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?"

Comments

Re:hey, wait a minute

[Doc Hopper]

Most singers have imperfect pitch. I'd go so far as to say *every* singer does. 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). If you listen to an accappella choir, they will nearly always gravitate toward this scale. The unfortunate side effect of a Pythagorean scale is that if the tune changes to another key, it sounds simply awful. 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.

Pianos, guitars, and many other instruments have a great deal of trouble with this. You'd have to rearrange the fretboard on a guitar to avoid (nearly) even-temperament, and the piano requires a skilled tuner at least 10 minutes or so to adjust. Thus most people are accustomed to hearing something as "in-tune" only when it is performed to an even-tempered scale.

This fights the vocalists natural ability to judge tune based on harmonic interaction with the rest of the song.

As a recording artist, I make regular use of pitch correction. You'll find that virtually every major artist commercial artist does, as well. The "effect" you refer to is often called the "Cher Effect" from the song, "Life After Love", where they intentionally used pitch correction to the extreme. Most uses are quite subtle, and are most often used to smooth out the rough edges in a once-in-a-lifetime recording.

It's possible to pitch-correct large variations in performance (bringing, say, a C to a G) but they sound increasingly unnatural the further you move the note from reality. The human ear is very closely attuned to variations from normal speech and singing patterns. That's why a sped-up playback of a tenor doesn't sound like a soprano -- it sounds like a sped-up tenor.

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.

Some artists thrive due to their "natural" sound. That's great for them. The rest of us enjoy technology's ability to make our lives more fun, interesting, and better-sounding.