The eternal debate for/against auto tune.

[Orvillain]

Have you ever taken vocal lessons? My experience has been that at least as much time is spent focusing on each of tone, dynamic control, and projection, as on pitch. Those are hugely important parts of being a skilled singer.

The singing teachers I've had over the years have told me to focus on control, support, flow, and vowel shapes, and the pitch will just follow.

Poor pitch is usually a sign of poor technique somewhere in the biomechanical chain.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

The singing teachers I've had over the years have told me to focus on control, support, flow, and vowel shapes, and the pitch will just follow.

Poor pitch is usually a sign of poor technique somewhere in the biomechanical chain.

Mine also noted to me "you keep ragging on your pitch and it's totally fine. You are hitting the notes and have your own characteristic of bending in/out and holding them. Which all singers have."

Yet I couldn't put it out of my head and struggled with some of the dynamic control he was trying to teach me because all I could worry about was pitch. I bet if we'd slapped some auto tune on me, I would have gotten a lot more out of those lessons because I would have freely gone as loud and soft as I could, focusing only on that, not on my pitch. So I could totally see using it live in a "set to where I can't really hear it but know it's there" in the same way a lot of guitarists use an always on pedal - comfort and confidence.

Things that are okay to do live: hard limit a bass so the neanderthal doesn't literally blow up the PA on accident with his shit technique. Ride faders during solos because nobody in the band has any ability to properly control dynamics. Compress everybody for similar reasons.

Off limits? A little bit of auto tune because it's so transparent these days that unless it's used like Cher, nobody knows. Almost like compression...

 

[Sascha Franck]

Off limits? A little bit of auto tune because it's so transparent these days that unless it's used like Cher, nobody knows.

Unfotunately, that's not the way Autotune is often used these days. The "Cher" effect is all over the place, especially in hip hop (at least over here). So much it's really driving me insane.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Unfotunately, that's not the way Autotune is often used these days. The "Cher" effect is all over the place, especially in hip hop (at least over here). So much it's really driving me insane.

Yeah, but that's not what is being complained about here. That's an effect that is specifically chosen for how it sounds.

 

[laxu]

The worst thing that autotune created was being able to use it as effect rather than correction. Now pop music is filled with rap artists who can't carry a tune so they throw on trap beats and autotune. It sounds absolutely awful, in fact it reminds me of the connection sound of a modem which the young folk have never got to experience. The bar for vocalists is lower than it has ever been.

It's totally different from a vocodor used by Cher or how T-Pain (who can sing!) used it.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

The worst thing that autotune created was being able to use it as effect rather than correction. Now pop music is filled with rap artists who can't carry a tune so they throw on trap beats and autotune. It sounds absolutely awful, in fact it reminds me of the connection sound of a modem which the young folk have never got to experience. The bar for vocalists is lower than it has ever been.

It's totally different from a vocodor used by Cher or how T-Pain (who can sing!) used it.

Who knows if those folks can carry a tune or not? They are choosing auto tune because they LIKE the sound of it. And so do the kids. At this point it doesn't matter whether the artist could or couldn't hit the pitches in that genre, the sound the producer wants is hard autotuned.

 

[ian_dissonance]

Humans use tools. A good singer with a little tuning is mostly inaudible to all but the most discerning engineer. A bad singer with autotune sounds like a robot and can be considered a stylistic decision. If YOU don’t want to use the tools, awesome, don’t. When people start pretending there are some arbitrary rules for music creation/artistic expression I stop listening. The point of music to me is to either express myself for myself, or in a way that resonates with the average person in a crowd. The average person in the crowd does not give a flying fart about the tools used, if the band has tracks, or plays to a click, etc. They just care how the performance makes them feel. Besides, guitarists using a fretted instrument and electronic tuners complaining about tuning technologies is pretty hilarious to me. Your whole instrument has analog autotune.

 

[2112]

Re-read this thread but replace "singer" and "auto-tune" with "guitarist" and "distortion".

 

[Sascha Franck]

Yeah, but that's not what is being complained about here. That's an effect that is specifically chosen for how it sounds.

I know, but for me it seems to happen too often that the line between just correcting something and a clearly audible effect is crossed. And because that effect is oh-so-popular anyway, people seem to just leave it at that.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Re-read this thread but replace "singer" and "auto-tune" with "guitarist" and "distortion".

Well, distortion doesn't exactly correct anything. Also, it's used while playing already, whereas Autotune - at least most often - is only used once tracking is done.

 

[ian_dissonance]

Wait until you guys find out almost every track with a pitched instrument is melodyned in most major releases.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Re-read this thread but replace "singer" and "auto-tune" with "guitarist" and "distortion".

Dream Theatre with Jazz Chorus backline and no pedals. Spectacular gig, that...

 

[Sascha Franck]

Dream Theatre with Jazz Chorus backline and no pedals.

And just a harpsichord for Mr. Rudess.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Well, distortion doesn't exactly correct anything. Also, it's used while playing already, whereas Autotune - at least most often - is only used once tracking is done.

No one's ever turned up the gain knob to cure technical deficiency? Come now. And surely you've thrown a plugin on a DI track, or are aware of how many people sing through a device with pitch correction live.

 

[Sascha Franck]

No one's ever turned up the gain knob to cure technical deficiency? Come now. And surely you've thrown a plugin on a DI track, or are aware of how many people sing through a device with pitch correction live.

I was just talking about how things are usually used. Distortion is something entirely different from clean whereas Autotune is just a corrective thing.

 

[Bruce]

Why do we find it unnatural? If an acoustic guitar player (or singer) doesn't have dynamic control and requires compression, he's never going to be able to sit in on an acoustic jam or accompany a singer acoustically, no matter how good their pitch/bend control is.

I've done pitch correction much worse situation than simply fudging a slightly out of tune bend. I had three takes of a guitar solo we were trying to choose from. One I actually ended on a fret different than I intended, but otherwise it had more energy and drive than the others. "You're going to hate me for this, but imma use that first one and pitch shift that last note and use it". I told him I was actually in complete agreement. Why NOT use the take that most clearly makes the artistic impact we were shooting for?

Have you ever taken vocal lessons? My experience has been that at least as much time is spent focusing on each of tone, dynamic control, and projection, as on pitch. Those are hugely important parts of being a skilled singer.

Loads of singers have such bad dynamic control that engineers have to go in and clip the vocal take up into snippets and gain adjust each one BEFORE they even get to compression.

We frequently use signal processing to make up for technical limitations of performers. Folks overdo it with all of them - compression to the point the life is taken out of a vocalist's performance; EQ to the point they sound like they have ice-breath, pitch adjustment to the point that you miss the singer no longer has personality at all. But I don't see why subtle use of any of them is any better/worse than the others

Thanks to what we expect from modern recordings, all of the above is necessary to deliver a good product.
Don’t compress, don’t EQ, don’t use other fx and don’t edit and even the neighbors dog is going to want to know why your production sounds so bad.
No guitar player in the world can play so evenly on an acoustic to warrant it not needing compression in any kind of a mix approaching any real density. It’s a highly dynamic instrument. The guitar is also at best a compromise in terms of intonation. Chord sounds a little out but the guitars in tune and reasonably intonated? Melodyne that shit. There’s no fixing it any other way.

 

[DrewJD82]

On the flip side, nothing better than getting tracks of drums that sound like wet cardboard and the band sending a great recorded drum sound and saying “make the drums sound like THIS”.

Yea, I’m reaching for Slate Trigger.

AKA: Alex Van Halen’s drums on nearly every VH record.

 

[DrewJD82]

The singing teachers I've had over the years have told me to focus on control, support, flow, and vowel shapes, and the pitch will just follow.

Poor pitch is usually a sign of poor technique somewhere in the biomechanical chain.

This, this, this and more this. For me this was extremely hard to understand and internalize until I crossed that road on my own, then it made sense. The way I used to force things out I was always sharp, but once I got into speech-level-singing my pitch improved considerably. That and having no faith in my ear, I’d try to control the situation more where I learned later if I trust me ear, the pitch will go where it needs to go on it’s own.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

This, this, this and more this. For me this was extremely hard to understand and internalize until I crossed that road on my own, then it made sense. The way I used to force things out I was always sharp, but once I got into speech-level-singing my pitch improved considerably. That and having no faith in my ear, I’d try to control the situation more where I learned later if I trust me ear, the pitch will go where it needs to go on it’s own.

Since autotuned is fake, nobody should try to be a lead singer in a band without a solid 6 years of practice.

 

[DrewJD82]

Since autotuned is fake, nobody should try to be a lead singer in a band without a solid 6 years of practice.

To be fair, I’d be pretty far behind the ball if I didn’t put myself out there and sound like ass in front of people over and over again. Nothing inspired me to get gud like watching live videos of myself and hearing nearly everything a 1/4 step flat, or sharp. Or my band members busting my balls over it.

Gonna put myself out there a bit with this one, but this was 13 years ago when I was fronting a band. Going back to what Orville was saying about focusing on breath, control and support; around this time I was always trying to sound like someone else and as a result, would ignore what my voice wanted to do and force it to do something else. This is pitchy as hell, it was in my drinking days and I was just trashing my throat from ignoring all the things Orvillian mentioned.