Auto-Tune Abuse
 

How many of you are familiar with auto-tune?
I was actually unaware of how heavily it was used until about a month ago.

This is something that will definately bring about the destruction of meaningful music, if it continues in the rampant pace with which its being used today.

I thought it was mainly used by those pop and techno idiots that wanted to add a little something extra to their vocals, but it's actually being used to correct any out of pitch perfomances in the studio.

Anyone else got any input?

I feel blindsided by it, even though I can't say I'm too surprised.

I can understand and appreciate it's use in small doses, but an abuse of it is truly annoying. Recording an album is an everlasting thing, as long as there is a means to play the album, it will always remain the same (unless physically damaged). With this permanence I can understand an artist's desire to make it as perfect as they can, and if that includes fixing a few places in their audio recording where they go out of tune then so be it. This argument is very similar to the one about overdubbing on instruments, specifically guitars. Some artists like Billy Corgan love this method of recording to death (for instance the song "Soma" contains 42 overdubs) however my opinion is if they can't replicate it live then it's all for not.

Fortunately I don't hear too much of it's overuse but I am aware of it. I think it's a cool effect that's kind of been played out.

Amen.

I guess I could understand and be okay with it in a studio environment, especially when trying to make sure everything was as perfect as possible.
But I couldn't condone its use if the artist couldn't naturally reach that peak, unaided, and in a live performance.

If a singer can't replicate the performance without the aid of auto-tune, then its nothing but garbage.
If you know the artist is capable of performing the vocal the same way, I could potentially justify the use of autotune to correct pitch in records.
Especially if there isn't much time to record the vocals.

I wonder which bands use autotune live....I already know quite a few that use it in the studio, a few of which, really surprised me.

.....it should be destroyed...and replaced with the vocodor.

It has to be risky to use live....unless it has some sort of properties to make it work similar to a limiter, volume wise.
Maybe its only activated under extreme circumstances.

I'm not really familiar with it. Just seems that it could be risky, especially if you accidentlly sang a note that was incorrect and autotune escalated the effect to make the sound even worse.

define 'meaningful music'.

this quote is the same line of crap people dumped onto synthesizers when they hit big in the mainstream in the early 80s.

it's new technology that has proven to be (and will continue to be) successfully used by many (but never all) acts. music grows and evolves in the same way society and culture do, regardless of the opinions of the individuals that seek to define or control it. the issue is that it challenges established norms which in turn challenges individual tastes, and we all know how much people 'really' like change.

Autotune could be useful to correct slight pitch problems in vocals, but if used in the long run, I think it could be devasting to the core
of what music really is.

Music, for me, is an area where honesty should be expressed through both the artistic and personal sides of the band in question.
I'm just someone who personally prefers an open and honest song, rather than one that has been engineered to perfection in the studio.

Technically speaking, with autotune, anyone could be a great singer.
If all you had to do was correct the notes you messed up on, you could pretty much fake anything you wanted to, and get away with it.

When it comes down to it, a singer is judged by their live perfomance, as far as I'm concerned. If they can't sing live, they can't sing at all.
You can make it pretty in the studio all you want to, but at the end of the day, you're only as good as you really are.

I would rather listen to an artist give his passion to a song, than hear a computer generated, robotic quality in the vocal.
I'm not going to define meaningful music, because that is subjective.
But to me, music would be meaningless, if you had the means to transform it into something its not.

I would rather my music be real, than something created by a program in a studio.

Edit: In response to the synthesizer point....

That is something that is used to enhance or alter the sound of an instrument. You can make the argument that autotune does the same thing for vocals, but I hope I'm about to stiffle that.

Technically speaking, you still have to be able to PLAY that instrument, in order for the synthesizer to work..

With autotune, you don't have to technically be able to sing well.
You can just sing, and autotune will do the work for you.
Nothing has been invented yet that will make your fingers move to the appropriate frets on a guitar, so that you play all the right notes.

That is the big difference. I think the question you should ask now, is "what defines a great singer".

This settles the debate over auto-tune for me. When someone can make a coherent (and sometimes damn catchy) song out of newscasters SAYING the news, then it just proves that you don't have to have any musical ability to make a song with auto-tune.

What really bugs me about autotune is not its use to correct things, but as a vocal effect that's completely overused and annoying. Not that I listen to the type of music where it's prevalent, but I have the misfortune of overhearing it once in a while.

I also understand the argument that (when used to correct) it's making people that can't sing sound like they can, making pop stars out of talentless *******s as if we didn't already have enough of those. But for the most part I can tell when music isn't sincere and I don't listen to that crap so it doesn't really affect me.

I just don't want to hear autotune.

I have used auto-tune in the past with singers I've recorded in order to correct small pitch deviations that didn't warrant a total re-take of a vocal section, and it's effective in that scenario.
But what I think is going wrong with the "abuse" of the program is a lot of mix engineers tend to apply the effect to the entire vocal line in a way that presents the vocals as unnatural and artificially tonally "perfect", which can be clearly spotted if you listen to a majority of new rock acts on the radio.

Using such an effect to transform the natural state of a vocal, instead of using it to correct isolated mistakes, can be a creative application, but more often than not it's used to make a bad singer sound good, which is the main concern in terms of honesty to the music itself and the fans who expect consistency in the bands they love whether in the studio or on stage.

By the way...
For anyone who is possibly confusing the application of Auto-tune:

The T-Pain effect is Auto-Tune used in an EXTREME application with absolutely no humanizing settings. The intention is to sound robotic.

But Auto-Tune used in a realistic manner is even easily spotted when used consistently along a vocal line because of the audio phasing it introduces to the vocal itself, which is unavoidable. Some producers actually add phasing effects on top of this to balance it out and make it less noticeable as a corrective action and more noticeable as an intended "effect". It's either a deception or taking advantage of a situation. It's really up to the listener to decide.

It should be known that Auto-Tune is most certainly a corrective function, but it's also known that it has made singers a lot more lazy than they used to be, that's for sure.

Technically speaking autotune is a kind of vocoder.

Well put.

Not really.

Auto-Tune allows a person to modify an audio file using an algorithm similar to timestretching, except instead of modifying tempo without modifying pitch, it modifies pitch without modifying tempo.
It's basically drawing a pitch envelope.

Vocoders are more in a re-synthesis vein that has more to do with filters and melodic reproduction based on filter settings.

Both of Freebases comments are correct. It is not a new effect by any means. Engineers have been using it to correct subtle, and not so subtle, pitch deviations for years.

Sometimes in the case of an artist who's image sells, but can't carry a tune with a wheel barrel, the effect is used much more liberally both in live and studio applications, such as in this humorous example of an atist's vocals before being sent through the auto-tune processor:



It wasn't until pop, hip-hop, and yes offshoots of genre's ending in "mo" started utilizing the effect creatively by maxing out the effect's parameters, (aka a vocoder), that the general public became hugely aware of it's usage.

dear christ that was terrible!:laughing:

...lmao

I can't stand auto-tuning, it makes it possible for tween celebrities with no singing talent and Kanye West to make **** albums. It'll become unpopular soon I hope, just like the super-chorusy guitars and reverbified drums from the 80's.

Vocoders are polyphonic chordal & vocally manipulated filters.

It's nowhere near the same thing as AutoTune, in any instance, and in any extreme.
We really have to stop calling AutoTune a Vocoder... Unless we're just using that as a slang term or something.

I know what a vocoder is but, if you use the AutoTune to a certain point it almost sounds like you are using one right? I have no experience in production, but my old guitar teacher went on about this all of the time and he was producing music.

A Vocoder is a specific piece of processing equipment that does a specific thing, which is take an analog vocal signal and split it into bands, modify those bands via filters and allow them to be assigned on a keyboard or MIDI editor.

An abused vocalizer, or abused auto-tune program, is a pitch modifier of a signal pushed to extremes so that the changes don't sound natural.


There's a huge difference, and if you do a side by side comparison, you know the difference.

Think Imogen Heap's "Hide And Seek", which was created with a vocoder, VS all of T-Pain's crap. Notice the difference? (besides the fact that one sounds amazing and the other sounds garbage)

It's two completely different effects, doing two completely different things.
I mean, in theory, one could say "well if both are modifying the pitch on any level, then they're both the same", but that's too general.
It would be like saying, "well... you can breathe oxygen, and you can breathe helium... so they're the same 'cause you can breathe both of them".

...no that's why terrible 80's music was exceptionally shitty(except in a comical way) compared to terrible music of other decades.
Autotune is pretty limited, and it should die.

Oh really? How about those phase vocoders you ignore in your post?

Agreed that Auto-tune should die, even using it in pop or techno songs in small amounts is still really unnecessary. IMO Auto-tune is a really lazy way to make music. There are countless examples on sites like YouTube of the crappiest/singers and musicians making songs using Auto-tune excessively to make it sound like all the ****ty pop on the radio and in dance clubs.

Music should require more work, effort and talent than blanketing your ****ty sounds with Auto-tune in an attempt to make it sound professional.

Using autotune is no different than using a guitar pedal.

No, I think they differ. Auto-tune is a processor most often used to disguise inaccuracies and mistakes in tone. It's basically pitch correction. While guitar pedals are also used to process sounds and spit them out in a different format they aren't really used to correct pitch but instead to enhance and manipulate sound in other ways... unless you're referring to a specific effects pedal which concentrates purely on correcting pitch.

There is also a difference between 'Auto-Tune' which is a pitch corrector developed by a specific audio technology company and the term 'autotune' which has been kind-of adopted as an umbrella term to refer to other audio processors developed by other companies.

this one is better

They're both means to enhance your sound.

They do the same thing.

Yes, they are, but in very different ways. I just don't think using Auto-tune is the same as using a guitar pedal according to the reasons why people use Auto-tune (purely for pitch-correction and 'covering up' tonal flaws) verses the reasons why most musicians use guitar pedals (not to correct pitch but to manipulate sound in other ways). Yes, they are both a means to enhance and manipulate sound but they are definitely not the same thing.

A lot of them do the same thing, but I just thought I'd mention it because I've come across a lot of people that call many other vocal processors 'autotune' when they aren't pitch correctors and they don't do the same thing as the original Auto-tune. Not all vocal processors do the same thing.

As long as its acceptable to modify sound I don't see why we should draw the line at modifying it a specific way.

Thats different, and not quite what I'm on about. However, music that is fully digital, while still needing a composer, is performed by mechanical processes which don't make mistakes. Nobody would ever say that electronica isn't real music, so I don't see why using something to make your voice flawless is any different as far as the performance aspect.

^ You're right, that's very true I guess. I hadn't really looked at it in that way. Although there is a huge difference between well-produced electronic music and a crummy pop song made lazily by running vocals through an autotune processor... just as there is lazily made music in other genres as well I suppose.

And also... unfortunately there are actually many people out there who would argue that electronica isn't real music!

Wasn't it Kylie who first got into trouble with early versions of autotuning technology?

Anyway - she soon learned how to sing!

I agree that dependecy on the technology is very bad for popular music, but it takes a LOT more than being able to sing in tune to be a good singer, and music depends on a gazillion things in addition to being in tune.

Before the technology existed, people sang and played "out of tune" (that is, instruments and voices did not pitch to precisely 440hz or whatever) - musicians FELT the music.

ALL singers sing flat. Fact.

I have "perfect pitch", decades worth of vocal training including large-scale choral, opera and solo work and I sing flat*.

*Flat here meaning in terms of pitch (which is all that autotune can fix), not flat in terms of tone, style, or musicianship, which autotune will never fix.

A guitar pedal, like a synthesizer, is used to add effects.
Auto-tune is used to fix mistakes.

Don't defend the obvious.
I'm not saying it should never be used, I'm saying it shouldn't be used to deceive people.

Why so fixated on the technical skill that goes into a song? If a singer can't really sing and uses autotune, why would I care as long as it sounds good? Whether it does or not is another argument, they run the risk of sounding 'plastic'. But in the end it's artistic discretion.

Anyone and their brother could be the lead singer of a band, if they could alter their vocals and make them sound perfect. What's the point of putting your all into a performance, if you can just tweak it later?

It isn't that hard of a concept to grasp.

Sure, it can be used to fix mistakes but half the time artists use it for the effect not to fix mistakes

In genres like techno, that's acceptable.

In genres like Rock, I sincerely doubt you're going to hear many "Daft Punks", if you catch my drift.

T-Pain sucks, for the record.

you're right and

lol I wasn't defending T-pain's style or use of it

Haha. I know.

Just thought I would throw that out there, since he was one of the first to come to mind.