Does Autotune Have Any Artistic Merit?

[Sebastian Cobb]

What I want to know is if there is a song which improved by the air horn

Numerous rave tape packs.

[Bazooka]

It sounds awful.

Is genuinely anything of the past 20 years actually worthy? Lyrically or artistically?

Anything we'll be quoting as a piece of poetry or saying yes ghat piece of music was genius? Did we peak ages ago and everything since is hust noise?

Help a brother out.

I'm afraid you are beyond help if being serious.

[alan nagsworth]

As many have said here, it's been used countless times to great artistic effect and it's a good thing. I will also chime in with others who shot down the notion of Cher's "Believe" being a bad example, because it's really not. It's an incredible song, even at face value.

One of my favourite examples would be Kanye's "808s and Heartbreak", with Ye's brazen admittance that he wasn't blessed with a good singing voice, so this was his way of compensating. A bloody great pop album.

Again, it's been mentioned already but Bon Iver is pretty much unparalleled in terms of how popular Justin Vernon is and how he has so brilliantly and artistically utilised it. There are some seriously beautiful ways he has subtly used it in his music, and some very brazen ways too, such as the gorgeous 715 - CR∑∑KS.

Of course one of the most famous modern day songs would be Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek", which I'm a big fan of, both for its use in memes and the SNL "shooting" skit, and just on its own as a really good song.

Autotune is just an Instagram filter, isn't it? Obviously the thing didn't look like that in its original form, but why shouldn't you be allowed to change it to suit what you need to achieve?

[Sebastian Cobb]

Hide and Seek isn't using autotune though.

Getting angry at Believe for things that follow it is a bit like getting annoyed at O Brother Where art Thou? for using colour correction because films are now either a shade of teal or orange.

[alan nagsworth]

Hide and Seek isn't using autotune though.

oh

WELL it's still a good song

[purlieu]

I absolutely loathe 'Believe' by Cher, but the autotune did its job well there: it was really striking and memorable when it came out.

[Johnny Yesno]

I like it if it's used as part of a battery of vocal effects. For example, on Mouse on Mars's 2004 album Radical Connector:

Mouse on Mars - Mine is in Yours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IMhTq6fby0

Mouse on Mars - Send Me Shivers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz_foErCj-Y

[Camp Tramp]

Hide and Seek isn't using autotune though.

Getting angry at Believe for things that follow it is a bit like getting annoyed at O Brother Where art Thou? for using colour correction because films are now either a shade of teal or orange.

I remember not liking Believe at the time and the Autotune elements really stuck out.

I'm not saying that I'm right and you're all wrong, it is just the way that I feel.

[buzby]

Pop's been dishonest forever though hasn't it? Before Autotune or less sophisticated pitch correction they just overdubbed with session musicians at night.

As for creative use of Vocoders, rather than autotune, I'm a big fan of Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek.

It's not the dishonesty as such, it's the lack of care and craft for want of a better term. FGTH's records are almost completely dishonest, with only Holly featuring on them (and his voice was probably also sweetened by an Eventide Harmonizer I'd imagine), but Horn & co. worked on them for months before they were deemed 'right' and ready to release. There's numerous tales of 60s & 70s soul singers going hoarse from recording sessions form doing retakes and harmonies (Tina Turner during the recording fo River Deep, Mountain High for example).

The modern method is to do one or two vocal run throughs, then use Autotune or Melodyne to drag it back into pitch, cut and paste it together in Pro Tools and then spool all the harmonies off by repitching that take. It just smacks of a lack of effort and care, but then again modern pop is probably more disposable than it ever has been. As a fan of Sia, you can see examples of this is when guide tracks of songs that she has sold get leaked. Even on demos she goes to a lot of trouble recording all the multiple harmony layers, and more often than not when a singer who bought it releases their version Sia's harmonies are still on the track as they have only rerecorded the main vocal line.

I'm not particularlya fan of Kanye West's use of autotune either ,to be honest. So what if you can't sing? There's plenty of revered vocalists who can't sing in the conventional sense. If your lyrics have meaning and you deliver them with emotion doing it in tune isn't that important.

Weird....

I open this thread as I play "I Pity Inanimate Objects" by Godley and Creme - a song that feels like the step-father of Autotune.

The vocal effects on it were produced using Antares Autotune's grandfather - the Eventide H910 Harmonizer (it appears in one of the 'icons' under the track on the inner sleeve of 'L'). It was a hardware processor that could do limited pitch manipulation, and was a bit of a recording industry secret for years, They used it to explicity manipulate the vocals on Inanimate Objects by using it like a reverse vocoder - they used a keyboard to supply the pitch follow input to the Harmonizer, outlandishly pitching the vocals to the melody on played on the keyboard.

[Sebastian Cobb]

What surprised me about the eventide was one of its first uses was to pitch down television repeats that US networks would play fast to gain more ad space. I knew this happened nowadays; there's a good Seinfeld example here, I was just surprised to find it had been going on as far back as the 70's.

[purlieu]

I'm not particularlya fan of Kanye West's use of autotune either ,to be honest. So what if you can't sing? There's plenty of revered vocalists who can't sing in the conventional sense. If your lyrics have meaning and you deliver them with emotion doing it in tune isn't that important.

I think this probably highlights the two sides of the coin here: whether the means or the ends are more important to you. For some people, the 'authenticity' is important, for others it's about how the final thing actually sounds. For me, it doesn't matter how much emotion is put into a performance, if it's out of tune then it sounds horrible.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think it depends. Pop music has traditionally been full of tyrants from Phil Spector to Pete Waterman (lol) they've been meticulous in what they do and you sort of expect it.

Conversely indie is typically the antithesis of this, Nick Lowe was called the basher because of his trademark 'just bash it out, we can polish it later' approach and it works fine.

[Johnny Yesno]

I think this probably highlights the two sides of the coin here: whether the means or the ends are more important to you. For some people, the 'authenticity' is important, for others it's about how the final thing actually sounds. For me, it doesn't matter how much emotion is put into a performance, if it's out of tune then it sounds horrible.

There are three things wrong with this:

(1) The false dichotomy of choosing between the means and the ends.
(2) The assumption that the intent of of an artist not using autotune is to convey authenticity rather than an aesthetic decision.
(3) The self-fulfilling prophecy that you won't like a piece of music because of a single feature. This is a conservative tendency and will only get worse as you get older.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Are we talking about autotune used to inconspicuously polish the odd duff hook, or conspicuously using it to mask the fact someone can't sing?

[Johnny Yesno]

Are we talking about autotune used to inconspicuously polish the odd duff hook, or conspicuously using it to mask the fact someone can't sing?

Both, I think. Plus using it creatively, as in my Mouse on Mars links above.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Both, I think. Plus using it creatively, as in my Mouse on Mars links above.

I do like Mouse on Mars, but only own Autoditacker.

[Johnny Yesno]

I do like Mouse on Mars, but only own Autoditacker.

Radical Connector is by no means their best album (that's probably Autoditacker, although I recommend you check out Niun Niggung), but there are some excellent tracks on it. I'm sure you can recognise their obvious pleasure in being inventive with sound. Using autotune in the above tracks is authentic to their commitment to processing the fuck out of everything.

[NoSleep]

Are we talking about autotune used to inconspicuously polish the odd duff hook, or conspicuously using it to mask the fact someone can't sing?

You can't cover up being unable to sing. You can also, inconspicuously, use autotune to hide that somebody can't sing in tune. You only use autotune conspicuously to get that recognisable effect (because it's still the "new" thing, 20-odd years on). I'm sure a lot of the singers that use it know how to work it harder to get more of the right effect (and I don't mean by twiddling autotune knobs).

[purlieu]

There are three things wrong with this:

(1) The false dichotomy of choosing between the means and the ends.
(2) The assumption that the intent of of an artist not using autotune is to convey authenticity rather than an aesthetic decision.
(3) The self-fulfilling prophecy that you won't like a piece of music because of a single feature. This is a conservative tendency and will only get worse as you get older.

I get where you're coming from - and of course it's a much more complex issue than my intentional over-generalisation - but my post was largely intended simply as a counter to the idea that "If your lyrics have meaning and you deliver them with emotion doing it in tune isn't that important." For me, this is completely untrue, and I just wanted to offer an alternative viewpoint.

[Sebastian Cobb]

You can't cover up being unable to sing.

bollocks

[NoSleep]

So have you managed to do that?

[Sebastian Cobb]

What a terrible argument; I can't fly a plane but they're circling overhead.

[NoSleep]

So how do you know that what I said was bollocks? You can't make a bad performance/weak voice sound good; autotune automatically retunes the voice but it doesn't make the voice sound better.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Yes you can. Mediocre RnB singers use the T-Pain/Cher effect to hide the fact that they sing flat rather than using it to polish it (such as correcting flat notes etc).

On top of that and dishonesty in general, you can hear autotune trill on the late sections of X-Factor.

[NoSleep]

Yes you can. Mediocre RnB singers use the T-Pain/Cher effect to hide the fact that they sing flat rather than using it to polish it (such as correcting flat notes etc).

So how can you tell they're mediocre?

[Sebastian Cobb]

So how can you tell they're mediocre?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5RVM-aUtJM

[NoSleep]

That just tells me what her voice really sounds like; are you saying it sounded great (i.e. no longer mediocre) by tuning it (as I've not seen the corrected version)? I would think it remained mediocre.

[Sebastian Cobb]

this is just pedantry isn't it?

[NoSleep]

A tuned turd is still a turd.

[Johnny Yesno]

You can't cover up being unable to sing.

!=

You can't make a ... weak voice sound good

What I'm saying is you can put people who can't keep in tune and in time in tune and in time, which most people would consider being able to sing.