Mrs. Cardigan popped my bubble one day when commenting on the Pentatonix acapella version of Hallelujah
I happen to have perfect pitch and remarked one day that the way they hit every note ‘squarely in the center’ was amazing. She then suggested maybe they use auto-tune. I had to google to find out. Sure enough it turns out, the Pentatonix like so many other recording artists, use autotune. I was crushed. I really can’t enjoy the song anymore knowing this. She thinks I’m overreacting. Perhaps so, but I can’t help feeling cheated.
It occurs to me that musicians using autotune is not unlike athletes using steroids. Sure, Barry Bonds was a naturally talented athlete but we can never know how much of his impressive record is owing to technology vs his own ability and commitment. I’m not a baseball fan, but I could certainly understand how the widespread use of performance enhancing drugs among professional athletes can ruin the enjoyment of the game for many. Some folks don’t care and argue what difference does it make so long as excellence is achieved. I guess I have a hard time buying into that.
I agree. The end result is not all that matters. So, I’m much more impressed / inspired by phenomenal singers from the pre-Autotune era, as well as strongmen before the steroid era, or hunters before the high-power / night tech optics era etc. etc.
I don’t know if this is a good comparison. Steroid use causes a number of health problems, and athletes who use steroids are bad role models for young athletes.
Also, there’s the fact that steroid use, and other doping, such as takes (used to take?) place in the Tour de France, are a result of competition-- everyone is trying to get an edge, and it becomes a kind of ‘arms race’ in which at its worst, it becomes necessary to dope just on order to stay competitive.
So for those reasons I think it’s extremely important to ban all doping in sports, to level the playing field and to not entice and corrupt younger athletes.
Autotune in music is a little different. It’s (arguably) not a competition, except perhaps a competition that the artists have with themselves to try to perfect their craft. And it’s not like autotune is the only technological ‘boost’ in the music industry: I’m not a music studio tech-head, but I know there are many, many tricks in the recording studio, apart from autotune, to add to and improve the final recorded musical product.
That said, I do prefer music that’s much less produced and much more natural. Let’s take Bob Dylan as an example: his voice is famously derided as being very bad. If anybody could use autotune and any number of other studio tricks, he could, right? But I think he can put more emotion and depth of feeling into a sung line than many other singers. My favorite late-period Dylan album is a little-known one called “World Gone Wrong”, which is just Dylan singing old obscure Folk / Blues songs and playing guitar. In the song ‘Delia’ he sings the line “all the friends I ever had are gone” several times, each time a slightly different way that conveys depths of world-weary emotion. Applying autotune to something like that would be like putting ketchup all over a dish with truffles in it because you’re unfamiliar with the taste of truffles, instead of developing a palate for them.
I’m there with you in spirit, but the the fact is raw talent will not last longer than a lifetime and may not ever be repeated. Whereas, on the other hand, technology is an unstoppable wave that will squash everything before it.
You can choose to hang on to the greats of the past, or to go with the tech assisted future. No way is wrong. It’s just a preference.
I just ask you this one question - who is going to be more popular: the naturally pitch perfect singer with mundane lyrics and style; or the assisted pitch perfect singer with style and wit?
I’m not a fan of auto-tune, but I have to be realistic. Much of modern/recent popular music (choose your genre) is the product of a drum machine, a sampler, a keyboard, and studio editing software. Does the producer or engineer think this particular vocal line is pretty good? Just cut and paste it into other locations in the track. Need five repetitions of this “guitar” riff? Same thing.
Rick Beato has done several YT videos where he demonstrates modern production and editing. They are informative, interesting…and depressing.
It’s mind-blowing to consider that Boston was made to prove that they were an actual group and could play the songs before they got their first album contract. The record execs were worried that their sound was “studio sound” that could not be duplicated in the oh-so-necessary live performances required to hype the album. Today, nobody cares.
I don’t much care that they or anyone else uses autotune, but to my ear, the perfection of an autotuned voice - especially when it’s used to generate chords - just sounds unpleasantly synthetic.
I do have more respect for artists who can sing in tune reliably. Whereas a studio recording can be done over and over again until they get an acceptable take for the final album master, the crucible here is a concert performance: there’s no second take when you’re performing live.
Ironically, Boston (the original band) never really could come anywhere near duplicating the album sound in live performances. Later incarnations could.
OTOH, The Cars were amazingly good at knocking out live performances that sounded like studio tracks. And were rather boring in concert because of it.
Taking the notion that technology in the realm of entertainment will inevitably and naturally surpass human creativity to an extreme, how long will it be before AI fully replaces or eliminates the need for human artists?
I’m sorry, but this is turning out to be a pretty depressing thread.
Different folks are looking for different types of excellence. A group like Pentatonix puts out tracks that are excellently produced. The quality of the product is unmistakable, so long as we define the product as “vocals produced using auto-tune.”
“Vocals produced without computer assistance” is another type of excellence. Like you, I place a higher value on this type of music because I’m more interested in a singer’s natural talent. But that’s almost certainly down to my having a modest amount of talent myself, and so being a bit of an armchair quarterback.
I do feel strongly that vocalists who use auto-tune should be up-front about it - especially if they’re an a cappella group. Just like I’d want an artist to be up-front about whether their art is the creation of an AI image generator.
But I ultimately believe that artistic endeavor has two primary purposes.
To please the artist.
and/or
To please the audience.
If auto-tuned music fully satisfies the global need for #2, all to the good. It won’t have any impact on #1. That moment when your entire vocal group hits its harmonies perfectly? There’s nothing quite like it in all the world.
People will keep making music because it’s satisfying. The great vast majority of people making music (and art) today aren’t doing it with any expectation of hitting it big or making a living from it. They’re doing it for themselves. AI won’t change that.
Back in the 90s, Cher started using Autotune. At that time, the use was obvious because it left a tinny sound in the vocals. All of a sudden that tinny sound became prevalent in pop music; I think it was to hide how much and how often they had to autotune the voices. I don’t hear the tinnyness in Pentatonix’ music (not that I’ve heard that much of their stuff), so either they’re not using it much or the technology has gotten much better. Enjoy it for what it is.
I’ve never been a fan of pop music. Over produced; created to sell, not for artistic purposes. I like my music raw and emotional. Whitney Houston’s trills in “I Will Always Love You” sound to me like she’s showing off her voice rather than feeling the song. Dolly Parton’s versions are always much more from the heart, and her trills and slides are her feeling the song.
I suspect the Cher song you’re specifically referring to is Believe. Cher - Believe [Official Music Video] - YouTube
No attempt was made to hide the use of the Auto-tune, and in fact quite the opposite was done, as it was obviously and cleverly used in that instance to create an interesting effect. No one could mistake that as being Cher’s natural voice, and that was an artistic decision. The intent was not to ‘clean up’ her voice or allow her to hit notes truer, but rather, to intentionally sound synthetic. In this context, I think the use of Auto-tune is great.
I’d love to hear a with and without version, as my ears cannot hear what you guys are discussing in this thread. This Pentatonix version doesn’t sound any different to me than any other group of people singing.
I think there is a difference between singers that are great singers and auto-tune is used to fine-tune their vocals to meet some production standard as opposed to a singer/group whose whole reason for existence is their perfect voice. In the second case, yeah it’s a cheat and it’s just not the same and I agree it ruins the song. Not only a cappella groups but those that rely on harmonies and/or the purity of their voices like Il Devo.
Dropping in to say I absolutely adore World Gone Wrong. Great, great album.
I’m not a fan of auto-tune or quantizing drums, even though I know I enjoy albums that probably use both technologies. Would I love them more if they didn’t use those technologies? Possibly?
I remember Pentatonix when they were on the sing-off and supposedly not allowed to use anything but their voices. They were phenomenal. I am not sure how much auto-tuning is being done with them now, but they are either remarkably talented singers or that whole show was a scam.
Just pointing out that, when it’s not used as an intentional audio effect, you have no idea as a listener that it’s being used. It’s invisible.
As to the bigger question, as @ZonexandScout mentioned, the entire process for recording and producing is (or can be) miles away from a representation of what an artist/group can do ‘live’. And, in fact, ‘live’ performances can be augmented in various ways as well.
When it comes down to it, all of the expectations we have about what true performance is, artistic or athletic or otherwise, are based in an arbitrary status-quo of tools and knowledge available. The more we develop tools to enhance the product of our efforts, the more insignificant the human effort becomes. It’s just measured against arbitrary rules in place for nostalgia’s sake more than anything.
… ok, that all sounds depressing, but my personal solution is to go listen to local music, buy local art, and otherwise tune in (no pun intended) to how people in my community are expressing themselves. The local is where creativity and honesty still thrives.
This.
There’s an important distinction to be made here. Many of you have probably read Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers”. In it he argues that practicing an activity in any field for 10,000 hours is a prerequisite to achieve greatness. He cited the Beatles as an example of a band that had spent 10,000+ hours, playing and all this practice combined with ability equaled success. This argument might hold true for someone like Yo Yo Ma, but I take exception to applying this to the Beatles, as I think it completely misses the point of what made the Beatles such a great band. Undoubtedly, they were thoroughly proficient in their respective instruments, but the reason the Beatles were great had little to do with them being virtuoso performers and a great deal more to do with being creative out-of-the-box geniuses at song writing.
A group whose claim to fame is virtuoso vocal performance, as in the case of an a cappella singing group, that relies on technology to add virtue to their natural singing ability is squarely cheating in my book if they aren’t up front about their use of Auto-tune.
Funny you should mention that. I’ve sung on recordings by a local artist, and he used autotune on the recordings.
You want honesty? See the local acts live. I know, not exactly convenient when you’re sitting in your dining room typing into a message board on a Thursday afternoon instead of doing the work you’re being paid for and you want a little noise in the background…
In the 60s the Beatles were manipulating their vocals, and in the 50s Les Paul used speeded-up multi-tracking on his recordings. So, this kind of thing is nothing new.
I wonder if I’ve ever bought any recordings that used autotune, and I wasn’t even aware of it?