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Perfect Pitch for Those Without It
airrage writes "Sometimes technology is a good thing, and sometimes it ends up in a hardware device called an autotuner. Apparently, it allows real-time pitch correction. They are actually being used at concerts. I think we all realize that some singers sound different -- much different -- live than they do on CD's, but this just seems so, so, what's the word: fake?"
didn't Millin Vanilli perfect this 15 years ago?
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
It really comes as no surprise that music during concerts is altered to some extent. Most musicians are marketed not for their true musical talent, but for their attractiveness, or whatever other marketable features the record companies can exploit.
Now I can practice my perfect opera singing while sitting on the shitter reading Daily News.
This seems like a perfectly natural progression. Technology has long been used to enhance human beings. One example is the use of steroids to make the body stronger. Of course, in that instance, there are negative side effects. Using this auto-tuner isn't going to hurt your body, so why not? Now bring on the bionic limbs!
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Homer: D'OH!
Me: YOU FAIL IT!
I would prefer pitch correction done on the fly over some asshat lip-syncing to a recording any day. I'm not sure I'd favor it over a real performance, but I'd have to compare the two.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Cummon... almost everyone in the modern entertainment industry owes their life to silicon(e).
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
don't The Simpsons have prior art on this one?
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
I can see using a tool like this to get the perfect studio recording -- especially after getting a great take with just a few bum notes.
Using it during a performance, however, is just cheesy. Learn to sing in tune, please.
A concert where the artist sounds great, or a concert where the artist sounds terrible? If I pay $50 per seat, I'd like to hear something I'll enjoy, whether it is slightly modified or not. Bad music isn't fun.
Without this wonderful technology we wouldn't have The Backstreet Boys, Hanson, Celine Dion and so forth.
-- So now the world is a bit more stupid thanks to you.
Apparently, it allows real-time pitch correction. They are actually being used at concerts.
Gee, Antares Auto-Tune has been out now for what, 6 years? I have a demo of it on my old OS9 Mac, and you can get a hardware version.
Usually it's used subtley to "clean-up" vocals but Cher really abused it on that "Believe" song. And also Madonna has used it recently on some song and Squarepusher (Red Hot Car). Like the article says it's used a LOT. So are a lot of other effects like reverb, compression, "aural exciters", etc.
It's just a tool like any other. The big-name recording industry completely abuses and sanitizes every track with endless re-takes, splices, effects, equalization, compression, etc., etc., this is just another way to make the tracks squeaky-clean, bland, and lifeless! If you like that "well-produced" sound this should be no problem.
I love this quote from a producer: "It's satanic.. Digital vocal tuning is contributing to the Milli Vanilli-fication of pop music. It's a shame that people just do it by rote.
Uhm, dude, the whole recording industry is satanic .. have you bought any
records lately? MilliVanilli-fication is the norm! I think if fans knew just
how awful most performers are without the technology, they'd wonder why the engineers name isn't on the front of the album!
PS: "Perfect pitch" to me means "being able to identify notes by ear without a reference" rather than "being able to sing on-key" (though I guess the two usually go together).
If you're going to an arena show to see a display of musicianship, expect to be disappointed.
If you just want to turn off your brain and have fun, then you will be right at home, because this is exactly what that kind of music is crafted for.
And I thought it was a technology to help me LEARN perfect pitch.
meh.
News? That stuff has been around for years...Every pop star today uses one in the studio, and on stage. My friend worked at Destiny Child's studio where everything had to be filtered through one of these.... and they are seen as "talented" "singers"...Viva La Pop Music!
I don't want to support horrible artists that need to be autotuned in order to sound good in person. Get some talent!
if by boo you mean yeah, boo-yeah!
should be to completely silence Britney Spears. I only wanna see her, not hear her!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
A lot of concerts are simply entertainment.
Noone ever went to a Kiss show because the music was brilliant, it wasnt, it was goofy garage rock. They went to see big explosions and a guy with blood coming out of his mouth and drink and just have a good time. As an aside, I saw Phantom of the Opera in Toronto with Paul Stanley playing the Phantom. The guy can't sing. But it was still fun.
Don't be so pretentious. Go to concerts to have a good time, not to critique artistic integrity. Start complaining when they start using this at some snooty opera or philharmonic orchestra.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
There is no way Britney and the other stars could make it singing live (when they do, which seems seldom enough) and sound completely different in the interviews before and after the concert but be like on the record on stage.
;).
Fake boobies, fake voice, no?
Umm, auto-tuners have been around for a very long time, this is old news.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
Arg!
Just what we need...
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
This technique has been used in big budget studios since the early 90's but has been refered to be a codename of "Catalyst." Appropriate, as it is the catalyst between a crappy singer and a inspiring vocalist. I guess they just started admitting that some singers sucks mure than you think.
The New Root Council, kickin' ass sinc
Just thought I'd mention that my shower seems to have a similar effect and the cost is zero since I need an apartment anyway! Add the cost of water and I have a make-shift autotuner for about twenty-five cents an hour....
As somebody who actually HAS perfect pitch, I think these things are awful. But then again, this isn't anything new in the music world; people have been altering pitch in the studio for years, even before "autotune". They just did it manually. This is just the next step.
Is it misrepresenting the abilities of the singer? Perhaps. I think people should just find musicians who have the looks AND the abilities.
This is why I have always enjoyed going to the local punk and bluegrass concerts. Much of the scene is about playing the music in the moment. Granted this is not an excuse for mastery of your art, rather it is about being honest and supporting your local musicians.
P.S. Don't steal music.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
There's plenty of good music that comes from people who can't sing. I can imagine technology like this greatly improving the diversity of music because now people who can't sing well naturally can still make good music.
I'd much rather listen to someone using one of these with original, creative music than listen to someone with great singing talent, but singing crappy cookie-cutter music.
So let's start putting this in the hands of the creative people who can't sing.
if(!cool) exit(-1);
Signed,
Lieutenant L. T. Smash
(not spell-checked)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
This technology was previously covered on Slashdot April 2002!:d =02/04/0 2/2121254
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?si
They have perfect pitch.. ALL of them... I believe it has something to do with how their language is spoken.
Just plug in your new "N'Synchronizer 2000" and you'll be able to have an entire pop lineup, sans group! Perfect for parties!
And don't listen to those guys at Sharon Apple... there's nothing to worry about as far as stability and artificial intelligence are concerned!
skye
In other news, the food industry has considered using additives to improve the look, taste and durability of food products.
Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
Karma: +1 for off-topic, mindless, MS bash, obviously without reading the article.
They've had these things for literally years, and they work astonishingly well. The only novel thing is that they are real-time now.
This is not news, it's been going on for years! Even I, a lonely solo artist, have been using an Antares Autotune unit live for 3 years. Give me a break.
This type of functionality has been available for quite some time. That's why no-talent bimbos can become famous on the merits of their great butt. That it's available in real time now is not too surprising. If the pitch correction is too great, it sounds funny though.
Real time correction can make it worse if the pitch correction takes the note to the next half step away. Ouch.
If you need an autotuner to keep you in tune, what are you doing performing a concert at that level anyway?
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
"The presumption that autotuning is somehow cheating is just that, proponents argue, since the technology won't transform a bad singer into a good one."
This is a good point from the article. For myself, I enjoy the actual music more than I do the history and background "behind the music". I listen to a song because I enjoy it, not because the singer is naturally 100% perfect. I sound like a stepped-on frog when I sing, no amount of computer trickery is going to make me into a Christina whatsherface. Frankly, I can almost appreciate the attention to detail that people will go to to protect my ears from bad notes.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
They're advertised "brown bag" style in musician's magazines because they know people would be ashamed to use them. While they serve a purpose for production and mastering (if you like that over-produced sound), their use is blatantly obvious when used live. Personally, I think it's the flaws inherent in the matrix that make living in it more believable. But that's just me.
Anyone who thinks that notes can and should be limited to the 12 chromatic pitches of the equal-tempered music system is full of crap. Read a good book on the history of tuning systems. I can detect an autotune-processed track within seconds of hearing it, due to the utter piano-like lack of pitch sensitivity and expression.
The saddest of sad is when you hear autotune processing on the voice of an artist who understands how to use the many subtleties of pitch, yet bows to the record company execs by submitting to the autotuner.
I don't get it... This is old technology. I've been using Antares Autotune as a cubase VST plugin for at least the last 3 years.
Perfect pitch implies that one has the ability to know what a pitch is. So you can hum a 440 "A" then walk up a piano that's been properly tuned, plunk the "A", and you're right on pitch.
Now, pitch matching is the ability to sing "on tune".
This sounds more like a pitch matching solution, not something that gives you perfect pitch.
.sig
It's about entertainment. We already know that CDs are produced all to hell... if there are the same corrections at live concerts, what's the big dealio?
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Pro wrestling is fake!
And yet it crushes monday night football in both ratings and shatters attendance records around the world. (I believe the Toronto SkyDome's record is still like 60,000 from Wrestlemania, is it not?)
It's entertainment, not art. Just accept it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Why do they do things like this? To make the singer dependant on the label. Without the label, the singer can't sing correctly, so they are tied to the label for their entire career.
It's amazing how different some artists sound when you compare their live vs. album performances. In the past I've generally liked live performances more, but after reading this....I kinda feel that I could have been cheated in some way. Granted half the reason I like going to a concert is just seeing the band and getting a more personal view, (well....if you can call thousands of people crammed into a building personal). Granted I'm still in college so that may have some bering on my
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
I think John Stewart has used this rhetorical method enough. Please do not encourage it.
curtsey
see above
As someone who plays music, I would be appalled to find out that a band who's concert I went to used an autotuner, since I feel it misrepresents their abilities. Sure, in the studio, it's fine to use whatever you want (although I think there is a difference in the integrity of the artist) but live, I go to be impressed by the skill and musicianship of the artist. To find out someone used an autotuner would make me feel like their talent was misrepresented.
In the "heyday" of music, (~10-15 years ago), artists didn't have this kind of tools at their disposal. So acts had to genuinely be able to belt out their tunes on key and in tune.
If so many artists today have to rely on this type of technology, what does that say about the modern pool of talent? Especially in the Pop and Rock genres, where it seems to be used the most.
recording like P**k Fl**d did back in the eighties. I sat next to the sound platform on several of their shows back in the late eighties and a reel to reel was always on throughout the show. Thought it might have been just to record a live album, but after the lead singer (g**m**r) made the same mistake night after night, I got a clue as to what it really was. So in my mind, at least Britney et al. are trying to be authentic.
I think you misunderstood; they are seen as "talent", a term generally used to describe strippers at strip clubs. Like most pop stars, their talent has nothing to do with their singing ability.
What's good for Milli Vanilli is good for the rest of us.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Autotuners have been around and in use for a few years now. Aside from the obvious use of being able to correct pitch on a performance, they also have other uses.
For example, autotuners can be used to change pitch during performance in ways that vocalists simply cannot. A good example (well, most people will know it anyhow) of an autotuner and vocoder used in combination is in Cher's song "Believe"
Antares Autotune is probably the most popular autotuner, and is said to be what Cher's track actually used. It's available in DirectX, VST, and several other versions and has a free trial version for anyone who's interested.
My band used an autotuner plugin when we recorded last year. My singer doesn't have a particularly great voice, but autotune allowed us to spend much less time doing take after take until he hit all the notes right. Yes, it's 'cheating', and 'fake'... but so is recording the same vocal track for two days until all the notes are perfect. There were places where the autotune was too much, and would digitize his voice.. these situations required us to go back and have him re record. In the end, it simply polished off our album a bit more, and unless you are an audiophile you probably can't even tell.
LOL
An old one at that...
Usually they're used when mastering a recording, and in the hands of a good recording engineer, you don't even know they were used. It's not about perfect pitch, it's about hitting a note perfectly (difference between 20/20 vision and batting 1.000).
More recently, Cher used the autopitch as an effect, keeping it on and letting it lock the notes as her voice slid up and down. Now every damn artist uses it, and it's as damn annoying as the robot voice in 80's electronika, but it's still as an effect. If you can't sing, it's still not going to make you sound good, and even if you can, it's still hard to sing like cher did into the autopitch without sounding more like Bette "Dyipthong" Midler instead. Try it, you'll see.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
perfect pitch means being able to distinguish notes by their letter names. so, if I have PP i can hear an F# and tell you it's an F#. it doesn't have anything to do with accurate pitch while singing.
Here's a Sound on Sound review of the DirectX plug-in version of Antares Auto-Tune... Dated August 2000.
...Keith Richards will have a viable solo career.
This technology will help good songwriters with crappy voices more than it will help crappy songwriters with crappier voices.
Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here but why is a singer using pitch-correction any more fake than, say, an actor using a stunt double or a photographer taking several pictures and keeping only the best one?
All three 'tricks' create an impression of a person's talent that is different in some way from reality.
Sitting on top of my bass amp, for the last couple of years. Works very well. Can make me sound like anybody, pitch correction, chorus and Male / Female harmonies with subtle variations, and can shift my voice to the key that's being played by the keyboard player. It's called a voiceprisim+
Robert
I have no range in my voice, I bet this would drop me down to a ~2 note range. Thats ok though, I am a dj ;)
It's because we're all downloading MP3's from P2P networks, the RIAA can't afford to pay for artists that can sign in tune!
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
I recorded an album a few years ago using alot of gear plugged into a Mac (Logic) and we had to use pitch correction the backup vocalists vocals quite a bit.
.. we didn't have the resources to get an intonation processor for our live shows so we got a new backup singer instead :-)
Unfortunately the backup vocalist could never match live what we did on the CD because of the pitch correction
(we also vowed never to record digitally ever again)
... means that the auto-tuner isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'm a guitar player, and I know that compression, for example, can be used in two different ways. It can be used before the mixer to limit vocal or sonic extremes and make it easier to balance with the rest of the band. On the other hand, I can stick a compressor set to an infinite compression ratio right after my distortion and use it to color my sound on purpose.
If this is the same technology that Kid Rock used on his ballad "Only God Knows Why" (I think that's the song) then that kind of treatment fits well with what technology should do for music. Fixing a crappy vocalist's inability to sing is another story entirely.
PrisonerCX
Why, I remember in the good old days, you didn't need electronic enhancement for made-for-tv bands to make shitty music!
I think the technology behind this is hella cool, no doubt about that, but i have to agree that it sort of does seem like cheating, and honestly, imperfection is important to performance.
When i go to a concert i don't want it to sound exactly like the album, I like the fact that the lead's voice is a bit crackly because this is his 10th night in a row and he slept on a car seat the night before. I like the fact that some roadie is going to inevitable cause a feed back loop half way through one of the songs. All of these things are part of the experience, and to have a computer fixing the mistakes as they go along takes something away. When the robot overlords enslave us they will have perfect music, we as humans are not built for perfection.
Still, if they could only build a device that can filter out suck, that would be a valuable benfit to society.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Hmm... any SCO code used in autotuners? Maybe we owe them $699 per CD player that plays these songs.
However, to some people in the industry, these devices are the work of the devil. "It's satanic," said producer R. S. Field, who has used it sparingly on records.
:(
See, I knew the Devil owned RadioShack! THAT'S why he always wants my phone number... he's going to make a boy band out of me!
A lot of the milli vanilli faction already lip sync to prerecorded music. Sometimes just the original track, sometimes the 'artists' will actually re-sing it so that it has a few modifications for authenticity.
So this really is simply the next step to that facade, I guess.
...Don't fake it.
I don't care if people want to "fix" their errors on an album, that doesn't bother me - I can accept an album as a "finished" work of art and enjoy its (presumeably enhanced) merits regardless of the unenhanced talents of the musician (or composer, where that differs from the performer).
However, I go to concerts to see the "raw" work, with no enhancements. If an artist lacks the talent to actually reproduce their work (within reason) in that environment, they should not tour. Simple as that. Selling me the same thing I could have on CD (minus the masses of sweating fans packed in like sardines, $3.50 pints of Aquafina, and idiots who consider a concert a good place for impromptu karaoke) for about $80 less (per pair) does not make me happy.
As an (almost) unrelated aside, another concert peeve of mine - Volume. I went to a concert this past weekend (Tori Amos in Boston) where the performer did well, the set list appealed to me, and the environment in general seemed just about perfect. However, even with earplugs (a must for anyone who actually goes to concerts to enjoy the music), they had the volume cranked so high that the bass completely distorted everything else (as in, I could audibly detect clipping of the vocals at every new bass note or percussive event). This does NOT make for satisfied (much less "happy") concert-goers.
So how is this "news"?
This is what boy bands have been trying to find for years.
All you used to need was good looks and singing talent (although most didnt even have that) and now with modern technology they dont need either.
What ever happened to "talent".
"You're on my side and the dark side, like Lando Calrissian?" --Gimpy, Undergrads
Many artists use the ultimate fake already - if they can do something live that is "fake" but still a live performance, that's better. With all the fixing going on in a studio, some artists would sound very different without at least some of the same effects. If they can do it live, they can at least add some personal touch to it, not just the CD with a sceneshow...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Wasn't that on the Simpsons? LT Smash's boy band?
Many singers are not always in tune. Go back and listen to some old Beatles albums like Revolver ... the auto-tuner would have a field day fixing all the slightly out of tune instruments and vocals. But would it make an obvious classic album more classic? Quite the opposite.
Part of the charm of vocals is that they are organic, even more so in a day and age where every single instrument can be synthesized and manipulated. Being in tune is overrated. You can't "fix" a Johnny Rotten scream. There's no point in auto-tuning rap music. Listen really carefully to some of your favorite singers. Not everything is a matter of being in tune. Some of it's confidence, "presence", knowing how to convey emotion through subtle details.
The worst thing that can happen as a result of auto-tuning is people start preferring cookie cutter, perfectly in tune vocals. That they start thinking N'Sync and Britney and Shania Twain are the apex of pop music. Thankfully I don't see this happening.
perfect pitch is NOT the ability to sing in tune, it is the ability to know the pitch of a tone w/o a reference.
this is a great way to dilute the value of talent. heloooooo, riaa schmucks! if anyone can do it (and can today), then it shouldn't be so expensive! mass produce the music, sell it cheap and be happy and fat without suing your fanbase . . . . sounds like the good old days, huh? when the riaa just screwed the artists, not the fans too.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
One of my favorite albums from the 90's was Nirvana's MTV Unplugged gig. The band insisted that the original recording not be doctored in any way - and the mistakes certainly shine through.
Another great memory for me was seeing Judas Priest live and watching KK Downing drunkenly throw his guitar into the air and miss it on the way down. BLAM!! - it broke into several pieces which he stupidly stared at for a couple of seconds before picking it up to hurl at a roadie. Who also missed it as it slammed into a stack of side-fills. Hee hee hee, great moments in live rock. You never see that stuff any more. Everything is too sanitized and pre-packaged these days.
Anyway, this is what the soul of music is all about, (to me at least), - including the mistakes and sour notes. It adds to the reality of the experience. Otherwise, you may as well just listen to the radio and save yourself the cost of the concert ticket.
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
Even I can see the benefits of pitch correction when used in moderation. It means that instead of spending those extra hours re-recording spots and trying to match the exact tone of the voice where you slipped in pitch just a hair in the wee hours of the morning after a long session, you can instead spend that time creating more music.
As for the live concert thing, it's hard to do a concert lasting more than an hour and not get tired. When your voice gets tired, it gets harder and harder to maintain exacting pitch all the time, and you just plain slip every so often. Sure, most people won't notice this, but the ones who do will leave disappointed that your CD was much better than your live show, not because you used pitch correction on the CD, but because you weren't utterly exhausted when you recorded that track on the CD.
Now when such technology is used to make someone with no sense of pitch sound like they can hold a tune, that's horrible (and beyond the abilities of these devices anyway, in most cases). Such use is an abomination, and usually sounds bad even if it is on pitch.
And before you ask, no, I don't use one, thanks. However, I don't feel any less respect for those who do. Music, and particularly singing, can be grueling, even for the most talented of performers. So before you judge them, let's see you go up there on stage and try it. We'll see what you say when you listen to the tapes.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
rather than to keep the artist in tune it can have it's uses.
I work part time for a small record company as a producer and I don't like using autotune to correct duff notes. If the take is crap I'll get the singer to do it again, and then splice together various different takes to make a final vocal. With a decent mike, nice valve-preamp and a decent (outboard, not software) compressor you can get most takes to sit well with each other. Luckily, the singers we have signed up to us were all chosen on talent first, looks second (they're hot, however) so often the time is taken on getting the feel 100% rather than getting notes in tune.
Where autotune can be used is as a special effect, with a slow re-tune rate and strict tuning you can get the voice to sound somewhat as if it were being put through a Vocoder (though it sounds subtly different, much less harsh and robotic). You can get the voice to do some really wierd things that you know voices aren't meant to do.
If used sparingly and only on the kinds of tracks that warrant that kind of sound AutoTune is the mutts nuts.
Cher's believe wouldn't have been the hit it was if it didn't have that quirky vocal (there's still some debate over whether this was autotune with extreme settings or a vocoder).
I am NaN
Probably not the same quality, but a few months ago, I saw Wal-Mart selling a karaoke device that claimed to support auto-tuning. My aversion to the idea of a home karaoke device fought off my geek tech curiosity, though, so I couldn't bring myself to plunk down the $80 (or whatever it was) to take it home and try it out.
Fake Boobs?
.sigs are for post^Hers.
I used to do session work (as a bassist) in Nashville and can tell you even folks like Garth Brooks used these in studio. Recently, George Strait used one as well (Stars on the Water) but not to hide any inability to hit the notes, but for a particular effect eliminating sliding notes. It's interesting technology, but just adds to the major labels ability to give us the pretty singers rather than the talented ones.
As long as 10 years ago, digital recording/editing was used to get rid of sour notes in strumming, solos, etc... and to "humanize" rather than "quantize" the rhythm so it would be almost perfect rather than perfect and machine sounding.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
A-ha! That explains King Diamond!!!
Anyone ever listen to that dude? Back in the late 80s? I think he had a vocal 'range' of over 8 octaves..
It was either this device, or some type of testicle clamp..
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
Ugly, plastic music for ugly, plastic club kids. Give me Janis Joplin & Big Brother rather than Cher (and all her 2000 parts) any day of the week.
Without the "raw and loose", without the personal voice and individually flawed sound, music is just audible math and little more.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Blue Man Group's rock concert "The Complex" is a parody of rock concert. At the beginning of the show, a voice comes on like this (I'm paraphrasing):
Thank you for purchasing the rock concert manual. This manual will teach you to how host a rock concert. The most important thing for performers is choreography. Will the advent of autotuners and backing tracks, performers can now focus all their attention on dancing. You no longer have to worry about things like hitting the right notes or showing emotion. Start by loosening your hips. Now, lets try this simple beat...
They performed this on Leno recently as well. It is quite funny how they make fun of all the rock concert cliches.
Well yes. Studio recordings now emply autotuners, vocoders (thanks, Cher), an array of samplers and other digital sound make-up. Result -- clean sound, less worries for engineers, more harmony and polished sound. Those who're not into polished sound probably do it too, just tune them in opposite way :)
What amazes me is nobody complains about regular make-up for stars (of any caliber). Have you ever seen your favourite movie star without make up? How about a tv announcer? Not quite the same, huh? Yet nobody screams "CHEATING!!!" because it's a part of professional life. Why sound should be different?
Hyperom.com
Autotuners are here to stay, we should get over it. They will get more sophisticated, and be used by more-and-more artists, and consumers.
Also, what should consumer's expect - especially since the onset of MTV? Essentially, the current premium in pop music os to *look* good (hip); *sounding* good is important too. Thus, if current audio technology permits somewho who looks 'good' (right for the venue) to sound good (even if they don't have vocal talent), why not.
Thus, rather than diss autotuning technology, those who complain might consider Antares (and other) autotuners a sign of the pop music times.
Lastly, this technology will eventually make it into consumer devices. Can yo uimagine being able to 'sing' a pop song "in tune" with the original instrumentals, after the pop star's voice has been digitally muted? Or, singing along with the pop star on a CD/music video that's running on your game console (with all requisite tuning siftware built in)? How about singing your favorite aria via cell phone, and having your tune sent to a friend, or Mom. These things, and more, will happen as a result of autotuning technology.
If nothing else, autotuners help us all to appreciate just how rare a great, always-in-tune, expressive singing voice really is. In an odd way, autotuning technology will help create more respect and awe in the presence of great, un-retouched singing.
...some songs just suck. *cough*Cher*cough* Some of my favorite tunes were created before the advent of the transistor, for goodness sake. :P Not to mention that I don't think an autotuner exists that could clean up death-metal vocals.
It would be interesting to take some of those really god-awful American Idol contestants and run their voices through one of these things, see what happens.
If I had one, I'd have to have one with little robot arms that it could throw up in disgust when I tried to sing.
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send your fingerprints off to Washington."
Here's a related read. It's long, but very entertaining. Of special interest is the hilarious account of how the drum tracks for an entire album were edited at great expense, because the drummer couldn't play the drums to save his life.
People that speak native Chinese are a lot more likely to have perfect pitch because pitch is an integral part of the language. Pretty cool
My friend used this technology on a cd he recorded and it made him sound a lot better.
The "auto-tuner" has been around forever and is standard fare in any producer setup. Some audio engineers (as in the article) are using it for live performances, but some producers actually use it with a horde of other tools to build interesting effects. It's almost an instrument in itself especially when fed off a tone generator or synth.
Hmm, if you play an electrical instrument, there are devices you can put in your effects loop that tell you whether you're in or out of tune and how much to correct. That doesn't seem so different from this, except that an inline tuner won't do the pitch shifting for you. It seems like this is just giving singers a capability that already exists for other musicians.
It's overuse and misuse. I have a copy of Auto-Tune 3 (yes, a REAL bought and paid for copy) but you'd never know it from listening to the music I record.
Here's a real-life scenario: I'm recording a singer who is pretty good but there's one note that they can't quite hit today. We could scrap the session and do it again later - even good singers have trouble hitting all the notes all of the time - but that will cost the client hundreds of $$$. Alternatively I can fix the one note that's not quite there. I wouldn't try to correct every little shaky bit of intonation in the entire song, just the one that's really sour. What would you do?
Or how about this? Got a great bass player laying it down. Good tone, good part, one note played near the end of the neck is a bit off because the intonation of the instrument needs adjusting. Would you fix the note with Auto-Tune or scrap the session ($$$) and ask the bass player to get the intonation fixed? I'd do the expedient thing - fix the note AND ask the bass player to get some work done on the instrument before the next session.
What drives me crazy is the obvious warbling and perfectly pitched effect you hear on all of the modern pop and Nashville country CDs. Nobody can sing like that, it sounds like a machine. That's misuse of what can be a very subtle and powerful tool.
"Clean up the air and treat the animals fair" - Captain Beefheart
Cher and the material girl have used them on stage for a while. We use to joke about how Paula Abdul did 1 album without it. Her last. (Yes, that was album, not performance.) Face it, these are visual performances, not music performances. If you aren't there for the lights, dancing or atmosphere, then you are being ripped off.
Dan
Ancient history folx. It has *so* been done before.
Remember the group Blondie?
Hedley
1/2 the enjoyment of listening to music is that differenet artists sound different. That there is something extra at live performances. If I wanted to hear the same music over and over I would leave a Britney Spears CD on auto repeat
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I propose that there are two types of performers who use these: The ones with utterly no talent (most of the ones listed in the article), and the ones who may have talent, but are too busy dancing and performing acrobatics onstage to nail their notes. (not that an athletic performance is a sign of talent, but Cher played in town the other night, and I can't write her off as utterly talentless.)
So we have talentless shills, and visual performers who don't focus 100% on their music onstage. Are we REALLY causing any damage with them, or for that matter, are we very interested in listening to the singing from these people?
Somehow I don't see Happy Rhodes using one of these.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
This isn't anything new. Antares (antarestech.com) released the first product in 1997, and it's been used extensively in most studios since. In fact, I just got back from the music store checking out the Antares AVP-1 rack unit which has a compressor, gate, auto-tuner, parametric EQ and other nice features in it for the price ($500).
:)
The fact is, I really enjoyed watching the band Chicago live on Camp LeJeune's 4th of July celebration in 1991(?) when the troops had just came back from Desert Storm. It was a real performance, complete with voice cracking and singing off key, and though it wasn't a studio quality perfomance, it was fun to listen to. However, if you heard the same songs on the radio next to other studio recordings that were mastered, mixed, auto-tuned, etc. until it was a close to perfection, you'd think they had no talent.
Most vocal recordings include a high end condensor mic, a compressor / limiter, a gate, an EQ, an auto-tuner, a mic-preamp, an EQ, and sometimes a microphone modeler. That's BEFORE the editing begins. Most vocal recordings take 30+ takes to get it right. All an auto-tuner does is save the poor producer from having to take as many takes due to off-key notes. If they don't use an auto-tuner, they're just going to record the track over and over until the artist eventually gets it right, tuner or not, then spend days going through all the takes doing a cut and paste.
If you can't sing to begin with, this doesn't make you a better singer. On stage, it just helps. If you think it's easy hitting every single note, pitch perfect for an hour while bouncing around the stage, think again. Personally I'd rather hear a real performance live if the band is good, but I'm fine with hearing a "studio" mastered recoring on my CD's.
Then again, I've heard Axel Rose live. Maybe Antares did too. Necessity (or is that greed?) is the mother of all inventions.
From Antares' site:
Female singer before
and after processing.
Lots more at the product info page.
...has been going on for decades. When the Beatles went the way of Sgt. Pepper, Bob Dylan retaliated with John Wesley Harding.
...in the wrong direction.
Back in the 80's(???) Asia admitted to spending more time dubbing in fixes then in recording the album.
Sammy Hagar admitted that on the VH Fornication album, "Man on a Mission" was the only song sung straight thru.
Ex lead singer from SoundGarden, (name escapes me) now AudioSlave singer says its needed given how hard he pushes his voice every night.
And as for getting what's on the CD, Gene Simmons
admitted to a bit of tinkering on one of their live albums. Seems they upped the crowd a bit.
(Source VH1)
Unless you listen to classical, or Jazz, don't expect to hear the CD played live, it just doesn't happen anymore. Which in most cases is really sad.
.... vocal fx have been used for years. Playing
outdoors? Crank up the reverb? Playing indoors
in a room that sucks? Ditto. Want to fatten up
the vocals or guitar? Time for a little chorus
effect.
Effects are nothing new, and tuners are just
another way to modify the sound coming from the
originating source (in this case a voice) before
it gets to the speakers.
Fans are increasingly educated and technically
demanding; its hard for musicians to meet those
expectations without enhancements.
Further, who cares how it's done? If it produces
good music that's a rush to listen to -- all the
better!
I find it amusing that the same people that call
tuners cheating don't seem to have any problem
with the idea of tracking. Explain to me how
it isn't "cheating" to lay down 10 tracks for
the same part so that the sound engineer can
pick and choose from all those tracks in order to
build one piece of a song.
Good grief. The last song our band recorded had
82 final tracks recorded for a group with 3
vocalists and 4 instruments.
Pooks
Dude, this is slashdot. We don't support RIAA.
Hey, if you put 27 of these in a row, wouldn't you have a Perfect Game?
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
Usually it's used subtley to "clean-up" vocals but Cher really abused it on that "Believe" song. ... I love this quote from a producer: "It's satanic..."
What makes you think that wasn't precisely the effect the producer was going for?
--
Anyone who has attended a Soundgarden/Audioslave song knows exactly what I'm talking about. Chris is considered to be one of the best alternative rock singers in the history of alternative rock (post 1989 era, along with Vedder, Staley, Cobain, Weiland, etc). How come his albums sound great yet he can't hit the first note live? I recently saw Audioslave's performance of Cochise on top of the Late Show building, and it was absolute ass. He could not hit any of the notes and his voice sounded like he had sung 25 songs prior to that one (1 song setlist!). I have also been to several Soundgarden shows and he can never hit the notes or sound as good as he sounded on the album. Engineered much?
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
...take a look at voice modelling, but fasten your seatbelt...
www.tc-helicon.tc => listen to the demo from voice-one.... I use use one of them for voice dubbeling, harmonies, and it's amazing.
I'll just wait until they get an effect that can change your voice to any known person. I want to sing like Richard Nixon, only with perfect pitch!
stuff
From this description, it appears that the autotuner will not work if the singer is intentionally out of key, such as sliding up or down to another note. Will someone with more knowledge shed some light on this?
Honk if you're horny.
From Discover magazine, a biology study indicates the tonal orientation of their languge gives a large number of them perfect pitch. It also indicates that perfect pitch can be learned given the appropriate environment. So while the parent post may look like a troll, the moderator didn't do their research.
ehintz
Beer.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
"If you're a bad singer and sing out of tune, it'll turn you into a bad singer who's now singing in tune," Antares's Mr. Alpert said.
Ah hah! Now I understand Whitney Houston!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
this would be a savior for the Detroit Tigers...
There's two ways to view things like this. Either as a tool to enhance something (if you can't sing, for example), which is the intended use... Or to be used as an instrument in its own right.
The latter gets my vote a lot more. Before you get upset and hope it never takes off, just think: Mellotrons haven't replaced orchestras, drum machines haven't replaced drummers, and samplers haven't replaced every other instrument in the history of time. They all sound good in their own right, not as clones of other things.
Automatic pitch correction has been around for some time. I saw a variation of it over ten years ago with the Eventide Harmoniser series (as used by Steve Vai and others). The difference now is that they are a lot more sophisticated and it is harder to tell when one is being used.
Are they evil? I think they are really not a lot different from all the other tricks you might use on a vocalist's sound: compression (to fatten up the sound), EQ (to notch or boost particular frequencies), reverb (to give it ambience), detuning/chorusing (to thicken the sound) and harmonising (instant vocal harmonies). These techniques have been used live and in recording studios for decades and are considered fair game.
I personally think a crap vocalist who's in tune is still a crap vocalist. There's more than just perfect pitch. There's got to be a bit of personality and power in the voice too. A slightly off tune Freddie Mercury, Sarah McLachlan or Geoff Tate will still sound better than a perfectly in tune Britney or Kelly Osbourne (to my ears).
There's an old saying in the music business: crap gear in the hands of a talented professional will still sound better than great gear in the hands of a no talent.
It's been done. Simpsons Episode 1214, from wayyy back on Feb 25th, '01.
On a serious note, if you can't sing, don't go into music. Don't cheat, just don't go into music. Is it that hard? I wish this could be made illegal.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Apparently, it allows real-time pitch correction. They are actually being used at concerts.
Wonderful! About time they came up with something to make pop music marginally more tolerable.
Now if they could just integrate this technology in consumer karaoke machines, I'd be truly grateful.
Too bad that widespread knowledge of how doctored up even "live" pop concerts are won't add appreciation for live classical music, where the artists work for several hours a day (at least) from early childhood to sufficiently master their art. It doesn't help that fewer and fewer school music programs are still around. Typically, when schools get money, they buy technology, yet when the account goes dry, the arts are the first to go.
..as well as an occasional producer... i don't see much of a problem with this. why? because it's not particularly different than using a parametric EQ, compression mic, and a quick bit of digital editing (removing the huge and ridiculously loud breathing that some vocalists have).... if you're going to attack this, you should definitely attack compression....
in a lot of ways, this comes down to... "how natural do we want it?"... if you just want it to sound good (or so bad you'd have to try... or just alien), this technology is great. if you're some analog-phile who hates digital recording/editing/anything to do "digital" + "music..." of course you'll hate it. it's just a thing of preference.
and a sidenote: quick uses of pitch correction can be horribly great if you're producing an extremly whiny vocalist... the type who won't do 100 takes just to get the perfect sound;)
Since then, the line between musicianship and show business grew a little clearer through the use of recording and visual technology, enabling both poor performers/good singers and poor singers/good performers to have their 15 minutes of fame. We ended up seeing a lot of people noting the differences between live performances and studio albums, often opting to not see their favorite acts live because their performances were mediocre.
Perhaps we experience some conflict over the difference between live performance and studio recording because we expect imperfections in live shows but want flawless recordings. Maybe we don't want "perfect" (sometimes read: inorganic) sounding music in such a spontaneous atmosphere but still want the show to sound like the studio record. The line between musicianship and show business is certainly blurring again, but is it cheating if our expectations have gotten too high?
Okay, I am in an independant hard rock band called Fusion Ball. And yes, on one of our songs, "The Pain Resides", I used an autotuner.
You see, my band had two 12 hour days in a studio. One day to record, one day to mix. On the first day of recording, we were so stretched on time for our 3 songs we were recording that we didn't really get an in depth listen on everything. We recorded our parts, said "good enough" and then went on to the next thing.
Well, the next day, during the mixing session, I realized my vocals were about half a note off for the whole song. Why? I don't know. The other 2 songs along with the other 7 we recorded there earlier had vocals that were just fine. I didn't want to have to pay to go back and re-track the vocals, so the engineer asked if I wanted to use his new "toy" of a rack mount that he called an "auto tuner". Hell, the thing worked like a dream. My off tune parts sounded perfect and on key.
I have no reason not to use it in certain situations, but using it live, all the time is pretty crappy. When I go hear a band live, I actually like to hear them miss a note every once and a while. Helps me remember that they are still human!
-- Goto Blasto.Net for GOOD, FREE E-Mail, with many names to choose! Really! GO!
when was the last time you saw an MTV video where the lead singer was ....what's the word.. UGLY?
Oasis. Next question?
Then blame Clear Channel for playing the living shit out of this ass-nugget.
Next, blame the mentally challenged public for buying the record, propelling Kid Suck into the rarefied Coors lite atmosphere of sTARDom.
Don't forget to slap the RIAA around for paying producers to 'make more like this', dooming music to a downward spiraling crap-tunnel.
Autotune is like any other EFFECT. Pleasing or innovative when sparingly used. Tiresome, boring, lazy, and perfectly capable of destroying a good song when overused. Producers, take note: That's why they call it an 'effect'. Please don't make it the song.
lots of asian cultures have a higher-than-average perfect pitch population, b/c their languages are tonal. (in mandarin, for example, a word can be at one pitch high, one pitch low, low going up, low going down, or like a "u" shape).
Milli Vanillie had one of these. Maybe they'd still be around....
Interesting how the writer appears to assume since it's "punk"-based these groups can't sing for shaite. In reality, I'm sure they are less apt to use these 'autotuners' than say miss Britney.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Ooh, this is a serious affront to the artistic purity of musical performance. Clearly this devil's tool must be banned immediately, along with stage makeup, effects boxes, sampled sound modules, and synthetic instrument materials.
Duh.
Let's be clear on the difference between perfect pitch and good relative pitch. With perfect pitch, a singer (or musician) expects A to always start at 440Hz, any deviation will be noticed and annoy the musician. He or she will unlikely be able to work unless all instruments are tuned correctly against a 440Hz A. With good relative pitch, a musician will automatically accept whatever is assigned to A (be it 450Hz or what have you) and then convert up the scale. A very good one will be able to do this both in key and across a chromatic scale in half tones (the notes outside a key). The important point here is that it doesn't take perfect pitch to properly bend notes out of key. And a good musician with relative pitch will work just fine if all instruments are tuned perfectly, whereas most with perfect pitch will go absolutely nuts unless all the instruments are tuned properly.
/.).
None of this has anything to do with hardware autoscaling pitch to key for bad pop singers. I'd would love to see how that equipment would mangle Ella's voice, which just goes to show you how this kind of equipment would limit a *real* singer in her artistry. Hell, those who actually care about quality sound and acoustics aren't going to stadiums to hear their music anyway. Instead they attend local venues and carefully designed concert halls to see real people perform up close and personal. The day I see this crap used at the BSO is the day I give up on live performances in disgust. Ain't gonna happen. Also won't happen at Club Passim or The Middle East (just local Cambridge dives). You want good music? See a local band perform right in front of you. And buy their locally produced CD to help support the musicians directly and screw the RIAA out of a few bucks (enough of that soapbox - we've heard it a million times on
Cheers,
Maynard
Man, I can actually kind of understand newstand air brushing... but voices?! (Andy Rooney voice) Gimme a break!
I mean how are we suppose to appreciate the human voice when now all we're hearing is a computer?! And when you do get an amaizing voice like Charlotte Church or Celine Dion it will no longer stand out among all the synthetic comercialized cokie-cutter singers.
If you can't sing... move over and make room for someone who can!!
(steps off soap box)
...another device predicted by The Simpsons...
Blues Traveller.
... but i can spot Autotune at the very first instance of pitch correction.
It sucks, it's cheating, and it ruins the music.
What's worse, i hear some artists (that actually can sing and don't need autotune) using it as an um.... effect.
Ugh.
do() || do_not();
Autotuners are not solely used for pitch correction. I spent some time playing with one particularly nice unit a year or so ago - about $300 for the box. In addition to pitch correction (which was WAY cool to play with, by the way), it also offered harmonization. If the unit were hooked up to a MIDI keyboard or sequencer and it could determine which chords were being played, it would automatically add harmony to the main note being sung. The amount of pitch correction, harmony, and original (uncorrected) vocals could be mixed on the console. The harmony is based on the original voice, so how good it sounds is largely a function of how good the performer sounds by themself - it's not exactly a crutch.
Okay, I'll instantly agree that the pitch correction can be horribly abused. I got a real shocking lesson in this while in college, going to see a pop band whose albums I adored. Well, in person they flat-out stunk. After a fashion I lost my innocence that night.
But the harmonizer has an interesting use. In a small performance setting, i.e., one guy and a guitar and a drum machine/sequencer, the harmonizer can enable him to put on a very rich concert without backup singers. This is great for some classes of performers - especially the travelling small artist who does coffeehouse-style playing. They can do live original music, even taking requests, and the audience is treated to a very rich sonic experience, knowing that in the end it's still the artist's skill - if he can't appropriately handle the hardware, it won't sound good, no matter how expensive it is.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
why yes we can, and have been for sometime, the 1st time with an UltraHarmonizer, and the technology just keeps getting better, or worse as the case may be... But now we have really shiny turds... and if you have any sense you can pick out the turds really quick...
The fans can tell when something's off key, but the people they go see can't sing on-key? Is something wrong with this picture? (No, we're in the USA!)
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
a computer printing for art painting. just give the photo of the model or scene to computer and start painting. if you are off-color or shape, the printer will correct it...
When you're singing or playing in an ensemble that's out of absolute tune but in tune with itself, you have the unpleasant choice of staying in absolute tune and going out of tune with the group or adjusting and hearing things out of tune, which is jarring.
For a simpler example, imagine trying to improvize in C on a clarinet and hearing the music in Bb. Now that's jarring.
Unbelievably good relative pitch is required for "absolute mastery" of music. Perfect pitch is just a party trick.
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
I wonder just how much one of these are... would make a great shower gift ;-)
Only this time, they've decided not to label the new CD with a warning. "We can't put a sticker that says no computers were used in the making of this record," he said. "It'd really make us look like jerks, but there's not going to be any of that."
Why not? Tom Scholz of Boston has been putting the "no synthesizers or computers used" on Boston albums since Don't Look Back, their second album.
Then again, I don't know what exactly he calls his racks and racks of Rockman sound processing equipment, but they sure look like computers to me!
1) Like with diamonds, there is artificial scarcity of good singers. If this technology can turn everyone into Pavarotti, good for us all.
2) RIAA claims that music is expensive to make. If this technology can make this process cheaper (record the album in one take instead of spending a whole month), they lose the right to complain about P2P sharing.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I'd be embarrassed to use this sort of thing. If you can't sing/play on key, on command, you don't belong on the stage. Being a real musician is hard work, and that means you perform when you are supposed to. And you do a damn good job at it, every time. And if you aren't in the mood, or you're upset, or whatever, you do it anyway. If you're going to use a safety net like this, you may as well lip-sync to the studio track.
I know this sounds like a harsh approach, but that's the world of the professional musician. I have to question the work ethic of a musician who would need something like this. If you were the leader a band (especially one wth 12+ members), would you want the singer to have a special little box "just in case" he/she made a mistake? I'd rather get a singer who is confident he/she won't make those mistakes. There are more musicians than gigs, so to make it, you have to be there whenever they ask, and don't fuck up.
Pop stars are obviously a different matter, thought. They are much more glamorous, and typically less talented and don't work as hard as the pro musician. They are tossed into a studio to record the next "hit" written by a room full of boring-looking writers, quickly whisked away to a dance studio where the star is yelled at for hours until he/she can dance like a rock star, then a bus takes the soon-to-be-one-hit-wonder around the country while Clearchannel plays the hell out of the new song. This is the kind of person who needs a safety net like that. This is not the kind of person who spent years writing and practicing, accepting any gig that came along, playing to sometimes empty clubs, sometimes double-booking rather than turning down a gig, and driving for five hours to play a four-hour gig. While that may sound like hell to the non-musicians out there, it is exactly the kind of experience that most real musicians go through, and if it weren't for the genuine love of music, nobody would do it. But through that process, the musician learns a lot of discipline, and is ready to sight-read through forty charts with a band full of strangers. Ask the musician if he/she needs a device like this.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Just ask those who worship Phish
Yeah...people who worship Phish aren't mindless at their concerts. Stoned to the point theat they can hardle stand, but not mindless. The guys in the tie-die sarongs definitely had it together when they got dressed, too.
But Neal Schon was fantastic. Gotta give you that!
Simply by all of the comments already made. For starters, any real musician who plays every note perfectly on pitch will sound odd. Why? Because such an autotuner will automatically "correct" any tonal variance that is added for musicality, such as vibrato, bending, slides, etc. The cases where one needs completely on tune notes is very small compared to the instances where "out of tuneness" is needed. Such devices are useful for salvaging cases where the recording is way out of whack, but don't think that's it's a matter of setting the machine to "fix this" and that's it. Items like these are used more like code optimizers are, lots of tedious going back and forth. And to use this in a live setting? The machine would truly be a hindrance. There are just too many times when the machine would inhibit the notes that really need to be slightly off.
The only ones who would truly benefit from one of these machines in a live setting are those who are truly bad singers. The artificial sound of the pitch shifting would be an improvement over these persons' naturally bad voice.
I sound like a stepped-on frog when I sing, no amount of computer trickery is going to make me into a Christina whatsherface.
Liselle is absolutely right... At least about the second part (I've never heard this person sing, so I can't speak to that.) But I can't believe that no one has pointed this out yet... we're talking about *pitch*, people! This has NOTHING to do with the tonal quality of the voice! There are some people who still sound pretty bad even when they sing on pitch (think Fran Dresher)!
The *quality* of the voice is much more important in the long run than the pitch. Even when I sing absolutely on pitch, I still can't match the absolute tonal beauty of Andrea Bocelli. The tibmre of the voice is still a major factor in vocal beauty even when pitch is removed from the equation.
Take any reasonably slim, boob jobed 'actress' throw some generic blonde look at her face, pump her voice through a synthesizer, teach her some basic ass shaking and dress her up like a slut.
I want 5% of the gross of that so my grandchildren will never have to work a day in their lives.
They are actually being used at concerts.
They also use it in the movies.
Ever heard of Brad Pitch ?
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
"Frankly, I can almost appreciate the attention to detail that people will go to to protect my ears from bad notes."
I think that you're confusing attention to details and laziness.
I've been a musician for 16 years and I've worked very hard to sound as good as I can. I've spent countless hours practicing and honing my skills so that when I play or sing I can be happy with what comes out. That's attention to detail.
What this does is allow people to be lazy. You don't need to try your best and work hard because a machine will do it for you.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
In the Bluegrass community, "perfect pitch" is defined as tossing a banjo into an outhouse without hitting the rim...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
On the day when Wesley Willis's death is all over the news. If there was ever an artist who proved that singing on key is not necessary, it was Wesley Willis.
I sincerely enjoyed seeing Roger Water's screw up the lyrics to 'Mother' on stage in Indianapolis in '99 or '00. That was fantastic.
As a musician, these sort of devices make me very upset. To me, music is something that's in your blood, and not everbody has the skill, which is why not everyone is a musician. Therefore, if you can't sing, quite simply, you shouldn't be singing. This just goes to show that music has become, in a way, just a product. Very depressing.
Just listen to Chuck Berry. He's notorius for never stopping a show to tune or change his guitars. Sure, the guitar was out of tune. So what? He let his soul hang out and everybody was having fun! Nobody cared that he sometimes ended up playing in Ab when the band was in A. It seems to me that the Autotuner would somewhat spoil the magic of not caring about the pitch. However, for a guitarist concerned about pitch, it would mean not having to stop the show.
So puzzle me this: how would the Autotuner account for deliberate accidentals/chromatic runs/blue notes? Would it turn D-D#-E into D-E-E if set to key of Am?
Do not lecture me on intonation. I am merely stating that someone was using this, and was upfront about the machine's use.
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
He got the idea from Bono of U2
man rtfm
But both me and my producer agreed that it was NOT a replacement for singing correctly and on pitch.
Instead, we'd set it so that it would slowly "grab" the tone to tighten things up a bit. This was particularly true in 'stacked' situations where up to 4 vocals were singing the same note.
In fact, sometimes we actually used it to make a stack just a hair flat or short...to give the sound a nice buzzy presence effect. Basically we used it as a creative tool and not to cheat. If I was off on something, we'd laugh and do it again...we NEVER relied on the box to fix something.
It's just like everything else...you can use technology for creativity or to cover imperfection. I'd rather get it as perfect as humanly possible, and leave the electronics for the creativity angle.
Lots o' ranting going on about how the music industry sucks. Understandable. But before ya'll get bent out of shape about how music sucks today, and how things are over produced, and how you have to look good to get any attention, and blah blah blah ... take a look at http://www.cdbaby.com/
... there are options out there. Instead of complaining, spend a couple of bucks to try something new and support a local artist who isn't 0wn3d by the RIAA.
Looks intimidating. No familiar faces. Hmm. Could be sketchy.
But wait! By God, there's almost FIFTY THOUSAND hours of music you've never heard, from musicians you've probably never heard of. Independent musicians. Good musicians, too.
If you're tired of big label big production big boobies little talent Top 40 schmucks
Cheers!
I am really happy to hear that everyone is so down on making music sound perfect. The music I make pretty much sucks, and I can barely sing at all, but if that's what people like, right on! I may even drag some notes around in my sequencer to make sure I really suck.
Hrm, sometimes I do a good take though. I wonder if there is a product that is the opposite of autotune, that can put my voice out of tune so I can get street cred.
I'm with y'all on this. Just look at Rush, Dream Theatre, Yes, Genesis, Frank Zappa... just because you hit every note doesn't mean you can make music anyone would want to actually listen to.
I remember flipping through the channels one day and stoping on MTV. Briney was up there half naked as usaul so I stopped to watch. When she was done "signing" her song the VJ started to interview her. When she started to talk, it was barley audible. The sound technicans had turned the level down so low that you couldn't hear her real signing voice and only the tape. I guess they forgot to turn it up after she was done with the performance.
[singer] Are you guys ready?
[5 male voices in harmony] Yeah, we're ready. Go ahead.
And by the way, it sounds great.
I've also heard quite a few live singers try to sing when the monitor mix is too quiet. When a singer can't hear themselves they tend to sing flat. It's actually quite a common problem with live shows so I can see having a device like this to "clean up" those kinds of problems.
So why are people not concerned with my friend using essentially the same device to add backup vocals to his music, but they're upset about a live singer using the device to touch up their performance?
I was at the Idyllwild Jazz Festival this weekend and I heard a woman singing flat when she couldn't hear herself in the monitors. It wasn't pleasent.
Often process is more important than raw talent. Or I should say the art is in defining the process. The grand master painters of the Renaissance usually had scores of assistants. The master artist defined the process and the apprentices carried out the process. Chiluly is a good example of this today.
The quality of the recording and playing equipment is also extremely important.
What happens in pop music is that people want young idols. So the industry has a process defined by veterans. The implementation of the process takes place by 'merican idol wannabes.
Wilson Philips They weren't dogs. I thought the blond one was pretty hot actually.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
"Instead, the music industry is divided over the use of computer hardware called autotuners, used by acts such as Britney Spears and ''N Sync to make sweeter music on the days when they can't quite hit those tricky notes."
Do yourself a favor. Buy a copy of Abbey Road on vinyl And listen to music they way it was and shall never be again. Be sad. Very very sad.
--ken
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
It's a tool, like any other tool in the studio, and it's used to achieve a certain effect (getting notes on key) without going back and tracking a difficult passage dozens of times. Sure, artists could do that, but it's a massive waste of time, and a source of frustration. As a tool, it's no less invalid than compressors, digital reverb units and effects processors, and anything else that's available to the modern musician. If using an Autotune unit (or the software) is fake, than so is adding reverb with a processor instead of recording every instrument live in a large hall.
Consumers want a musical product that is enjoyable, and a large portion of that enjoyment comes from the quality and professionalism that a polished and on-key composition delivers. If you're interested in the pure art, then go listen to some live acoustic musicians at a coffee house, or vote with your dollars by only listening to artists who don't use Autotune.
But for 99% of working bands, playing live shows on tour means living out of a van for perhaps several months at a time, not an ideal environment for keeping your voice in top notch shape. If an inexpensive box or piece of software can help them deliver the high quality performance that their fans expect, and that helps them pay their rent when they get home, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
For those of you who don't know, this stuff has been around for quite some time, I'm thinking years...
First of all, a little company called Eventide has been making pitch shifters for literally decades. The H969 has been capable of using an external control voltage to vary the amount of shift since it was released to the market back in the late 80's. The newer H-3000's were MIDI capable, again allowing for remote control of how much to shift the pitch of the incoming signal. The H-3000's have been around since the early 90's.
Next, I don't remember if it was Synclavier, Emulator/EM-U Systems, or Fairlight systems (no longer in business) that came out with the first pitch-to-midi convertor - again back in the late 80's.
The point is that there were people doing this way back then, using pitch-tracking hardware and pitch shifting hardware in a way to create pitch corrected output of singers - and I am talking about in live concerts, not rebroadcasts, not recordings, but live.
Let's not even get into the issue of the number of live bands I've seen where the band used DAT for the group vocals in concert. I'm not talking bar bands either!
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
It has been said more than once here in Nashville that if Autotune was a time bomb, Music Row would have been wiped off the face of the earth some time ago.
In all seriousness, one of the first things that a lot of potential clients ask you is if you have "that pitch box," read as Antares Autotune. This is generally a good sign that this is not a client that you are going to enjoy doing vocals with. Heavy application of the autotune is SOP in a lot of studios around here, and the music has suffered greatly as a result.
For some textbook examples of how to deploy the Autotune in a production environment, just refer to anything by Shania Twain; she's the poster child for vocals enhanced by Antares! around here.
Don't Panic!
you're being sarky, but he _meant_ to say 'signing'. she was coreographing her 'song'.
I think there's a confluence of things going on here, but I'm primarily entertained by the notion that use of this device somehow undermines the artistic merit of pop.
The issue IMHO is not that the audience is somehow more discerning and will demand refunds if britney is a few cents flat, but that the audience expects to hear live performances that sound substantially like the track from the CD that's been burned into their minds. The artists use autotuners and more extensive vocal processing in the studio, and whether or not the audience realizes what it is, the result is very distinctive, and if they should happen to hear the unprocessed star, something is obviously missing.
Personally, I don't like the sound of it, but I don't really care, as I am not laboring under the misapprehension that pop stars are inherently talented.
Use the tools, sell some noise, what's the difference? It's not like britney is purporting to be 100% genuine by any measure.
.... for a picuture of a nakid girl (guy) in a shower singing?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I thought "perfect pitch" referred to an above average ability to discern small changes in pitch.
I knew a guy who could sit 30 rows back in the theater, listen to a note on the grand piano, any note, and tell you what one it was. Furthermore, if you plucked a guitar string, he could tell you what note it was, and how far out of tune it was, with an uncanny accuracy.
Was he a great prodigal singer? No... though I suppose such a talent would come in handy as a singer.
Singing in tune and perfect pitch have little to do with each other....
Just throwing a note in here: electronic pitch correction has been around for years and years. Not as many years as tube distortion, no, but longer than that fake jet flyby on "White America" (Eminem) - which, by the way, is done by an Evantide Harmonizer (probably the 3000, but might be a higher model), a rackmount that also does pitch correction/shifting/multiplying. In any case, just in case anyone here (including the /. editors) didn't realize it, pitch correction has been heard on albums since the 60's. Back then it was usually done manually by recording a slightly speed-modified track off one tape machine to another, so it wasn't very common due to it's difficulty - and the necessity of having 2 tape machines. The last 2 decades have seen the technology mature into something usefull. Unfortunately, it's ease of use also lends itself to abuse.
Anyways, my $0.02: pitch correction/shifting/multiplying is an effect and should be used as such. Don't blame Kid Rock for being the first abuser. If anyone, blame Cher and her production team. Under time constraints, it can be a shortcut to touch up occasional errors (the same way reverb can be used to soften harsh notes, or distortion modified to cover problems), but under normal circumstances, I wouldn't use it as a primary sound (like Cher or Kid Rock) without a damn good reason - and a bad singer is NOT a damn good reason.
Dammit, I meant to post that anonymously!
Ok, first off, I saw Shania Twain perform at the superbowl last year on TV and I can say she absolutely, positively, was NOT using an auto-tuner. I mean, why use an auto tuner when you're lip synching?
Secondly, they're not the black magic that the article makes them out to be. I've used one many times in a recording setting and they can't make a bad singer into a good singer. They can make a slightly out of tune singer sound in-tune and that's about it. Plus they're hard to use. If you set the tuning speed to fast, they'll flatten out your vibrato. If you set it too slow, bad notes will get through. They have limited usefulness.
They are actually being used at concerts. I think we all realize that some singers sound different -- much different -- live than they do on CD's, but this just seems so, so, what's the word: fake?"
Okay, this guy has no background in music. For starters, you really do not want most of your music to sound like it does while live.
There are so many variables outside of the artist's control in any public gathering. You are starting off with some of the worst materials for good acoustics, such as steel, concrete floors, etc. Once you've compensated for as much of these things as you can, then you have to deal with being able to jump around, dance, whatever you do to put on a performance while singing. I doubt most of the people making their remarks about this device can dance, let alone dance and sing at the same time. Then do it flawlessly for a 30-60 minute set. If you can, and you are posting on slashdot about how this is fake, then you should really consider a career in performance.
Now guitars, for instance, were originally played by plucking strings with bare fingers. As a result, a guitarist's hands would be hard as a rock from the friction and could bang out tunes excessively loud and clear. Are modern musicians fakers because they use a plastic pick to pluck the strings? What about when they insterted coils into a guitar and ran it to an amplifier? Using your logic, then anyone who uses an electric guitar is fakey.
You've got to face reality. Musicians are going to do what makes their life easier, too. Music isn't about being a gifted-by-god singer, it's about getting tunes out of your head and into people's ears.
This is a great thing. Well, obviously it's bad news for innovation in popular music, but look on the bright side. It means tuneless geeks like myself will never again have to fear the embarrassment of karaoke evenings.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
And you have not addressed the whole lip-sync
farce. Few can pull of complex dance moves AND
sing at once.
Pitch shifters have been used in the studios for
at least 20 years, as well as the common practice
of patching together performances with cut-ins.
At least the poor tape operators no longer have
to do THAT by splicing tape together.
I talked to someone who was engineer on one of
Metallica's albums and the amount of work to get
the drummer's meter corrected was significant.
Believe in live music, really live music and
avoid the rest.
but this just seems so, so, what's the word: fake?
You mean like Britney Spears' breasts?
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Their live music *IS* a CD!
Granted, in that case they fully admit to lip synching and really you are "paying" for their modern dance choreography. But the tunes are always perfect!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
This technology has been around for year, in www.antarestech.com has had HOME versions of this stuff (including multiple auto-tune 1U rack units specializing in overal sound, vocals, etc) for under $400. This aside from the plugins for most software that can be had for under $100 and the farm cards for pro-tools hardware. Jeez.... i would have thought it a sad day when /. was behind the times.
PITCH CORRECTION IS MY PET PEEVE ABOUT TODAY'S MUSIC!!!!!
...the newer punk bands, such as Sum 41 and Good Charlottes, would sound awful if they weren't corrected with an autotuner.
(Yes, I was shouting, that's how peeved it makes me.)
I've been telling my friends this for years. I can barely listen to any new artists because they sound so FAKE.
> Mr. Barry said he relies on the autotuner when
> a musician's performance is nearly flawless
> except for that one flat note "that's going
> to drive everyone crazy" or when there are
> time constraints.
That's pretty much my point of view. This should only be necessary about 1% of the time.
>
So, sign bands that can SING AND PLAY instead of pretty boys (and girls) who will look good on posters, t-shirts, and lunchboxes!
AAAARGH!!!
(Me: singer/guitarist)
assert(birth_date<time-86400)
radiohead is one of the biggest bands out.
Thom Yorke == not attractive
but they rule
I assume they are on MTV.
Tuning equipment for recording has been around for awhile... and I can't help but think that they are fueling the indie music biz, where musicians frequently release their music raw, and play it without benefit of corrective technology on a regular basis because of the places that they play. A lot of folks are finding that there's a big welcome for their sound because the sound is unique, and you get that uniqueness by keeping the faults. Voices frequently waver, often hitting near but not perfect pitch, and that's not just part of the value of the recording, it's one of the ways that we recognise human voices versus machine voices. What the increase in tuning technology means is that it will be a lot easier to make machine-quality sound- which, unfortunately, sounds a lot like machine-quality sound.
Just my $ .02.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
The auto-tune factor only comes into play if you listen to synthesized nonsense like britney spears in the first place. if you listen to real bands such as dave matthews (which i just saw for the 8th time last night) or pearl jam, you're not going to have to worry about auto-tuning issues. They's heavily talented bands that don't use any tweaking in their live experience... they're human just like the rest of us. they make mistakes on stage every-so-often and you can notice it... but other than that they give you flawless shows because they are veterans at performing live. cheers.
This article struck a true chord for me. What comes to mind are beautiful voices like Annie Haslam (from Renaissance) ... Sarah McLachlan (from Lilith Fair) and odd things like Hawkwind whose lure was to be habitually off key(from the 60's and early 70s)as well as Jon (from Yes) and David Gilmour (from Pink Floyd). It seems to me that all of these artists use their outstanding vocal ability to "stretch the envelope" and artists such as Madonna tend to use tools such as this to "be perfect". Music does not have to be perfect to be perfect for that artist.
Best Jeff
The whole idea that it is cheating to use auto-tune is absurd. Yes, it makes lots of crappy singers sound like they are singing in-tune, but it doesn't have the ability to turn bad music into good music. It is just a tool. If talented and creative musicians use it, then most likely it will be a positive enhancement. If untalented and unoriginal musicians use it, they will remain untalented and unoriginal.
As many people have noted on here, this technology has been in use for quite a while. I'm pretty sure that some albums (and not necessarily mainstream ones) that I really like employ it. Do I feel disillusioned? Of course not, because I understand that a lot of process and processing goes into making both recorded and live music.
Let's not forget that there was a time when people made similar complaints about musicians amplifying their music. "They're cheating! They don't really play that loud!" Remember when it was such a big scandal for Bob Dylan to "go electric"? There are some people who still believe that mono is better than stereo, that stereo sounds fake or that CDs don't sound as "real" as vinyl records. So what's the big deal? Technology can make great music and it can make crap. In the end it is all about the talent behind the music.
the reality is most singers and not only singers but the musicians themselves would sound like total shit if this and a whole lot of other technology were not used.
when you pump a singer through a 50,000 watt PA system you need to do a lot to the signal to get it ready to be amplified to that level and still sound good.
as a sound engineer I get to hear what they really sound like and sometimes its pretty amusing.
in general most vocalists first get fed into a basic parametric EQ which is often used to cut back a lot of the bass and mid frequencies and often boost the high frequencies to make the vocals more understandable. Next they are generally compressed using a multiband compressor that squashes the signal to make the signal more even and fatter. Often a gate is also employed which physically turns the microphone off when the signal falls below a certain level so that you don't hear breathing and other background noise. next the signal is fed into an autotuner which can be programmed to subtly correct minor flaws while leaving out deliberate pitch changes (I often just turn it on when I no a singer has to stretch to reach a high note).
next an aural exciter introduces harmonics that add sparkle to the voice and lifts it above the mix.
then we pipe it through to add subtle reverberations that make it sound more full and often additional effects such as chorus and flanging are used on backup singers to puch them back further in the mix.
without all this gear most professional singers would sound no better than your average kareoke bar singer.
i have some very interesting recordings of rather big name acts straight out of the mixing desk before all the effects are applied. My next door neighbours 13 year old kids band sounds better than some of them.
next the sign
Bear with me through this analogy:
You are visiting Harlem, NYC, for the first time. You have heard people talk about the legendary soul food that can be found in these ghetto streets; however, as you start exploring all you see is....well, a ghetto. The windows of these incredible establishments are dirty, and the decor was old in 1982. You say to yourself "Surely, a place like this cannot be as good as everyone claims." You turn around and head over to KFC, where you can get "soul food" (ahem) in a nice, clean, store with menus you comfortably recognize from your hometown. The food tastes exactly like you expect it to taste. You leave, stomach full, but certainly no richer for the experience.
The point? Taking chances is what fun (and life) is all about. Maybe, just maybe, going to terrible concerts makes the good ones all the better. You know, no pleasure without pain, no light without darkness, etc. etc.
Alternate point: You could always just find out if Band X is a good show before you spend $50. With the technology mentioned above, you obviously cannot go by the sound of the album.....
=============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Has any effort been made to have these products labeled as 'tuned'?
I am an advocate for less regulations and smaller government; however, I do think an important role needs to be played by government in education on all levels.
Labeling digital vocal tuning is no different to me than labeling genetically modified foods in the supermarket--I understand both and I don't have much against either, but I 100% believe that consumers should be educated on both and have the choice to select which they want.
You sir, are an idiot. You want to pay to see a concert to NOT see a display of musicianship? What is wrong with you? You can just stay home, invite your friends over and play the fucking CD if that's the scene you want.
When I go to a concert I damnwell EXPECT to see raw talent, and an enjoyable show to boot.
Take Peter Gabriel. I saw him on the "Growing Up" tour and you know what? He has a FANTASTIC live show with extremely talented musicians on stage. They don't NEED a damned autotuner because they have fucking TALENT. The only time Gabriel used a "taped" voice was to pay tribute to Nasrah Fateh Ali Khan, who did vocals on some of his songs (and died a couple years back). The rest was RAW GABRIEL and band. Levin & Rhodes are utterly amazing at what they do.
That's what I fucking paid to see, not Milli Vanilli for the digital age.
Plus Gabriel had one hell of a stage show to boot (the lightbulb jacket he wore for Sledgehammer made the crowd go wild all by itself).
I second that.
Do you like what you get when you buy that CD?
Buy that DVD?
Buy tickets and go to a concert?
Yes? Then stop complaining.
'nuff said
A lot of people are slamming this thing, but personally, I think it would be very good to have this in every karaoke machine. I know I'm no perfect singer, and I've sat through some terrible songs. This could cure all that.
-no broken link
They are actually being used at concerts. I think we all realize that some singers sound different -- much different -- live than they do on CD's, but this just seems so, so, what's the word: fake?"
Is a Moog Synthesizer fake? (I remebmer people griping aobut it, back when it was new.) Are electric guitars fake? How about elecric guitars plus the plethora of modification devices (wah-wah, fuzz box {originally emulating a blown speaker cone}, maybe a dozen others). Should we just abandon rock/punk/metal/etc. music as "fake" and go back to acoustic guitars? (Like the folkies that booed Dylan when he came out for one set with an electric guitar.) And take the seeds out of Sitars while we're at it?
And let's dump the voice modification technology that's been around since before electrical recording - like the little megaphone to give that narrow-band sound to a voice that's been used since at least the '20s for starters. (Think the lead singer on _Winchester Cathedral_) Take that "voice box" hose out of Peter Frampton's throat on _Do You Feel Like We Do?_ What a cheat!
Let's take the mutes out of trumpets, and the fists out of french horns. Jaw harps and kazoos can go on the trash heap.
Dump bagpipes, oboes, clarinets, saxaphones, and the rest of the reed instruments. (Reeds are just fake vocal cords.) Take the valves from trumpets and the slides from trombones. Heck - dump the horns entirely: A mouthpiece to modify your lip buzz to replace your vocal cords and a brass resonator to replace your vocal tract? Totally fake!
Trash those drums, too. If you can't make the sound you want by clapping, stomping, or using your vocal tract it's obviously fake.
Harpsicords have to go - they're "fixing" the striking force. Pianos: Take off the pedals. Take away the resonator. Heck, take away the keyboard and hammer (darned mnemonics anyhow). Stick to a harp.
Take those frets off the guitar - they're a cheat! If you can't finger-tune it like a bass or a violin you don't deserve to perform!
Wait a minute: Strings? Tuned for you? Dump it!
If you don't want "fake", stick to acapella. And try to compete with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, The Nylons, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
= = = = =
Pop music is about making sounds that please their audience - using as much, or as little, tech as the artist choses to use and the audience choses to accept.
= = = = =
And the tech isn't just a cleanup. Watch it make possible more interesting sounds.
Which has already been done. (Example: the chorus of Cher's _Do you Believe in Life after Love?_, where just such a pitch altering device is used to form note-shifts faster than a human vocal tract can, creating a hint of human/machine convergence and a subtle reference to immortality-by-uploading, reenforcing the message about post-romance depression and overcoming it - in addition to sounding neat.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
OK, this is way off topic, I'll admit. However, in some strange way, it's related to this magic little box.
/.ers!
Can anyone tell me if it is currently possible to isolate a single musical instrument from a mono recording? I've come up with some neat thought experiments around the idea, but I'd like to plug a song into some software and/or equipment, and pull each of the instruments into a separate track.
Is this possible? Can I get software to do this stuff? Will it take two years per song?
Thanks
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Try 60 years. Tin Pan Alley, all of that jazz. Independent artists were the exception, not the rule. Media stars were groomed and coached by the labels and studios in every aspect, until they got popular enough to start bargaining.
As a longtime professional musician turned software tester (starving to death sucked), I feel qualified to say the following. Presented in this article is yet one more reason to pray for the demise of the industry that has created an environment in which the use of such a device is not only acceptable but desirable. The industry's crimes: 1. Ludicrously overpriced CD's. 2. Cookie cutter 'artists' (marionettes). 3. The purveyance of heinous and extremist moral values to the detriment of society. 4. Music turned into a background for ones life, instead of a glorious experience to be valued. 5. Active attempts to destroy/hold back technology in order to preserve their crude monopoly. 6. (Should be #1) The cruel exploitation of those who earn their money for them. Am I bitter about my experiences? Hell yes! Can't wait for them all to go out of business.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
These 'autotuners' arn't anything new at all, and there's nothing so 'evil' about them.
Essentially, if you're not a good signer, this thing doesn't make you sing. What It generally does is slightly swing you up if you're flat or swing you down a few semitones if you're singing sharp - which are problems that generally happens when you're singing somewhere with less than desirable accoustics - ie, concerts.
Also bear in mind that when creating studio albums, artists have the luxury of multiple takes.
After all - would you want to go to a concert and have the singer going flat every so often?
When I read headline, I immediately thought, "Cool, now I'll be able to get job playing baseball".
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Does anyone actually read these stories before they're approved for the front page?
As a CD music producer and live sound engineer I can tell you the autotuner is a studio tool only. Artist cannot find their natural pitch if it is being corrected. What happens is the autotuner will jump the note from one to the next depending on the settings and will sound horrible while the singer is trying to get a refrence on the actual note sang.
What happens during a concert is a extra pre- recorded tracks that follows along with the performance, the sound techs may replace the original with the prerecorded as needed.
The give away is the drummer with headphones who starts the song from the prerecorded tracks and keeps the song in time.
:^)
Had to.
Was at a Who concert way back when Keith Moon was still their drummer. Moon had serious issues, and that night he passed out on stage.
So they asked if any one in the audience could play drums. "You have to be good." Some lucky fan got to live out their dream that night, and played drums for the Who for the rest of the concert.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Cheater!
We've had Antares AutoTune for years!!
It's what Cher used for her infamous "Belive"
that this thing has been out for YEARS.
it's also the effect you hear on Mrs. Bono's voice on "Life after Love", when it was used to tune the voice to a key she wasn't singing in (deliberately).
cool huh? forget about it, it's here to stay..
If by concert you mean symphony, tuning varies but is typically closer to 442. 440 would be considered flat and I've tuned as high as 446. A is what the oboe says it is. Symphonies hate to have tune to a 440 A. It's hard to hold that tuning through a performance.
Symphony musicians can frequently tell you it's an A and give you the frequency as well. It's not that hard really considering how often you hear it.
Tuning is relative and varies throughout a performance. Winds go sharp as they heat up while strings go flat. It's a joke really to suggest there's one tuning (A440, A415 otherwise known as G#) except for instruments like a keyboard that can't do better. There are many instruments that don't have to choose what notes they get wrong and many times when wrong is exactly what you want. The chromatic scale we're familiar with is arbitrary. Just ask the Chinese.
I bet Sinead O'Conner wouldn't use one of these things.
Its suprizing to see this thing on slashdot after I've known about it for years. Autotune's not just for singers. I've heard about it being used with instruments such as clarinets.
Its been used to get a neat effect out of it when you set the slide time to zero. (For example, Daft Punk's One More Time.)
They DO have useful applications, for example, if you're producing a track, the singer has left, and you notice the singer is a little off pitch.
Oh, and if you're going to Britney Spears concerts because you enjoy the quality of the music, I hate to say it, but (because of how the music industry is,) you're missing the point.
Also, this is the first time I've heard it been called an "Auto-tuner." Probebly a news reporters take on the name. It's a little like saying "making a xerox" instead of "making a copy." There are two companies that I know that make pitch-correction devieces. Antares and some other company whose name I can't think of at the moment.
ALSO, one other thing to add that is a pet peeve of mine. AUTO-TUNE DOES NOT EQUAL VOCODER.
She's quite big in the UK (and presumably her native Australia as well), having had something of a revival in recent years, partly due to her pop music but mainly due to her fine backside (her sister has the better breasts though) and modelling of her own lingerie range.
Sure they have gotten slowly less intrusive, but I can still pick them...
And on the front page too...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
What makes this any different from plastic surgery, makup, stylists, lighting and directors? and half of them dont write their own songs, they do copys (called covers) or paysomeone in holland. Most of the industry is full of average people, a good producer with the right tools (see above) can make almost anyone into a star - how do you think pop-idol works? Kinda like script kiddies really? Sure it helps if you have some ability, or atleast the ability to take direction and mime;)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
A "vocoder" is an algorithm which is designed to vork on a voice signal. It's not a very specific term.
The first thing you described, using a fixed modulated carrier, is indeed a type of vocoder. The second technique you described as "pitch correction," using FFTs to estimate and shift pitches, is usually called a phase vocoder (look it up). Which is obsolete anyway. Modern pitch correction techniques use wavelet transforms to analyze and resynthesize signals... but they're vocoders too.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
Wow, Antares Autotune's been on the market for years...way to stay on top of things!
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
I have software taht will vocode anything with anything. Give it two PCM files, it will vocode one with the other. So you could vocode someone's voice into a saxaphone for example to make it sing.
I had one drummer in a band of mine who was amazingly technically precise - like a metronome. And as a result we wound up canning him because HE SOUNDED BORING. The next guy sounded great, even though he sped up, slowed down, because it added life to the song.
For the same reason that MMORPG are popular rather than just playing the computer. People do weird unexpected stuff, that a computer would never do, and that makes it exciting and fun.
..........FULL STOP.
I mean, I've seen Wynton Marsalis, Maynard Ferguson, The Canadian Brass, the New York Phil, and so on in concert. Here are real musicians with real talent, at concerts often with >$50 tickes. In not one performance I can recall did they ever get everything perfect. There was always at least one entrance that wasn't 100% together, or one note that hesistated or cracked a bit, and so on.
Know what? I'd see any of them again in a heartbeat. It was real, it was genuine and it was DAMN GOOD.
... of the routine deception that is the modern way of life. From GW lying about, well, everything, to the quaint concept of "marketing", to this... it seems to be totally acceptable, and it seems nobody cares. The language is debased, and even music is subverted and perverted.
Bah!
Actually, as a musician of 25 years, I'd have to disagree that the only ones to benefit from this are bad singers. I have the software version of Antares autotune and have putzed around with it a little (I haven't actually recorded anything yet, I'm just playing around with all this stuff), and it doesn't work miracles.
The singer would have to be decent to begin with - it can make them sound a little better, but a flat-out bad singer is still going to sound bad. An autotuned bad singer just sounds so artificial, it's almost creepy sounding, and I'm not talking about the infamous "Cher / Believe" effect either.
Good intonation is an important part of a good performance, for sure, but so are the nuances, the inflections, the timbre of the voice, and probably most of all, the emotion put into it. Good singers know how to breath when singing, how to control their volume, when to step back from the mic, etc. Autotune won't help any there either, although a compressor would some, obviously. Antares version does offer a graphical edit mode (obviously not for use in real time) that be used to tweak things like vibrato, to an extent, as well as some control even in the default mode (kind of like a threshold setting), but again, 90% of the performance still depends on the singer.
Like any tool, too much of anything usually defeats it's own purpose. Used judiciously in a recording studio, as mentioned in the article, to fix a wrong note under time or money constraints was acceptable even to the critics. In a live setting, I could see applying it to the backup singers, whose vocals tend to take on a more "generic" (for lack of a better term) tonality.
After all, really strict critics could contend that compression and delay are cheating, if taken to the extreme, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone take that position.
But to have it on constantly, on a lead vocal track, yeah, I'd have to say that's the equivlalent of musical perjury. It reminds of guitar players, who, just because they have a stompbox, like a chorus, think they have to have it on 100% of the time. It usually makes their guitar sound thin and buzzy, like some kind of deranged mosquito.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
There's an old joke among musicians "It's folk music... it doesn't have to be in tune". Although your style isn't folk music per se, it's that sort of singer/songwriter stuff where the songwriting is often more important, and an "authentic" sound might be more important than being strictly in tune....
:)
Not bad stuff, by the way.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
The modulator signal is broken down into bands by sending it through a series of bandpass filters, and the output voltages of these filters drive a series of amplifiers, which are fed the same spectral bands of the carrier.
Essentially the same thing, but you manipulate the spectra with FFT instead.
The reason this tends to sound like the voice is being played by a keyboard, is that in the most common case(read Cher), the carrier is a keyboard, and the modular is the singer's voice. That way you play your melodic content on the synth, and apply the vocal formants with the vocoder, making the synth "talk". Although as others have mentioned, vocoder is technically a general term, and doesn't necessarily mean what I just mentioned. I suggest using the more distinctive term: Assbox.The Antares Auto-tune has been around for years. I thought it was sent from hell when it first appeared, but then I produced an album with a not-so-perfect singer, and oh my god it was sent from the heaven of audio legend. The fact is that the voice is just another instrument. There is obviously a skill in singing, and those skillful singers will shine through, but using the Auto-tune is a life-saver when your human instrument won't quite do what you want it to.
AFter after reading through the first week of this disaster, what happend to him next had me laughing hard.
"One thing that's great about the better studios in LA, is they supply you with a plethora of food. On any given day we could have muffins, bagels, croissants, fruit, or even veggie trays. At this particular studio there were almost always muffins. I love the muffins, especially the chocolate muffins. But for some inexplicable reason, the runner only buys one chocolate muffin per day for the basket ( he also only buys one onion bagel, which is even more dumbfounding to me). The longer I wait to go to the muffin basket, the more likely I'll have to eat a bran muffin (something that I was not in need of at that particular moment). Today, I figured I'd get to muffin basket early, and guarantee myself the lone chocolate muffin. When I arrive to the muffin room, lo and behold, before me stood Willy Show himself! And he was eating a muffin. This had to be kismet! Fate! Willy Show liked muffins too! And he liked chocolate muffins...
MOTHER FUCKER!!! "
Guy can't catch a break! hehe:)
Lusting over the sweet autotuned voice of a plastic surgery enhanced goddess with fake knockers!
;P
Just gives me another reason to like Phish
-FB
Ligaguinggligagiggagoogoogwillgo
And I suppose that the use of computer systems on modern jet fighters to keep the plane from breaking apart in mid-flight means that the pilots are a bunch of fakes, huh? And the photographer who uses a camera with faster-than-human-reflex autofocus is just a wannabe who ought to be using a wooden view camera and glass negatives? Or the accountant who uses a spreadsheet instead of his fingers is a poseur? How about the paraplegic who uses a motorized wheelchair instead of dragging himself along the ground? Give me a break.
The whole idea behind all technology is to augment natural human ability.
I hate to break it to the suddenly Luddite masses on Slashdot, but musical recording and, for that matter, electrically-amplified live performances are completely and entirely products of fairly sophisticated technology from beginning to end. Personally, I don't give a rat's patoot how the end product is arrived at as long as it's good. If I want to appreciate raw human nature, I'll go look at 19th century porn daguerrotypes. If I want good music, I'll drop a digital CD into my computerized stereo system and listen to it with my computer-designed speakers. Sheesh.
My first thought on reading about this, as someone who can play the guitar fairly well but can't sing worth a shit was cool, I want one.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Well the 'before' sample has an obviously flat note. However, the 'after' sample takes that note and makes it just a bit too sharp. There's a reason people tend to sing flat rather than sharp, it sounds better. If the 'before' sample had managed to get the pitch up just a bit it would have been fine.
I cringed more at the sharpness of the 'after' sample than I did at the flatness of the 'before' sample. So much for perfect pitch! The ideal pitch for that note was just a bit flat. Of course, you can't expect a computer to know that.
I'm sure an untrained ear wouldn't notice but having played in an Orchestra and sung in a choir, I know how important pitch is. Most instruments allow you to 'bend' the pitch half a tone or more. In an orchestral setting, it's the rule rather than the exception to do just that.
If you put autotuners on instruments in an orchestra, you'd create an abomination of sound. What makes singers any different?
Link
Maybe you've heard of Aerosmith?
The CB App. What's your 20?
Would anyone claim that having better surveying, measuring, and leveling tools in construction would lead to less artistic architecture?
A device for perfect pitch will only improve one technical fundamental of music and that is A Good Thing. The human factor for self-expresion is not affected by this technology at all. The more the human can focus on self expression and let machines do the gruntwork the better!
I guess no one told Metallica...
Auto-pitch correction has been around for a fair while now (at least 6 years).
I remember using it on an Eventide Harmoniser in uni in 1996!
And for all you non-musicians out there who are getting irate about this, well I have news for you. There is no such thing as a music recording without some kind of artificial processing done by electronics to make the instruments and/or vocals sound better. Whether its reverb, compression, or vocal processing, everyone, and I really mean everyone "cheats" when it comes to recording(or performing) sounds electronically. Hell, look at guitar distortion, without which there would be no hard rock or metal music. That's gotta be one the most processed sounds ever, when you compare the original guitar sound with what's actually coming out of the speakers.
If you need to keep it pure, I suggest you listen only to all acoustic music that is not mic'd or amplified in any way. If it has been recorded, it has been altered.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
NO IT WASN'T!!! DIE DIE DIE!!!
a cks661.htm
Thanks for playing... BUT YOU are WRONG!
Read the section of this article from the "That Vocal Trick In Full". It was done with a vocoder.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb99/articles/tr
There wasn't an AUTOTUNE in sight.
Feel free to appologise.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I learnt this today -- coincidence?
Find a song you know really well. Ideally one with a chord or key played consistently that you can sing along with. In this way you have an auditory recording, a vocal (kinaesthetic) configuration as well as the corresponding feelings (does it feel right?) Three representations is more than enough to ensure accuracy.
Learn how to match the pitch without listening to it first (I could do this instantly). You now have perfect pitch for one note/key.
From that chord/key, you can create create perfect pitch for the entire scale by using intervals (much easier). Different songs use different intervals eg Away in a Manger has a 4th interval and Happy Birthday has a 2nd interval between the first two notes.
That's it. Go away and test it.
I think of these devices as performance enhancing technology. We hate these in sports precisely because they violate the point of sports - human performance. They ought not to be hated in the arts, though, because the point of art is nothing like that - art is for art's sake and should be judged on its own merits. Consider - instruments of all kinds can be thought of as methods for people to make sounds they would otherwise be incapable of making. Also, I suspect we reverve our revulsion with these techniques for only a subset of their use in music. When Laurie Anderson uses that "make her sound like a guy" thing, no one objects. Another example would be that transexual guy who did the music for A Clockwork Orange. No one would complain over their use of these kinds of technologies because we understand that it's the art that matters in those cases, not the way it was made. A long while back I read an interview with William Burroughs where he was asked to comment on the then recent publication of computer-generated poetry. He said he liked some of it and some of it left him cold. The interviewer asked if he had any reservations, given that it was a program that had written the work. His response was more or less that he'd been asked to comment on the art, not the artist. At the end of the day, the most likely use of this stuff will be to help shitty singers make shitty music, yes, but there will always be shitty music. But I bet you somewhere out there, Lou Reed's bitching about why they didn't have this thirty years ago :)
All them years of mathematics weren't wasted after all!
I'm sure my wife hates being woken up by my wailing as I take my morning shower before work.
They sound awful, anyway.
sig not found
In Soviet Russia:
3. Profit!
2. ???
1. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of sigs, you insensitive clod
Do sigs really cluster?
I knew there would be several of these "this is what is wrong with music today" posts on here. Having worked with pitch correction directly during student projects, everyone is blowing this way out of proportion. Pitch correction does not remove the "soul" from music. Yes, much of the "talent" portion of the music is gone from mainstream music, but that soul has nothing to do with pitch correction.
I used to know a guy from a fairly popular hardcore band in Boston, name removed to protect the innocent. When we laughed about the pitch-correction microphone in front of him, he told us that his lead singer really wanted one. In those small clubs, with little ventilation, in the middle of summer, it gets hot. You sweat. It becomes hard to perform. Especially if you're in a hardcore band fronting a heavy mosh pit. The pitch correction mic helps keep the technical aspect from sounding completely like shit just because the atmosphere is wearing you out.
What's more, a lot of music these days uses synthesizers rather than analog music. Against a completely techno-created production, pitch correction is almost a necessity. "Real" guitars and pianos can't hit perfect pitch right on the dot, no matter how well tuned, but a synthesizer usually has a mathematically-created perfect pitch. If the vocal is the only part of a track that sounds out-of-tune, then it can be hard to make the vocal match the track without a bit of pitch correction. For that matter, many dance tracks abuse and overuse autotune correctly, making a vocalist's voice sound robotic and mechanical to match a similarly electronic and mechanical dance beat. This is not to say that Cher's "Believe" is a great track, but it's not the autotune that keeps it from being interesting. Check out the underground "synthpop" revival, like Freezepop and the like, for other points of note.
And much as the parent poster mentioned, you people do not actually want an album with mistakes on it. How many of you kids would actually enjoy a terribly off-pitch album? If the players are having an off day in the studio, a bit of autotune is cheaper than another day of recording. Besides, most of the "good musicians" you people claim to like will probably be more inspired by the live stage than by the studio anyway.
Much like compression can help make tracks more tangible, but pop producers are abusing it to crush pop tracks with an L1, pitch correction is not destroying music. Pitch correction can bring a bit of technical expertise to a heavy performance, or can be used as a robot-ish effect, popular on pop dance tracks and other brands of synth pop. Shitty production, uninspired lyrics, and repetitive beats are killing music. Wait a minute... who said music was dying? Maybe if you'd all get your ears out of Clear Channel radio and check out local and indie artists, you'd notice that there is a vast area of music that is NOT being ruined by anything.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
As the value of a copy of a recorded song (or movie, or anything pretty much) continues to disintegrate, the live show will come back into prominence. Entertainers will have to actually--*gasp*--perform for their money. Until they can copy the actual performers, that is.
>Most singers have imperfect pitch. I'd go so far as to say *every* singer does.
You mean most *people*. Good singers have perfect pitch. Its how *they* get to be rich, and *you* need pitch correction.
>Your brain corrects pitch generally to a Pythagorean scale (perfect intervals at fifths and octaves, with the third exactly one-half way between the fundamental and fifth).
Crap. My brain was not built by pythagorus. It can, however, recognise harmonious frequencies with astonishing accuracy. It does not correct pitch.
>If you listen to an accappella choir, they will nearly always gravitate toward this scale.
OMG!
>The unfortunate side effect of a Pythagorean scale is that if the tune changes to another key, it sounds simply awful.
Are you nuts? Since when does a key change sound awful? Perhaps if you change to a key that is not 'right' for the piece. Or perhaps if not everyone does it at the same time. Key is a basis in a scale, pitch is frequency. Singing out of tune has nothing to do with pythagorus.
>Choirs can get away with this because they adjust their tuning on-the-fly to still sound good with one another when doing key changes.
They don't adjust their tuning. They all change key at the same time.
>Pianos, guitars, and many other instruments have a great deal of trouble with this.
What? Changing key? No. Changing pitch on-the-fly? Why would you want to - to sound crap? Changing scale, yes.
>...piano requires a skilled tuner at least 10 minutes or so to adjust.
You cannot change a piano to another scale, and have its keyboard make sense. And I defy anyone to retune a piano to another scale in 10 minutes. It takes longer than that to tune a piano at the best of times (except minor adjustments).
>Thus most people are accustomed to hearing something as "in-tune" only when it is performed to an even-tempered scale.
This is a cultural thing. Most people in a culture that does not use 'our' scale, would think theirs is very much in tune.
>This fights the vocalists natural ability to judge tune based on harmonic interaction with the rest of the song.
This is your arse talking.
>As a recording artist, I make regular use of pitch correction. You'll find that virtually every major artist commercial artist does, as well.
If you are recording yourself and make regular use of pitch correction, you might want to think about not giving up your day job. If you are recording someone else, I hope they are paying you lots. Every major commercial artist? - I don't think so. Maybe all the boppy mass produced rubbish - but not (c)RAP 'artists', we all know they can't sing anyway.
>The "effect" you refer to is often called the "Cher Effect" from the song, "Life After Love"...
It is not and has never been called the Cher Effect. Its called over compression. Yes it has been pitch corrected, but vocoders have been doing this for years.
>Most uses are quite subtle, and are most often used to smooth out the rough edges in a once-in-a-lifetime recording.
Obviously not so subtle if you only make one recording in a lifetime, eh.
>Anyway, get used to pitch correction. It's been in common use for over fifteen years on commercial recordings, but only recently has the technology become cheap enough that it's accessible to live performance and lower-end home recording artists. It's no more "BS" than a motion picture studio rigging cameras up for "bullet time", trapeze artists using a net, or stuntmen playing body doubles for stars in a motion picture. It's the ultimate quality of the performance that matters, and whatever you can do to bring the quality up a notch is probably a good thing.
I will never get used to pitch correction. The fact that the technology has become cheap is a bad thing. It means a whole load of no talent gits spew out their collective self-indulgent crap and think tha
One only has to compare Avril Lavigne's live performances (absolutely bloody awful) with her CDs (not much better but at least on-key) to realize how much tweaking some of these so-called "singers" need before they get anywhere near the right note.
These have been used for years. In recording studios too, where they can be called harmonisers. Used often with frequency compressors. To get those tight, Queen-like chorals. No, you don't really have to know how to sing - but it helps. Also, why worry about what is done at concerts? Most major acts rehearse and then record their entire concert beforehand, and then provide a 90%/10% mix to the public - sure, they're playing, but it's mixed with the pre-recorded at about only a tenth. If there's a glitch, you will still hear them. Between songs, their mics go up in volume. And so forth. No one is going to risk big money on a few false notes anymore.
What most people with perfect pitch really really hate are bagpipes. Never mind the fact that most people have never actually heard bagpipes when they're played well. Highland bagpipes (the most common variety) are tuned to a very sharp A, like 448 or 449. That's almost a b-flat but not quite. When playing with other instruments they are tuned up to B-flat myxolydian (E-flat major). Even still, a piper would have to adjust a few of the individual notes by partially covering the fingerholes with tape, in order to blend in with the other instruments.
Pipe bands (good ones) will have standardized tunings for all their players, and thus 30 pipers in perfect tune is an awesome sound, but there are plenty of solo players who prefer their own tunings that would be an aural assault on the ears of people expecting to hear standard equal-tempered Western tuning.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Chugging a few top weight beers has the same effect as a pitch corrector. At least for the singer.
There's a place for people who have talent but can't sing. Its called song writing.
Or become a (C)RAP 'artist'. Then you need neither sing nor have talent.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
In one music store about 2 years ago I was introduced to a machine that could make me sound like Johny Cash or Dolly Parton. Freaky to the max.
:-)
First time I ever talked dirty to myself
I bet crank phone callers would love that thing.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know if people still do it, but there was a time when direct-to-disc recordings were popular with audiophiles. I've listened to a few of them and I was very impressed with the sound quality.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
About 99% of the guys singing in rap songs should run out to the store and buy this thing right away!
The auto tune doesn't perform miracles. If you can't get within 50cents of the note it's not going to work well. Saying singers shouldn't use an autotune is like saying people should tune insturment by ear instead of using electric tuners. Why should peoples creativity be stiffled by genetics? As long as bands write their own songs they can use whatever tech they want to improve the performance.
See the Scientific American article "Speaking in Tones". It seems speakers of Asian tonal languages have close-to-perfect pitch.
It was only a matter of time before this technology reached the live stage. I don't think many people even realize how much it was relied on for recordings throughout the 80's, much less in the 90's.
I recall reading a recording magazine's article discussing how heavily Richard Marx relied on an autotuner for all of his recordings, for example. (I also recall the shock some people expressed at how much less "vocal talent" he seemed to have when they saw him perform live, when he did a show at Six Flags amusement park here in St. Louis.)
It's just another effects processor, ultimately. I'm sure there are purists out there who can't stand distortion being applied to the natural sound of an electric guitar. I know there are many people who can't stomach electronic drums/drum machines in music. Obviously, there are also those who won't care much for this effect being applied to vocals either.
In the end, I think the genre of music and the audience it's geared towards will determine how much autotuners are used. In a recording studio, pretty much anything's fair game (unless you're dealing with an act/artist that prefers a "raw" and "less refined" sound to the final recording - which is valid too). In live performances, I think harder/heavier rock acts tend to go for a more straightforward approach to things. Just project as much energy as possible and get the audience hyped up. For a "pop rock" act, achieving an "as close as possible to what you heard on the recording" sound is sometimes more acceptable.
As someone who played guitar in a local band before, I can tell you I wouldn't necessarily have had a problem with our singer using an autotuner on stage. Quite frankly, the guy had lots of energy and good stage presence, but his voice was "on again, off again". He had his "good days" where he sung our songs great, but many other times, he sounded like he was slaughtering cattle.
I guess they're seen as pretentious, or that the videos don't have enough titties. Ugh.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Though I do not like N'sync in any way... I am somewhat impressed that they use this technology in a creative way. If you've heard the vocal pitch slide in one of their more famous songs (no idea the name) thats this box being put to creative use. They sing one note, and it does the slide... sounds kinda nifty...
So now... you can tune a piano *and* you can tune a Phish...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
try to tune 'em though.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
As far as I know, all these pitch correction devices use an equally tempered scale.
After a few years of singing Barbershop harmony, and listening to my quartet's vowel match get progressively better, I can really start to sense how almost all non-acapella music is a little out of tune. Oddly enough, the two instruments I play are guitar and trombone, both of which let you tune by ear to a certain extent. Trombone is obvious but even on a guitar you can bend a note up if it's sounding a little flat. You just can't bend it down. I used to tune my low E a little flat because I always ended up bending it a little and rarely played it open.
In Barbershop it gets weird. You can be singing a note, and say that note is the 3rd of the chord you're in, so it's a little flatter than an equally tempered 3rd. The next note may still be written a the same note but if it's the 5th of the chord you have to sing it sharper and louder or it won't be right. You have to be Justly in tune and listening to your three buddies to get the chord you want. There's no longer just major and minor, there's also bright, blue and everywhere in between.
It's the world's best ear training, and loads of fun. Try it.
we all know what a vocoder is and can do, some even better than you, as some of your reply's answers show.
Now, if I tell you that it's a *fact* and it was publicly announced by Cher's producer himself who should be aware, then there's no more whining about vocoders vs autotune, ok ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
These things have been around for ages. Pop music is all filled with auto-tuned vocals. Its quite obvious if you can putty up with the music long enough to listen for it. There are some good creative uses for auto-tuning, but making vocals sound natural is certainly not one of them.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
http://www.frontalot.com/mp3/mc_frontalot_-_bragga docio.mp3
Yes... Thats auto-tune in the chorus.
Gord Adams, a Toronto music engineer, set up the sound system at last summer's Harley-Davidson 100th Anniversary Open Road Tour, which featured artists such as Journey and April Wine. He witnessed autotuners being employed there by about half the major recording artists.
Heck yeah, I'll bet "If You See Kay" would really suck without pitch correction. WTF?!?
Perfect pitch means one is able to identify a given pitch (according to Western systems, do, re, mi, fa, so, la, si, and the accompanying sharps/flats)
Absolute pitch means that one is able to sing a given pitch.
By the way, I think that Shenkerian (the Shenkerian who posted above me, that is) is correct in saying that good relative pitch is the most necessary requirement, and a machine that corrects the relative pitch would be the most useful.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ha, this just made my day. What tickles my cultural bone here is the seemingly obvious increasing incompability between our western capitalistic comsumption orgy and our basic human nature. Have we indeed forgotten what music has meant for our cultural evolution ever since the dawn of our species? Now, however, it seems to be perfectly acceptable for the "musically impared" to entertain the masses using such technology. I for one believe that no-one lacks musical talent more than anyone else and that this trend will further degenerate our most fundamental abilities.
/. for days to come.
In addition to being an anonymous coward I am also a musician and hacker. I'll probably monitor this discussion closer than any other on
Hooray for human nature!!
/demoncleaner
Why do you think you have to limit yourself to that? :-)
My brother had a demo version of a commercial auto-tuning program. Was great fun, though of course in was on windows so the latency was horrible.
You could have your voice corrected to any scale you wanted. Not just the chromatic scale, you could force it into the proper key, say d minor. Heh, Awful-Singer Spice probably needs that, I don't think she's accurate to a halftone most of the time.
It had support for some rather eccentric scales as well. I amused myself by transforming my bawling into mongolian yodeling
Just a PS: According to my former folk music teacher Olve Utne all scales used by humans are in some way based on the Natural overtones* except down in Mali and Java and those islands. There it is instead based on the relative weight of the gongs!
*(or what it is called. I am sure you know that if you double the frequency of a tone you rise an octave. If you start by doing that and thereafter keep increasing the pitch with a constant amount, the amount used in step 1, you get the natural overtones)
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Just like it's a no no to be smart in that culture, sounding good is a no no as well. Only stupid and terrible sounding will do!
Fuck the false-positive spell checking. The autoformat makes me homocidal. All of a sudden you get number lists, bulleted lists, pages are indented for no apparent reason, tab settings go to hell, and all the little buttons in the ruler up top are in the strangest places.
Fuck word, fuck microsoft.
Avril Lavigne had had one of these at the Brit awards, my ears would still be healthy.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
> " ... I think we all realize that some singers sound different -- much different -- live than they do on CD's, but this just seems so, so, what's the word: fake?"
I believe the term you're looking for is Milli Vanilli
Must-not-watch TV!
It's all fake. My god, Letterman and co started using cameras that selectively soft focus just their faces back in 1996. Madonna's getting younger every day, and then there's Britney "panting like a dog" Spears and her "it's not lip syncing, it's just singing real quiet under a pre-recorded mix".
If it passes through a piece of electronics, it's fake. If you don't see it with your own eyes, and hear it with your own ears, it's fake. That's not a judgement - when I'm watching fake titties bounce, I don't like to be distracted by off key wailing - just an observation.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Gee, Antares Auto-Tune has been out now for what, 6 years? I have a demo of it on my old OS9 Mac, and you can get a hardware version.
Yeah I felt the same way. Usually Slashdot comes up with articles about stuff I never herad of. But as someone with intermediate audio knoweldge, THIS article just sounds a little funny. You guys are just finding about "Auto-Tune" now?
It's a little like hearing a buzz that authors have startd cheating by using a "new" technology called a "Spell-Checker" that automatically corrects spelling mistakes in a document. No really isn't that just WILD? The book industry is really lowering its standards with this one!
I guess this just goes to show that the standard slashdotters are really up-to-date on some issues, but not on ALL issues.
You realize thats the only comeback insecure fuckheads who make a idiot of themselves in a post have?
The guy who didn't know shit about Milli Vanilli was a moron. Not a Troll.
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
I never get myself to use the autotuner if not for the effect. I like the effect, so when I use it, I use it in the extreme. (eg. changing the melody note for note) Then again, that's only when I do extremely eperimental electronic music. In "normal" music - go for the second take. Your ears might be used to the antares sound, not noticing it anymore, but believe me, EVERY time its used is noticable.
(And all the while I thought its just a modern effect everyone latched on to. Never realised they're thinking they sound normal!)
Why does this matter? Would you be equally upset if I told you that the robot voice in Kraftwerk's "Computerwelt" is a voice synth, and not actually one of the band members? Isn't it the actual end product (the sound) that matters?
Can we give Mikey-boy one of these and set it to correct his voice to 0 volume?
I have no sig yet I must scream.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/FutureTech/ futuretech030128.html
She still needs to make the recording that she is lip synching to. She probably isn't using her vocal track off the record. More likely, she laid down a vocal specifically for the superbowl lip synching, and used the auto-tuner to do so.
Lasers Controlled Games!
Anyone who saw the HBO "Britney: Live in Vegas" special knows full well that Miss Spears is NOT using pitch correction in concert. That would require her to ACTUALLY SING!!! Which she doesn't. At all. You don't need live pitch correction for an already pitch corrected recording.
I'm a musician, singer, and sometimes sound engineer and producer, and I am usually able to pick out use of these boxes in a recording situation. In a live venue, it's tougher because the people who can afford their use, maintenance and programming are typically large acts where the typical venue and audience size obscures their sound. Generally, the signs of pitch touch-ups on recordings, such as done by the Antares boxes, are: (1) pitch in the singer's voice that is abnormally accurate when holding a single tone, and (2) unnaturally quantized sounding intervals when the singer is changing pitch.
The most trained human voice still has a characteristic "wobble," warble, or inaccuracy, especially when changing pitches. Even the most notably gifted singers, Pavarotti, Celine Dion, Aretha Franklin, etc., have their peculiar signatures or inaccuracies, most of which are simply felt sympathetically and probably not recognized, even by highly trained ears, when one is not paying very close attention. When these inaccuracies (or as I prefer to call them, "human touches") are eliminated, a trained ear can usually pick it up.
Just to run a gamut that should encompass the listening habits of some readers, you'll hear quite a bit of this on many country hits of the past several years, like that song that goes "I am Rosemarie's granddaughter..."; a number of cuts on Avril Lavigne's album; of course the infamous Cher single "Believe," which used the auto-tuner as a gimmick for the song's hook and pretty much took the tool "out of the closet," so to speak; and innumerable other dance and pop records. (Oops, showing my age there, sorry.)
You can of course get Antares plug-ins for ProTools (TDM, RTAS), VST or MAS for Mac, or DirectX for PC. (I don't know them, shill for them, or whatever. Just passing on the 411.)
This has nothing to do with the Pythagorean theorem. Seems like *your* years of mathematics were more or less wasted.
The one where the mixer technician turned up the "Suck" knob.
Yet another symptom of the utter lack of musical talent in pop culture.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Was Jello Biafra's singing "perfect"? No, but it was _distinctive_. You can always tell when you're listening to the Dead Kennedys (although John Linnell, on his State Songs tour, did an eerily good impression when he and his backing band covered California Uber Alles as an encore. That was a jolt, to be sure.)
The same is true of non-punk bands like Quasi and Hefner. The vocals are excellent, but a choir director would cringe at them. On the other hand, synth-pop bands like Freezepop make good music and _try_ to make their vocals sound like a synth, because it fits in with the rest of their style.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
you guys seem to think that music is dead because of things like MTV and stupid manufactured bands, but these only make up a extremely small population of the musicians in the world. This auto-tuner will probably gain wide use among the manufactured bands but it will never make it to the majority of artists who probably will never be able to afford it.
If all you hear is MTV. Go to your local and listen to the wonderful crap that they play.
LONG LIVE OUT OF TUNE MUSIC!!
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
The tool is not a panacea.
I've got the software version, and I can say with some confidence that if you suck as a singer, it's not going to fix it.
What it is helpful for is correcting small errors. It can be used subtley. In fact, it's probably used a lot more than you think. Many, many "great" singers use it live for an extra push. Hey, if you've had a long day, or have a slight head cold, or whatever, there's no way you'll be able to hold that sustain in tune for 4 bars without drifting a little flat. This'll help that a bit. Not everyone who uses it ends up sounding like Cher.
I've heard some absolutely AMAZING vocalists use Autotune live. I don't think less of them. I know they can sing, I've heard them - what's wrong with some technological backup?
(as a side note, I'd *much* rather hear a computer sing than Celine Dion. Her voice is like fingernails on a blackboard to me).
----
"I used to listen to Null Device before they sold out."
True -- but when you are playing against most modern instruments, it sound bad to use your own temperment against what is going on. If you are in an acapella barbershop quartet -- hell yeah! Use proper intonation.
:-)
For that matter if you are playing against unfretted stringed instruments -- those too can deal with the proper tonality. At least if you find someone that understands there IS a difference between G# and Aflat. Most musicians today would look at you funny for even suggesting there is a difference. Then again, I'm glad that my synth only has 12 notes to the octave instead of 24 or 36 or whatever (I knew a guy that designed a 36 note per octave synth that was set up using accordian buttons in different rows that he was sure to change the world...its a shame he never learned to play the thing with grace...then again, I also know a guy with a guitar with a 19TET scale with removable fretboards that sounds killer -- though he definately doesn't play anything diatonically...I wonder if the Xenharmonic mailing list is still around...I haven't been a member in years).
As for the original posters comparison to the piano...anyone that is using software that is this terraced has it on the hardest of settings. This is USUALLY an effect as opposed to anything else. A friend calls it Oscillator Voice. It was used badly on a Cher song a few years back ad folks loved the effect. Its now a pop staple...one can say distortion in punk is the same sort of effect. I definately wouldn't consider this correction of any sort...just another noise to mix up the sound a little.
Besides -- most of these softwares CAN tune to Just or Equal temperments with a click of a button. Load in a new scale and you are cool. Most of the automatic tuning programs will even allow you to hit a grace note and gives you a chance to correct it yourself before it slides into the correct note -- you adjust that sensativity as you feel the need.
Anyone that doesn't know how to use this stuff either just isn't trying or is an idiot. Used judicasously (??? where is my spell checker?), it can do its job without ever stripping the humanity from a performance. Then again, humans are imperfect and thus its still human in the end
My band has been using autotuners for atleast three years. What they ultimately do is to speed up the recording process, since we can accept minor flaws that the autotuner can correct. Wouldn't record without them.
A quick Google search, however, lists several authoratative sites which conflate the two terms.
For example:
You tell me how "whilst" differs from "while," and I'll stop calling you a pretentious jackass.
Folks, pitch correction has been around since the late 1980s (thank you Eventide). I have a box called a Digitech IPS33B "Super Harmony Machine", which can correct and shift pitch, create chordal harmonies (in the correct key) and arpeggiate, all in real time. It was made in 1992.
"News" for nerds?
A variety of electronics are available to enhance vocal performance, and I think they have their place. In the computer world, is it "cheating" to use an IDE rather than a basic text editor for coding? Is using a cluster or network-distributed service to achieve lighting-fast performance somehow dishonerable? We use the best tools we can find meet our goals. Musicans are doing exactly the same thing
Here's a quick example: I'm an amature musician. I'm a decent vocalist with some decidedly third-rate guitar skills. A few months ago a friend who has his own basement studio asked me to come over and cut a few tracks.
One of the songs had a two-and-a-half octave range. I can hit just over three octaves, but the musical value of the extremes is questionable. This piece called for a thick, rich, bluesy presentation, which is especially hard to reproduce at the edges of the vocal range. Even after transposing for my voice, there were a couple of high parts where I sounded pretty thin and reedy, and a couple of lows that were gravely. Multiple takes didn't help, that's all I could deliver.
Enter the magic of electronics. A couple of days later, my friend wanted me to come over to cut another harmony track, and check the vocals. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to hear this piece again, but I was amazed. It sounded just like me, without any noticable "robotic" tones or alteration. However, where I'd been thin or raspy I heard a full, well rounded voice with plenty of harmonics and depth. RJ (my buddy) muttered something about filters, compression, flanging, etc. The track was great, and I love to have friends listen to it, but I could never duplicate that performace live. In my opinion, that's not cheating, it's debugging. Which of you, finding a deficiency in your code, can allow it to remain unaltered?, well, neither can I! ;-)
They have personality. Personality goes a long way.