The Deceptive Perfection of Auto-Tune 437
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.
Re:Authenticity (Score:4, Interesting)
So what? Stop competing, make music and sing because you like it, get the music for the same reason, if you can make money from it to, good for you.
If I made music I would want it to sound whatever way I liked, if that was cheating or not what others wanted I wouldn't give much care for that.
You got a point regarding looks though, I know what I expect in peoples look :D
Re:Overused & Abused (Score:5, Interesting)
And the parent is also absolutely correct re: "artistic input" of the modern-day pop idol. For a brief while I worked as a PA to a guy who wrote/produced songs for hit machines like Britney. When he and his partner would write a new song, I'd be the one sending it out to various talent managers to shop it around. Some wouldn't be interested, others would. It's not unlike actors vying for a leading role in a movie. Several audition to get the song, and one gets it. They're just the presentation face. To use the movie analogy again, do you think the actors write the lines that they say? They have a little input, but for the most part, they're just the hired help that's being told what to do.
Miku Miku Ni Shite Ageru (Score:3, Interesting)
Or perhaps for some purposes, we'll eventually dispense with real vocalists altogether -- Vocaloid [wikipedia.org]. A few quick examples of Miku Hatsune's work:
Reset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrCxVzocnyo [youtube.com]
Uninstall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-fja9RtRBc [youtube.com]
You: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV5JH8jUeXY [youtube.com]
BTW, if anyone has any other examples they're particularly fond of, please link below.
Re:Authenticity (Score:5, Interesting)
Ding! And that's exactly where true musicianship enters into it. Technical excellence is only one part of the equation. But having the sense and ability to hold notes for just the right amount of time, or to add that slight staccato element to a phrase is where someone with real musical ability shines. And these aren't the things that will ever be notated on a score. It's where interpretation and understanding of the piece comes into play.
Think about someone reading a paragraph from a book. Sure, all the periods and commas are there. Being able to say the words with the right pauses and stops is the technical aspect. But knowing when to put emphasis on certain words or phrases, or to add a slight pause even where there isn't a comma--that takes skill. It's why some people are better orators than others.
Re:Overused & Abused (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
First time I heard "Revolution" by The Beatles I thought there was something wrong with the recording or the amplifier- I didn't realise it was *meant* to sound like that. I remember coming across a review of the song from when it first came out which described it as a "fuzzy mess".
Re:The sting in the tail (Score:5, Interesting)
You're spot on. You can easily tell which artists heavily rely on post-production techniques based on their live performances. Some shine, and for those that fail miserably(Jessica Simpson, Nelly Furtado, here's looking at you) it is easy to tell why.
Absolutely right. I once saw a chat show where Sting was a guest. Half-way through he pulled out a guitar and sang something, and it was great. (I think it was Fields of Gold, which is a superb piece of music.) Despite the silly name, he's a real musician.
Interestingly, though, I once saw much the same thing happen with, of all people, the Backstreet Boys: one of the original glossy boy bands. Now, it was obviously carefully prepared, as four guys singing in close harmony doesn't happen spontaneously, so they could have sneaked in some postproduction, but the overall environment and production values makes me suspect they didn't. So it's possible that at least some of these people can actually perform.
Personally, I blame to songwriters --- a large proportion of the modern pap pop artists are just performers who sing whatever they're told to. One day I'd like to see a collection of music charts sorted by author rather than by performer and see if there are any interesting patterns...
Re:It's an instrument. (Score:1, Interesting)
I think I speak for us all when I say, "WHAT?????"
Thank you, come again!
Re:Anybody Remember Billy Joel at Super Bowl (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Authenticity (Score:3, Interesting)
I heard an interview with John Doe (of X, The Knitters, etc) and he was asked about auto-tuning at one point. He said that even if you're someone who doesn't normally use them, sometimes when you've been in the studio for hours and you're just having one of those days where you can't seem to get a particular part right, you just decide fuck it and use the auto-tuner so that you can record the damn thing and move on.
Autotune? Old School! MELODYNE'S THE POOP!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, autotune is the oldschool. Melodyne [youtube.com] is the Real Deal and it kicks ass. Direct note Access is freakin' nuts.
RS
Sounds familiar... (Score:3, Interesting)
'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.
"The New Yorker" had a great article on this (Score:3, Interesting)
Sasha Frere of The New Yorker wrote an article on this several months ago. It's here [newyorker.com] 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.
Re:Authenticity (Score:5, Interesting)
What has this got to do with creativity?
Before autotune, we'd drop in on the same bit of vocal for hours if need be.
Now, if the spirit of the take is good, but there are a couple of pitch problems, you can fix them without endless retakes taking away the vibe.
I'd say it does the opposite to removing creativity. It liberates artists to let go a little when singing and go for feel over perfection.
Re:Authenticity (Score:1, Interesting)
Perfect technique is great to have, but it better not be your only "selling/brag point" as a musician. ...
You want the perfect snare hit? OK record a "perfect technique" musician to hitting a few "perfect" snare hits, then you can play them back on demand _exactly_ when you want in the recording.
I completely agree with the first part above and completely disagree with the second.
Perfect technique is not of interest on its own because, as you point out, a computer can do it better. However, there is a hugely important point to obtaining and celebrating technique.
What is the "perfect snare hit"? Is there only one? If so, then the second part quoted above would make more sense. Art occurs in the differences, not in the perfect replication of the same over and over. Auto-tune, for instance, may be unfailingly accurate, but is constant, cold, and without the shapes, colors, nuances of a real voice.
The human element is still involved in music because the art of it, the differences we can imagine, and the communication it allows cannot be done by a computer.
This leads us to the point of technique: a human with technique has the tools of sound creation directly connected to the source of the art and can be expressive, make nuances, and communicate emotion in real time and with a depth of detail that defies our ability to codify it completely.
A computer can have the technical perfection but not the art. Someone without technique can have the inspiration, but can't actually make it come to life. Someone who tries to use indirect tools (like computers and recordings) to simulate a performer's technical output will run into the limitation of his ability to codify all that a great performance entails; and even if he partially succeeds would only have one version to offer the world.
As old-fashioned, slow, and difficult as it seems, the best way to get great music is still to have someone devote their life to developing both their musical ideas and the techniques to turn them into sound. Computer tools may inevitably become more involved, but the ones that last and prosper will allow for a vast palette of differences in the sound, directly under the control of a human being, and thus won't change the need of the artist to develop a real-time performance technique.
Re:Authentic is the wrong word (Score:2, Interesting)
You just bought into the hype of pop music, right there. They want to kill music so that you have to buy what the big record labels are selling. I just started reading the next reply and everyone here seems to have a real knack for making me feel like shit about being a musician. I write music that I feel, and I may use a drum machine or synth to tweak effects, but that doesn't make me a crappy musician. That doesn't mean that music is dead, in fact music is more alive than ever.
Some bands, believe it or not, are writing great music, and are utilizing things like synths and (OMG!!!) vocoders to create unique sounds that are actually pleasing to the ear, original, and, what is it, oh yeah MUSIC. To think that the state of music in today's world is that it is dead is a sign of ignorance and corporate hogwash telling you to buy everything from FYE because you probably shouldn't bother listening to anything that none of your friends are listening to, or that might be considered "underground," "indie," or otherwise.
Original music is out there, blooming in cities and towns across the world. Listen to The National, Animal Collective, The Polyphonic Spree, Beirut, Panda Bear, Yeasayer, MGMT, Broken Social Scene; the list goes on, and its all good - no, great - MUSIC.
Oh, and say hello to Marketing for me while you're there - pirating music is what has led me to actually spend money seeing these bands, buying their CDs, and supporting them as artists. Good music should be rewarded, bad music is just propped up by a dying business model that knows how to work over 13 year-old girls into buying crap - know the difference.
Re:Authenticity (Score:4, Interesting)
Dead on. Berklee College of Music churns out class after class of fire-without-heat players, people with fantastic technique, most of whom go on to do absolutely nothing worthwhile musically. This despite the fact that they can outplay most of the musicians that create music that people actually want to listen to.
It's an easy trap to get into, and it happens in programming, too - who amongst us has not had to work with some technically brilliant programmer that wrote fast, concise, and "impressive" code that despite working for its purpose ended up being so incomprehensible to everyone else that it was unmaintainable? People that start down the path of technical skill and forget to stop and smell the roses are far too likely to forget that technical facility is only a means to an end, and they start evaluating both themselves and others on the technicalities of what they do, not the results.
To me, stuff like auto-tune is the equivalent of using a decent IDE, or programming in a language that is well suited to your task rather than one that makes you do everything yourself. Yes, it probably takes a better programmer to code CGI stuff in C than in PHP, and plenty of poor programmers rely on all the built in functionality of PHP to cover the fact that they can't code; that doesn't mean that the good programmers should always stick with straight C when PHP could cut out a lot of the work, though.
If a musician uses auto-tune to turn a 20 take marathon into a couple of takes that can be cleaned up after the fact (and end up with similar results), that's fine, they still may be an excellent musician, they're just working smart. If they're using it to cover the fact that they really can't sing, that's another issue altogether, but even then, if they have something worth singing and can't pull it off technically, why not fix it up with technology? If it enables a good product that otherwise couldn't have been created, then maybe they have excellent songwriting skills but poor vocal ones, and why should they not do whatever they can to put it out?