Auto Tune?

[Taylirious]

I am wondering how people feel about this. There are instruments that have auto tune and consumer vocal products that have auto tune. The main consumer product for vocals is directed to the karaoke market but if one can sing okay but not professional it could be good for them live and anything can be done in studio.

I feel if one wants to preform and can write their lyrics and music to a greater extent more power to them but does technology take away from the truly great ones? I don't know who even qualifies as great because resent music seems boring.

Spoiler: Recent Music

Other than Taylor Swift for me

 

[MacLeod]

In a professional use does auto-tune detract from a person professional capabilites? Do we expect professional musians to always hit every note correctly be it played or sung? Or does it allow those with less skill to appear better than they are?

Auto-tuning like most things has its place.

As for the state of current music, it doesn't matter the era there is always some good and some bad, but in general it might be fair to say our musical tastes are set when we are growing up. So that can influence how we perceive current music.

 

[intrinsical]

For me, it depends if we're talking about a piece of music or a specific singer.

If we're talking about a piece of music, I don't care if its autotuned. Any good artist should be able to reproduce a non-autotuned version of the same piece of music that sounds just as good or better.

Now if it's an artist who has to rely purely on autotune to sound good, then regardless of whether their music sounds good, they are not a good artist. An example is Cher. I may like Cher's Believe, but I don't for one second believe she can sing without autotune.

 

[ITL]

For me, it depends if we're talking about a piece of music or a specific singer.

If we're talking about a piece of music, I don't care if its autotuned. Any good artist should be able to reproduce a non-autotuned version of the same piece of music that sounds just as good or better.

Now if it's an artist who has to rely purely on autotune to sound good, then regardless of whether their music sounds good, they are not a good artist. An example is Cher. I may like Cher's Believe, but I don't for one second believe she can sing without autotune.

Even though she was a singer for eleventy+ years before it was invented?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Do we expect professional musians to always hit every note correctly be it played or sung?

On the contrary, I should expect any flubbed notes to be part of the actual performance. It's more realistic. Nobody ever sings perfectly, why should they have to be made to sound that way?

To put it another way: If you were going to a concert by a classical pianist, you'd want them to actually be playing the piano right in front of you, amirite? You wouldn't want the performance to be played by a sequencer (or, in the old days, a player piano)? Because it's not that far off from autotune, really.

Or does it allow those with less skill to appear better than they are?

It could, yes.

Although if autotune is restricted to the studio, I guess it's not that bad. When performing live - assuming that any artist who uses autotune in the studio ever actually SINGS live, as opposed to lip-syncing - I wouldn't want it at all. Live music should really BE live.

 

[Random_Spock]

Hate it.

Too many people who don't have that much talent imo end up using it to (at times) sound better than they actually are.

One example:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEDvlSAMhQU[/yt]

 

[JirinPanthosa]

There are legitimate artistic uses of autotune, but most of the uses we see are not.

We don't expect an artist to hit the note exactly every time, but do we want them to? Small imperfections and a few off notes are what inject emotion into the performance. If everything exactly hits the note every time, your performance is sterile and dull.

 

[Random_Spock]

There are legitimate artistic uses of autotune, but most of the uses we see are not.

We don't expect an artist to hit the note exactly every time, but do we want them to? Small imperfections and a few off notes are what inject emotion into the performance. If everything exactly hits the note every time, your performance is sterile and dull.

Good point. Don't really mind it for those uses. But then there's over use, and that isn't good either.

I don't mind a song sounding off, but there are times when I'd rather listen to a studio recording than a live show version of a song.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

There are legitimate artistic uses of autotune, but most of the uses we see are not.

We don't expect an artist to hit the note exactly every time, but do we want them to? Small imperfections and a few off notes are what inject emotion into the performance. If everything exactly hits the note every time, your performance is sterile and dull.

Good point. Don't really mind it for those uses. But then there's over use, and that isn't good either.

I don't mind a song sounding off, but there are times when I'd rather listen to a studio recording than a live show version of a song.

That's what separates real artists from big label cronies. Real artists know how to make a live performance of their music that's special and distinct from the studio version, and big label cronies just kind of sing their album.

I used to like Linkin Park back in the late 90s. Then I saw them live and they pretty much just played down their album, even apologizing the one time they played a song the audience might not have heard. I couldn't listen to them at all anymore after that.

 

[Owain Taggart]

An example is Cher. I may like Cher's Believe, but I don't for one second believe she can sing without autotune.

In context though, I think her use of autotune for that song was mostly for effect, in a time when autotune wasn't yet so common. One can even argue that the success of that song turned others onto it who then started using it more as a crutch.

Overall though, not so much a fan of it. I tend to like acoustic music more, which tend to be free of most of that stuff.

 

[FPAlpha]

I don't have a problem with autotune itself.. music has become a commercial product (inf act it always was besides being an artistic product) and thus people demand perfection, the same as with any other product.

Where it gets problematic is when "artists" get on the high horse and claim they would never use it or people start claiming how it's their natural talent. This is disingenious at best, outright lying at the worst.

Best way to judge a singer is to hear them live.. that's it. They will not hit every tone perfectly but sometimes that's the charm.

Most current and best example is this (and i really love the song btw).. when she sings especially high notes sometimes her voice cracks a little bit but it's so adorable and charming:

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILTZ8qZbNK0[/yt]

 

[mos6507]

You have a tin-ear if you can't appreciate the difference between an auto-tune-heavy singer and real talent. Here is the real deal.


[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-gLRp5bSpw[/yt]

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't have a problem with autotune itself.. music has become a commercial product (inf act it always was besides being an artistic product) and thus people demand perfection, the same as with any other product.

Autotuning detracts from the quality of the recording nine out of ten times. Or rather, it drags all recordings toward 'Average'. It makes bad singers average, and good singers equally average. Sterile recordings with lots of disposable hooks and no feeling.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sterile recordings with lots of disposable hooks and no feeling.

You have just described 99% of current pop music.

 

[JoeZhang]

You have a tin-ear if you can't appreciate the difference between an auto-tune-heavy singer and real talent. Here is the real deal.


[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-gLRp5bSpw[/yt]

Shame her diction is so terrible - Skyfawl indeed.

 

[FPAlpha]

Sterile recordings with lots of disposable hooks and no feeling.

You have just described 99% of current pop music.

That's just modern pop music.. fast food music as i call it because once the season is over no one will remember it and they sure won't become classics. That has nothing to do with Autotune except that it gives a hot female body a passable voice so she can "sing" while she displays her ass and tits.

Music business got faster and move vicious so the kind of music is made that will make immediate money rather than pushing the long term star abd building him up slowly (few exceptions like Adele of course who have exploded onto the music scene).

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Are we speaking of "modern pop music" as something distinct from pop music of the past? It's really not. Pop music has always been made for the masses, and as such the most popular tools and techniques of the time are employed. Today, it's AutoTune. In the '90s, it was that grunge sound. In the '80s, it was synthesizers. In the '70s, it was a disco beat, etc. Same as it ever was.

 

[ITL]

Antares (the makers of Auto Tune) have released a version for guitar. They use guitar modelling tech (which I find very interesting), just like Line 6 and Roland have been doing for ages. But because they sell it as "Auto Tune for guitar", it gets rubbished online from time to time for the same reasons as the vocal Auto Tune does.

It's just a musical tool that gives you something different, that's all.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

People will find anything to be all snobbish about.

 

[Pingfah]

It's very rare autotune is used because people simply can't sing well, because it's very rare a record label would be stupid enough to give a recording contract to somebody that can't sing. Regardless of how attractive someone is, there's always someone just as attractive who CAN sing, singing really isn't a hard skill to learn.

It's more about creating a flawless product, flawless beyond what one could reasonably expect from a set of human vocal chords.