World of Weird Al Yankovic

Hello

I have a pretty good musical ear but can't always tell the difference between every note sung live. My question is whether Al really worries about singing 100 percent in key all the time or if his goal is just to impersonate the style of the music? For example with the Nirvana parody is he always singing the same notes every time? Most pop singers today don't even sing in tune and use auto tune or sometimes leave it off key just for the style of the music.

I think with most of the parodies, Al might just be more concerned with singing in key. With the original style parodies, he might put a little more effort into impersonations (see "Bob" and "Headline News").

headline news isn't a style parody though

Al doesn't use auto-tune except maybe to fix a note or two that was off in a recording, to save doing the whole thing over. He doesn't have whole auto-tuned songs like some artists. By this point in his musical career, I don't think he worries about singing in tune- he's sung so much, his voice is trained, and singing in tune is just what happens. I'm sure most of his conscious attention is put into stylistic questions and interpretation. But this would make a great question next time Al does a q & a somewhere.

I know that a human isn't 100 perfect all the time either so singing A# for example all the time probably isn't realistic but as long as it sounds fine to the average person that's all that matters. I do know Al is a good singer but I don't think he's always in key either because after all it's funny music.

I do not know anything about music, but this question has come up before and I believe some music people mentioned that there are several songs where Al changes the key or register of the song in order to fit his vocal range better.

bryce87 wrote:headline news isn't a style parody though

Don't mind Killingsworth.
There is usually at least one headscratcher and one patently untrue sentence in each of his posts.

TMBJon wrote:I do not know anything about music, but this question has come up before and I believe some music people mentioned that there are several songs where Al changes the key or register of the song in order to fit his vocal range better.

'changing the key to fit his range would make sense but still whether he is singing note for note is what my question is.

TMBJon wrote:

bryce87 wrote:headline news isn't a style parody though

Don't mind Killingsworth.
There is usually at least one headscratcher and one patently untrue sentence in each of his posts.

I'm not even going to try to correct myself. There's no way I could bother to salvage that post.

If we're talking live performances of his songs, there are certain situations where he will try to sing as true to the key, as possible. You're always going to have certain situations live, such as the building acoustics, technical problems, that won't allow it. Most of the time this is only based on his originals, which are half of the concert. There is still a significant portion of the concert where he wants to pull off the perfect impersonation, and will completely try to impersonate that artist's live performance, which he's parodying.