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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
Is hip-hop and R&B the only form of music?
Is hip-hop and R&B EVEN a form of music?
Actually, I kind of like R&B, but I refuse to recognize Hip-Hop as music. I mean sure, it's got a beat and you can kill cops to it, but it's still lacking something.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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 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 have a harmonizer that I bought back before this guy supposedly invented this process, which does pitch correction in realtime, and can definitely be used live.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
...but I refuse to recognize Hip-Hop as music. I mean sure, it's got a beat and you can kill cops to it, but it's still lacking something.
It's poetry with a beat behind it! And guns! They're like beatniks with automatic weapons.
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
"using the tool in previously unexpected ways" is innovation, not authenticity.
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."
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.
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.
I don't know how they would have worked in real time. I could see speeding up or slowing down a tape loop, but since the note length would then be different, you'd have to splice in or remove enough tape to make the notes end at the same time.
Mine is digital and works in real time just fine. I only ever really used it for live stuff as in the studio, I would just have all the harmonies sung and recorded individually.
My harmonizer would let you do interesting things like assigning certain tracks as male and certain tracks as female and it would change your voice inflection to match appropriately.
As I mentioned, it also had a pitch corrector. When I first got it, I played around with the pitch corrector as a novelty, but I never used it in a performance or recording. Part of what makes a voice interesting is that it is not perfect. It is a fine line for certain. Too perfect sounds flat and boring. Too imperfect sounds dissonant and terrible. I like Sheryl Crow's voice because it is not perfect and it always sounds like she's just about to be badly off key, but it never happens.
Similarly, in orchestral music, if two perfectly in tune trumpets played, it would sound like one trumpet, which would not be that interesting. Two badly out of tune trumpets playing would sound like two badly out of tune trumpets playing and would sound awful. Two trumpets that are nearly but not exactly in tune gives just enough dissonance to give a rich, full sound.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Actually, I'd rather Dr. Dre, Eminem and Jay-Z have guns than Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. I've read what they wrote and I've read what others have written about their lives, any man giving those people automatic weapons should be sent to jail for a long time.
Is this some kind of zombie joke? Cassady, Kerouac and Ginsberg have all been dead for a long time now.
I wish there was a feature on Youtube called "Instantly find the best version" that would skip re-uploads and camera phone versions. I had my speakers off and was in a rush. Thanks for the new link!
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.
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.
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.
'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.
It really depends on the artist in question. Take, for example, "Tag am Meer" (actual song starts at 1:20) by German Hip Hop band Die Fantastischen Vier, an extremely relaxed song about spending a day at the beach. Granted, the band is known as a rather artsy Hip Hop band but there's plenty of bands like them.
Most probably you only know gangsta rap as Hip Hop because that's what dominates the media in the States (whereas Germany used to be dominated by Fanta Vier and the fun-focused Hamburg rap scene). There's a lot of different English stuff available, as well; for a particularly nerdy example MC Frontalot, who is responsible for things like the Penny Arcade theme. The fact that his page proudly displays an endorsement by Noam Chomsky says a lot about him.
Sure, your post might have faked ignorance but hey, it's not like additional information has never hurt anyone. (I'm not delusional enough to not put that 'n' in front of "ever".)
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)