Death Cab & Jay-Z have it right!
Auto Tune pisses me off. Amazing technological developments & creative reasoning aside, I am so grossly offended by this tool. Not only is it totally overused but it contributes to an industry standard of overly processed and affected recordings that are not a representation of the truth. I thought part of the beauty of music was all the imperfections? When did we become more attracted to an imitation of a human being singing? Worse, auto tune is now used in live shows as well, which begs the question, when did we stop getting excited about the live experience? Why are we more interested in what could be likened to cardboard cut outs instead of the real thing?
The thing is, I really care about singing. Songwriting too, but singing was always my first love. I’m not a fan of ill placed vocal calisthenics but I do appreciate great singers who can SANG if you will. In other words, people who have developed their instrument enough that they can freely express themselves without physical or psychological hindrance. Getting to that point is a life long practice. From developing the connection between one’s voice and diaphragm, to resonance balance and learning the proper use of vocal effects, and so on. Getting to a place where you can do all of that effortlessly while still being accurate with the music your singing is truly an art form. To be clear, I’m not saying that everyone who hasn’t developed their voice sucks, nor that I haven’t been a fan of some artists that have probably used auto tune, but for the people who give a s$%^ about capturing a great vocal performance, auto tune is annoying. It implies that perfection (whatever that even means) is the preference and I just don’t buy that. Perfection is boring and after a brief flirtation of my own with auto tune, I just couldn’t see myself recording a record and then being like “oh that one note is slightly pitchy, let’s go in and fix it.” F$%^ that! It’s the HUMAN instrument! It’s so cool that the voice can even do this sort of thing!
I’d like to add that some of my favorite singer-songwriters are vocally limited in terms of mind/voice/body connection, but it doesn’t matter because their songs transcend that. In their recordings you’ll hear occasional pitchy moments or wavering, but it doesn’t matter because there is an undeniable beauty that can be heard when the music is coming from an honest place.
From the deft vocal styling of people like Ella Fitzgerald to the haunting pipes of Janis Joplin to the soaring vocals of Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie), they all share something in common. They’re emotions are expelled when they sing so that we can feel the pain and joy in the sounds of their voices. Some of it comes out clean and some of it comes out messy. Auto tune would take all that away, ship our poor little recording to post production for whatever other effects et voila, pancake! Well kind of…my blog post was getting long.
Check out Spin magazine’s interview with Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard:
Death Cab Wage War Against Auto-Tune
Jay-Z’s Death of Auto Tune video
I SO agree with you on this one
well said. i guess maybe autotune is part the entire “artform”, but art shouldn’t be perfect..There could be some “beauty” in pitch correction and the way the voice shifts and modulates electronically that way but there’s too much abuse of it in pop, it sometimes makes me cringe :s
Thanks Florence and yeah, I couldn’t agree more. My main issue is with people who use it purely for pitch perfection.
Sociologically speaking, I wonder how the use of pitch correction will culminate in, say, 30 years from now. Pending that pitch correction continues to be used for some time, I wonder if we’ll become a culture of adults and children who think to themselves “I can’t sing” because we’re so used to hearing the human voice through pitch correction without even realizing it. In turn, could that turn us into a group of people who are too scared to sing because we won’t, that is, we CAN’T sound like people do when Autotune is implemented? I wonder what ramifications that might have in terms of simple things like singing with one’s family or one’s friends for fun? And how perhaps this fear might prevent us from the great release that can come from singing? All of a sudden every 4 year old I know is stressed out of his mind and reading the business section in between mocha lattes. Trust me. It could happen.
Agreed! My only hope is that pitch correction is a fad that will eventually die down. Perhaps that’s wishful thinking though and eventually scientists will spend their time looking at a petri dish trying to figure out how to spawn little auto tune babies.
4 year olds reading the biz sec while sipping lattes might be a little sad, but it’s also effing hilarious
Thanks Erica! I can always count on your awesome sense of humor.
Joking aside though, there are some young people already super insecure about singing for the simple pleasure of it and that really gets my goat. Television culture propagates the idea that you should only sing if you have “a nice voice” and can “sing in key” and that if you don’t have those things you should lower your head in shame and expect to be ridiculed. That is just ridiculous. Expressing oneself through song is as old as freakin’ time.
To be fair, I can sometimes be one of those people who is too scared to sing for fear that it won’t be perfect, and that gets in the way of the release that comes with it, but I’m working on it. Also, I think I tried reading Sartre at age 11 so really, I shouldn’t judge
haha, fair enough!
It makes me sad that people have been encouraged to think that the only reason they should sing is if they can measure up to some arbitrary standard that doesn’t even make sense.
What then, in your mind, is the most important reason to sing? There’s surely more than one of course, but for you…what’s the best thing about it for you?
It’s the closest thing I have to therapy. heh
Nicely put, as always! I 100% agree with you on this topic. Great points. You got me thinking, it’s so true about this whole auto tune need for “perfection” thing thats going on nowadays. Seriously what is perfection? Everyone sounding a specific way? What would the world be like if we all just sounded the same? Boring indeed. To me when I hear auto tune in action I find everyone sounds like T-pain lol.