The eternal debate for/against auto tune.

[Boudoir Guitar]

If autotuned could take the singer for Death Cab for Cutie and make him sound like James Labrie; or make Courtney Love sound like Barbara Streisand; maaaaaaybe there would be a point. It can help

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.

Yeah, I was being sarcastic. Anything that gets people making music is a great thing, as far as I'm concerned. :)

 

[Gearzilla]

Warning: Includes gratuitous robot singing.

 

[Bob Zaod]

I'd be fine with the use of tracks for some background keyboard parts, but no backing vocals and no lead keyboard parts as in Jump.

I agree 100%

 

[JiveTurkey]

HIRE LOCAL JAM HAMMER OR GTFO

 

[Bob Zaod]

If autotuned could take the singer for Death Cab for Cutie and make him sound like James Labrie

This is a big chunk of my initial argument for auto-tune. Let me re-state for all in this thread that auto-tune (at least the way most including me use it) CANNOT turn a bad singer into a good singer or make you into a different singer. If you (or anyone else) can hear it working then you should not be using it or not be singing that particular song.

 

[Bob Zaod]

HIRE LOCAL JAM HAMMER OR GTFO

Good luck. Where I am, anyone who can actually play keys is either a complete asshat or is doing pro work at Casinos and such. It's one reason I have been learning keys every chance I get lately. Most days I am not an asshat...

 

[Sascha Franck]

and no lead keyboard parts as in Jump.

We all know where that might end anyway, don't we?

 

[TSJMajesty]

I wonder if there's any connection between having all these time-saving, performance-enhancing tools, and that music has become a watered down commodity.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I wonder if there's any connection between having all these time-saving, performance-enhancing tools, and that music has become a watered down commodity.

I guess that was a rhetoric question...

 

[laxu]

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.

I've heard some of these artists at festivals and they were some of the worst performances I've seen, to the point that I'd want my money back if I was the one booking them. Unintelligible, zero stage presence and no, they could not sing or rap the few times they turned off autotune.

It really baffles me why people like the sound of autotune-as-effect. Is this how my parents or grandparents might have felt about overdriven guitar?

 

[Sascha Franck]

Is this how my parents or grandparents might have felt about overdriven guitar?

Perhaps.
"Hey, that guitar is broken!"

 

[TSJMajesty]

I guess that was a rhetoric question...

Not entirely. Sort of. I see examples all around. We keep getting tools that allow more people to do things faster and better, while losing aspects of the art. I see it in homes, where maximizing square-footage and building it as quickly as possible are the main goals, while the home loses character in the process. Same thing for modern architecture. And just like with music, there are gems out there and new ideas being created with those same tools (steel and software allow buildings to be created in shapes that used to be impossible), but for the most part it's being diluted to a whole lot of bland creations.

That's just the way I see it. Or maybe I'm just old.

 

[Sascha Franck]

That's just the way I see it.

Fwiw, my reply was meant as an "I agree".

 

[TSJMajesty]

Fwiw, my reply was meant as an "I agree".

Aaah, I completely misread that!

 

[DrewJD82]

Not entirely. I see examples all around. We keep getting tools that allow more people to do things faster and better, while losing aspects of the art. I see it in homes, where maximizing square-footage and building it as quickly as possible are the main goals, while the home loses character in the process. Same thing for modern architecture. And just like with music, there are gems out there and new ideas being created with those same tools (steel and software allow buildings to be created in shapes that used to be impossible), but for the most part it's being diluted to a whole lot of bland creations.

That's just the way I see it. Or maybe I'm just old.

I agree. It’s not just watered down pop music, either. Once a whole bunch of work some people did has been loaded into a preset, it can create a lot of sameness. Look no further than the metalcore/Killswitch Engage/Andy Sneap production that dominated commercial and home-musician’s mixes for the last 20 years. You can literally load up Andy’s drum samples, use profiles/presets that someone made that sound exactly like the raw guitar/bass tracks from The End Of Heartache then slap the Andy Sneap EZMix preset pack on the master bus and Bob’s your uncle.

I went for the exact same mix for a long time until I developed my own preferences. It’s starting to change up a bit now; Periphery’s albums sound f*cking great and they’re quite a bit bigger than the standard Sneap mix, Trivium’s albums have sounded pretty damn good these days and they started right out of the gate with a literal Sneap mix.

But something to consider; it’s been in the last 15 years that home recording got to the point it’s at. So many people were learning at the exact same time, for the first time, so it’s not too surprising with people sharing information and learning together, that a lot of things started sounding the same. Everyone starts somewhere and we always try to replicate our favorite stuff when we start, add that with people wanting to get away from the standard sounds everyone else uses and I think we’ll start seeing a lot more variation within certain genres in the coming years.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Fwiw, my reply was meant as an "I agree".

And of course, it would be nearly impossible to objectively curate information to illustrate my point, but it just seems to me that as technology marches forward, we as creative humans are losing a lot of that creativity in the process.

I can't remember the last time I heard a new song just GRAB me from the opening riff. I'm sure they're out there, but once they started getting so few and far between, I mostly gave up searching. The 70's, 80's, & 90's were full of that sort of thing for me, but I could hear it starting to diminish in the 90's when you'd get one new fresh-sounding band come along, then almost immediately there'd be 3 more that sounded the same. And they would fizzle out like a hand-held sparkler.

I viewed it as record companies trying to capitalize on the success of a new band. And I'm sure it went on before that decade; It's just seemed to me to ratchet up quite a bit during that time.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Everyone starts somewhere and we always try to replicate our favorite stuff when we start...

SO true! At first, I didn't pick up on it, but a guitar player buddy of mine pointed out to me in some early Rush, "Oh man that was a straight-up Jimmy Page ripoff!" Once he pointed it out, I couldn't disagree.

Again, I blame tech. It allows things to be copied and shared SO MUCH faster than ever before. Heck, back in the day Ford bought Volvo mainly because they knew it was a quality car company, but they lacked the technology that Ford had, that allowed them to bring a new design to market much faster than Volvo could, which at the time iirc was 18 months. Too long.

You can't afford to not use the tools available, in pretty much any profit-driven endeavor, and be competitive.

 

[Bruce]

Petrucci on images and words sounded like all his heroes. No unique identity (yet).

 

[Gearzilla]

SO true! At first, I didn't pick up on it, but a guitar player buddy of mine pointed out to me in some early Rush, "Oh man that was a straight-up Jimmy Page ripoff!" Once he pointed it out, I couldn't disagree.

Going to need a footnote.

 

[TSJMajesty]

Petrucci on images and words sounded like all his heroes. No unique identity (yet).

And everybody knows the best DT didn't happen until Portnoy left.