Postmedia News
May 14, 2012
Read more: http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/artslife/story.html?id=e9bae6f8-dcec-4674-a0a3-4101285317c0
This article also appeared in the Montreal Gazette under the title "Giving 10 voices to the people; Straight No Chaser's colourful repertoire spans the genres, and its appeal spans the generations." That link is no longer active, but it had an additional bit that I liked after the last paragraph, which this version has deleted. Text appears below.
"We all have in-ear monitors, which helps us to be able to hear ourselves from different parts of the stage. That's what's important to us: to be able to hear ourselves and sing as if we could be singing off mic," he said. "Occasionally, if the crowd's really into it and we come back out for an encore and the room is appropriately sized, we'll do a song without microphones. It breaks down a wall."
And the gesture always proves to others what is obvious to the singers, Stine said. A man in the audience, he said, recently asked him how they sync up all the tracks they sing to. Stine, baffled, asked him what he meant and the man referred to what he called "the drum and bass stuff."
"I said, 'That's just us. There's nothing going on except us singing,' " Stine said. "Sometimes, when there are microphones or any kind of sound production involved in general, people have this disbelief that what we're doing is real or actually sung. They'll say, 'How did you make the drum noise?' Or 'How do you make the bass noise in Billie Jean?' I say, 'I just sing it.' And they say, 'Really? That was you?' And I'm like, 'Yeah.' So sometimes, it's refreshing for us to sing off mic and it allows you to prove yourself to the audience, who might think it was some kind of trick or something."
Hat Tip: @ShainaEng
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