Why video recordings are not the truth about your singing

Why video recordings are not always helpful for singers

One of the main reasons I wanted to write this is something I’ve seen happen. I’ve watched singers who were confident, enjoying their voices and singing freely, come away from a gig feeling doubtful, self-critical and low in mood after watching and listening to a recording of themselves. It may have even been felt that the performance was fine. But the shift happened afterwards, with a phone video.

That concerned me and made me look into this more.

For a long time, I assumed that recordings were objective. I thought that if something was captured on audio or video, then that must be what actually happened. I’ve realised that this belief causes a lot of unnecessary harm.

A recording is not neutral

A recording is not a transparent document of reality. It is a piece of technology making decisions.

Most recordings are made on mobiles, often several feet away from the singer, in rooms with other instruments and sometimes amplification. Phone microphones are designed primarily for speech. They compress sound heavily, prioritise certain frequencies and lose a great deal of harmonic information.

What you hear back is not simply “what happened”. It is what that microphone, in that position, captured and processed.

How microphones can make singers sound flat or sharp

This is the part many singers don’t realise.

Pitch is not just the note

Pitch perception relies not only on the fundamental note but also on overtones, the higher frequencies that give sound clarity and definition. When overtones are reduced, pitch can feel vague or dull, which the ear often interprets as flatness.

Phone microphones frequently flatten or strip these overtones. As a result, singing can sound less secure on a recording even when it was reasonably well centred live.

Instrument bleed distorts the reference

In live recordings, microphones often pick up other instruments more strongly than the voice. If the piano, bass or guitar is slightly sharp or flat, or simply louder in the mix, your voice ends up being judged against a distorted reference.

This can make it sound as though the singer was out of tune, when that was not what was heard by the audience.

Compression exaggerates instability

Most phone recordings use strong compression. Compression makes quiet sounds louder and reduces dynamic contrast. This exaggerates vibrato, small onset wobbles and tiny fluctuations that were barely noticeable in the room.

Sustained notes can therefore sound less stable than they actually were.

Microphone position matters enormously

A microphone several feet away from a band is not capturing “the performance”. It is capturing reflections, timing differences and whatever happens to be loudest near it.

Small changes in position can make the same singer sound bright one night and dull the next, secure in one recording and unstable in another. This is why professional recordings rely on careful microphone placement and controlled conditions.

Why singers often panic after listening back

I’ve taught singers who sang perfectly well in the room and then became deeply distressed after listening to a recording. They were convinced they had sung badly out of tune, when that was not what was heard by the audience or by trained ears in the room.

This is caused by a mismatch between how pitch is perceived in a live acoustic environment and how pitch is represented by a poor-quality recording.

Understanding this makes it much easier to treat recordings with appropriate caution.

Amplification changes everything again

Once amplification is involved, sound becomes more complex. Foldback, the sound that comes back to the singer from monitors, can include delay, imbalance or awkward placement.

This affects timing, pitch confidence and nervous system regulation. It also affects what the microphone captures.

A phone recording taken in these conditions is not a reliable tool for judging pitch accuracy.

One recording is not evidence

A single recording of a single performance does not tell you how well you sing.

It tells you how that microphone heard that moment, under those acoustic conditions, with that balance and placement. That is all.

Treating it as definitive evidence of ability is a mistake, particularly for singers who perform infrequently and do not yet have enough experience to put it in context.

If a recording leaves you confused, distressed or doubting your ability, then it is not serving learning.

What worries me most is the sudden loss of confidence I sometimes see after recordings are watched back. A singer can go from enjoying their voice to doubting it deeply, based on a single distorted snapshot.

That is not musical growth. It is confusion caused by poor information.

A word about recording and consent

It feels appropriate to also mention this as we are on the topic of recording. We have slipped into a culture where people record performances by default, often without asking permission. For some singers, that is fine. For others, it is not.

People may not want to be recorded because they are experimenting, still learning, managing anxiety or simply wanting to be present rather than documented. Knowing you are being recorded may change the psychological conditions of performance, increasing self-monitoring and pressure.

It is always reasonable to say, “I don’t want this recorded,” or “I’m happy to sing, but not to be filmed.”

Not everything needs to be captured. All performances are meant to be experienced first.