autotune. please don't

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
I really like it. I wish everyone did it in real life. I hated that period in RnB when they were all singing flat just to show they could, and am really glad it came along.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
when was the flat period in R&B? i hated that period too but i dont know if it was to show they could 'do' that.

one good thing that could come out of autotune is that there might just be more effects on vocals in general, not just AT.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
when was the flat period in R&B? i hated that period too but i dont know if it was to show they could 'do' that.

one good thing that could come out of autotune is that there might just be more effects on vocals in general, not just AT.

Erm, post-'no scrubs'? I'm not sure when it started or who did it first but it was from the mid-nineties onwards, and became a particular style, which has in some weird way mutated into autotune, it's the flat notes that get twisted the most in the program, no? You could see it as cause and effect in some way.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
To me the effect's like pop stars being violently "airbrushed" in Photoshop. Completely hairless, buffed faces all kinda bronze looking (regardless of original skin colour). Same kind of bizzo with technology being applied to suppressing human character, very cyberpunky and stuff.

fucking t pain.
The astounding thing about T Pain and the follow-on effect (pun definitely not intended) is that it marks about the third or fourth resurgence of that "Cher effect". I remember it seeming in danger of being played out around the time of Daft Punk's 'One More Time'...

Nowadays I can't tell who's trying to use it explicitly in the above fashion and who's trying to use it in a supposedly natural-sounding, "corrective" way. The byproduct of all the explicitly artificial-sounding stuff is that it's trained our ears to hear the more subtle stuff, IME.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
i dont exactly WANT more effects on vocals, but if people are going to go nuts with autotune then might as well try out some other ones too. could be interesting.

or very annoying.

strangely i find the use of AT more bearable on choruses, but when i hear it on verses too i think its just wrong. like that kanye and jeezy single, if all the verses had it it would be better, but only kanye has it.

then again, having entire songs autotuned right the way through... :eek:

weirder tho is when you hear it on supposedly hard sounding songs, like i heard it on some shitty g unit one and it just sounds a bit wrong. same when i heard it on a dancehall track (mavado i think). its a bit disconcerting. :confused:
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
in respect to it being disconcerting... thats something I always appreciate.

i mean if modern music is painstakingly constructed, anything that makes that evident has at least an ounce of honesty, even if its merely aping a popular trend or pretending to be street, whatever that means any more.
 

SIZZLE

gasoline for haters
I love me some autotune. It's like the drum machine of vocals. Cheap, inhuman and soulless but allowing for a whole lot of musical possibilities never imagined.

Let me put it this way. Working with a singer who CAN sing, with Autotune there suddenly opens up a whole new range of melodic possibilities that weren't there before. Just like samplers and computer sequencing made the possibility of fast repetitive beats no drummer could maintain a reality.

Listen to someone like Busy Signal or Munga and their use of it. They're using it to write these crazy falsetto lines that no adult male singer could hit or maintain but become possible through autotune. It's broadening musical possibility. Also by giving better pitch to the people who can't sing properly (in a naturalistic style) I think we will be exposed to a whole new range of singers and singing possibilities, harmonies etc that will be very interesting.

As much as people complain about how 'anyone can sing through it' you'll quickly learn that's not the case if you try. You still need to be able to create a good melody line and sing in time to make it work. It turns the voice into something more like a synth which you still need to be able to write great lines on to make it work.

Although the old people who grew up in the era where technical ability was the main judge of musicality will and do hate it the kids love it and my guess is we're just seeing the start of what it'll do.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
^that's one argument. The other is that it sounds like shit and is slapped on records in order to sound of the moment. Have we learnt nothing from idm's mid to late 90s excesses?
 
christ, i think i'm actually starting to like this autotune one. 'she glows', first on his myspace player, check it.

I think you might be in the minority on this one mate.
That chorus is just painful.

September 1 freestyle is funnier. g g g g. Still not brilliant though.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
christ, i think i'm actually starting to like this autotune one. 'she glows', first on his myspace player, check it.

mad words- it just strips all the personality out of his voice and makes him sound like some sort of r'n'b pop boy. i can't even listen to what he's saying- my brain just focuses on the modulation of the software.
 

mos dan

fact music
i know i should hate it probably lol.

makes him sound like some sort of r'n'b pop boy.

i don't have a problem with this, i like his rnb sweetboy tunes just as much as nightbus dubplate or what have you.

also feeling his usual trick of mixing random girl talk with utter digressions into what it's like being wiley:

"if i didn't have another hit song the label would've probably shelved me / in this current climate i can tell you that ain't healthy" - interestingly shows his sensitivity to how much his fans hate 'summertime'.

i'm quite happy with this digression, as long as it's a one-off.
 
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