Auto tune

[thejuice]

Is auto tune cheating? Now I believe there are probably few absolute truths in the world, go with your gut feeling

 

[FilterFreq]

Melodyne is probably cheating, which is used quite a lot more than autotune. It basically allows you to move the individual notes around graphically and both are often used together to achieve pitch correction.

Technically it's cheating, probably, but it's been going on since 1998 or so in one form or another so it's likely here to stay

 

[AndyFBlues]

I don't know if it's cheating, but I don't use it. I'd rather keep trying until I get it right. If one is striving for perfection, then it might be necessary sometimes.

 

[Human Avatar]

In my opinion. The Human voice is not designed to be pitch perfect. The auto tune/pitch correction takes away all the natural oscillation in a voice. All instruments oscillate frequencies,piano,guitars,synths, violins , horns etc etc, the human voice is no different. The oscillation is what makes it sound human. Vibration and frequency is what people connect to on a subconscious and conscious level. Once those variables are removed and made to be mathematically,graphically perfect it’s no longer human and lacks magic and most of all emotion. It’s the space between the numbers and notes where the real music lurks .
It sucks that music is made now visually by graphs on a computer, I have fallen victim of this. I went back to the beginning when it was just my ears , that is the best for me . Listening to music creation instead of visual creation of music .

It’s my opinion it sounds horrible, For instance there has been studies done with Freddie Mercury‘s voice -when run through pitch correction it sounds horrible, He was an amazing singer but it’s the oscillation of tones, which makes it have character. Freddie’s character.

Think about if we talked as one frequency with no oscillation or variables in our tone , we would sound horrible.

If your singing voice is a little bit out of tune that is the magic ! That is what creates emotion and the oscillation! Now, if you’re extremely flat or sharp, it’s not going to sound good. Just afraid that people now hear pitch correction on everything now our ears are trained to hear a voice as unnatural.

Just like looking at a real painting painted with brushes by hand, there is a much more profound deeper meaning and connection . But that doesn’t mean it’s appreciated. Thats my opinion anyhow .
I definitely don’t think it’s cheating, but I think it is really overdone these days

Sorry for the rant

 

[Neonatal RRT]

From a recording and production perspective, it can be a useful tool. Having said that, as @Human Avatar pointed out, even the best singers ever will drift sharp and flat on any given note, and it sounds beautiful, almost ideal. Very few singers are able to truly hold a note for any length of time, Karen Carpenter one of only a very few ever. The human ear and vocal cords are not tuned instruments.

Now, having said that, there are people that are simply lousy singers and are horribly out of tune to the point of cringeworthy performances. They shouldn't be singing at all, in that case, nor should they be using tuning software as a crutch in the studio or on stage.

The YouTube channel "Wings of Pegasus" analyzes several studio vs. live performances and discusses in great detail how all of this is achieved. Learned quite a bit from him. One example:

 

[thejuice]

Technically it's cheating, probably, but it's been going on since 1998 or so in one form or another so it's likely here to stay

There are solid commerical reasons to keep it for sure

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Autotune is the worst form of cheating.

I'd rather learn about a new group where three or four friends taught themselves to play guitar, bass, and drums, and sang poetry from what they experienced in life.

I can't stand any modern music groups, and it's been almost like that since the late 1990s. It's all mass produced crap that was written by a focus group in a studio and sang by someone else, accompanied by digital music.

I want to hear authenticity. I crave it.

 

[thejuice]

Well we have quite a few anti autotuners in the comments but I'm the only one who voted yes.. Your ancestors died for your right! (Not rigging honest)

 

[thejuice]

it’s the space between the numbers and notes where the real music lurks

Imagine an autotuned Dave Gilmore solo on Comfortably Numb

 

[Mr. Stevens]

I like Human Avatar's answer. I think he summed it up perfectly.

It seems unfair to call it cheating, since bands will comp vocals or edit different takes into backing tracks. But, that can sound great, whereas autotune for me--on a purely aesthetic level--sounds awful. It has this wavy quality, like a robot drowning. It sounds like the person is drinking their own words. I much prefer a vocoder or other processing effect, if people want to do that with a vocal. I say that because autotune isn't always to hide flaws, but add texture and color.

They used pitch shifting on the first Smiths album, to improve Morrissey's vocals. You can hear the difference on the BBC sessions they added to Hatful of Hollow. I prefer The Smiths. But, that worked better than autotune programs, for my taste.

 

[stevens]

Is auto tune cheating? Now I believe there are probably few absolute truths in the world, go with your gut feeling

By the time that autotune, compression, and a dozen plug-ins process a track, it's not the original. It covers up incompetence. A competent musician's unique blips and errors can add to the total package. I'm not talking about people who do "beats" in their bedrooms here. When I listen to high-def tracks recorded at Capitol Studios in the 1960's, there is something missing these days, after Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

 

[thejuice]

In my opinion. The Human voice is not designed to be pitch perfect. The auto tune/pitch correction takes away all the natural oscillation in a voice. All instruments oscillate frequencies,piano,guitars,synths, violins , horns etc etc, the human voice is no different. The oscillation is what makes it sound human. Vibration and frequency is what people connect to on a subconscious and conscious level. Once those variables are removed and made to be mathematically,graphically perfect it’s no longer human and lacks magic and most of all emotion. It’s the space between the numbers and notes where the real music lurks .
It sucks that music is made now visually by graphs on a computer, I have fallen victim of this. I went back to the beginning when it was just my ears , that is the best for me . Listening to music creation instead of visual creation of music .

It’s my opinion it sounds horrible, For instance there has been studies done with Freddie Mercury‘s voice -when run through pitch correction it sounds horrible, He was an amazing singer but it’s the oscillation of tones, which makes it have character. Freddie’s character.

Think about if we talked as one frequency with no oscillation or variables in our tone , we would sound horrible.

If your singing voice is a little bit out of tune that is the magic ! That is what creates emotion and the oscillation! Now, if you’re extremely flat or sharp, it’s not going to sound good. Just afraid that people now hear pitch correction on everything now our ears are trained to hear a voice as unnatural.

Just like looking at a real painting painted with brushes by hand, there is a much more profound deeper meaning and connection . But that doesn’t mean it’s appreciated. Thats my opinion anyhow .
I definitely don’t think it’s cheating, but I think it is really overdone these days

Sorry for the rant

Interesting thought about singing slightly sharp or flat. To my untrained ears, a lot of punk bands tune slightly flat, it just gives a denseness and flavour that perfect pitch doesn't. Maybe a guitarist here can explain better?

 

[thejuice]

I like Human Avatar's answer. I think he summed it up perfectly.

It seems unfair to call it cheating, since bands will comp vocals or edit different takes into backing tracks. But, that can sound great, whereas autotune for me--on a purely aesthetic level--sounds awful. It has this wavy quality, like a robot drowning. It sounds like the person is drinking their own words. I much prefer a vocoder or other processing effect, if people want to do that with a vocal. I say that because autotune isn't always to hide flaws, but add texture and color.

They used pitch shifting on the first Smiths album, to improve Morrissey's vocals. You can hear the difference on the BBC sessions they added to Hatful of Hollow. I prefer The Smiths. But, that worked better than autotune programs, for my taste.

Robot drowning, nice

Morrissey is an interesting singer, for sure. I like him, but he has many flaws technically, which make Morrissey, Morrissey! A bit like his views as well.

 

[thejuice]

By the time that autotune, compression, and a dozen plug-ins process a track, it's not the original. It covers up incompetence. A competent musician's unique blips and errors can add to the total package. I'm not talking about people who do "beats" in their bedrooms here. When I listen to high-def tracks recorded at Capitol Studios in the 1960's, there is something missing these days, after Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

It certainly lowered barriers to entry for a music career, that's for sure. A session musician in the 60s had a lot of pressure to nail it first or second time. You hear drummers of bands, before they got famous, getting fired during the process of recording the first album. It was a position in the band where sloppiness was out of the question.

 

[Mr. Stevens]

By the time that autotune, compression, and a dozen plug-ins process a track, it's not the original. It covers up incompetence. A competent musician's unique blips and errors can add to the total package. I'm not talking about people who do "beats" in their bedrooms here. When I listen to high-def tracks recorded at Capitol Studios in the 1960's, there is something missing these days, after Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

Are you saying after Spector (or at least his peak in the 60s), you think something is missing from recording?

 

[stevens]

Indeed I am. Spector is largely credited with turning audio engineering into an art form of its own. It's funny how we have all the dynamic range we want with 24-bit recordings, whereas magnetic tape was at best 30 dB. But today, the dynamic range is gone. At least with today's technology there's some hope for intoxicated Karaoke singers.

Spector was an impressive artist, but doing recordings like that is similar to doing a cover of someone's original track, as it's produced.

 

[Magna]

Jean Ralphio sounds pretty good.

 

[Human Avatar]

Imagine an autotuned Dave Gilmore solo on Comfortably Numb

That is a perfect point , imagine David Gilmours guitar with no bends or vibrato. Wtf would that be, that is the most recognizable part of his style. Auto tune would remove all of that .

With guitars -the moment you fret the guitar there is going to be slight variances of notes oscillating, depending on the guitar players unique touch of the guitar. That’s one of the reasons every guitar player sounds different even if they play the same now . And then on top of that there could be subharmonic frequencies dependent on what kind of amplifier are you using where the amp is placed in a room, how loud it is ,where the recording mic is placed . All of these wonderful things that make it a onetime projection of sound that will exist in that moment, and never again. And the recording is there to take a snapshot of it , like a photograph.

Vocal performance is the same,in my opinion.I love hearing vocals sliding up to the note,and guitar doing it even more. This is a good topic @thejuice .

Everyone post here is making very valid points.

 

[Human Avatar]

@stevens

I agree all the dynamics are gone because all the tracks use compression and limiters now and also max the volume of a track . maybe it is a lost art by new musicians learning to incorporate peaks and valleys in their playing. and even if they are able to incorporate that the studio will squash it right out of the recording

Another trick musicians used to use to create emotion in a track.

I was playing keys and singing to Black Magic Woman (Santana version ) this morning and was impressed how dynamic that track is. It is amazing to hear that in older recordings.

 

[Judge]

I honestly don't think it matters to me.

Reminds me of being born in an earlier time when there was often a huge difference between what was meticulously created in a sophisticated sound studio versus a more impromptu , yet live and inferior performance. Sometimes making me think less of a band that I once thought.

With some notable exceptions of musicians who played live as well as they could in a studio.

Something that came about long before the digital age in music. Technology may change, but the artificial aspect of it all just keeps on going. But then some also lamented everything was changed with the advent of an electric guitar and an amplifier. Go figure...