The fad that just wouldn’t fade.
September 22, 2018 3:07 AM   Subscribe

 
That was really cool. Super fun to read and lots to follow up. Thank you!
posted by lokta at 4:13 AM on September 22, 2018


Same thing happens here. I wrote this comment in wingdings initially, but the mods pitch correct it to bland internet text on a professional white background. (I use the themes.)
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:30 AM on September 22, 2018 [10 favorites]


Previously
posted by ShooBoo at 4:50 AM on September 22, 2018


That was an excellent article- thanks for posting! It referenced a lot of artists and technicians I am unfamiliar with but that didn't matter. Some great writing there.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:11 AM on September 22, 2018


Oh god this reminds me...

I’ve never been a huge Cher fan. I mean, I know she is very talented and bought a couple of her songs from the 70s for my library: Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves and I Got You Babe.

I’m not a Cher concert-goer either, and once even had to ask another gay dude what the attraction was, why she and Bette and Liza and Barbra were so popular among other gay guys. (His answer: torch songs, glam and attitude.)

So anyway, I was in Aix-en-Provence in 2002 and popped into a little shop of some sort, and “Believe” started playing on the store’s sound system. Ah, another poppy Cher song. And then the auto-tuning kicked in.

I don’t know what happened, but it felt like that auto-tuning wizardry was a magic spell and it was hacking my brain. I scribbled down the lyrics and searched for them later, and a week after that, arranged to buy the CD. I ripped the one song to my computer and it became one of my top listened-to songs from 2002-2004. The CD was packed away.

The song itself is pablum, but that auto-tune, man...that was something else.

Fast forward to 2006, now living in Phoenix and my sister is staying with me for a while as we dealt with Mom’s final arrangements. At one point she was in the den and looking through my CD collection. When she found the CD, she held it up and teased me about being so stereotypical, “you gay guys and your Cher.”

I just smiled and said, “Yeah, you know how we are.”
posted by darkstar at 7:56 AM on September 22, 2018 [7 favorites]


On this day, September 22nd 2018, East14thTaco was officially declared a Stodgy Old Man. His friend, Eric, said "fuck off."
posted by East14thTaco at 8:22 AM on September 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


I think the reason that the rise of auto-tune saddens me more than it should is that it coincided with both massive cuts to arts education and the decline of social institutions that promoted public singing for everybody. So there are a not-insignificant number of grown adults, in the US, anyway, who have the idea that singing is something rarefied and reserved for professionals or people born with massive talent, instead of something that everyone has as part of the birthright of being human and living in human society. Because they grew up without hearing natural human singing voices - including their own - as the everyday default. Either that, or just because I was born in the Bronze Age and my bustle's on inside out.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:15 AM on September 22, 2018 [43 favorites]


Oh boy. I wanted to give this a fair shake in case I'm just an Old (and vocal performance major, at that). And indeed, it does (finally) get into some of the why behind opposition:
Another commonly heard accusation mounted against Auto-Tune is that it depersonalizes, eradicating the individuality and character of voices. In their natural mode, vocal cords don’t produce a clear signal: there’s “noise” mixed in there, the grit and grain that is a physical residue of the process of speaking or singing. This is the very aspect of the voice—its carnal thickness—that differentiates one from another. Digital transmission can interfere with that anyway, especially at the lower bandwidths—it’s why, say, if you call your mom on her cellphone from your cellphone, she can sound unlike herself to an unsettling degree. But pitch-correction technology really messes with the voice as substance and signature. Given that this embodied quality, as opposed to the learned dramatic arts of singing expressively, is a big part of why one voice turns us on and another leaves us cold,
OK, so far so good …
surely anything that diminishes them is a reduction?
Uh, wait, did they take that and make it into a straw man they could knock down?
Maybe, and yet it is still possible to identify our favorite singers or rappers through the depersonalizing medium of pitch-correction—and to form a bond with new performers. In fact, you could argue that Auto-Tune, by becoming an industry standard, creates even more premium on the other elements that make up vocal appeal—phrasing, personality—as well as extra-musical aspects like image and biography.
I'm not sure I can even engage with that.
These and other examples also lay waste to the related argument that pitch-correction is a deskilling innovation that allows the talent-free—performers who can’t sing in tune without help—to make it. Actually, it refocused what talent in pop is.
No. No, I can't even engage with that. That premise is ridiculous.
The history of popular music is full of super-professional session singers and backing vocalists who could sing pitch-perfect at the drop of a mic, but for whatever reason, never made it as frontline stars—they lacked a certain characterful quality to the voice or just couldn’t command the spotlight. Auto-Tune means that these attributes—less to do with training or technique than personality or presence—become even more important. Hitting the right notes has never been that important when it comes to having a hit.
"Whatever reason" there carries a whole lot of water for racism and the randomness of record label marketing teams. It presupposes that hit making, more than music making, is the goal. I confess that hit making is certainly a goal (and long has been) but there's a long history of studios and marketing departments failing to capitalize on musical success from artists who didn't fit the mold of the month. Were Becker and Fagen failures because they didn't succeed in the Brill Building? Oh wait, they had a long and successful career recording their own music. Was Aimee Mann a failure because the A&R execs from the company that bought her label "didn't hear a single" and thus just decided to leave the completed album in the can?

That article is way too long for an argument that rests on the vagaries of what makes a "hit." Also the dig at backup singers who never "made it" as solo artists is a bit like picking on Charlie Brown because Joe Shlabotnik never got his picture on bubble gum cards. And they cast aside the criticism of auto-tune as deskilling without addressing how that is precisely its effect on a whole bunch of mass media (cf. "Glee" and every Disney teen musical). It's one thing when auto-tune is used as an instrument in itself (Cher or T-Pain, say; I don't really like the music but done like that I at least respect the work) but another thing again when it's used to take mediocre talents at best and turn them into "stars" because they have the right looks but little else.

Shorter me: OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD
posted by fedward at 10:54 AM on September 22, 2018 [18 favorites]


I had no idea "Believe" was a Cher song but 1998 wasn't really my peak of attention-paying
posted by thelonius at 11:42 AM on September 22, 2018


I remember sitting in a bar with a friend when I was at library school in 1998. I'd heard "Believe" before and knew that a funny effect had been applied to her voice at differing levels of intensity throughout the song, but I guess my friend hadn't because when I commented on it she listened intently and when it got to one of the AutoTune bits she said "Oh! Ohhhhh!!!" and started laughing uncontrollably.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:46 PM on September 22, 2018


I'm on side with Steve Albini on this one. It's awful and cheapens everything it touches. I'm also still not over Bob Mould dipping into it.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:25 PM on September 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


It can be used to good effect by artists. It's not uncommon for professional guitarists to be surrounded by an array of effects pedals and banks of other tech wizardry. If it's okay for guitarists, why isn't it okay for vocalists? Is music only honest when it's unplugged and unproduced?

In the hands of a good vocalist, it can be another tool in their toolbox. Of the uses I know of (Cher, Radiohead and Kanye), the artists weren't using Auto-Tune because they were unable to sing in key - it was an artistic choice intended to convey a particular effect.
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 2:54 PM on September 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


If it's okay for guitarists, why isn't it okay for vocalists?

btw, Antares made an Autotune system for guitar, but it did not catch on
posted by thelonius at 3:18 PM on September 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


Good “old fashioned” music is alive and well. I play traditional Irish music which is a living and evolving tradition. Last night I was out at the bar playing a late night session. Our oldest player is 86 and the youngest 17. Tunes were played and songs were song. The traditional handed down from one generation to the next. There is a lot of good music out there, you just have to look for it.
posted by misterpatrick at 3:36 PM on September 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


Is it okay to say that I despise autotune? Am I threadshitting? If so, sorry.
posted by Splunge at 4:56 PM on September 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


auto-tune was invented so the second half of this song could be made.
posted by JimBennett at 4:57 PM on September 22, 2018


1) I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Auto-tune, when intended to be used as a correction rather than an effect-in-itself is a great medianizer. A crappy vocal will sound.... OK. A great vocal will end up sounding.... OK.

And for people who can make good performances with a few bad notes, and will not simply "get gud" by practicing and training hundreds more hours because they really won't get that good, or because they don't have the time, Melodyne is a valuable tool.

Far from making vocal performance an "elite" thing, I think Melodyne and Auto-tune and related software actually is of a piece with the democratization of music. You can sound, maybe not great, but definitely not awful in a recording that you and many others may listen to for years or decades. And all for a price that is in line with many studio plugins. Not trivially cheap, but accessible even to people on a budget. Seriously, the basic version goes for 99 Euros.

I know there are many purists out there, but if a few extra days of practice and a few extra takes would solve your problem: do that. If you're not a very good singer -- and have either not the time or talent to *become* one -- Melodyne can make a crummy vocal sound... decent. And for many people, that's already more than they could hope for otherwise.

2) Antares did try a guitar autotune, and it sucked. Melodyne's higher-level polyphonic correction software (249 Euro) works far better, and can be literally undetectably transparent. I've literally changed a guitar arpeggio from minor to major too late in the recording to get a borrowed guitar back after a composition change required it, and would defy anyone to show me where it was done.
posted by tclark at 5:04 PM on September 22, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm on side with Steve Albini on this one. It's awful and cheapens everything it touches. I'm also still not over Bob Mould dipping into it.

I dunno, have you heard Bob Mould sing live? The guy can't make a melody up on the fly OR find his original melody if someone hit him in the face with it. I absolutely love the power of his performances in recordings, when the conditions are far, far more controlled. I never got to see Husker Du live, or (even more lamentably, IMO) Sugar, and Bob Mould-with-band/Bob Mould-solo-acoustic have been some amazing shows in my life. But Bob isn't the hill a "autotune is a bad thing" person would want to die on.
posted by tclark at 5:34 PM on September 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


In the hands of a good vocalist, it can be another tool in their toolbox. Of the uses I know of (Cher, Radiohead and Kanye), the artists weren't using Auto-Tune because they were unable to sing in key - it was an artistic choice intended to convey a particular effect.

That's fine, in theory, but the ubiquity of Auto-Tune shows how there's no space between just another tool that can be used for artistic effect and gimmicky trend used to fit in, with the latter eroding the vitality of the effect of the former.
posted by gusottertrout at 5:53 PM on September 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


does the ubiquity of the electric guitar in popular music erase the fact that people can use it artistically? you realize how ridiculous that is right?

this site is so old.
posted by JimBennett at 6:02 PM on September 22, 2018 [5 favorites]


To be fair, autotune is not nearly as reprehensible to me as range compression is. Listen to the Beatles or Led Zeppelin and you will hear legitimately quiet portions. Almost every album recorded back then was quiet and loud and vocals could get lost in the recording... there were legitimately songs ruined by bad recording. But - there were also brilliant songs that grew and swelled like classical music. And then came dynamic range compression. And high quality production. And while yes, there are now fewer duds on an album, every song is a non-lively blaringly perfect stereophonic normalized meh-fest. Even worse, is when someone remastered a classic and dumps on the dynamic range compression... I weep.

It's like the kids in third grade that just shout out Christmas Carrols. Way more offensive than them being off pitch.
posted by Nanukthedog at 6:28 PM on September 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's getting better nowadays Nanukthedog, what with Spotify/Youtube/etc adopting LUFS limit standards. Now if you go north of -12dB (or even -14dB) you're at risk of getting wholesale gain reduction. I still aim for what in the 90s would've been reckless and recent years still gets me songs that sound "too quiet" on playlists at -9dB LUFS -- I'm happy with that dynamic range in my mixes but that's my personal taste. Fortunately it seems the loudness war is mostly over.
posted by tclark at 6:37 PM on September 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


To add: unfortunately, the screaming isn't all over. I mean even for a group whose music doesn't lend itself to dynamic range squashing like The National, I just ran some songs on Sleep Well Beast through my studio software and some songs were coming in near -4dB short term, and -6 for the whole song. So yeah.
posted by tclark at 6:46 PM on September 22, 2018


Erodes, not erases, as imitation weakens the effect by making it common. It isn't "just" used for artistic effect but out of a want conform, as is suggested in the article:

but really it was a transparent attempt to compete on urban radio by adopting the prevailing template of commercial-yet-street rap. Jay-Z certainly doesn't sound overjoyed about being surrounded on all sides by the effect, having proclaimed the “death of Auto-Tune” a decade ago.

Technology can be used for artistic purposes, but it can also be used for a shortcut to approach some area training, talent and/or skill once better provided. Imitation can deaden innovation, making it seem more banal for surrounding good effect in monotony and convention. That happened to steadicams and rapid cutting in movies, where powerful effects get aped for lesser effect making it harder to see the originality and power in the more thoughtful uses. Autotune is interesting for its widespread adoption, and the article is good in talking about those aspects, but celebrating it is something different.

If it's just and argument from a popularity standpoint, anything that is widely used is then "good" just for dint of its adoption, popularity is its own proof and there's little point in arguing against it. If it's a argument on musical importance of the device, then defending Auto-Tune requires looking at how widespread its use is, how most of that use is entirely predictable, and judging the technology from its totality of use. Defending Auto-Tune on by its best use is putting the device before the artist, which is backwards and doesn't show as much about the overall meaning of the device as it does the talents of those who found something of significance in its usage. The article seems to try to do all of those things in a mixed way, but doesn't really nail down any of them well, even as I enjoyed reading of the different devices' history of use.
posted by gusottertrout at 7:02 PM on September 22, 2018


does the ubiquity of the electric guitar in popular music erase the fact that people can use it artistically?

Man, no Pro Tools haters in the house? You guys are leaving a good rant right there on the ground.
posted by Artw at 7:13 PM on September 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


I dunno, have you heard Bob Mould sing live? The guy can't make a melody up on the fly OR find his original melody if someone hit him in the face with it.

Neither can Bob Dylan, but it hasn't stopped him.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:20 PM on September 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don’t know what happened, but it felt like that auto-tuning wizardry was a magic spell and it was hacking my brain.


I should add, on reflection, that I’d had a similar reaction to the 60s and 70s Moog electronica. Dick Hyman’s Electric Eclectics LP album was on frequent play in my house. Hot Butter’s Popcorn, Wendy Carlos’ Switched-on Bach, Perrey & Kingsley’s The In Sound From Way Out — man that Barnyard in Orbit and Spooks in Soace — all just seemed to burrow into my young brain a little.

Not really surprising that the auto-tune in “Believe” triggered the same neurons.
posted by darkstar at 9:47 PM on September 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


Also, no discussion of Auto-Tune would be complete without a link to GladOS’ Still Alive, and the Gregory Brothers and their “Auto Tune the News” videos (e.g., #2, #5).


Getting blessed from Joe Biden in Spa-a-ace!
posted by darkstar at 10:20 PM on September 22, 2018 [1 favorite]


That is a very interesting explanation and description of autotune technologies, but I don't buy the argument for. Sure, there has always been some (increasing and partly unavoidable) amount of artifice in music, but I've always hated the overuse of reverb too, for one example. It would be one thing for using autotune to correct the occasional imperfection, help a weak vocal be that bit better, or even add a special effect here and there, but to have even geat singers use it all the time is just...sad and terrible. Even when used relatively lightly there is just something not quite right about it that detracts rather than adds. It's also a bit of a switch in the article, starting off listing all the negatives, but then trying not only to excuse and justify but then cheerleader for autotune in an overlong and not too convincing way.
posted by blue shadows at 12:43 AM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think the artistic use of auto-tune is fascinating. From Cher to T-Pain to Future, people do really cool things with it.

But I don't know if that is enough to justify the existence of Disturbed's cover of The Sound of Silence. If you can't sing a song, it's okay to just not sing it.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:52 AM on September 23, 2018


this site is so old.
that's really lame on your part dude
posted by thelonius at 5:27 AM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


When working on recordings with singers, I definitely don’t mind helping a little if a vocalist is having a hard day or in a mix if everybody was too tired to notice a less than perfect note, or maybe a synth overdub or something affected the temperament of a passage. In fact I believe that myself and most other computer musicians can do it in a nigh impossible to notice way. (It's strange then, when you hear the high production music of today, the auto-tune effect is so noticeable even in parts when it’s clearly not supposed to be. Pop-country and whatever they are calling the genre where one dude screams and the other sings like Fallot Boy are particularly bad.)

What really irks me is when I work with singers who after takes are just like, “You can fix that,” like it’s completely normal, usually with a wink or laugh.
posted by dagosto at 5:51 AM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


this site is so old.
that's really lame on your part dude


I dunno. It's absolutely okay to not like something, but some of the arguments people are making in this thread really remind me of the "I listen to all music except country and rap"-type discussions. Autotune/Melodyne are tools and I find it really fascinating the types of sounds producers and artists are getting out of it. This is the first article I've read that really dives into the nuances of how Autotune is shaping the sound of modern commercial music.

I also really appreciated the section talking about African music. I've always loved raï, so it sort of comes across as a "no duh" moment to realize that of course Algerian artists are using Autotune in their music, but somehow I've never made that connection before
posted by timelord at 10:16 AM on September 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


"Melodyne's higher-level polyphonic correction software (249 Euro) works far better, and can be literally undetectably transparent"

I've played with Melodyne and it is truly incredible being able to reach inside a chord and change individual notes. Never actually used it for anything but it is a marvel.

New color grading technologies are similar in concept and are just as wow inspiring to me.
posted by bz at 10:56 AM on September 23, 2018


It's absolutely okay to not like something, but some of the arguments people are making in this thread really remind me of the "I listen to all music except country and rap"-type discussions.

I don't have any argument with this pushback, and if mine is one of the comments that inspired it I'm sad I gave that impression. There are really two specific things I hate about auto-tune as a tool in the producer's arsenal.

(1) The deskilling aspect of it really does bother me on a professional level, even if I'm not currently working as a professional musician. I trained for years. I know lots of people who put lots of time, energy, and money into perfecting their skills. The article minimizes it, but I believe strongly that anything that takes a job out of a qualified musician's hands in favor of somebody who has the looks but not the skills is at least depressing, if not actually damaging to the notion of professional musicianship as a going concern. I don't think that's something that can just be handwaved away as taste, age, or changing times.

(2) There is a crushing sameness to the music that gets broadcast, streamed, or supplied to corporate playlists that I feel is far beyond what label A&R execs used to be able to pull off, even though payola and its offspring have always had noticeable effect. Without even getting into other flaws I might find this is incredibly boring, a tragedy of the A&R commons. Everything just sounds so … shiny now.

But it's also true that producers and engineers used to rely on note banks for opera singers, or cut together multiple takes (the liner notes to the Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings box set address the difficulties in reassembling the master edits in stereo; the discs provide a number of uncut takes the listener can compare with the edited masters), that the Brill Building used to be a literal pop song factory and many pop stars are still made by a machinery that includes people who are songwriters in their own right and producers hired for a given sound, and that Musicians You May Know And Love have long used and will continue to use new technologies in the making of music. All of that supports the creative, interesting, and practical uses of something like auto-tune, even though the now-standard lacquer of it may be entirely unappealing to Olds like me. But if I'm complaining about excessive lacquer, there's a bunch of stuff I listened to in the late 80s and early 90s that I just can't go near now because of how poorly the production has aged.

For me it doesn't boil down to "I just don't like rap" or whatever, it's "oh, you're doing that thing that I've already heard too much of." Where I think it's really gone off the rails is the seemingly unchecked power of modern A&R, driven by market segmentation data, new distribution methods, and digital production tools. It's now possible to make literally anything from whole cloth and push it not just into radio stations, but commercial playlists and streaming services and customer service hold music and so on. That's now happening to a degree A&R could only dream of in the first era of manufactured pop stars. I can't get past the crushing sameness to hear what might actually be new. The premise of the article seemed to be to praise our new crushing sameness overlords and thank them for letting other things be more important than, y'know, the ability to perform music well, and I'm just not on board with that.
posted by fedward at 1:49 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


does the ubiquity of the electric guitar in popular music erase the fact that people can use it artistically?

I still remember an argument I had once with a very earnest folkie, more than 35 years ago, where he tried to convince me that amplification had ruined music.
posted by fuzz at 2:39 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


I can't get past the crushing sameness to hear what might actually be new.

There's definitely something to be said about the formulaic nature of a lot of pop music. Rick Beato has pretty good video ranting about the sameness of just reusing the same chord progressions over and over (I realize that many jazz standards use the same progression but it really does feel just ubiquitous these days). Something that drove the point home to me is where he points out that of The Beatles number one hits, only a single song really relies on the I–V–vi–IV chord progression.

That said, I'm a pretty big fan of pop music and the creative use of Autotune is one of the areas where I think pop music is actually getting more interesting.

I do hear you on using Autotune to prop up a sub-par singer. It's not entirely a new thing, but it's certainly a heck of a lot easier now. I mean, I live in a relatively small town of about 30,000 and I know many phenomenal singers (from classically trained to people who just really understand how to control the presence of their voice). If we extrapolate that to the rest of the country there must be so many truly talented vocalists who will never know even a fraction of a percent of the fame some star artists receive. It's not really fair, but the system has never been really fair in the first place.
posted by timelord at 5:12 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


of The Beatles number one hits, only a single song really relies on the I–V–vi–IV chord progression.

Things "Let it Be" and "Let it Go" have in common.
posted by kurumi at 10:06 PM on September 23, 2018


"Let it come, let it be, let it go." - John Yates
posted by paleyellowwithorange at 10:33 PM on September 23, 2018


I remember listening to "Hey Jude" in Theory class because the professor said it was the best example he knew of a IV/IV-IV-I progression. McCartney was taking it waaay back to church
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:56 AM on September 24, 2018


Bon Iver - Woods
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:48 PM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


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