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The Deceptive Perfection of Auto-Tune

Posted by Soulskill on from the hitting-all-the-right-notes dept.

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.

13 of 437 comments (clear)

  1. Authentic is the wrong word by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Authentic is the wrong word by geekmux · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      Ah, correction, writers are still making music. The "artists" or "singers" on the other hand, are finding more and more ways to artificially make themselves sound better than they really are. Therefore, the ONLY thing that is left to being authentic is whatever is left after the "they stole my song!" lawsuit dust settles, and the general masses acknowledge a song as one persons work.

      For the rest of the tripe being "manufacturered" today, it's as fake as half the "natural" breasts in Hollywood. Give me a break, a hardcore rapper being nominated for album of the year? Like half those beats aren't stolen from the last 37 rap albums.

      Music is dead. Say hello to Marketing. And if you have a hard time believing that statement, then I have two words for you. Hanna Montana. Still not convinced? Here's two more. American Idol.

    2. Re:Authentic is the wrong word by badasscat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ah, correction, writers are still making music. The "artists" or "singers" on the other hand, are finding more and more ways to artificially make themselves sound better than they really are.

      Eh, and this is nothing new either.

      What would you define as an ideal setup that allows, say, a rock musician to "sound as good as they really are"? Everything rock musicians have ever used have made them sound better than they are, right down to the amps they use to amplify their guitars, the effects they use (even amps from the 50's and 60's had reverb and could be overdriven), the pickups in the guitars themselves, the strings they choose to use, etc. A singer will sound better or worse based on the microphone they use, the equalization settings, etc.

      This idea that there's ever been *any* unaltered recorded music out there is rubbish. There never has been. Even just a guy playing by himself with an acoustic and singing into a microphone is having his sound altered by various things during the recording, mixing and mastering.

      I'm not arguing in favor of auto-tune, all I'm saying is that there are no absolutes and the line across which you do not (to quote Walter Sobchak) is different for everybody. And this is a generational thing; in the 1960's, people railed against rock music for exactly this same reason, citing some of the things I said above as making the music "fake". Today we consider those same things as being responsible for what we call "authentic" rock music. And now a new generation has new tools to make themselves sound the way they want, and we rail against it the same way our parents and grandparents did 30 or 40 or 50 years ago.

  2. Authenticity by Angst+Badger · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Authenticity by DavidR1991 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is however a downer for smaller groups or actual singers with decent voices, because they have to compete with an altered (potentially 'perfect-sounding') voice.

      We'll end up with the same thing as what has happened with photoshopped magazine images - people expect unreasonable perfection, and the people without an army of machines behind them get made to look inferior. We'll end up losing touch with reality at this rate... What's a human singing voice sound like again...?

    2. Re:Authenticity by clifyt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      AMEN to this.

      What the fuck is authentic these days? I'm sick of the notion that creative output needs to have an olympic mentality to it. It is like the guys that can play 64th note riffs on guitars and then act as if anyone that cannot approach their technical ability has no business playing.

      In my case, I was a professional musician for a number of years. Toured nationally with a Grammy winning group. Had to get out of it because I developed severe arthritis that impacted my ability to play (it is an autoimmune disease as opposed to just bad technique...put me in a wheel chair for a year bad). I *STILL* compose and play somewhat, and went on to work with the same artist on the next album...some of my work ended up on it as I had left it as opposed to being replaced by other artists. Since I used a sequencer and samples, some would say this is inauthentic. So, if someone is robbed of technical ability (or never had any), their creative output means NOTHING?

      Of course, quite a few musicians trade the autotune 'perfect' output as an alternative to creativity...so long as everything hits on the right notes, it will sell. I don't believe in that either. Creativity involves falling outside of the lines occasionally. And sometimes it involves being right on the line. Personally, I don't get the folks that think perfect technique has anything to do with musicality...some of my favorite works come from non-musicians with absolutely no training or technique but had something to say and used ANY possibility they could to get it up there. Far more authentic than most of the instrumental / technique bands I could ever hear...those guys are as coldly robotic as any autotune could be.

    3. Re:Authenticity by Fungii · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I actually agree with what you're saying, but I think you're off the mark in this case - you talk about true creativity falling outside the lines occasionally, but in pop music autotuners are used to turn every vocalist into a robotic, pitch perfect singer. What T-Pain is doing is creative, he's going for an original sound but for the most part autotuners are the antithesis of creativity.

  3. Authenticity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. The sting in the tail by Alioth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  5. Overused & Abused by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  6. Re:It's an instrument. by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 5, Funny

    Scene addendum: "It's deceptive *and* anachronistic! The eight note scale isn't supposed to be invented for thousands of years yet! Quick! Hit him with a femur!"

  7. Re:Real-time Auto-Tune by Prefader · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's already here, and it sucks. Give a listen to Billy Joel's singing of the national anthem at the super bowl.

    That performance would have undoubtedly been better without auto-tune.

  8. Music is already VERY artificial by obarthelemy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.