As must have been evident to many viewers, singing live is an immense skill which requires the performer to sing in "one take". These types of feats were expected of the old playback singers such as Lata, Manna Dey, Mukesh etc but not so much now as current approach to music production relies on numerous vocal/instrument takes. The difficulty of undertaking the task of singing live must clearly have been apparent from the atrocious live-singing performances of the gurus including Himesh.
However, in the case of the SRGMP contestants, the clarity and consistency of their vocals (which I might add were performed during dancing routines) suggested nothing but studio tracks-the mic levels were either turned low or "killed off" with the possible exception of Mussarat (though there was not enough time to evaluate his performance due to the shoddy editor who I suspect needs to enrol into a "video editing class for beginners"). For me, in this respect, it's extremely disappointing that the SRGMP contestants did not use this opportunity to showcase their ability to sing live.
To quote the words of a track by the legendary rap duo, Run DMC, "Is It Live? I can bravely assert that for the major part of the show with respect to the contestants "it wasn't."
Arjun
