Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect
time.com
time.com
Then came Auto-Tune. That meant that less perfect singers no longer would have to strain themselves by performing a dozen tracks, we could do with three or four, focusing on performance and feel. AT would assist with the pitch. Sessions actually became more creative, since the tools were better than before.
So "perfect vocals" have been around way longer than Auto-Tune. We just did it in a more tedious way, and wore out the singers vocal cords in the process. Pop is just pop. Other genres will always cater for those who want to listen to more "real music".
I sense you think this is a bad thing... Are cars made by hand any more? Does being made by robots make a car any less fantastic?
The difference though is that a car is a physical object produced by a persons talent. A vocal track is (in spirit at least) something produced directly, or a direct output of the vocalist. Part of the mystique is supposed to be the fact that not everyone can carry a perfect tune. Except than when you apply too much technology post-processing, you eliminate the exclusivity (and garbage up the track at the same time).
I just think it's strange to apply inconsistent standards to the same genre. It's ok that the music is precision-engineered on a computer, but not the vocals? Have it one way or the other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocaloid
I said 'sort of' because the entry said "with specially recorded vocals of voice actors". It isn't completely synthesized.
There's way more to making pop music sound perfect than Autotune. Every step of the way is expertly crafted to fit together. No one complains about how much studio editing respected bands like Radiohead do in the studio, so we are we complaining about silly pop acts?
And to all the people who say that music is in a "rut" need to get off their butts and actually put some effort in to find the great new music that they'll like. Yes, you have to actually try, not just whine that things aren't the same as they were back when you were coming of age.
Mainstream people listen to fun, accessible music. It's always been that way, so get over it! There's great music of every type being made right now, you just have to go look for it.
It never stays that way for long though.
Historically, if you want to get a good idea of where music is going, see what black americans are producing. Virtually every new genre of western pop music in the last century has come from black americans. (Blues, jazz, soul, rock, funk, disco, house, techno, hip-hop)
After new genres emerge then there's usually a couple decades that follow of infusing that with other genres and that's where some really creative stuff starts coming out of the woodwork.
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, who both moved music forward, were both white.
The indie music scene nowadays comes from Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel. He's white.
Techno was inspired by minimalist classical music. Steve Reich? Philip Glass? White.
I agree with your first point: music changes. I disagree with your last point: genres are interesting from the start. They become interesting for fans of other genres after a few decades, but for people who comprehend the musical theory behind a genre it tends to become interesting from the beginning.
Berry is riff-based. He's all about the guitar. He did incredible stuff, but for me rock was about the advent of the larger-than-life music personality, and about the attitude. Elvis had attitude. Berry didn't, not in the same way. Elvis was the first rock heartthrob.
My point was that it's not a race game. White people do music too. To add to my above list: punk was Sex Pistols and the Ramones.
If you really want to see where music is going, you should just pay attention to what white people are buying.
Techno was influenced by 20th century minimalism, but it wasn't inspired by it. Minimalism started becoming a significant influence in the second wave of techno.
From your later comment, punk and some other rock sub-genres are good examples of genres that have not stemmed directly from black american culture.
Note -- I don't think this is something fundamentally having to do with race, but that there's something within black american culture that has driven a disproportionate amount of innovation in popular music.
With the genre-mixing thing, I didn't mean that genres aren't interesting from the start, just that often the phase where they begin to cross-pollinate often produces results that are as if not more interesting than the advent of the genres themselves.
What counts as a "new pop genre" and what definition of "virtually all" are we using?
Country/Western, Broadway, pre-rock pop vs Jazz, R&B/Soul, Gospel, Rap, Hip-hop
Country / western and pre-pop jazz aren't new, but they're definitely pop. Pop became jazz and country came around about 90 years ago. Broadway's even older. The rest on your list I think non-controversially have African American roots.
Probably a reasonable definition of "new" is everything post-widespread-phonograph since genres started working different culturally once the primary way of listening to music shifted from live to recorded.
And neither are R&B, Soul, or Gospel.
> The rest on your list I think non-controversially have African American roots.
There are two lists, separated by "vs".
I'm responding to a claim that almost all American pop genres came from AA roots. I disputed that claim by providing two lists, the first for "not AA" vs the second for "AA". The number of elements in the first is comparable to the number of elements in the second.
Recorded sales and concert attendance, as well as just turning on your radio, seem to indicate this. 2008's concert attendance was slightly down, and the top 10 acts were all ancient. In order Bon Jovi, Springsteen, Madonna, The Police, Celine Dion, Kenny Chesney, Neil Diamond, Spice Girls, Eagles, and Rascall Flats. With one exception they're either country (which has been in a rut for 30 years) or older than me.
That's a genuine rut my friend. The wheels are spinning but nobody's going anywhere.
If you're looking for "the cool new things" that are happening, I definitely wouldn't look at the Top 10 in concert attendance.
Given, we're not going to invent distorted electric guitar or precision audio editing again. But really, do we define great music as having a "sound" that's obviously jarring? Great music has been produced for centuries with the same old orchestral instruments--to the uninitiated, it all sounds pretty much the same.
We're in the midst of a major revolution in music distribution. While revenues are down, people are listening to more music than ever before, and getting more choice in what they can listen to. Thanks to a new generation raised on guitar hero and rock band, I predict that things are going to get even crazier very soon.
If you define a rut as "not undergoing mainstream stylistic revolution" then sure, we're in a rut.
Musicians themselves are exploring various niches and the audiences that await them in every corner of the music world. And as a result, have a smaller fanbase. The reason why you still hear the same garbage on KROQ and why the top 10 acts are ancient is because those are the musicians that have been proven to appeal to the widest audience. And with the top 10 acts, I'm going to guess that a big part of their fanbase is composed of 30+ year old individuals who are going to stick around for a while with their static tastes in music. Basing the state of the music world on who the top 10 performing acts are is a bit foolish. There's a whole lot happening.
My iTunes library is filled with music of recent artists who's music is of high quality. You can't just turn on the radio now to find good music, even via Pandora or Rhapsody. Don't fool yourself by thinking that Pandora is really giving you an in depth look to the various genres of music. It really isn't. You have to work a bit harder than that.
I couldn't think of a better way to define one.
But as far as music production, I think we've definitely seen a boom in music exploration and creativity. Again, a lot of musicians are finding niche audiences -- audiences too small and insignificant to record labels who are looking for the next Fallout Boy.
I'd agree with you in saying that the music business is in a rut, because its goal of marketing the next hit artist for huge returns leaves a lot of talent unnoticed. But is music, as far as its creativity, originality, progression, and meaning, in a rut? I really don't think so.
Most people will always remain largely tasteless. That's nothing new. Popular music will always be worse than the real cutting edge, because pop music hit its peak and now it's in recline. The Beatles were that fusion of cutting edge and pop, and now that they're done music is changing again.
I agree with you about the rest, though.
That's my experience too. In the 90's, lots and lots of really good music was selling really well too. You could just turn on MTV (or the radio), and you'd end up hearing it.
I haven't been following new music for many years, because somewhere along the way all that changed. The last time I happened to hear the stuff playing on a popular radio station, I was taken aback by what passes for a hit these days.
But I'm practically a grumpy old grandpa now. I bet people who grew up in the 70's bemoaned the lack of good music in the 80's or 90's too.
But still, just because there are a few schizophrenic glockenspielers out there doesn't mean the industry as a whole is doing well. As I pointed out originally, just like with the economy, the presence of some good stuff doesn't mean that the overall direction is a good one.
I put up a list of bands from the past two years doing new things. I don't see how you can say a band like The Arcade Fire is retreading old ground: they're creating something genuinely new. There are plenty of refreshing bands doing new stuff. Fleet Foxes is named a lot to the point of monotony, but the publicity surrounding them doesn't change the fact that they are genuinely new and good.
That's 4 years old now, yeah, but it's an example of how you might be missing what's going on right now. This year, for instance, Chumbawamba's The Boy Bands Have Won was an incredible folk tune album. Atmosphere's hip-hop album If Life Gives You Lemons, Paint That Shit Gold. Of Montreal's Skeletal Lamping did stuff I've never heard in pop before, even if it was a pretty inconsistent album overall. Fleet Foxes blew my mind last winter.
Last year, there was Streetlight Manifesto, half a good album by They Might Be Giants, Radiohead, Freezepop, Flight of the Conchords, Dr. Dog, Burial, Arcade Fire.
I can't think of a single year in the last 40 that didn't see major pieces of music come out. Every maligned era has had some incredible gems.
Back when he was new, no one could avoid hearing his stuff on the radio or MTV.
I always hated it, with a moderately burning passion, I might add, but I don't remember the details anymore. It would be interesting to hear why his music is "incredible".
For my definition of "incredible", buy yourself a copy of Prince's "The Hits - The B-Sides". It's got most of his best songs.
He hasn't released anything particularly great since 1993, but that doesn't stop many of his older songs from being absolutely mind-blowingly awesome ("When You Were Mine", "Little Red Corvette", "Purple Rain", and so on)
Usually I'd write a long essay on just why I love Eminem, but now noprocrast is set incredibly restrictive, so I'll be fast. The guy has an incredible power behind his voice: he's got an energy that's rare even in rock, and he really channels that energy to create something neat. Lyrically he's impressive. I will never be entirely a fan of rap's lyrical style - I'll always yearn for the incredibly focused and taut language of poetry - but Eminem does it well. He has extremely inventive rhymes, he sets up incredible rhythms, and he manages to be surprisingly funny at times, other times incredibly creepy.
I didn't like rap for a long time. Last week something clicked and I finally just understood what I was supposed to be listening for.
You mentioned that Eminem is lyrically impressive, and I thought I'd like to see that.
Google pointed me to www.eminem.net, which has lyrics for many of his songs.
Right at the top of the list, there's an album called "Encore", which just happened to contain this little gem of a song called "Ass Like That".
Here's how it starts:
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Ohh Baby, The way you shake it I can’t believe it, I ain’t never seen an ass like that The way you move it, you make my peepee go DOING DOING DOING I don’t believe it, it’s almost to good to be true I ain’t never seen an ass like that The way you move it, you make my peepee go DOING DOING DOING
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsRoe1bJQkk
Now compare this to Prince's "Little Red Corvette", which starts with these words:
"I guess I should have known / by the way you parked your car sideways / that it wouldn't last.."
I always thought that Eminem was just a record-company sockpuppet, cashing in on how white people have a strange tendency to equate sounding angry with having attitude, and that, in turn, with artistic merit.
Just another part of that evil, evil trend that started with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", continued with Linkin Park and the like, and will apparently never end.
> I didn't like rap for a long time. Last week something clicked and I finally just understood what I was supposed to be listening for.
Well, I started listening to rap as a kid, around 20 years ago, and I can assure you that Eminem is not what you should be listening to (or for).
Please take some time to check out these instead:
A Tribe Called Quest ("People's Instinctive Travels & The Paths Of Rhythm", "The Low-End Theory")
De La Soul ("Three Feet High & Rising", "De La Soul Is Dead")
Jurassic 5 ("Jurassic 5", "Power In Numbers")
Public Enemy (eg "Shut Em' Down", "Can't Truss It", "Give It Up"). Chuck D has attitude. The real kind.
Somewhat rap-ish: Spearhead & Michael Franti's solo work too.
.. and some old-school classics like:
Funky Four + 1 - That's The Joint (rap music's pure essence right there)
Spoonie G - The Monster Jam
Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message.
And maybe just for the heck of it, The Fatback Band's "King Tim III, Personality Jock", where it all started.
Eminem is a very talented rapper and was incredibly clever with his lyrics. Many of his lyrics including the one you quoted are meant to be satirical of generic rap lyrics.
Take the whole song 'Just Lose it' where he satirically shows he can create a catchy rap song with nonsense. Specifically, look at:
Now this is the part where the rap breaks down
It's real intense, no one makes a sound
Everything looks like it's 8 Mile now
The beat comes back and everybody loses theirselves
Now snap back to reality, look it's B. Rabbit he
Oh you signed me up to battle? I'm a grown man
Chubba chubba chubba chubba chubba chubba chubba chubba
I don't have any lines to go right here so
Chubba tubba tell me fellas (what?), fellas (what?)
This song made the top 10 single on charts across the world[1], with just a catchy beat and nonsensical lyrics.
In contrast, he has some very eloquent other lyrics.
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Well, what do you think about the stuff I listed?
> Take the whole song 'Just Lose it' where he satirically shows he can create a catchy rap song with nonsense.
A lot of "satire" going on then. I took a look at the video on Youtube. Just like the Wikipedia article explains, there are lots of references to things, but so what? Michael's nose might come off, Beavis sometimes turns into Cornholio, and some songs have a "break it down" -part. Where's the big revelation/insight though, or the implied moral higher ground?
> This song made the top 10 single on charts across the world[1], with just a catchy beat and nonsensical lyrics.
Right. That happens a lot to songs with catchy beats and more or less clever hooks.
Did "Just Lose It" become a hit because it's such a profound satire on all shallow, soulless, formulaic, mass-produced rap/pop music that gets on the charts? Or was it just because lots of Eminem's fans bought it? Maybe they're all the butt of a diabolically clever, circular/meta joke!
He's up to a lot of tricks, it seems.
Some other artists just concentrate on making music. A handful of them have even become hugely popular by writing, composing, arranging and performing it. Music that's completely made and performed by themselves. That handful includes people like Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Michael Jackson. Suck on that, Eminem.
Classic. High quality.
> De La Soul ("Three Feet High & Rising", "De La Soul Is Dead")
Fantastic.
> Jurassic 5 ("Jurassic 5", "Power In Numbers")
Great quality and an interesting style.
> Public Enemy (eg "Shut Em' Down", "Can't Truss It", "Give It Up"). Chuck D has attitude. The real kind.
Public Enemy is really the precursor to a change in rap. Their style, attitude, branding just seems so much stronger than anyone before them.
>Somewhat rap-ish: Spearhead & Michael Franti's solo work too... and some old-school classics like: Funky Four + 1 - That's The Joint (rap music's pure essence right there) Spoonie G - The Monster Jam Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message. And maybe just for the heck of it, The Fatback Band's "King Tim III, Personality Jock", where it all started.
Oh man you are dating yourself with some of these classics. I would say they were great for their time and really established the genre. However, because of this I don't know if you can tell someone today just getting interested in rap to listen to them and understand how different and new and unique they were. You almost have to listen to a ton of rap and then go back to the roots.
The first rap I ever heard was the album De La Soul Is Dead. I happened to hear some of it at a friend's house, and his big brother was kind enough to lend it to me. I just liked what I heard, but of course didn't analyze why.
In any case, I don't think there's any harm in even a new rap fan listening to "the classics". It helps them get on the right track. Learning to appreciate the classics should come naturally later on.
[The DNA Lounge also has web audio broadcasting]
So it's hard to be objective. But let the people downmodding the OP consider some active bands from a year long before my birth, 1969 (off the top of my head):
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
The Doors
CCR
Hendrix
Pink Floyd
[Clapton was somewhere between cream and dereck and the dominoes]
ADDENDUM: Here's a better list. The lineup for woodstock--ONE frickin' concert, which manages to leave out some of the best groups, like Zeppelin and the Doors and Bob Dylan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodstock_Festival#Performing_a...
It's almost surreal how good that list is.
If you start dragging out the "everything was better before" argument, remember that you'll get more than the music if you go back to 1970. War, the draft, unemployment, massive amounts of LSD...
I haven't seen any commenter in this thread attempt a somewhat scientific assessment of the quality of music then and now. We can probably agree that the general culture is less friendly to good music today, but if you want to go deeper than that there is really no way to reach a consensus. I'm of the belief that you can find just as novel, inspired, creative and emotional music today as 30 years ago. There might be a bit less and it will certainly be more obscure, but artists still create. As a case in point, both Marilyn Manson, Dream Theater and The Cardigans have created large amounts of novel music the last 10 years. Even though these musicians aren't among the most obscure, I still think you're doomed to fail if you search the pop charts for good art.
Radiohead, My Bloody Valentine, Neutral Milk Hotel. Of Montreal. Nirvana, The Flaming Lips. Belle & Sebastian. I'm naming a very slim set of music: I'm ignoring everything that's not rock. And yeah, they're different from the 60s bandset, but different isn't always worse. Radiohead's music is more complex than any 60s musician I can think of save Zappa, and his work picked up in the 70s and 80s.
Back then, outside activities were encouraging people to all group together. Now it's all divided. You wouldn't get the guitar virtuosos of the world - and they're better now than they ever have been in history - playing next to pop acts - which are arguably catchier than the stuff back then, thanks to the science of pop writing. They're separate fields; they've split off. Now, instead of a focused field, things have split and branched and turned into a hundred thousand separate branches.
I think that I like modern culture better than I would have liked the 60s. I like the Decemberists. I like that they're quirky book rock. I enjoy Harry and the Potters. Neither one is The Beatles, but nowadays instead of 20 big names I listen to a hundred small names and each one has something to fascinate me.
This nostalgia pisses me off. You never have a period of "bad stuff." Not in anything. You just have periods where the good stuff is more focused and easier to find.
Prince, anyone? :)
But seriously, have you seen him play?
I agree that music has become more complex along the way. For example 50's music just feels too.. primitive for me. 60's mostly too.
To me it feels like "real" music started emerging in the 70's with the advances in recording technology etc. Starting from the 70's, they could just put a lot more stuff into a song, thus making them feel a lot more "solid".
In the early 90's, music went through a period where some of it became too soulless because of their excessive use of computers for everything. Real instruments still work wonders, but computers led to songs becoming more and more intricately crafted.
Good music is good music, no matter how it's made, and I have a lot of respect for someone like T-Pain who's basically single-handedly proved that Autotune can provide powerful emotional effect in songs. I also have no problem with helping pop stars sing better, on albums and in live performances. I prefer the best product for my bucks, if at all possible. I trust a producer like Rick Rubin to know when to employ what techniques to a record to maximize my enjoyment.
For example, the Roland TB-303 "was originally marketed to guitarists for bass accompaniment while practicing alone" [Wikipedia]. But what we got from it — in the end — was acid house.
The vocoder was originally developed with telecommunications applications in mind, not Kraftwerk.
Once you did that a bit, you started to hear it everywhere. So I would put it at about 2000/1999 when I stopped hearing bum notes in pop songs on the radio.
As a fond example, listen to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers "under the bridge" - a MASSIVE hit in the early 90s, most of the notes are flat. Can you imagine that song being a hit like that now in that form?
A lot of amateur composing/producing on computers is heavily restricted by a relatively basic set of tools. While the tools may have deeper option sets, hobbyists may take years to discover them. It's rare that a program comes along which allows you to have in infinite amount of sounds to choose from and allows anyone to think of creative ways to recycle existing recordings. When the program is as easy to use as Melodyne, it gives a lot of power to the amateur.
It was kind of neat the first few times, now it's just annoying.
In the style of Zapp & Roger.
This completely the opposite of Kanye West's past work all the way back to Jay-Z's Blueprint album.
One big critique of Auto-Tune is that it kills emotion by making pitch too perfect.
You can't say this about 808s and Heartbreaks. The album sounds like nails on a chalkboard. And it's supposed to. The album was created in the context of him breaking up with his fiance and his mother dying.
You can call Kanye West a lot of things, but disingenuous is not one of them. The use of Auto-Tune wasn't meant to be disingenuous in this one particular case.
(I can't believe I just deconstructed a Kanye West album on Hacker News.)
It's an interesting sound, it's just overused recently. There's basically two ways to use Auto-Tune: the intended way, cleaning up the pitch of vocals; and as a deliberate distortion effect, a la T-Pain / Kanye's recent songs. The latter produces a very distinct sound that gets old, fast.
Thing is, people say it gets old because they think that all voices filtered through Auto-Tune sound the same, but that's not true. Kanye's voice through Auto-Tune sounds a lot different than T-Pain's, and you have to be talented to make it sound good. Can it be a cheesy effect? Absolutely. But if tuned correctly, can really add a cold, robotic color to a track.
Personally, I love it. Kanye uses differently than T-Pain and they are very distinct styles I enjoy.
It's a damn fun thing to play around with, too. :P
It entered my top 5 favorite rap album list, and I listen to a lot of rap. Maybe even number 1.
It is like a Pink Floyd album in terms of continual flow and quality, and I don't say that lightly.
I listened to his new album once and never again. It is great in terms of style, but trashed with the voice effects and over the top attempt at being 80's.
The Stripes have a whole package, from their brother/sister husband/wife pairing, to the goth vibe, to the artsy videos. Somehow they hit on something that people like, even if it's out of tune.
Without Autocorrelation there would be no Auto Tune. Without Auto Tune we wouldn't have to suffer the music of Britney Spears.
Andy Hildebrand.. you've just made my list sir.
Funny thing was, the band was not playing. Everything was tracked on 2 macs run by a chubby guy in a phillies hat on the side of the stage.
I'd argue the majority of people who go to these shows have no clue and will gladly pay their $50 just to see famous people and tell their friends.
Music was great in the past-time because radio was the mass-medium and sound doesn't discriminate against physical characteristics that would otherwise make one unattractive for marketing.
This is Ebert's review of Touch the Sound, which is a documentary about a deaf percussionist.
So -- looking at this and Melodyne (see other comment) let's extrapolate to see where the technology is heading.
It's Guitar Hero, except for real guitars. You and your friends play (hack) as best you can hit songs, along with vocals. The computer "adjusts" both the instrument and vocal performances to put you on-time and on-key.
Heck, I'd pay money for that. It'd be awesome.
I'm willing to bet you've heard it used both ways, and on the first ones you've thought 'obvious and atrocious,' and on the others you haven't noticed it at all.