Slashdot Mirror
The Deceptive Perfection of Auto-Tune
theodp writes "For a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a lot of pop vocals suddenly sound better than great — they're note- and pitch-perfect. It's all thanks to Auto-Tune, the brainchild of Andy Hildebrand, who realized that the wonders of autocorrelation — which he once used to map drilling sites for the oil industry — could also be used to bestow perfect pitch upon the Britney Spears of the world. While Auto-Tune was intended to be used unnoticed, musicians are growing fond of adjusting the program's retune speed to eliminate the natural transition between notes, which yield jumpy and automated-sounding vocals. 'I never figured anyone in their right mind would want to do that,' says Hildebrand."
As these techniques improve and become more popular, it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like, and how much authenticity will be left.
People are still making the music, sure it might not be coming from the vibrations of strings and vocal chords but its still authentic music.
I thought they all lip-synced.
Next up: Fake Symphonies with synthesized "Real Life" performers. (with the symphony ticket cost)
Yes, because everything that isn't done manually is inauthentic. And it's been getting worse almost every day since the end of the Bronze Age.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
As these techniques improve and become more popular, it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like, and how much authenticity will be left.
What does authenticity have to do with music? If you like the sound, listen to it. It's that simple.
"As these techniques improve and become more popular, it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like, and how much authenticity will be left."
Well, according to TFA, T-Pain *has* been using it in a creative/authentic way, to create a different style of music. He may not be "in his right mind" according to Hildebrand, but he is using the tool in previously unexpected ways. So, here is the authenticity!
As these techniques improve and become more popular, it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like, and how much authenticity will be left.
Are you serious? Is hip-hop and R&B the only form of music? Most modern folk, rock, and classical recordings have far more fidelity (thus more authentic to the original sound of performance) than those made twenty or fifty years ago.
But whenever the artist is live, they end up falling flat on their face. I saw Lily Allen on Johnathon Ross the other night, and she sounds *terrible* live, I've heard schoolgirls singing along to their MP3 player better than that.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
How long before this feature is part of the amplifier, and live musicians are singing 'tweaked' vocals?
At first I thought that there will always be authentic live music, but thinking some more, maybe that is doomed too.
Of course you can always switch it off.
Don't worry, soon actual artificial singers will have replaced artificial-sounding pop singers. Sure, the current Vocaloid offerings are still distinguishable from human singers for lead vocals, but when used professionally and as part of a backing track you'd never notice.
I never figured anyone in their right mind would want to do that
And who ever discovered analogue distortion by maxing the signal probably thought no one in their right mind would use that either. They were wrong. However, whoever discovered digital distortion by clipping probably thought no one in their right mind would want to use that ... and they have been for the most part correct.
:)
I'm going to make a prediction that this is going to turn out to be a lot like synth drums in the 80s. They were invented for fast beats that no human drummer could play. Except everyone started using them. On every song--with utter disregard for whether or not a regular drummer could play that. And what we have is a lot of hot fast songs from the 80s with synth drums and a whole bunch of hilariously cheesy disgusting synthesized drum songs. Synth drums are still used today but tastefully and when needed and--most importantly--in moderation.
I predict that we will look back at this vocal manipulation and see it the same way. It will have its place in a studio's toolbox where people want to modulate their voice unnaturally fast for a single song and can experiment with it. But these albums where every song has this applied to it are probably going to look like we resurrected & worshipped Max Headroom to future generations.
One more important thing: you don't know who is doing this. Is it Britney Spears? Does she really have control over her music? Are the fans actually demanding it? If this package is only $600 then why don't we see more bands (even independent) using this stuff? That's within any studio's price range.
I'm going to guess that it's safer for the corporate guys who run Spears & Co to bet on a machine to make perfect pitch. The fans are just told what to listen to by the radio anyway. I still get a kick out of listening to people defend Britney Spears as a talented musician when I'm pretty sure she's just a world class entertainer. Someone else shows her what to sing and how to dance--she's the piece of meat that keeps sales coming. Sad really.
Kudos to Hildebrand for making such a large jump between two completely different fields for the same technology. That stuff is getting more and more rare these days. Unfortunately it's for two of my least favorite industries
My work here is dung.
How much authenticity is left now in pop music?
There was a time when lip syncing would get your grammys taken away and have you shun by the music Industry and fans. These days it just seems commonplace.
As a musician and a sound engineer I shun everyone who relies on Auto Tune to make themselves sing in pitch!
If you don't have the vocal ability to sing in tune then you shouldn't be singing.
I think it's disgraceful that AutoTune be used for anything other than correcting minor blemishes and should never be used live. In fact, I usually take the stance that if I can't reproduce the effect live then I won't put it into the song. The audience has paid to see a live performance. Not your studio album played through speakers.
Unfortunately this is becoming all too common nowadays, using digital tools to touch everything up because you can. I weep for music's future.
Don't worry, there will always be purists in every field. Fast forward fifty years and SOME music is still going to sound the same.
Balls. Showing that you know nothing about pop music right at the beginning of your article was a bad move. There have been decades of pop music where much of the instrumentation, writing and vocals were of a naturally high quality.
Scratch the surface beyond the radio-played cack doing the rounds currently.
I listen to quite a lot of MIDI/XM/MOD stuff already, and some are actually very decent.
Hildebrand may have invented the particular algorithm which is used by many musicians, but the ability to electronically pitch correct has been around for quite some time. I have a harmonizer from that period of time which has a perfect pitch setting where it samples your voice and corrects it to the nearest pitch.
I was going to suggest that the vocoder was much older technology that does the same thing, however more research shows that Hilderbrands implementation actually uses a phase vocoder.
That said, the use of the autotune in the forefront I find absolutely atrocious. To me it's the musical equivalent of applying makeup in order to highlight the mole on your face.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As these techniques improve and become more popular, it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like, and how much authenticity will be left.
You make it sound like there's any authenticity now. Authenticity in the music business is an airbrush used to sell an artist's music. There's no reality to an "authentic" sound. You don't get a certificate with your CD or MP3 that says "this artist is an authentic descendant of Elbonian yak callers, and his music is guaranteed an authentic rendition of that ancient culture" (well, and actually means it).
Now all I need are auto tune earplugs for the Karaoke bar!
Chris Cornell uses this for the end of "I Am The Highway" (i think that's the name). That's what their talking about when referring to using it in unusual, unanticipated ways.
put the what in the where?
The article is about people using this technology to produce effects, so the word "deliberate deception" no longer seems to apply. In this case it's an instrument, like synthesizer or even a lute.
Scene: 9,000 BC:
Hey, that guy has some gut strings on a hollow log that he makes vibrate, and they're tuned in harmony! He plucks them as he sings, so he can sing in tune all the time! That's deliberate deception!
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I say we don't have to worry too much about it.
Firstly, I think this is a well researched and well written Slashdot story, kudos to the person who wrote it.
---
... it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like, and how much authenticity will be left.
Don't worry too much about it. As TFA (time.com) said: "the creative abuse of Auto-Tune quickly went out of fashion, although it continued to be an indispensable, if inaudible, part of the engineer's toolbox." Meaning the sound engineers quickly learnt how it should be used properly - Cher's 1998 release was a showcase on How Not To Use It.
"West's 808s & Heartbreak is the complete opposite ... ghostly and cold, and it's that alienated tone that made 808s one of the best albums of last year." Meaning they're learning to use Auto-Tune in creative ways to produce the unnatural sound intentionally, fully knowing the side-effects and consequences.
Grammy-winning recording engineer: "And every singer now presumes that you'll just run their voice through the box." Most photos used in glossy magazines are cropped, dedusted, contrast adjusted, even air brushed. As long as the engineer knows when not to over-do it, I think it's fine.
I could not care in the least whether the voice on "Circus" and "Toxic" belongs to a young blond woman named Britney Spears or an AI in a basement in Kyoto. It's pop music: flash, rhymes, synth, beat, top hat and just enough cowbell. Ever since MTV it's also been good looks and plenty of skin, and that's fine too. Lemme say it again: It's Pop Music! It's not classical, or jazz, or standards, or any of the genres which mandate legit chops. When I listen to a pop song, I am under no illusion that the person credited wrote the song, is playing the instrument, or sings like that in real life. I don't care about the artist (or his/her politics) I care about the production of the song.
Jeez... didn't The Monkees teach us anything?
I'm guessing there'll be as much authenticity in pop music ten years from now as there is in the cover of beauty magazines (Cosmo et al.) now.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Music can have soul and character no matter what tools are used in its creation. Auto-tune is just another tool in a good musicians aresenal. Yes, it, like many other good tools, can be used to make bad singers sound better, good singers to sound awesome or weird. That has nothing to do with whether the song has artistic worth or not.
You may be shocked to find out that many of the old classics you remember (Sinatra and such) were written by people who could not sing and sung by singers which were better at marketing themselves than actually singing. They may have been great live performers, but that is not necessarily all about the singing.
Writing and performing with passion is ultimately worth more than the tools used, but the tools are often the means to get your vision out.
Recorded music was denounced as soulless and artificial when it first started. Look where we are now.
...using media that contains all the detail. That means no lossy compression technologies (mp3). And choose a sound system that will faithfully reproduce all that detail. No, your $20 ear buds or the Wal-Mart home theater sound system won't do. You don't have to spend tens of thousands for "boutique" audiophile gear, but you do need components that don't add to (or remove from) the program material
If you do these things, the difference between well-recorded audio and over-processed drek will be clear. I'm not saying the electronic tricks don't have their place, but they are not a substitute for genuine artistry in both the performance and engineering regimes.
Or perhaps for some purposes, we'll eventually dispense with real vocalists altogether -- Vocaloid. A few quick examples of Miku Hatsune's work:
Reset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrCxVzocnyo
Uninstall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-fja9RtRBc
You: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV5JH8jUeXY
BTW, if anyone has any other examples they're particularly fond of, please link below.
I think I heard that shit on a radio ad a couple months ago. It ended with a song with a female singer. Sounded real, but there were these step transitions between the notes, and I thought it was some sort of computer generated or sampled voice.
It makes it easy to market pretty people as singers if they can be "tuned"...We need never accept anyone less than beautiful as a singer ever again...After all music is a visual medium...Or at least that's what it seems to have become.
This is the worst live use of Autotune ever.
In 2007, Billy Joel sang the National Anthem with live autotune with all the wrong settings, and his voice got modulated like crazy. Sounds TERRIBLE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bcT_YOszxs&feature=related
Kanye will eventually get shot by one of his employees/managers/rivals, and auto-tune will go back into hibernation for another decade.
Eventually, "artists" will learn that electronic music tools should remain in the electronic music genre, as sonic exploration devices. Daft Punk can auto-tune whatever the hell they want, because they're not in the singing business.
In other words, if your computer does the singing for you, don't go around telling people you can sing.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
If it weren't for Auto-Tune I wouldn't be listening to pop music anymore.
Space Olympics FTW!
Yes, and authentic drummers used to make their sounds by banging femurs on skulls and rocks. It's a shame we don't have "authentic" drummers anymore.
All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted
Its really just a question
Of your honesty
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Where can I get one of these autotuners? Oh, and where's the next American Idol session being held?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
There'll be real-time auto-tune soon enough.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
lose and not loose.
I don't have a problem when Mr. Incredible is not a real person, why should have a problem when his voice is synthetic as well.
Antares' first big success was a sample auto-looping program called Infinity. It eliminated the pops and clicks that often resulted when repeating segments of a musical sound to allow it to play "forever." It's long forgotten now, but I used to run it on a stratospherically expensive Mac IIx system with a heap of Digidesign audio cards. It took a tedious job that I once despised and made it fun. The result was several very popular soundsets that I still hear used occasionally.
I'm glad to see this little company enjoying more mainstream success within the music industry. Yes, the effect is hopelessly overused. But that's good for the manufacturer, even though it's bad for the music.
How is this news? This has been going on for MANY years. The first example that came to mind is 11 years old, and I'm sure this is not the oldest.
it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like, and how much authenticity will be left.
Ask an opera singer how much authenticity they think there was in pop singing to begin with. When you see a pop star with the mic pressed up against their mouth just so they can be heard, that already means they can't really sing. Electronic amplification has already filled the ranks with non-singers. This just adds a few more who can't carry a tune either.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
What the fuck is authentic these days?
The bands that play at my local jazz bar.
As a very middling hobby singer, its depressing, but only in the same way that a hobby chef will never produce a loaf of Wonder in their home oven.
I am mostly in agreement with you on this. There is a little part of me, though, that thinks the range of music I can enjoy listening to (or, in some cases, tolerate) is appreciably expanded by this sort of manipulation. I love acoustic and a capella works, and to hear great musicians perform live and unmodified is a treat. Those are the musicians of note and worth. Still, there are some pop/punk bands I like to listen to, and I have no doubt that the lead(s) are less than proficient. In those cases, I happen to like the music, and if the singers were hit by a bus tomorrow they could be replaced and I'd be none the wiser. I don't follow them as personalities - I just happen to like the tunes. Having pitch issues would just spoil the fun - like having to slog through a piece of dry carrot cake when all you really wanted to do is dip a spoon into a tub of cream cheese frosting.
It's a bit disappointing how widespread it is, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
II think the issue is that people never learn the skills to sing in tune. It's not something one has to inherit, either. Singing in tune is kind of a fundamental skill, for a singer... kind of like how novelists learn to read and write. I've often wondered that... it doesn't very long to learn to read music... yet so many pop musicians can't do it. Why don't they make the effort? It's a good thing Shakespeare and all the other famous writers/poets learned to write. Anyway, 99% of the "music" released today is pretty much garbage, but I guess the target audience is what really matters.
FTA: "Download TIME's Auto-Tune Podcast from iTunes"
What about people who dislike iTunes?
Hey, that's the title of my next album, you insensitive clod!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Auto-tune will generally jump out at you if you know what to listen for. And there are a lot of acts using it just for this effect (as stated).
Here's a youtube clip of auto-tunes next generation replacement that many people feel provides more seamless transitions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFCjv4_jqAY
Only time will tell if it ends up replacing auto-tune in that domain or not, but auto-tune will probably still be used for it's sound artifacts like it is in a lot of current pop music.
Well autotune is not quite the same thing Vocoder [1], which is probaly the effect, that you mean. That said, all autotune effects that I have seen wheren't that impressive. Autotuning involve pitch shiffting, which is very hard (imposible?) to do, without making the signal sound artificial and "wrong".
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder#Musical_applications
Dadas and not daddas.
This is about software that was developed in 1996 and became mainstream with that obnoxious Cher song in 1998. What's next, a review of Windows 98?
This is not news.
Plus, Auto-tuning somebody doesn't make their singing sound any better. If they were singing great and the single problem with an otherwise issuable performance was a technical detail like the pitch or timing of the note, then whatever, fix it. Many vocalists hit off notes that are contextualized by the presentation of the material.
None of this has anything to do with "authenticity" or whatever. Most pop music is conceived as a product, not as communication, anyway.
The work of Jaco Pastorius is not diminished because I can play a fretless bass but then tune my bum notes afterwards. Presenting mixed recordings that are "statistically better" than his does not increase my rapport with an audience in an appreciable way.
Auto-tune and other tricks are a great way to free determinants like looks and age when deciding what type of product you're going to be creating out of a singer.
I have a somewhat less hostile attitude toward pitch correction.
I make music as a hobby.
I can't sing precisely in tune.
But, I still want to be able to produce an audio rendering of my compositions, with the vocals in tune.
So I use Melodyne.
I know it's cheating, and I constantly work to sing better, but this tool helps me make music despite my limitations.
What is sad is that there are some incredibly talented musicians, drummers who would knock your socks off just listening to the tunes and melodies they can create while being technically proficient, for example, who will never be heard because people want to be amazed by technology and entertained by visual delights more than they want to be shown what great mastery of an instrument, including voice sounds like.
Whatever. Matters not a bit to me. 90% of the music I buy, I buy directly from the hand of the artist over a table at the back of the bar/tent/whatever. I support indie artists and live music venues, and I know whether what I'm buying sounds like what I've just heard or not. This has been my life for years, and I wouldn't go back on a dare.
Authenticity is non-issue. I'll bet that it's being used euphemistically to refer to the real problem with auto-tuning: commoditization. This is another step toward turning pop music into a product that meets the specifications of market research. It is a step away from music as art.
On the other hand, using this auto-tuning tool to produce interesting effects enhances the artistic potential of music. And if anyone is still under the impression that pop music in the vein of Britney Spears is not completely commoditized already, they probably aren't going to be convinced by auto-tuning.
I think my favorite use of tune-correcting software so far is "Bastard Wants To Hit Me" by TMBG. It's used to give a creepy vocal effect to the lyrics, as the perfect jumps are kinda jarring. At least it's a cool effect.
I used to worry about crap like this, having read somewhere that software now exists that can basically come up with the outline for a hit song. I calmed down over the situation when I realized I couldn't give a shit what the masses were listening to. I can still go out there and find stuff I like by artists who really cherish music and not just empty people looking for fame and fortune. Bands like Mastodon aren't going away anytime soon just because Auto-Tune might make worthless bands sound more poppy.
There will always, always, always be people out there somewhere with the passion and talent to make good music, you just have to find them,
Name...That...Autocomplete!
I think the new Kanye West album is a good example of somebody really trying to do something new with it. Intentionally using the jarring, slightly inhuman vocals to create a sense of distance and isolation, something the album was intended to convey. Sort of an "uncanny valley" of voice. IMO, the song "Love Lockdown" is an excellent example of him really trying to make the autotuner into an instrument, and not just a tool. Now, the entire album is far from perfect, but I give him extra artist points for reach extending his grasp.
On the other hand, other pop songs use it horribly, and in such a way that it ruins the song. A good example there is the song "Nine in the Afternoon" by Panic! at the Disco. That song is supposed to have a warmth, and a little bit of a rough feel about it. It seems to have been written for a teenager in their room in a hormonal storm. And yet, the autotune, especially in the chorus, destroys that sense. It pulls you out of that feeling, and reminds you that it's not really the singers voice. Suddenly, he's not singing something you can commiserate with, he's singing words on a page.
it makes me wonder what music produced twenty or fifty years from now will sound like
You young punks call that stuff you listen to now music? When I was your age, we had to beat on hollow logs with sticks if we wanted music!
And stay the hell off my lawn!
Have gnu, will travel.
While Antares Auto-tune may have been the first to market, Celemony's Melodyne probably has a larger market share nowadays. While auto-tuning isn't news, Celemony's up coming Melodyne Editor software does actually do something new and (to musicians) amazing - it can separate chords into individual notes and allow them to be retuned individually. This makes it much more of a creative tool, not just 'fixing' out of tune notes but also moving in tune ones around - so you can turn a major chord into a minor. There's an amazing demo of taking a guitar recording and changing the scale it's played in near the end of this video: http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna&L=0
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
... I'm waiting for a waterproof model so I can use it while singing in the shower.
Have gnu, will travel.
Led Zep, Yes, Rush were known for "adjusting" imperfect sessions in the studio. They can now do it via software.
Now get off my lawn!
Kurt Cobain may not have sang pitch perfect, but at least you could feel the honesty and passion in his voice.
Yup, everyone is elitist about what they assume to be "the right way", and it's at the point when they decide they have found "the right way" that they stop learning. When you don't know anything, you have to put credence into what you are taught. As you get older, you decide you know better because of everything else you "learned", which is only really based on your best instinct about whether or not it conflicts with what you already "know", unless you apply the scientific method to absolutely everything you do... but at a certain point that is based on assumptions as well. You could be wrong about almost anything, but really, you accept that certain things are fundamental. In short: "Get over yourselves everybody!"
it already mainly comes
- not live, but from a piece of plastic
- not "natural", but from artificial instruments/synthetizers
- not as played, but from a careful, non real-time, mix of several tracks recorded separately
- from a performer different than the creator
All of these would have been anathema to snobs at some earlier time. There is stil music I like, and there will still be for a long time.
So, next to get the "improve" treatment is the vocal part. How is that different from the rest ? WHo cares ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
I hope I never hear the this used on the Laibach singer.
Vocoders have been developed since 1936.
The problems always were the number of channels/bands. The more, the better it sounds. But only with computers, you can simulate many of them, without it resulting a huge machine.
As an example, a typical vocoder that I used for fun effects (because nobody says than any of the two inputs has to be voice, or even an instrument), had 8 bands.
Modern software, like the one from "Native Instruments" has 1024 bands, and I bet they went up since I last looked, nearly two years ago.
And that's all. It's just that since it was the style at that time to add noticeable vocoder effects on purpose, and that nowadays you can have them very powerful and very cheap, that everybody knows how to use them. So if you're a big music producer of a crook (which is the same thing) why not make more cash, by not letting you stop by the little annoyance of a totally crappy singer, when she has big tits.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I agree. Look at Bon Iver's "Woods". They take the autotune, well the vocoder really, and with Justin Vernon's voice make an instrument to give a different kind of sound space. You can like it or hate it, but it certainly isn't "inauthentic". As a group who has in the past regularly walked into the audience with acoustic instruments to finish their concerts and gave a capella versions of their songs in Paris alleys, I don't think they care what people call it. They want to experiment with sound and the vocoder/autotuner is another way to do that.
Studio albums have their place. Live is cool and all, but sometimes, a really good studio album can just be an auditory festival and in that regard it matters a bit less as to where the sound came from than that it exists.
This is my sig.
Ray LeMontagne, Les Claypool, They Might Be Giants, The Brew, Leo Kottke, The Mars Volta, Tom Waits and so on.
music: an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner
Just because you don't like hip-hop, rap, or synthesized/corrected vocals, doesn't mean it's not art or not music. Music is an intensely personal experience. I think it's kind of cool that artists are using tools like this.... and if you don't like it, don't listen - but that doesn't mean the artists are talentless or not "authentic".
I laid down my lines with my Bass guitar and then the "engineer" spent 20 minutes dragging each and every bleeping note into exact position...WHY!!! when he'd finished, there was no feeling left at all... every fscking note was exactly on the beat on his timeline.. so robotic... it was as if I'd played a few notes and then he'd sampled them and put them on the track using the sampled notes... I was not impressed at all... especially as it all got lost when final "mastering" took place and the whole thing got compressed to within an inch of it's life...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
At least, music as an art form. Everything now is electronic, and don't even start to argue that all this new-age/electronic/computer-generated bullshit is art-music. It's great that you like it, and I don't want to put it down or stop anyone from enjoying it, but it's simply a completely different thing than traditional art-music, which is what most people think of as classical, jazz, and other ethnic musics.
The only hope for the future is that people will continue to perform live, unplugged concerts.
People may be walking sideways, pretending that they're leaving.
But rock is not dead!
LONG LIVE ROCK!
Seriously, there will always be people making nice, live music! And they will do it, just like they have always done it.
They will stand up there, and perform.
Recorded music will move through the trends it does, and this will fade and become old news just like everything else does.
Frankly, I like the effect, when it's not overused. Turns the voice into an instrument with different characteristics. There is art to that, like there is with everything else.
Blogging because I can...
It'll be like 'electronic' sounding keyboards in the 80s - it'll be a trend for a while, then it'll sound dated. There'll be a handful of music produced in this period where those effects sound 'right' and which will remain classic, at least in their genre (think Joy Division's use of electronic keyboards, which still sound 'right' 25 years later, whereas 90% of early 80s music sounds weirdly tinny because of all the keyboard nonsense); the rest will be irrelevant, and we'll all move on. 'Music' and the idea of music is pretty resilient to fads in the longer run.
To say musicians are starting to use this a lot is quite... strange. Pro Tools auto pitch tuning has been around for a VERY long time, and the "unusual" use of it to get that strange warbling type of vocals has been used at least as far back as the late 90's. Case in point being Cher's "Believe" released in 1998.
So what's the real news here? Author discovers what everyone already knew = news ?
Wow, that's painful (or hilarious). With a production as big as the Superbowl, I wonder if the autotune was Billy Joel's idea or some producer's. The fact that he was trying to sing with vibrato and smooth transitions makes me think he wasn't prepared for it. I can imagine how distracting it would be to start singing and hear a weird mechanized version blasting from the speakers.
The best or worst autotune I've yet heard was on Colbert Christmas. It was used blatantly throughout all the musical segments and to me it was very distracting. The guests like Willie Nelson can definitely sing without it, so I hope it was just being used ironically.
Are you thinking of the same beatniks I am? They were very strongly rebelling against metric verse; most of their poetry, or at least the poetry of people inspired by them, ran towards free or blank verse, and was much more about imagery and Zen stuff.
"I have seen the best minds of a generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked..."
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Link for Willie Nelson on Colbert Christmas.
Sure, Sturgeon's Law applies to rap music and hip-hop the way it does to fiction and to other genres of music, and Donaldson's Commentary that "Sturgeon was an optimist" also applies there. Not everything that's popular has to be a keeper.
Rap had a lot of potential depth and character to it, and people had a lot of fun with it even if most of it wasn't very good. It's not like most of the early rock&roll bands banging out three chords in their garage were that good either... And hip-hop expanded far beyond where rap was.
Did the performers have anything interesting to say? Did they say it in new and interesting ways? Did they grab a voice from the culture around them? Could you dance to it? Did they have fun? Did they get girls? (and if you don't think the latter wasn't a major objective of rock&roll, you obviously weren't around during the 60s :-) Did their parents yell at them to turn off that noise? Were they good enough to listen to even if they didn't achieve _all_ of those objectives simultaneously?
Yeah, it's not particularly my music, and lots of the performers were appallingly misogynistic thugs, but there was also a lot of blazing creativity there in addition to a lot of overpromoted crap. Some of it's worth keeping, and lots of it was good for its time even if it wasn't worth keeping.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The pop music I remember most from the late 50s (which was a bit before my time, though I was alive by then) is mostly groups of about 4 guys singing in harmony - Blue Moon, etc. - and folk had a lot of that. Even by the 70s there was still Crosby Stills Nash and Occasionally Young, though they were a bit more of an exception by then.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Good post - thanks!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
There's a movie in the movie festival circuit called "The Wrecking Crew", about the group of LA studio musicians who backed up just about everybody's recordings in the 60s-70s. A typical recording might have a lead singer or two and occasionally a guitarist who were the actual group recording, but mostly the guitars, bass, drums, and other instruments were actually played by the studio musicians, rather than by the band on the label themselves. They were fast, professional, and very good, and it made a lot of money for record producers to use them.
Sometimes they'd be used very effectively - Bob Dylan(mostly in Nashville rather than LA) would know what he wanted to do, and he'd be playing lead guitar as well as singing, and you didn't care who backed him up. Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds was mostly him and the crew, with the actual Beach Boys doing some vocals. On the other hand, there were prefab bands like the Monkees back then, and other bands that really weren't the same live because they couldn't play that well. And just about every artist complained about Phil Spector overproducing their stuff, including bands that really were artists and other bands that really weren't...
Is digital post-production to fix a singer or guitarist cheating any more than having him/her replaced by (usually better) studio musicians for a record?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That said, autotune is the oldschool. Melodyne is the Real Deal and it kicks ass. Direct note Access is freakin' nuts.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
It's called "ethanol"...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Does it sound good?
To use the movie analogy again, do you think the actors write the lines that they say?
You'd be surprised at how many lines in films are improvised. Will Smith has improvised lines in a lot of action comedies. I seem to remember that even Darth Vader's "If you don't turn to the dark side, then perhaps she will" at the end of Return of the Jedi was reportedly more like "Vader says something to rile Luke up" in the original shooting script.
(google the reference if you don't get it)
I remember when i was in highschool, using a PC .mod editor, with samples i had gleaned from other .MODs i had downloaded. IIRC it was XM Mod or something like.. whatever the guy who did Crystal Dreams 2 allegedly used.
I remember using distorted guitar samples to create guitar solos that I couldn't actually play on my real guitar yet. I could play a lot of stuff, but what I had in my head never quite came out of my fingers. Spending hours on 1 pattern in the MOD editor until it sounded like the idea in my head made it possible for me to hear what I was thinking.
At the end, I had a song that I liked, that featured drums I couldn't play and guitar solos I couldn't play.
There is a guitarist named Jason Becker who put out an album or two at a very young age. He was an absolute wizard of a musician, and just a few years into his career he came down with Lou Gehrig's disease. He was able to create at least one more album entirely via computer and MIDI. He got some friends to guest-play some of the parts he had written in the studio.
The mind of that man can now outplay his fingers (which wouldn't have seemed possible if you'd heard him shred pre-disease!), but he can still create music that we can listen to. The world is better for it.
Even the creative elements of music are being synthesized by machines to some degree of success.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatsune_Miku#Hatsune_Miku
Imagine something like pandora, which can analyze what you like, coupled with a synthesis component, which can create entirely new peices of music.
I'd be happy to let others debate the merits of "artificial" music catering solely to my tastes, while enjoying something I cannot find today: album after album of music that pushes my buttons the way my favorite songs do.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
'I never figured anyone in their right mind would want to do that'
I read a history of rock music at one pint, and I can't remember the author's name, but he had an apogryphal quote from the guy generally credited as the first guitarist to ever install a pickup and plug into an amplifier to that same effect... this genius had found a way to make a guitar loud enough to fill any sort of space and facilitate large venue shows, but he couldn't fathom turning the amplification up "too high" and causing distortion as an artistic decision... let alone getting rid of the hollow body altogether and using his invention exclusively to actually generate audible sound.
It never fails to surprise how unimaginative visionaries can be.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Sasha Frere of The New Yorker wrote an article on this several months ago. It's here and talks about the place that autotune has in modern music and how it's being used and misused.
Among other things discussed in the article is the zero-time adjustment setting, which is often referred to as the Cher setting, based on her use of it in her 1998 hit "Believe". It's a better read, in MY opinion, than TFA.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
And exactly when was music 'authentic' ? I think you are pursuing a dream of music that never was.
From a 1959 article describing "How no-talent singers get 'talent'":
"Recording techniques have become so ingenious that almost anyone can seem to be a singer. A small, flat voice can be souped up by emphasizing the low frequencies and piping the result through an echo chamber. A slight speeding up a the recording tape can bring a brighter, happier sound to a naturally drab singer or clean the weariness out of a tired voice. Wrong notes can be snipped out of the tape and replaced by notes taken from other parts of the tape. Almost every pop recording made today , even by well established talents, carries some evidence of he use of echo chambers, tape reverberation, over-dubbing, or splicing"
Same old, same old...
Progressive metal pioneers Cynic use Auto Tune to purposely give their vocals an aritficial, robotic sound. In their original 1993 release, before Auto Tune, they used a vocoder for an even more artificial effect. I think they refer to it as their "alien" or "android" vocals.
Woo. Vocoders are nothing new, neither is the notion that some artists use it and autocorrecting technology to sound spot on, but whats the hubub, Bub? Music is, to some people, about the little mistakes, spaces between notes, and original sound created. While this might raise concerns that pop music is headed down the toilet - no wait, it was already there - it doesn't mean the "END OF AUTHENTIC MUSIC" in the next 20-50 years. Its like saying that the teleprompter is going to kill improv television. Completely unfounded, unreliable and rather foolsih FUD isn't something I expect here...well, there was a time when I didn't expect it.
The fact of the matter is, music isn't limited to what the popular people in the scene do, and it certainly doesn't hang in the balance of a teeny-bopper using an auto-tuner.
In the 50s and 60s, you were cutting often in one take, with no second chances. Your voice was your voice. Your shitty picking couldn't be edited out after the fact, or punched over. Your awful rhythm couldn't be corrected in post production.
The rise of digital audio recording has allowed a lot of great bands to go their own direction without the backing of a label, and in response those same labels pour money into two or three tracks lead by someone who is more photogenic than talented in order to make it pay off.
No one practices as much as they need to. They don't listen to other bands. Their live performances are bullshit, if they're live at all. The Beatles and the Who and the Stones sounded good because they played all the time. The Beatles had performed their own songs hundreds of times together before they ever got past the small club level.
Multiple takes are not "fake." It represents a performance that is a direct copy of their abilities in reality. Almost no mainstream performer could ever duplicate any part of their own record. They're simply not that talented.
Pop music is dead, the underground lives and surprisingly sounds a lot like country and folk and crossed with Sonic Youth.
I corrected your post, you're welcome.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
For people doubting that it could be considered something of an instrument, a la synth, give '20 Dollar' by MIA a listen. Check the backing vocals..
The mic is purposely held close so that the sound will be different. Check wikipedia if you care, but IIRC it emphasises the low pitches.
The intent is to change the sound. IIRC, it emphasises the low pitches. Check "close mic" on wikipedia if you care.
all of the originality will be left in the heavy metal genre, where singing on key means nothing if you can't do it while sounding like an angry Norse God
of course, there will always be ProTools...
How about the talk box? Similar effect to a vocoder. The musical instrument you have hooked up gives you perfect pitch. Alvino Rey used it as early as 1939, of course Peter Frampton with a guitar, and the great Roger Troutman of Zapp and Roger fame, younger generation might recognise his 'Enhanced' voice on 2Pac's California Love. Oh and Stevie Wonder used it too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBaXwRQQciI&eurl
If the author is curious about the authenticity of a musician's talent, attend a live concert. Ok there's the issue of lip-syncing, but it's not that difficult to tell a pre-recorded track from a truly live performance.
Music will be more diverse than ever.
There are still people who make their own drums and play them around a fire, there are still people that tune pianos and there are still people that sing accapella for their family and friends. A new form of music doesn't eradicate the old. Now what's popular on TV by then may be computer synthesized crap, but you may be shocked to learn that TV programming is selected by monetary, not artistic, value.
Authenticity isn't an issue. Authenticity is requirement for great art but it isn't a requirement for great entertainment. If you're worried about authentic, ask yourself how many pop stars you think are singing songs about their own life experiences...
You can't polish a turd, they say; which is not entirely true, of course, but the result is unlikely to please.
There is nothing new in artists trying to make themselves appear better than they can manage on their own. If you listen to music from the sixties or earlier, you can still spot it - back then they tried to mask bad singing of rubbish text with bigbands or similar. And it doesn't have to be wrong, really. It is like people using make-up; used without taste, you end up looking like Rafiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafiki), but applied cleverly, the result can be spectacular.
Still, there is something in me that is against this intolerance to small, human flaws. Perfection is in-human and it feel alien; it makes you feel that you aren't allowed to to take part and sing along.
The "artists" or "singers" on the other hand, are finding more and more ways to artificially make themselves sound better than they really are.
You mean like plugging a guitar into an amplifier?
Ah, no. Take an idiot who doesn't know how to play guitar and plug them into an amp. This doesn't magically make them play better guitar. They still sound like shit, only louder.
Take a shitty vocalist and autotune and perfect pitch it, and you've got a shitty vocalist who suddenly sounds good, and one who will likely be lip-syncing for the rest of their careers.
There IS a difference.
It should be called deceptive 'correction'. This article is addressing something that has already come and gone. The fact its called correction is what causes all the geeks here to overreact and flinch about singing and 'authenticity'. There is no 'correct' and mechanically its actually 'quantization', not correction.
By the same logic placing frets on the neck of a guitar prevents authentic music? Those frets are not the same distance as you near the bridge, they get closer together so its kind of unpredictable. Have you ever used a penny whistle and tried to play a simple melody? The distances between notes change depending on the absolute pitch - its not easy. And finally music geeks, have you ever played a theremin? Known to be so difficult to master. Why? Because there is no pitch quantization. Which reduces your performance to a very intentional but perhaps limited scope. Can it be mastered? Of course. Psychologists estimate that virtuosity at the level of classical musicans takes about 10,000 hours. Most geeks and computer people don't do anything for more than 3 minutes because they have attention deficit of some kind and why they are drawn to tenoris, monomes and software that changes your wii into something that makes 'tones'.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with autotune except perhaps the name, and the fact that its a commercial product, which makes using it recursively stupid in some cases because people can't make their own notes or software.
I can make both, and have. Instead of using a commercial product I use math, vocoding and FFT. And believe me, you have no idea what correct means in my system.
Best,
jonathan adams leonard
www.jonathanleonard.com
We've had "auto-tune" on some musical instruments for hundreds of years. A piano, for example, is bang-on in tune regardless of how inexpertly you hit a key. It was engineered that way. Is piano music inauthentic, because some technology made it easy to play perfectly in tune every time without any skill?
In the same way that airbrushing and Photoshopping Hollywood's most beautiful people can be damaging to our perception when we are bombarded with it as often as we are, perfectly produced music does the same. Fledgling actors, actresses, and musicians have a great deal of self-esteem issues to contend with if they are to keep at it long enough to lift off the ground. Maybe there is even something to be said in defense of live music: should my favorite local bands now be expected to bring their own auto-tuning hardware along with their amplifiers? If they bring auto-tuners, what amount of digital assistance is too much? As taxing as it can be to compare yourself every day to successful members of your field who are using all this movie magic, imagine what it must feel like to give in and begin depending on computers look pretty sound in tune?
What I wanna know is, can I plug it into my TV before a sporting event and make that narcissistic singer hit only one note per syllable except for the 7 syllables that are supposed to have 2 notes?
For an American, the Star Spangled Banner can be a profoundly moving experience to sing along with, if the singer could only hit the notes and rhythm correctly. (*) It never fails to bring tears to my eyes if the singer just sings it straight and lets us all sing along. Not one of the selfish, narcissistic singers (who all want to say 'Look how wonderful my voice is!') has ever brought a tear to my eye. Not one. Ever.
(*) I say 'could' rather than 'would' because I really don't think they can. I think they're covering for their inability to hit the difficult notes by improvising around them. Pretty thinly veiled, in fact. I would love to be proven wrong, but none of them ever accepts the challenge of singing it straight. Hmmm, I wonder why?
So I'll buy the Auto-Tune box that has been preprogrammed to know the notes and rhythm of that particular song and has a red 'SSB Correction Mode' button. Then all the stadium goers who don't really feel like singing along anyway can hear it their way (butchered), and I can hear it at home the right way... the profoundly moving way... once again... finally.
I'd go with one of the earlier 5.x versions, the newest winamp builds are buggy.