. With a full sound source and good headphones you can get mired in her characterizations, enjoy her form and subtlety, and fall to a better discernment of what she`s trying to do.

You see her conscious use of a higher register and a more urgent timbre to her part in around of the songs, deploying more enhancements, sounding less warm, comfortable and lifelike than before, and you may question if Britney, or her A&R team, had decided that the clock for showcasing her as a new teenage sweetheart, with cloth to match, was ended and it was time to prayer to a maturing fanbase with tougher material and more imaginative mixes. You may find that, on some tracks, the double-tracked stereo pair to left and powerful are louder than the middle channel, and her voice appears to be more a season in the mix than the middle of attention. But it`s not care that all over the album, and with headphones you can appreciate those songs where an unobtrusive acoustic is giving her voice its true place, and place to shine.

Finally, this album is notable for its "noises offstage", random sound effects, overlapping lyrics, whispered asides, giggling and laughter, and with good headphones you can learn all of this far more clearly, and in 3 dimensions. It`s like being transported into the heart of a little grouping of people listening to music, getting in the channel and having a lot of fun. It`s something I would hate to drop out on!

Next time: ITZ, Blackout, Circus and Femme Fatale.

Karen Wilson is a writer for poorbritney.com and the lord of NewBritneyology.com