Monday, July 12, 2004
AUTOTUNE, USE AND ABUSE
In response to My brother's blog about the Dave Mathews cover of Peter Gabriels classic, Solsbury Hill, I believe the vocal effect that you're talking about is AutoTune. AutoTune has been around quite a while. Developed in the seventies to help vocalists in a live setting, it does what it implies, it tunes your vocal to the key of the song. In recent years the digital application of AutoTune has become prevelent in music, not only as a correction device, but as an effect as well. You may recall Cher believing in life after love; the vocal effect on that song (see also Kid Rock, Madonna, ect..) is actually AutoTune cranked up to a point where it over corrects the vocal causing a neat electronic robot type voice. Once you tune in (sorry bad pun) to this effect, unfortunately, you begin to hear it in it's other application (as correction) everywhere. Avril Lavigne's new single wreaks of AutoTune, and if you listen closely, so does every major pop record. It's depressing to think that they are all a bunch of fakers, but it's not their fault. It's done to them, not by them. Avril can sing. It's her producers that would rather fix her first take than work the track until she hits all the notes right. Time is, after all, money; specially in a large expensive state of the art recording studio. I use it myself because I'm a horrible singer. What I try to do is work the track until I'm very close, as close as I can be reasonably expected to get, and then a dash of AutoTune, not so it's noticable, not even so it's completely correcting me. You need deviation and imperfection to make music interesting to the ear. But you also want to sing relatively in key. I say the best method is the old way, do take after take till you get it. There is no AutoTune on "Exile On Main Street", "Dark Side Of The Moon", or "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars".
In response to My brother's blog about the Dave Mathews cover of Peter Gabriels classic, Solsbury Hill, I believe the vocal effect that you're talking about is AutoTune. AutoTune has been around quite a while. Developed in the seventies to help vocalists in a live setting, it does what it implies, it tunes your vocal to the key of the song. In recent years the digital application of AutoTune has become prevelent in music, not only as a correction device, but as an effect as well. You may recall Cher believing in life after love; the vocal effect on that song (see also Kid Rock, Madonna, ect..) is actually AutoTune cranked up to a point where it over corrects the vocal causing a neat electronic robot type voice. Once you tune in (sorry bad pun) to this effect, unfortunately, you begin to hear it in it's other application (as correction) everywhere. Avril Lavigne's new single wreaks of AutoTune, and if you listen closely, so does every major pop record. It's depressing to think that they are all a bunch of fakers, but it's not their fault. It's done to them, not by them. Avril can sing. It's her producers that would rather fix her first take than work the track until she hits all the notes right. Time is, after all, money; specially in a large expensive state of the art recording studio. I use it myself because I'm a horrible singer. What I try to do is work the track until I'm very close, as close as I can be reasonably expected to get, and then a dash of AutoTune, not so it's noticable, not even so it's completely correcting me. You need deviation and imperfection to make music interesting to the ear. But you also want to sing relatively in key. I say the best method is the old way, do take after take till you get it. There is no AutoTune on "Exile On Main Street", "Dark Side Of The Moon", or "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars".
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