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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?"
This has been used in the studio for a while, and probably live.
Remember Cher's Life After Love and that effect on her voice that became used so painfully much?
That was achieved with Antares Autotune.
-B
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.
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
A vocoder generates a fixed frequency wave (pulse, sine, whatever) at the correct pitch and then modulates that wave with the input signal. The result is that when the input frequency changes, you hear a very sudden, abrupt change in the output pitch, much like the voice is being generated by a music keyboard. From a pitch perspective, it basically is.
A pitch correction does a frequency estimator on the original input signal, then determines the nearest correct frequency for a valid note in the current key, determines how far to shift it towards the correct pitch (you don't shift it all the way to avoid flattening vibrato completely), and finally uses a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to actually shift a chunk of audio up or down in pitch the appropriate amount.
Vocoding is to pitch correction as AM Radio is to Ogg Vorbis. Yeah, they both end up doing similar things when viewed at a high level, but they do them in such radically different ways that they don't sound anything alike.
120 character sigs suck. Make it 250.
Cher really abused it on that "Believe" song.
Nearly. It was a vocoder, but the end effect is very similar. The main practical difference is that vocoders can be used to make anything sound in pitch, and even let people sing chords rather than single notes. That and they've been around far longer. Hmm, maybe I should submit them as a new technology for a Slashdot article...
From Antares' site:
Female singer before
and after processing.
Lots more at the product info page.
...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.
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
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".
This is true. The version of the Beatles "Strawberry Fields Forever" that everybody knows is actually a splice of two different takes. One of the take's tempo was faster than the other, so they had to slow one down and then adjust the pitch to make the two takes line up. This has nothing to do with Lennon's vocal performance, but it just goes to show that pitch adjustment has been happening since at least the 60s.
"I can detect an autotune-processed track within seconds of hearing it, due to the utter piano-like lack of pitch sensitivity and expression."
Must be listening to ancient software.
The software I use for fixing tuning issues -- and more to the point for creative avenues of doing something NEW with the sound -- is pretty indistinguishable from the real thing.
Old Autotune would be something folks would be something folks just programmed a tuning and let it go. I still don't like Antaries version of the Autotune but they have make a LOT of improvements in their version of it. The last ProTools studio I was in didn't even use the hard pitching algs -- they penciled in the bad notes. Pull up a grid and ya moused the stuff to what you need.
Better softwares like Melodyne do this MUCH better. Instead of screwing with the pitch of the entire word or otherwise, it finds the center of the pitch and pops it to the right spot. The word still sounds natural. Its smart enough to know how to tie sounds together so you don't have major jumps in the sound and they've got great algs to make sure the timbre is consistant in the move -- of course anything more than a semitone or two is going to be more noticable, but its still better than anything the generic autotune can do.
Its nice enough that you can add or remove vibrato naturally as well as pitch widths...
I've heard several folks who've claimed to be able to hear ANY autotune alg in use and be fooled by this software. The only reason Antares is still in business is because of the name...Melodyne is the software to beat and it just keeps getting better (Version 2.0 was released this week...haven't had a chance to evaluate it yet).
You know that's a Nine Inch Nails song he's covering, right? He also covered Sound Garden's Rusty Cage on the Unchained CD. I believe Unchained is an album of cover songs, with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers as the backing band.
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!
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.
Distortion, like chorus effects and envelope filters, is simply another option for your guitar's "voice." They don't make bad guitarists sound good, they just make bad guitarists sound distorted.
Back to the topic of vocal pitch correctors... I see this as kind of like drum machines. Do they make me appreciate Neil Peart any less? Nope. Likewise, people will still value somebody who can sing.
Also, there's a lot more to singing than pitch. There's phrasing, vibrato, dynamics, etc., all of which enhance the expression in performance. Also, there's the issue of nasal inflection often heard in pop vs. broad, throaty sounds preferred in operatic music, and all points between. Microphones and PA systems eliminated the need to project your voice as singers once knew it, but a full voice still sounds very different than the reedy singing of that third-chair soprano in your church choir who can't be heard at all without extreme close-mic amplification.
In fact, many of the truly great singers don't sing on a "perfect" tempered scale at all. They deliberately bend certain pitches away from strict piano tuning frequencies, which are not correct representations of what the scale should be. Singers who know how to make subtle changes of intonation will still outshine those who rely on these auto-tuners, even if the listener doesn't consciously understand why they sound better.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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.
Huh? I thought the Pythagorean scale was based on whole-number ratios: An octave is 2:1, a fifth is 3:2, a fourth is 4:3, etc. But if you do the math, 3/2 * 4/3 == 4/2 == 2/1, so the octaves are still in tune.
Actually, brass instruments naturally hit notes on the pythagorean scale (if that's what this is) becaues they actually do use harmonics; thus to play in tune with a piano (or with another instrument using another fundamental note) they have to adjust slightly based on what harmonic they're using. Thus I remember my HS band director telling the trumpets to 'lip up' their E's, because the instrument tended to make them flat; in other words, 'just temperment' 3rd ratio is smaller than the 'even-tempered' 3rd ratio. But all the open C's on a trumpet, no matter what octave, are always perfectly in tune with each other (as long as the musician's lips are in good shape).
I think what you may be talking about is when you tune a piano using only one interval -- i.e., tune the C; then tune the G to be a perfect 5th to the C, tune the D to be perfect to the G, tune the A to be perfect to the D, etc; in that case, when you finally get around to C again, you'll have an awful howling, because the just tempered 5th (i.e., 3:2) is a tad too large; even temper makes it a bit flatter, so that it all adds up.
It just seems strange to me, that things are this way... in order to be able to play in all keys, you have to make all keys sound slightly out of tune (or adjust on-the-fly, if you can). I'm sure there's a moral there somewhere...
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
It appears you've never done harmonic analysis of choral music, or tried to match an accompaniment to an in-tune choral arrangement when said piece was first performed a cappella. Any competent digital piano will allow you to change tunings (note: NOT change pitch, A=440 all the way here) to match the harpsichord needs of pre-Baroque pieces or gain the sweet sound of a perfect Pythagorean chord.
If a piano is tuned to the Pythagorean scale in, say, the key of B flat, trying to play a piece in C major on the same piano without retuning will sound horrible. This is perfectly well-understood in the music community. If you wish to play an even-tempered instrument in multiple keys, you accept a slight dissonance across all ranges of the keyboard in exchange for the flexibility of playing in any key without unbearable dissonance. It is perfectly possible, and often done even today with harpsichords, to tune a keyboard instrument to a non-even-tempered scale in order to provide "perfect" consonance in playing pre-Baroque period pieces.
Now on to the rest of your nearly-coherent rant:
Baloney. You can be a good singer with good relative pitch. "Perfect Pitch", as inexpertly named for this article, is a totally different thing from singing in tune, or having good relative pitch. Given that I mentioned "imperfect pitch", above, I stand by what I said: all singers have imperfect pitch. They will not always nail the note perfectly, particularly at the end of an exhausting recording session. There will be times that pitch correction is welcomed as a practical measure in many vocalist's lives. There are, of course, purists who will raise holy hell if someone were to pitch-correct them.
If your instrument is even-tempered, key changes within a piece do not sound awful, although there is a slight dissonance to this tuning. If you are using a natural temperament or other alternative, sweeter tuning, it will sound awful in other keys, particularly if those keys don't have a fundamental on the major fourth or fifth with few accidentals versus the primary scale.
Since you are obviously a complete novice to the understanding of tuning systems, allow me to recommend checking out this brief talk on "Math and Music". These days, we've taken the even-tempered scale a bit further by using logarithmic tuning devices rather than simply dividing octaves by 12, but even those tuning devices are not quite "perfect" when tuning a piano. You need to stretch the octaves on the upper regions of the piano in order to avoid perceived dissonance on the part of the listener, and that is a skill that takes a long time to master.
OK.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
If you want to freshen your memory.
;-)
Go here:
http://www.quadrophenia.net/ and click "1973 Tour" then scroll down.
There is actually bootleg video footage of that show circulating. Of course, I don't have it..
To borrow from a favorite movie, "I don't think it means what you think it means."
The word "distortion," when applied to sound, almost always refers to the failure of electronic devices to accurately reproduce an audio source signal.
If I get what you seem to be driving at, I think the word you are fishing for is "timbre," meaning the variations in wave shape which make one voice or instrument sound different from another voice or instrument playing the same pitch.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.