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I find it so amazing that Tori's first-ever performance as an adult before an audience was earlier this year when she was 20 years old.
Tori not only draws inspiration from Karen's vocals, but also from Richard's techniques of vocal arrangements using layered backing vocals. Her educational background is in audio engineering and music production. When she does her own TikTok shorts, she adds her own background vocals. For example, she records each voice part of both Karen and Richard several times over. She chooses this more time-consuming technique over the easier cut-and-pastes and auto-tune that are now possible with computers, since, as she says, "The layering of harmonies is part of what defines the Carpenters' songs."
Tori said in an interview on a radio interview with Lee Richey that she has studied the recordings of the Carpenters. "The tone that I sing with is all mine, and the range... you know, you can't learn that necessarily, but the nuances when I sing the Carpenters' songs are definitely taken from the original recordings. It's still my voice; it's just using Karen's inflections."
In an interview with Neal Augenstein, WTOP-FM News in 2023 - when she was doing her own short-form videos and before she had recorded any full-length covers - she stated, “I don’t personally think I sound like Karen, but a lot of people do, and they find that interesting... To have the same range as her and be able to sing those really low notes, mixed with my production style."
Contrary to what I had expected, Tori also told Augenstein that she doesn’t remember hearing the Carpenters’ music in her house much as a child: “My parents absolutely love them — they had ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’ at their wedding, of course — but I don’t recall them ever playing Carpenters’ music deliberately. But I only learned of this [love of the Carpenters] after bringing up that I was interested in their music.”
She is quoted as saying, “I’m most comfortable in the studio — I’m kind of a nervous performer."
You're right about James Wilkas and his playing all the instruments in this cover. It's marvelous. I know, based on reading the comments of some of the other videos that Tori made with James, that they played to a click track purposely aligned with the tempos of the original recordings and also adhere closely to the original arrangements. They are doing what superfans do out of love for the music: they try to cook up their own tribute using the original recipe.
As I understand it, the Bacharach-David medley that they did together, was first recorded by Tori as a solo, and only afterwards James Wilkas contacted Tori and asked whether he might be permitted to add the vocal parts of Richard Carpenter to her already existing video, an offer which she accepted, leading to their series of collaborations.
I'll go ahead and add that Bacharach-David medley video (which I had posted in another topic):
Steverino