Hello y'all !

There has been a lot of bitching going on (myself included) concerning Jon's vocals during this tour (or should I say, since roughly 2003).
There are also a lot of people saying that Jon only sounds good in the albums due to the 'magic of auto-tune'. I thought I'd clarify that a little bit for people who may not know exactly how that works, since I make my living as a sound engineer both live and in the studio.

While it's certainly true that you can do an awful lot in the studio to cover up lack of talent, mistakes or less than ideals performances (drums are probably the most common case along with vocals), it doesn't mean that you can somehow magically make something terrible sound amazing.

First of all, as you've all noticed, music nowadays tends to sound a lot more polished and polished than 20 years ago, especially in commercial pop music. No matter how good a singer is, his/her vocals will undergo a certain degree of pitch correction. Drums, beats, basses guitars and others instruments will all be 'aligned to the grid' as well, meaning that any 'human' feel won't be spared, to make sure everything is perfectly in time (even though we, as humans, can't do this all the time).

Now, if a singer is slightly flat, producers will want it perfectly in tune. (Do not confuse this with the 'T-Pain effect' or 'Cher effect'. You can use pitch correction plugins such as Antares' Auto-Tune or Celemony's Melodyne to create an effect, rather than using it for correctional purposes, which is what a lot of people do nowadays - still doesn't mean they can't sing, they're merely using it as an effect.)

However, no matter how much correction you apply to a vocal performance, there are STILL certain things you can't emulate. You can't really cover up for lack of vocal projection or 'power'. This is where the issue about Jon's vocals comes to the table. A lot of times he's not putting his vocals 'out there' during his live gigs. It's not so much not being able to hit the high notes, it's also a lack of power, not breathing correctly and not being able to project his voice like he did in his heyday. Now, do you hear that in the albums ? Can you hear that in Burning Bridges? Some of the vocals in the album may be years old but others certainly aren't. The answer is NO, you can't. He sounds powerful and 'out there'. Why is that ? Because he sang at full throttle in the studio ! He may have recorded 20 or 30 takes, the engineer may have 'comped' the best phrases, vocals and - hell ! - even the best syllables whenever possible to make the perfect take AND THEN used pitch correction. But, again, bear in mind that no ammount of it would create the illusion of a powerful performance. 'We Don't Run' and 'Saturday Night Gave me Sunday Morning' also sound pretty amazing and 'meaty' don't they ? There you go, he did make an effort.

To sum it up, I think Jon's vocals were pushed to the limits during the 80s and 90s and started losing its sparkle during the mid 2000's, which is normal. I'm sure he's visited every vocal coach in the world but hey you can't always beat up human anatomy and age. Sure other singers like McCartney and Springsteen who are older than Jon sound much better live but we're not all the same. It's not that linear.

Jon sounded pretty amazing during 2007-2011 (with its ups and downs, but it was overall better than the last half of the Bounce tour and certainly better than the HAND tour). He's definitely going through a rough moment, vocal wise. Will he recover? Hard to say. This may be it, his vocal cords may be damaged beyond recovery and no amount of bitching on our camp will change that. What I do know is that if that's the case, he oughta know how to a) change the key of certain songs or b) put an end to Bon Jovi's powerful stadium based concerts as we know them and stick to his acoustic solo gigs and sing in a lower register - didn't he always want to be like Leonard Cohen ? :P

So there you have it folks ! Sorry for the long text but I though I'd clarify this for you. Sorry for any typos or grammar erros, didn't really bother reading the whole thread before submitting it.

Cheers