Death Cab For Cutie

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.