♪♫ One of modern history’s most reviled inventions ♪♫
October 13, 2016 9:25 PM Subscribe
I love Autotune and I think its use is still in its infancy.
posted by rhizome at 10:09 PM on October 13, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 10:09 PM on October 13, 2016 [9 favorites]
ME: Alexa, sing in autotune*. (or other various verbs before "autotune")
ALEXA: In the song I hear ‘em tune, the coolest sound ever known, somewhere far along this flow, machines have found their soul in and the groove ain't heartless
—random YT
___
Also, Still Alive by GLaDOS (Ellen McLain & Valve)
posted by christopherious at 10:13 PM on October 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
ALEXA: In the song I hear ‘em tune, the coolest sound ever known, somewhere far along this flow, machines have found their soul in and the groove ain't heartless
—random YT
___
Also, Still Alive by GLaDOS (Ellen McLain & Valve)
posted by christopherious at 10:13 PM on October 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
Not that it will matter 99% of the time for 99% of people but on the off chance you find yourself at a party full of actual studio musicians and/or sound engineers do yourself a favor and don't attempt to break the ice by complaining about auto-tune. Like the fine article points out, the recording industry was using this bit of signal-processing magic for three years before anybody found out. And the only reason anybody found out was because someone decided to use it in the most unsubtle way they possibly could.
Like, seriously seriously guys autotune is fucking EVERY WHERE IN ALL THE MUSICS ALWAYS. Even on non-vocal parts (like lead guitar lines).
I do agree that sometimes it can be really grating, but most of those times are either a) because it's an inappropriate application* of the effect or b) because the effect was applied with the same lack of finesse** as mayonnaise on a sandwich.
*e.g. musical theater, live concerts, movies where the character is supposed to be singing in the actual physical reality of the scene but instead they just look like they're lip syncing and it looks awful breaks my brain
**And I'm willing to bet the recording will have other artless features, like vocals that are EQ'd to hell-and-back so they sound like sibilant silver angel-robots and dynamics compression so overt the entire song is essentially shouting at you
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:51 PM on October 13, 2016 [10 favorites]
Like, seriously seriously guys autotune is fucking EVERY WHERE IN ALL THE MUSICS ALWAYS. Even on non-vocal parts (like lead guitar lines).
I do agree that sometimes it can be really grating, but most of those times are either a) because it's an inappropriate application* of the effect or b) because the effect was applied with the same lack of finesse** as mayonnaise on a sandwich.
*e.g. musical theater, live concerts, movies where the character is supposed to be singing in the actual physical reality of the scene but instead they just look like they're lip syncing and it looks awful breaks my brain
**And I'm willing to bet the recording will have other artless features, like vocals that are EQ'd to hell-and-back so they sound like sibilant silver angel-robots and dynamics compression so overt the entire song is essentially shouting at you
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:51 PM on October 13, 2016 [10 favorites]
I ran out of edit time and forgot to say that Alexa sings the above in autotune. I requested a feature to vary the response a bit and provide more. ("Encore!")[tangent]
Also wanted to add but couldn't: my Garmin GPS has a custom GLaDOS voice. So when I disobey her instructions, for example, instead of saying "recalculating" she says, "recalculating, because you are lost." And then she proceeds to rip me apart for not following instructions.[/tangent]
posted by christopherious at 11:18 PM on October 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
Also wanted to add but couldn't: my Garmin GPS has a custom GLaDOS voice. So when I disobey her instructions, for example, instead of saying "recalculating" she says, "recalculating, because you are lost." And then she proceeds to rip me apart for not following instructions.[/tangent]
posted by christopherious at 11:18 PM on October 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
It's no Melodyne.
posted by kersplunk at 11:28 PM on October 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by kersplunk at 11:28 PM on October 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
The reason people hate it is because it sounds awful. The human voice and stringed instruments are not meant to be totally 'in tune', because there is no such thing, which is why we've had to train our ears to tolerate equal temperament for a few hundred years (within which some of the intervals sound awful as well). Adjusting pitch relations of notes by use of computers rather than human ears is fundamentally different from recording technology like compression or equalisation.
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:37 PM on October 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:37 PM on October 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
The human voice and stringed instruments are not meant to be totally 'in tune', because there is no such thing,
Auto-tune is the "uncanny valley" of music the too-perfect sound that is like the too-perfect look of some CGI... Some producers/techs/singers.musicians are using it right, but I can't tell you who because the result doesn't sound like auto-tune. In time, enough people in the music biz will get good enough at it or it'll be developed to be much easier to sound natural, and then people will start asking "whatever happened to auto-tune" and the professionals will just roll their eyes. Just not yet, not now.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:01 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
Auto-tune is the "uncanny valley" of music the too-perfect sound that is like the too-perfect look of some CGI... Some producers/techs/singers.musicians are using it right, but I can't tell you who because the result doesn't sound like auto-tune. In time, enough people in the music biz will get good enough at it or it'll be developed to be much easier to sound natural, and then people will start asking "whatever happened to auto-tune" and the professionals will just roll their eyes. Just not yet, not now.
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:01 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
Every bit as ubiquitous a Autotune is moving individual drum hits around to being the drummer in time where their playing wasn't perfectly so. Because it's more subtle and harder to notice (and because nobody gives a shit about drummers) you'll get people complaining about musicians "cheating" with Autotune while doing recordings that have been beat detectored to hell and back. Mad.
(Note: the accusation of cheating is a subtlety different complaint to not caring for the sound, though in my experience it's rare to find one in complete absence of the other)
posted by Dysk at 12:20 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
(Note: the accusation of cheating is a subtlety different complaint to not caring for the sound, though in my experience it's rare to find one in complete absence of the other)
posted by Dysk at 12:20 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
Walter Benjamin rendered those criticisms irrelevant 80 years ago.
posted by rhizome at 12:26 AM on October 14, 2016
posted by rhizome at 12:26 AM on October 14, 2016
Only painting on a rock with your own shit and blood is art.
Anything else is artifice.
posted by Dr. Curare at 12:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [14 favorites]
Anything else is artifice.
posted by Dr. Curare at 12:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [14 favorites]
It took me about thirty years to be OK with the sound of the vocoder: it’s possible then that the obtrusive use of Autotune will stop creeping me out in another ten years or so!
posted by misteraitch at 12:26 AM on October 14, 2016
posted by misteraitch at 12:26 AM on October 14, 2016
The human voice and stringed instruments are not meant to be totally 'in tune', because there is no such thing, which is why we've had to train our ears to tolerate equal temperament for a few hundred years (within which some of the intervals sound awful as well).
Kids today with their newfangled pianos. In my day we listened to nothing but sick lyre jams.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:29 AM on October 14, 2016 [11 favorites]
Kids today with their newfangled pianos. In my day we listened to nothing but sick lyre jams.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:29 AM on October 14, 2016 [11 favorites]
If the stuff created with Auto-Tune is art, then its proponents should be happy for it to receive serious scrutiny rather than contrarian endorsement.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:30 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:30 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure you can call the endorsement of a completely ubiquitous music production tool "contrarian" exactly. It'd be the knee-jerking against a tool as a whole on the basis of poor or unsubtle applications of it that I'd characterise as such.
posted by Dysk at 12:37 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by Dysk at 12:37 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
the young delinquent started pulling C’s; in junior high, he made his first B; as a high school senior, he was scraping together occasional A’s.
...but these C's, the B and the A's where slightly off pitch, and that's what started it all.
posted by Namlit at 12:39 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
...but these C's, the B and the A's where slightly off pitch, and that's what started it all.
posted by Namlit at 12:39 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
I especially like the poor or unsubtle applications of it.
posted by rhizome at 12:39 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 12:39 AM on October 14, 2016 [5 favorites]
Unsubtle isn't necessarily poor, unless you were aiming for it to be seamless rather than an effect (unless the unsubtle effect works in context).
posted by Dysk at 12:48 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Dysk at 12:48 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
The human voice and stringed instruments are not meant to be totally 'in tune', because there is no such thing, which is why we've had to train our ears to tolerate equal temperament for a few hundred years (within which some of the intervals sound awful as well).
Sort of. There are no problems that I see to adjust auto-tune technology to any given historical (non-equal) temperament, or to other scales than the western major-minor modes etc. What's a problem for listeners who don't find auto-tune cool, is that the voice is locked on to single individual pitches and looses its power of modulation.
[just as data points for anyone who wants to go down the temperament road: Equal temperament has been known theoretically for quite a while but caught on in musical practice only at the very end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. [[oh, and what Bach's Well-tempered tuning was like, we simply don't know, although some people [[[that I know personally]]]have made some more or less widely published guesses more or less recently. People are agreeing pretty much that what Bach had in mind was not equal temperament]] ]
posted by Namlit at 12:52 AM on October 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
Sort of. There are no problems that I see to adjust auto-tune technology to any given historical (non-equal) temperament, or to other scales than the western major-minor modes etc. What's a problem for listeners who don't find auto-tune cool, is that the voice is locked on to single individual pitches and looses its power of modulation.
[just as data points for anyone who wants to go down the temperament road: Equal temperament has been known theoretically for quite a while but caught on in musical practice only at the very end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. [[oh, and what Bach's Well-tempered tuning was like, we simply don't know, although some people [[[that I know personally]]]have made some more or less widely published guesses more or less recently. People are agreeing pretty much that what Bach had in mind was not equal temperament]] ]
posted by Namlit at 12:52 AM on October 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
Maybe 'contrarian' is not accurate for Auto-Tune defenders, but the post is titled 'One of history's most reviled inventions'.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:52 AM on October 14, 2016
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:52 AM on October 14, 2016
There are no problems that I see to adjust auto-tune technology to any given historical (non-equal) temperament, or to other scales than the western major-minor modes etc.
I'm sure you could have Auto-Tune work using meantone or whatever. The problem is that singers adjust unconsciously between modal and scale pitch degrees during a song, particularly when singing in harmony, in ways that are pleasing to the ear, because of the basis of sound as vibrations that sets off the harmonic sequence. What it is that we find pleasing is a moving target historically that computers cannot keep up with, and cannot be defined once and for all eternity (unlike the harmonic sequence, which is defined for all eternity, and that's where the contradiction lies.)
The 'locked-on' effect is also a problem as well though, but as others say maybe that can be solved simply by dexterity and patience with the software.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:59 AM on October 14, 2016
I'm sure you could have Auto-Tune work using meantone or whatever. The problem is that singers adjust unconsciously between modal and scale pitch degrees during a song, particularly when singing in harmony, in ways that are pleasing to the ear, because of the basis of sound as vibrations that sets off the harmonic sequence. What it is that we find pleasing is a moving target historically that computers cannot keep up with, and cannot be defined once and for all eternity (unlike the harmonic sequence, which is defined for all eternity, and that's where the contradiction lies.)
The 'locked-on' effect is also a problem as well though, but as others say maybe that can be solved simply by dexterity and patience with the software.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:59 AM on October 14, 2016
It's no Melodyne
Auto-Tune probably wins for real-time correction though no? Melodyne is an extremely powerful tool for working on a recording.
Also it's already been mentioned in the thread and the article that unobtrusive use of Auto-Tune was the intentional use, predating the Cher effect by several years, and also that the obtrusive use of Auto-Tune is deliberate and supposed sound weird. So, you know, all those horses, barn door.
posted by atoxyl at 1:22 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Auto-Tune probably wins for real-time correction though no? Melodyne is an extremely powerful tool for working on a recording.
Also it's already been mentioned in the thread and the article that unobtrusive use of Auto-Tune was the intentional use, predating the Cher effect by several years, and also that the obtrusive use of Auto-Tune is deliberate and supposed sound weird. So, you know, all those horses, barn door.
posted by atoxyl at 1:22 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
A few years ago, in a meeting, famed guitar-maker Paul Reed Smith turned toward Hildebrand and shook his head. “You know,” he said, disapprovingly, “you’ve completely destroyed Western music.”
I dunno, man. There are some people out there playing Paul Reed Smith's guitars who some would contend are trying pretty hard to do that, Auto Tune or no.
Doleful Creature: **And I'm willing to bet the recording will have other artless features, like vocals that are EQ'd to hell-and-back so they sound like sibilant silver angel-robots and dynamics compression so overt the entire song is essentially shouting at you
Truth. Case in point - speaking of PRS guitar players, if you want a clear example of what compressing the bejesus out of something sounds like, listen to a Nickelback track. Chad Kroeger's delivery is not the ONLY REASON IT SOUNDS LIKE HE'S ALWAYS SHOUTING IT'S ALSO BECAUSE OF THE UNSUBTLE USE OF COMPRESSION.
But getting back to Auto Tune - once you put an effect in the hands of people making music, people are going to start messing around with it and suddenly it's everywhere being used in ways never envisioned by its creator.
I mean, what would the 80s have been without chorus?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:30 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
I dunno, man. There are some people out there playing Paul Reed Smith's guitars who some would contend are trying pretty hard to do that, Auto Tune or no.
Doleful Creature: **And I'm willing to bet the recording will have other artless features, like vocals that are EQ'd to hell-and-back so they sound like sibilant silver angel-robots and dynamics compression so overt the entire song is essentially shouting at you
Truth. Case in point - speaking of PRS guitar players, if you want a clear example of what compressing the bejesus out of something sounds like, listen to a Nickelback track. Chad Kroeger's delivery is not the ONLY REASON IT SOUNDS LIKE HE'S ALWAYS SHOUTING IT'S ALSO BECAUSE OF THE UNSUBTLE USE OF COMPRESSION.
But getting back to Auto Tune - once you put an effect in the hands of people making music, people are going to start messing around with it and suddenly it's everywhere being used in ways never envisioned by its creator.
I mean, what would the 80s have been without chorus?
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:30 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
The obtrusive use gets old but its artistic legitimacy is well beyond demonstrated. The unobtrusive use to just nudge everything toward perfection probably should raise more questions for traditionalists but of course of its noticeable it's more as a net effect on music than an effect on any given song. And as someone also already mentioned it's really part of a whole suite of studio techniques that give that nudge to different aspects of music.
posted by atoxyl at 1:32 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 1:32 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
It'd be the knee-jerking against a tool as a whole on the basis of poor or unsubtle applications of it
I don't so much knee-jerk as feel kind of nauseous, but only when I can hear a voice being pitch-quantized in a way that completely sucks all the life and humanity out of it. Which, to be fair, is absolutely the case for a Sturgeon's Law proportion of today's commercial music radio fare.
posted by flabdablet at 2:06 AM on October 14, 2016
I don't so much knee-jerk as feel kind of nauseous, but only when I can hear a voice being pitch-quantized in a way that completely sucks all the life and humanity out of it. Which, to be fair, is absolutely the case for a Sturgeon's Law proportion of today's commercial music radio fare.
posted by flabdablet at 2:06 AM on October 14, 2016
I'm a musician/producer and I love using effects all over. Delay/reverb/phasing, it can't be over the top enough but Autotune used as an effect just sounds like a supershitty vocoder to me. I'd love people to stop it, it ruins modern music for me. For instance Kanye's albums seem really good were it not for those godawful Autotuned vocals.
As for the use it is intended for, maybe it's a coincidence or just because I'm an old git but I haven't liked anything in modern popmusic since Autotune was invented. The overall sound of popular music seems to have deteriorated to the equivalent of a river of shit pumped through a sewage pipe at this point in time and Autotune is a part of that sound. It's just grating to my ears.
posted by Kosmob0t at 2:15 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
As for the use it is intended for, maybe it's a coincidence or just because I'm an old git but I haven't liked anything in modern popmusic since Autotune was invented. The overall sound of popular music seems to have deteriorated to the equivalent of a river of shit pumped through a sewage pipe at this point in time and Autotune is a part of that sound. It's just grating to my ears.
posted by Kosmob0t at 2:15 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
You can listen to a recorded piece of music a thousand times, so any small error becomes incredibly grating. If recorded perfectly, you can detach and read any meaning into it, like a blank canvas.
Live performance, different. Every error becomes a unique, one-off experience.
Derail: did Stereolab use auto-tune?
posted by Laotic at 2:31 AM on October 14, 2016
Live performance, different. Every error becomes a unique, one-off experience.
Derail: did Stereolab use auto-tune?
posted by Laotic at 2:31 AM on October 14, 2016
For instance Kanye's albums seem really good were it not for those godawful Autotuned vocals.
Kanye is maybe not a terrible singer but he's not a great one - which is to say he kinda needs the technology to hit some of the notes he wants to hit.
posted by atoxyl at 2:35 AM on October 14, 2016
Kanye is maybe not a terrible singer but he's not a great one - which is to say he kinda needs the technology to hit some of the notes he wants to hit.
posted by atoxyl at 2:35 AM on October 14, 2016
Additional derail: if Autotune had existed at the time, would Milli Vanilli be gigantic pop stars now, and would Paula Abdul not had the lawsuit about the recording of Forever Your Girl? "Sure, it's the star singing. We make sure of it!"
posted by hippybear at 2:36 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 2:36 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
Kanye is maybe not a terrible singer but he's not a great one - which is to say he kinda needs the technology to hit some of the notes he wants to hit.
In this instance I was talking about the use of Autotune as an effect instead of it's intended use. Kayne uses it as an effect all the time and for me that sucks. He's one of the few popular artists that keeps things raw in his productions and I like/respect him for that. I could get over his use of Autotune if he just used it to touch up his vocals here and there.
posted by Kosmob0t at 2:46 AM on October 14, 2016
In this instance I was talking about the use of Autotune as an effect instead of it's intended use. Kayne uses it as an effect all the time and for me that sucks. He's one of the few popular artists that keeps things raw in his productions and I like/respect him for that. I could get over his use of Autotune if he just used it to touch up his vocals here and there.
posted by Kosmob0t at 2:46 AM on October 14, 2016
Beatles, Brian Wilson, Brian Eno etc: geniuses, "using the studio as an instrument"
R&B, hip-hop, contemporary pop - slick, overproduced, "not real musicians"
Do I have that right?
posted by thelonius at 2:49 AM on October 14, 2016 [28 favorites]
R&B, hip-hop, contemporary pop - slick, overproduced, "not real musicians"
Do I have that right?
posted by thelonius at 2:49 AM on October 14, 2016 [28 favorites]
Do I have that right?
Well, do you think the Beach Boys/ Beatles vocals/harmonies would've been improved by using Autotune if it was available at the time?
posted by Kosmob0t at 2:56 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
Well, do you think the Beach Boys/ Beatles vocals/harmonies would've been improved by using Autotune if it was available at the time?
posted by Kosmob0t at 2:56 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
Jimmy Somerville told me that the giant dramatic vocal swoop toward the climactic chorus of The Communards' cover of Don't Leave Me This Way was created with a Synclavier back in 1986 (the other major sampling instrument-innovation at the time was the Fairlight CMI). Basically since the beginning of digital sampling artists have been using the technology to make their voices do things they wouldn't ordinarily do. [c.f. Art Of Noise]
posted by hippybear at 3:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 3:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
R&B, hip-hop, contemporary pop - slick, overproduced, "not real musicians"
TFA says Jay-Z was among the first musicians to complain about the technology. And when I was a kid we used to deride Pink Floyd for spending a million hours in the studio instead of rocking out, rather than hail them as geniuses.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
TFA says Jay-Z was among the first musicians to complain about the technology. And when I was a kid we used to deride Pink Floyd for spending a million hours in the studio instead of rocking out, rather than hail them as geniuses.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
And then I think of stories about how when recording The Prophet's Song, Queen was running the tape out of the machine and around a pencil taped to the back of a chair and then back into the recorder so Freddie Mercury could record his overlapping vocals in real time on a multi-track machine...
Back in the day, spending a million hours in the studio meant doing something truly amazing. Like with CGI movies today compared to special effects movies back in the 80s, the "how the fuck did they do that???" wonder factor is gone, because the answer is always "with computers".
posted by hippybear at 3:09 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
Back in the day, spending a million hours in the studio meant doing something truly amazing. Like with CGI movies today compared to special effects movies back in the 80s, the "how the fuck did they do that???" wonder factor is gone, because the answer is always "with computers".
posted by hippybear at 3:09 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's almost like some people are talking about using a level to frame a door and some people are talking about building La Sagrada Familia in your neighbor'a back yard.
posted by uncleozzy at 3:28 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by uncleozzy at 3:28 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
It's no Melodyne.
Apples and oranges. Melodyne is an offline editing tool (you load up your audio track and move notes around, correcting pitch, changing melody or what have you). Autotune, from what I understand, is a box in your signal flow that adjusts pitches in real time.
posted by acb at 3:29 AM on October 14, 2016
Apples and oranges. Melodyne is an offline editing tool (you load up your audio track and move notes around, correcting pitch, changing melody or what have you). Autotune, from what I understand, is a box in your signal flow that adjusts pitches in real time.
posted by acb at 3:29 AM on October 14, 2016
Funny fact, in the 80's Freddie Mercury used an Eventide Harmoniser to keep his vocals in tune during gigs.
Probably less funny derail; to my ears an 80's Eventide sounds a 1000x better than Autotune. It even sounds better than modern Eventides. Digital Technology made an enormous leap since the 80's but why does that old tech SOUND better then stuff nowadays?
posted by Kosmob0t at 3:50 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Probably less funny derail; to my ears an 80's Eventide sounds a 1000x better than Autotune. It even sounds better than modern Eventides. Digital Technology made an enormous leap since the 80's but why does that old tech SOUND better then stuff nowadays?
posted by Kosmob0t at 3:50 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I hate it.
posted by jonmc at 4:31 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by jonmc at 4:31 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Funny fact, in the 80's Freddie Mercury used an Eventide Harmoniser to keep his vocals in tune during gigs.
According to the late Alex Sadkin, the "dance on the Eventide" was how he kept Simon LeBon's voice in check on every Duran Duran album.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:58 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
According to the late Alex Sadkin, the "dance on the Eventide" was how he kept Simon LeBon's voice in check on every Duran Duran album.
posted by JoeZydeco at 4:58 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I like to look out over my fine green lawn while listening to my collection of wax cylinders on the gramophone.
posted by briank at 4:59 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by briank at 4:59 AM on October 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
Related: Bon Iver's has a new album, and it's great.
posted by schmod at 5:06 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by schmod at 5:06 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
I guess this territory's mostly covered upthread, but it's really a lot like digital reverb, quantized drums and compression: done right it's either barely noticeable or an obvious, glaring effect.
Done wrong it's just . . . cheesy. Most top 40 is explicitly going for cheese. If autotune is the most glaring annoyance for you in e.g. an early-oughts Justin Timberlake song, I'd suggest you desperately avoid listening for quantization, over-compression, or--god forbid--the lyrics. That way lies madness.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:19 AM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
Done wrong it's just . . . cheesy. Most top 40 is explicitly going for cheese. If autotune is the most glaring annoyance for you in e.g. an early-oughts Justin Timberlake song, I'd suggest you desperately avoid listening for quantization, over-compression, or--god forbid--the lyrics. That way lies madness.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:19 AM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
No mention of What Would You Do If I Sang Autotune?
posted by a person of few words at 5:43 AM on October 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by a person of few words at 5:43 AM on October 14, 2016 [6 favorites]
How did you possibly get a clip of my friends playing Beatles Rock Band?
posted by uncleozzy at 5:45 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by uncleozzy at 5:45 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Apples and oranges. Melodyne is an offline editing tool (you load up your audio track and move notes around, correcting pitch, changing melody or what have you). Autotune, from what I understand, is a box in your signal flow that adjusts pitches in real time.
Autotune in graphic mode works more or less like Melodyne. Melodyne just always seemed better to me for transparent fixes to bad notes, and it also has some crazy features you can be very creative like polyphony, export to midi, dragging notes around to make a totally different melody etc. (although I haven't looked at Autotune in a while so I don't know if Autotune has caught up).
posted by kersplunk at 5:49 AM on October 14, 2016
Autotune in graphic mode works more or less like Melodyne. Melodyne just always seemed better to me for transparent fixes to bad notes, and it also has some crazy features you can be very creative like polyphony, export to midi, dragging notes around to make a totally different melody etc. (although I haven't looked at Autotune in a while so I don't know if Autotune has caught up).
posted by kersplunk at 5:49 AM on October 14, 2016
Done wrong it's just . . . cheesy.
Yup. Autotune is part of the things that were going to ruin music forever, such as electric instruments and amplification, multi-track recording, guitar pedals, dynamic range compressors, synths, drum machines and samplers, DAWs, and so on. In reality, they're just tools, and some use them to correct annoyances, others go overboard and produce the shit out of the track until all it has left is production. Shiny shiny production that turn the project into something as real as the 3D renders of a flat on a listing.
But one thing I found really weird (well, if I saw them, I guess that should be clear) is allowing contestants in talent shows to use it. I mean...
posted by lmfsilva at 5:59 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
Yup. Autotune is part of the things that were going to ruin music forever, such as electric instruments and amplification, multi-track recording, guitar pedals, dynamic range compressors, synths, drum machines and samplers, DAWs, and so on. In reality, they're just tools, and some use them to correct annoyances, others go overboard and produce the shit out of the track until all it has left is production. Shiny shiny production that turn the project into something as real as the 3D renders of a flat on a listing.
But one thing I found really weird (well, if I saw them, I guess that should be clear) is allowing contestants in talent shows to use it. I mean...
posted by lmfsilva at 5:59 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
It is the distant future - the year TWO THOUSAND. We are robots. The world is quite different ever since the robotic uprising of the late 90s: there is no more need for autotune.
FINALLY. ROBOTIC BEINGS ARE OUT OF TUNE.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:10 AM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
(AFFIRMATIVE). We instead use randomizers to ensure our singing is chaotically sharp and/or flat. (aFfiRMATiVe).FINALLY. ROBOTIC BEINGS ARE OUT OF TUNE.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 6:10 AM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
The way I see it. I think Auto Tune is the PEDs of music production. Everyone uses and abuses it.
posted by 81818181818181818181 at 6:21 AM on October 14, 2016
posted by 81818181818181818181 at 6:21 AM on October 14, 2016
Truth. Case in point - speaking of PRS guitar players, if you want a clear example of what compressing the bejesus out of something sounds like, listen to a Nickelback track. Chad Kroeger's delivery is not the ONLY REASON IT SOUNDS LIKE HE'S ALWAYS SHOUTING IT'S ALSO BECAUSE OF THE UNSUBTLE USE OF COMPRESSION.
I worked In radio from the late 70's to the mid 80's. Mainly as an on air talent, but also as a sound engineer. I did a fair amount of live folk sound production later before leaving it all. Even formally studied music and vocal performance.
The Music Director at my last FM station (adult contemporary, in the 80's) LOVED tons of compression. Thought it made the station sound solid. It sounded like shit to me. But being an acoustic, folksy, musical theatre, classical, artsy-type with a choral conductor as a father, I shouldn't have been surprised.
I played with a lot of stuff when I was active in sound engineering and I have to admit, that's been awhile. But nothing ever replaced, replaces an underlying musical performance from the artist. I think I might have heard of Auto-Tune in passing many, many years ago, but I've long since left music, or following it, or listening to it.
Until my brother's family moved in. Two adolescent girls later and X Factor becomes required tv. Sucks that. I still cringe at lack of tonality and I'd guess that something like Auto-Tune might be being selectively deployed to support or submarine contestants.
posted by michswiss at 6:33 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
I worked In radio from the late 70's to the mid 80's. Mainly as an on air talent, but also as a sound engineer. I did a fair amount of live folk sound production later before leaving it all. Even formally studied music and vocal performance.
The Music Director at my last FM station (adult contemporary, in the 80's) LOVED tons of compression. Thought it made the station sound solid. It sounded like shit to me. But being an acoustic, folksy, musical theatre, classical, artsy-type with a choral conductor as a father, I shouldn't have been surprised.
I played with a lot of stuff when I was active in sound engineering and I have to admit, that's been awhile. But nothing ever replaced, replaces an underlying musical performance from the artist. I think I might have heard of Auto-Tune in passing many, many years ago, but I've long since left music, or following it, or listening to it.
Until my brother's family moved in. Two adolescent girls later and X Factor becomes required tv. Sucks that. I still cringe at lack of tonality and I'd guess that something like Auto-Tune might be being selectively deployed to support or submarine contestants.
posted by michswiss at 6:33 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
So much of the complaining about autotune baffles me. You ever think that the distinct warbling effect of autotuned cranked all the way up wasn't a goof or the result of an amateur; that maybe that was the effect they were going for? Since when do voices need to sound fully human to work in any particular song? I mean it's one thing to not care for it - personally, I loathed how much reverb pop musicians would put on a snare in the late 80s - but criticisms that autotune is the result of laziness, or people using it wrong or whatever, you just can't know that. Pop musicians have been using effects "wrong" to get desired results for decades now.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:39 AM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:39 AM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
Will respect the edit button and add this as a forgotten addition: I hate websites that disable "Pinch to Zoom" on mobile devices (iPad mini, in this case.) It makes your articles essentially not worth the effort for me to read.
posted by michswiss at 6:42 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by michswiss at 6:42 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
"Alexa - sing in autotune"...
Ha! My wife works on the Echo, and I got to delight her by showing her a trick she didn't know it could do.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:49 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ha! My wife works on the Echo, and I got to delight her by showing her a trick she didn't know it could do.
posted by rmd1023 at 6:49 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Autotune is part of the things that were going to ruin music forever, such as electric instruments and amplification, multi-track recording, guitar pedals, dynamic range compressors, synths, drum machines and samplers, DAWs, and so on. In reality, they're just tools, and some use them to correct annoyances, others go overboard and produce the shit out of the track until all it has left is production. Shiny shiny production that turn the project into something as real as the 3D renders of a flat on a listing.
Then something like punk or grungeternative comes along, pours gasoline over the whole shiny, overproduced mess and throws a lighted match. And then, a decade or two later, people start reclaiming parts of it as deliberate stylistic choices (i.e., mid-1980s 4AD bands reviving elements of prog for the serious young insects of monochromatic post-punk, or recent “credible”/“indie” artists like M83, Ladyhawke and Kristin Kontrol* reviving a late-80s studio-full-of-expensive-digital-gear gloss). Then, once the revivalist fad burns out, it's just another tool in the toolbox, like the 12-bar blues or the tremolo pedal.
* formerly Dee Dee of Brooklyn garage/C86-revival band Dum Dum Girls.
posted by acb at 6:58 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
Then something like punk or grungeternative comes along, pours gasoline over the whole shiny, overproduced mess and throws a lighted match. And then, a decade or two later, people start reclaiming parts of it as deliberate stylistic choices (i.e., mid-1980s 4AD bands reviving elements of prog for the serious young insects of monochromatic post-punk, or recent “credible”/“indie” artists like M83, Ladyhawke and Kristin Kontrol* reviving a late-80s studio-full-of-expensive-digital-gear gloss). Then, once the revivalist fad burns out, it's just another tool in the toolbox, like the 12-bar blues or the tremolo pedal.
* formerly Dee Dee of Brooklyn garage/C86-revival band Dum Dum Girls.
posted by acb at 6:58 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
I'm still wondering what the hell happened on the last M83 album. Then again, it is called Junk. I'm not sure if there's a joke I need to be inside, or the guy finally decided to make a record with all the bad ideas he removed from the previous two records.
(also: Ice Choir. That's the most delicious piece of sugary cheese I ate all year long)
posted by lmfsilva at 7:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
(also: Ice Choir. That's the most delicious piece of sugary cheese I ate all year long)
posted by lmfsilva at 7:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
maybe that was the effect now-mandatory cliche they were going for?
Maybe.
posted by flabdablet at 7:28 AM on October 14, 2016
Maybe.
posted by flabdablet at 7:28 AM on October 14, 2016
I'm not a big fan of the overuse -misuse, if you will- of AutoTune, but listen to The Impossible Soul by Sufjan Stevens and try not to get a little teary-eyed at the heavily AutoTuned section that begins at around the 10:00 mark. I've probably listened to this song fifty times and it gets me every time.
If it's in the right hands, AutoTune can be a very effective way to communicate emotion.
posted by Fister Roboto at 8:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
If it's in the right hands, AutoTune can be a very effective way to communicate emotion.
posted by Fister Roboto at 8:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
In his new autobiography, Thomas Dolby talks about altering the pitch of vocal samples by hand in some audio program for a 1992 recording, and notes that the company making the software knew what they could do with it, they could have invented Auto-Tune years earlier.
(He doesn't specify in the book, but I suspect the song is "Quantum Mechanic", and it sure doesn't sound like auto-tune as we know it. It sounds real.)
posted by SansPoint at 9:22 AM on October 14, 2016
(He doesn't specify in the book, but I suspect the song is "Quantum Mechanic", and it sure doesn't sound like auto-tune as we know it. It sounds real.)
posted by SansPoint at 9:22 AM on October 14, 2016
I see autotune as a sort of Quality Compressor. It can take a blah take and make it decent. It can take an amazing take and make it.... decent. You get some quality gain boost for mediocre takes, but you end up losing something important if the source is already really good.
However, one can only polish a turd so much. Every time people talk about studio magic misses an important piece: YOU CANNOT SALVAGE A SHITTY TAKE.
Believe me, I've tried. I've tried on shitty takes by others in my studio and shitty takes by myself in my studio. You have to start with something at least consistent in note control to make it sound better, otherwise you end up with a warbly mess even if you don't want it.
I've been using Melodyne for about 10 years on my recordings, and I've learned much about the art of delicately using autotune, fixing a note here and there. If you find you're doing deep surgery to fix something, you're better off trying to get a better take in the first place.
Also, one thing I wish I'd learned earlier: always, always, ALWAYS do doubling/tripling/more, especially on people with relatively "weak" voices (like mine), even if they can hit the notes. It jut helps.
(Sorry for the big post-editing, I accidentally hit post too early unintentionally when I tried to turn off caps lock.)
posted by tclark at 9:36 AM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
However, one can only polish a turd so much. Every time people talk about studio magic misses an important piece: YOU CANNOT SALVAGE A SHITTY TAKE.
Believe me, I've tried. I've tried on shitty takes by others in my studio and shitty takes by myself in my studio. You have to start with something at least consistent in note control to make it sound better, otherwise you end up with a warbly mess even if you don't want it.
I've been using Melodyne for about 10 years on my recordings, and I've learned much about the art of delicately using autotune, fixing a note here and there. If you find you're doing deep surgery to fix something, you're better off trying to get a better take in the first place.
Also, one thing I wish I'd learned earlier: always, always, ALWAYS do doubling/tripling/more, especially on people with relatively "weak" voices (like mine), even if they can hit the notes. It jut helps.
(Sorry for the big post-editing, I accidentally hit post too early unintentionally when I tried to turn off caps lock.)
posted by tclark at 9:36 AM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]
Worked like a charm for Zimos in Saints Row...
posted by Zack_Replica at 9:54 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Zack_Replica at 9:54 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Perhaps the difference between fixing occasional pitch errors in a performance and making someone who can't sing in tune at all sound like they can is subtle, but it's still a difference.
posted by tommasz at 10:23 AM on October 14, 2016
posted by tommasz at 10:23 AM on October 14, 2016
tomasz Perhaps the difference between fixing occasional pitch errors in a performance and making someone who can't sing in tune at all sound like they can is subtle, but it's still a difference.
From how I read Mr. Dolby's explanation, it sounded like it was more putting his singer in tune than just fixing occasional errors.
posted by SansPoint at 10:26 AM on October 14, 2016
From how I read Mr. Dolby's explanation, it sounded like it was more putting his singer in tune than just fixing occasional errors.
posted by SansPoint at 10:26 AM on October 14, 2016
Funny fact, in the 80's Freddie Mercury used an Eventide Harmoniser to keep his vocals in tune during gigs.
Did the 80s models even do auto pitch correction? I can't remember.
If I'd seen an Eventide Harmoniser in his setup back then I would have assumed he was just doing that live trick of using a harmoniser with a very small fixed pitch offset to prevent feedback through the PA.
posted by w0mbat at 10:32 AM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
Did the 80s models even do auto pitch correction? I can't remember.
If I'd seen an Eventide Harmoniser in his setup back then I would have assumed he was just doing that live trick of using a harmoniser with a very small fixed pitch offset to prevent feedback through the PA.
posted by w0mbat at 10:32 AM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
Well, do you think the Beach Boys/ Beatles vocals/harmonies would've been improved by using Autotune if it was available at the time?
I have no idea what "improved" means in this context, but they would have surely done different things with different technology available. The Beatles were very into overdubbing and what the wiki page terms "artificial double tracking".
posted by mikeh at 10:46 AM on October 14, 2016
I have no idea what "improved" means in this context, but they would have surely done different things with different technology available. The Beatles were very into overdubbing and what the wiki page terms "artificial double tracking".
posted by mikeh at 10:46 AM on October 14, 2016
Yeah John in particular liked the ADT effect - an early, homebrewed sort of chorus/flanger - that he... had it put on nearly all his vocal tracks for a while.
posted by atoxyl at 10:55 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 10:55 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Auto-Tune might well have wrecked a lot of the Beatles' harmonies and may even have turned them into something like the Bro-Country, aural cheeseburger songs we get a lot now.
“In the third and fourth measure of the chorus of "Help!" the Beatles*, for instance, sing a D that belongs to the G chord. In the fifth measure the same note is sung, this time accompanied by the E seventh (Figure 3). Though seemingly the same, both notes differ by nearly a quarter of a tonal distance.”
"After many listenings, I'm still not 100% certain whether John intends to be singing G or G# in measure 13; it sounds different from one repetition of the phrase to the next. Sometimes, I even suspect he's intentionally shooting for the blue note that lies in between the two, but other times, I worry he was just waffling a bit."
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
“In the third and fourth measure of the chorus of "Help!" the Beatles*, for instance, sing a D that belongs to the G chord. In the fifth measure the same note is sung, this time accompanied by the E seventh (Figure 3). Though seemingly the same, both notes differ by nearly a quarter of a tonal distance.”
"After many listenings, I'm still not 100% certain whether John intends to be singing G or G# in measure 13; it sounds different from one repetition of the phrase to the next. Sometimes, I even suspect he's intentionally shooting for the blue note that lies in between the two, but other times, I worry he was just waffling a bit."
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:04 AM on October 14, 2016 [3 favorites]
My favourite thing about autotune is the way that Ben Schwartz as Jean-Ralphio Saperstein fakes an autotune effect with his voice when singing random lines on Parks & Recreation.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:21 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by tobascodagama at 11:21 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
That's not really the point though - the argument is that they probably would have appreciated the potential for artistic pushing of the software's boundaries as singers today do, not that they would have wanted their vocals "fixed." Though whether it would have been done and ruined them probably would have depended on how smart George Martin et. al. turned out to be about knowing what to fix - like editing together two parts of Strawberry Fields in different keys - and what not to.
posted by atoxyl at 11:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by atoxyl at 11:26 AM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
hippybear:
Jimmy Somerville told me that the giant dramatic vocal swoop toward the climactic chorus of The Communards' cover of Don't Leave Me This Way was created with a Synclavier back in 1986
Producer Mike Thorne's pieces about producing records by the Communards, The The, Etc. are a great read. Here's his piece on The Communards, where he mentions the Synclavier a lot, including the weight of hauling it around and the problem of it getting fried by bad wiring. (on preview, I see I'm not telling Hippybear anything he doesn't already know; a few years back he published an extensive Previously on Jimmy Somerville).
posted by larrybob at 1:45 PM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
Jimmy Somerville told me that the giant dramatic vocal swoop toward the climactic chorus of The Communards' cover of Don't Leave Me This Way was created with a Synclavier back in 1986
Producer Mike Thorne's pieces about producing records by the Communards, The The, Etc. are a great read. Here's his piece on The Communards, where he mentions the Synclavier a lot, including the weight of hauling it around and the problem of it getting fried by bad wiring. (on preview, I see I'm not telling Hippybear anything he doesn't already know; a few years back he published an extensive Previously on Jimmy Somerville).
posted by larrybob at 1:45 PM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
That's not really the point though - the argument is that they probably would have appreciated the potential for artistic pushing of the software's boundaries as singers today do, not that they would have wanted their vocals "fixed."
Agree, I'm not bothered by either pitch correction of a clearly bum note or using whatever new tools are in the studio to make whatever sound you like. My fear (and I'm not an engineer so I'm not grinding this out, just spitballing really) is that now the software can recommend decisions about scale degrees and harmonies that are based on the rigid definitions of key and harmonic relations that pop/blues/soul music has in fact traditionally subverted in order to produce its signature effects. Hence the Beatles examples above.
When you use Auto-Tune you need to assign a key to the song (or possibly it will now sniff that out for itself). But as I understand it this means the pitches it detects will be adjusted to fit the song’s putative key or mode (which in pop is often ambiguous), and if the producer reviewing the software’s recommended changes doesn’t have the same instinct for microtonal adjustments as the singer - whose 'voice', in all the richness that word entails, is what we are meant to listening to after all - she or he will go with the computer’s logic and we lose some of the nuance that makes all this stuff worthwhile in the first place. You could set Auto-Tune to correct all pitches to the underlying chord, but I suspect it would interpret this too rigidly and you are going to get equal temperament glitches. It's an AI issue, as so many other things are becoming these days.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:56 AM on October 15, 2016
Agree, I'm not bothered by either pitch correction of a clearly bum note or using whatever new tools are in the studio to make whatever sound you like. My fear (and I'm not an engineer so I'm not grinding this out, just spitballing really) is that now the software can recommend decisions about scale degrees and harmonies that are based on the rigid definitions of key and harmonic relations that pop/blues/soul music has in fact traditionally subverted in order to produce its signature effects. Hence the Beatles examples above.
When you use Auto-Tune you need to assign a key to the song (or possibly it will now sniff that out for itself). But as I understand it this means the pitches it detects will be adjusted to fit the song’s putative key or mode (which in pop is often ambiguous), and if the producer reviewing the software’s recommended changes doesn’t have the same instinct for microtonal adjustments as the singer - whose 'voice', in all the richness that word entails, is what we are meant to listening to after all - she or he will go with the computer’s logic and we lose some of the nuance that makes all this stuff worthwhile in the first place. You could set Auto-Tune to correct all pitches to the underlying chord, but I suspect it would interpret this too rigidly and you are going to get equal temperament glitches. It's an AI issue, as so many other things are becoming these days.
posted by Coda Tronca at 3:56 AM on October 15, 2016
AutoTune is like nuclear fission. It's a powerful tool, but as a species, are we ready for it? Does humanity deserve it, considering all the musical atrocities we've committed?
posted by speicus at 1:07 PM on October 15, 2016
posted by speicus at 1:07 PM on October 15, 2016
on the off chance you find yourself at a party full of actual studio musicians and/or sound engineers do yourself a favor and don't attempt to break the ice by complaining about auto-tune.
Yes. To me this is like reading a discussion of chemtrails.
It's perfectly legitimate to critique a music recording, and to not like the way it was done. But to have the tools used as the basis of that critique puts me into serious eye rolling territory.
I've said before, but even after all these years the way people view music production is baffling to me. Making albums is just like making movies, it's a matter of scale. Live theater is to movies as live music is to albums. There is crossover, but they are two different things. But you don't hear a lot of people vehemently asserting that all movies should be filmed stage productions, and there is only one proper way to make a movie.
I don't like movies with heavy blue filters all the time. I don't know anything about making movies, but that much I know. But I don't complain about how filters are ruining movies and they shouldn't use them. I just don't like movies with heavy blue filters all the time. Some people do.
All the modern tuning tools, of which Auto Tune is just one, aren't doing anything that wasn't being done before, it's just way less time consuming. They also sound way better and less obvious when used properly than the older methods, and I personally think Auto Tune sounds more transparent than the competition.
Auto Tune, compression, limiting, reverb, anything people want to complain about, are tools. You make not like the way the tools were used, but like the lyrics or the keyboard sounds, that's just you not liking the choices that were made. The people making the album either wanted that result, or that was the closest they could come to the result they wanted with their skill set.
posted by bongo_x at 5:10 PM on October 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
Yes. To me this is like reading a discussion of chemtrails.
It's perfectly legitimate to critique a music recording, and to not like the way it was done. But to have the tools used as the basis of that critique puts me into serious eye rolling territory.
I've said before, but even after all these years the way people view music production is baffling to me. Making albums is just like making movies, it's a matter of scale. Live theater is to movies as live music is to albums. There is crossover, but they are two different things. But you don't hear a lot of people vehemently asserting that all movies should be filmed stage productions, and there is only one proper way to make a movie.
I don't like movies with heavy blue filters all the time. I don't know anything about making movies, but that much I know. But I don't complain about how filters are ruining movies and they shouldn't use them. I just don't like movies with heavy blue filters all the time. Some people do.
All the modern tuning tools, of which Auto Tune is just one, aren't doing anything that wasn't being done before, it's just way less time consuming. They also sound way better and less obvious when used properly than the older methods, and I personally think Auto Tune sounds more transparent than the competition.
Auto Tune, compression, limiting, reverb, anything people want to complain about, are tools. You make not like the way the tools were used, but like the lyrics or the keyboard sounds, that's just you not liking the choices that were made. The people making the album either wanted that result, or that was the closest they could come to the result they wanted with their skill set.
posted by bongo_x at 5:10 PM on October 16, 2016 [4 favorites]
MetaFilter: The people either wanted that result, or that was the closest they could come to the result they wanted with their skill set.
posted by hippybear at 5:39 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 5:39 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
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Right here in River City!
posted by beerperson at 9:53 PM on October 13, 2016 [5 favorites]