On another board, people are dogging on Chinese Democracy and how it’s been overproduced to the point of allowing Axl to hit notes he couldn’t possibly hit anymore (though they all made clear that they had absolutely no expectations for this album). I’ve been bitching about the “Pro Tools effect” myself for awhile now without even really understanding it. Does Pro Tools really allow a producer to make wholesale changes in a band or vocalist’s sound that couldn’t be achieved 15 or 20 years ago? Has its effects been overrated? What are some examples of common “enhancements” that have shown up in modern music?
(CAVEAT: I don’t listen to the radio or stay abreast of the current pop music hits, so don’t assume I’ve heard any song you bring up.)
Pro Tools, in itself, does not do this. Pro Tools is a multitracking software. All it does is allow you to record, edit and mix audio. Pro Tools allows you to record several takes, and splice the best parts together. There are several other programs that do the same thing, but Pro Tools is probably the most used in professional studios.
Pro Tool, of course, can act as a plug-in host, and it is those plug-ins that allow you, for instance, to adjust a signer’s pitch in a realistic way. An examples of such plug-ins is Antares’ Vocal Toolkit.
Stand-alone vocal processors have been around for some time, but in past years, I think software has much improved. A somewhat early use of extreme, yet realistic, vocal processing was the voice in the movie Farinelli (1994), which was created at IRCAM with custom software by averaging the vocal characteristics of two different signers.
I remember hearing the guy from Sugar Ray complimenting the guy from A-Ha because he went out and hit those notes in Take on Me before the use of Pro Tools.
I took that to mean that they could correct the vocalist’s pitch in real-time during live performances. Is that true?
To some extent but, again, Pro Tools is recording software. It doesn’t do anything useful for live performances other than recording them.
Pitch correction tools have been around for a few years, both in hardware and software. For instance tc electronics’ Intonator has been around for some years. However, those tools are mostly meant for studio work. Live work is much more difficult because all those tools work on the assumption that you’re telling them what the pitch should be.
On edit: Take on Me predates any useable pitch correction technology, so he meant that when he hits the right pitch, he really hit the right pitch, it wasn’t corrected in post production.
I think part of the issue is that with Pro Tools (or any other Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW), producers can do more processing/effects and get it done faster - there isn’t a period of reflection that says “this is going to be difficult/slow/noisy, does doing this actually enhance the final result”.
It is now a case of “<click>-done, still got producing time, what else can I do.”
Some people also blame Pro Tools for an increasing tendency to over-compression in modern albums. This is where the dynamic range of a track is reduced (so that the difference between the loudest sound and the quietest sound is lower). This has the effect of making song sound louder to the listener. The result of this is that some albums are so overcompressed (Metallica, I’m looking at you) that they actually can sound distorted. Of course, this again is not a Pro Tools specific issue, but Pro Tools has become the standard bearer for this problem.
Devices exist that do just this. I had one a few years ago that moved the sung note to the nearest ‘correct’ pitch. I suppose if you were more than a quarter tone out it would guess wrong, but you’d have to be a really bad singer to be off by that much. It could also generate harmonies add vibrato and had a midi input that let you play the pitch you wanted. This was some time ago so I guess modern units will be even cleverer.
Pro Tools doesn’t cause this - it’s just a tool. IMO, it’s the people using the tool that are the problem.
Actually, the “standard bearer” for this problem is producers, engineers, musicians, and record companies who want they’re next big project to be the loudest thing on the radio. What compression does by narrowing the dynamic range is allow the mastering engineer to boost the average loudness of the entire track without getting digital clipping. The problem is, in the quest for ever more louder tracks, they squash the original sound wave too much (losing dynamics) and then increase the loudness sometimes beyond the clipping threshold (increasing distortion). The result is a mess of a track that’s tiring for the ears to listen to. Metallica is very guilty of this, as are many other bands - Audioslave and Wolfmother come to mind.
I can barely listen to a whole newly produced CD anymore. My ears get burnt out after the 3rd song. One CD I bought lately that I was pleased to actually listen to was the new AC/DC record. They actually kept a little bit of the dynamic range on that one…
Note how the Disturbed song is just one giant, solid wall of a waveform, with almost no dynamic range, and almost all of it concentrated at the very maximum amplitude, while the Beatle’s tune (which was considered quite heavy for its time) actually manages to have some dynamics in it and leaves a bit of headroom even in the loudest parts.
Just for the record, the loudness wars/overcompression during mastering and ProTools recording are two completely different subjects and issues. Mastering is not done in ProTools, and is a completely separate step in the record-making process.
There is a technical difference and many of the Pro Tools issues relate to over-production in the mix and not just the sound wars (but excessive track compression can crop up prior to the final mix, too). I’ve read comments that indicate that the sound engineer who mixed Metallica’s latest album is not happy with the compression on the final CD, and the mix on the Guitar Hero version of the album has not been compressed to death. Pro Tools (whether it was Pro Tools or not) still tends to gets the blame. And lots of people do run their mastering in DAWs - it saves money if they do it themselves, rather than paying the pressing people to do it. And they are hoping to retain some control of the final product. Of course, that may not happen with big record deal bands.
At the end of the day, someone makes the decision on the final cut that goes out. Either the producer, or the band, or the record execs, or the mastering engineer at the pressing facility (or some combination). And the fact is that at present, these decisions seem to be being made with one goal - to be louder than anyone else. And it is killing subtlety in music.
