Given the hubbub surrounding FOX's latest television hit Glee, I interrupted my studying this morning to watch the first twenty minutes or so of last night's episode. I'm not going to become a regular viewer, nor do I intend to provide a critical commentary that's particularly broad or insightful.

No, I want to comment on the way that the producers of the show have chosen to present the musical numbers that have (or so I understand) made the show as popular as it has become. As is obvious to anyone watching with even a modicum of understanding of television production, the music backing the musical numbers is recorded and mixed in a studio. It sounds good, from a technical perspective, as it should, given that it was recorded and mixed in a studio with lots of post. And to a certain extent I can understand why the producers choose to do this. It's hard enough to use the live sound from the sound stage or location that most big budget commercial films go to the trouble of dubbing the dialog in a studio.

But I don't understand why the producers choose to give the music a "recorded in a studio" feel. With modern music mixing and editing tools, I feel like it must be possible to process and mix the music so that the music at least sounds like it was recorded on the stage at some high school (or an idealized high school auditorium setting) rather than in a recording booth.

First and foremost, it would make the show sound more realistic. It smacks of Hollywood trickery when the vocal tracks don't echo or reverberate at all, even when a character is singing in a tiled hallway. Beyond that though, the technical quality the producers lend to the kids when they descend into a musical number gives people unrealistic expectations of what they ought to achieve if they decide to take up singing, or another musical pursuit. I'm sure more than a few reasonably talented teenagers have given up on singing or the violin because they can't match the professional musicians' meticulously edited and manipulated performances.

Not that the producers changing the way they post the show's music tracks would likely have an influence on my becoming a regular viewer. The music aside, I just don't find Glee all that compelling.