It has infected nearly every genre of music. Oh what horrors man hath wrought.


Genocide, pestilence, famine, auto-tune. Clearly these are the end of days.

Yes. 100 times YES.

12 to 15 years ago was the first time I heard it. I was meeting up with some friends at a winery which had live music and food on Saturday nights. My friend's friend was running the sound board and I commented to him how good the female singer's voice was. He grinned and handed me the headset to listed to her preprocessed voice. Nails on a chalkboard.

I can't imagine how good it is now.

Long story but interesting nonetheless-

Less Than Jake is a band I like. Ska band been around since the 90s. One of the guys in the band has a podcast and his thing is to have other artists on to discuss the story behind one of their songs. One of the episodes was a bandmate and they discussed how one of their albums released in 1998 was probably one of the first to use both auto tune and ProTools. They discussed how auto tune was just used to touch up the horns here and there and told the backstory of the software- that it was adapted from software used by oil companies to do sonic testing of potential oil wells.

And then Cher discovered it.

“Believe” (1998) by Cher is the first time I remember hearing Autotune used. Yeah, it should be illegal.

quote:

Originally posted by PowerSurge:
“Believe” (1998) by Cher is the first time I remember hearing Autotune used. Yeah, it should be illegal.

I was going to point this out to tatortodd, but yes, this is the song that kicked off that fucking craze.

So the problem is not necessarily autotune. Autotune is an effect in a program called Pro Tools, and pretty much everything you've heard on the radio since the 90's has been mastered in this program and a little bit of autotune has been applied to vocals and instruments in ways you'd never believe or notice. The problem is, you can set the modulation so that instead of a smooth curve, there's hard jumps to pitch, hence the robo-warbling.

Yes, I would like to see this trend finally die, more than twenty years in.

Here's an article that goes into more depth about it:
https://ew.com/music/2018/10/2...nniversary-autotune/

And I thought this was going to be about the card game.

This subject came up the other day with a friend who sings in our choir. I mentioned true-pitch software to make a non-singer a singer. She’d never heard of it. I guess most people haven’t

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mcrimm,

Well, before "Believe" and all the copycats that came after, the only people who really even knew that effect was a thing were people who were recording and mixing their own music, or studio professionals. I'm not surprised a choir singer doesn't know what autotune is.

Honestly if they just used it to make singers sound better I'd be fine with it. Sadly they do not.

98+% of Autotune use goes completely unnoticed, doing what it's intended to do.

Almost nothing released today doesn't use some amount of it, in all popular/mass market genres at least.

The 2% or so that everyone is tired of is just one way to abuse Autotune for that specific effect.

Annoying people since 1998, as stated.

It was cool for 5mins, back then.

So I’m tone deaf, or something like that. I love music. I can’t imagine a day without it. But until this thread, I had no idea this type if thing existed. I had to listen to Believe to hear what you guys were talking about. It wasn’t an instant “oh I see”, but I finally picked up on the robot sound.

To this point, I live to sing. I really love to sing. But I am awful. It’s not like I really suck. Really sucking would be a million times better than my monotone flat speaking voice belting out lyrics. However I didn’t know this until I was about 25.

I lived in Dallas and was at a club on a Friday night. In the restroom using a urinal and singing along with the guy playing live. This other guy a couple stalls away asked if I was a singer. Half buzzed I told him yeah. He gave me a number and said his band was auditioning for a singer and he would like me to come by and try out. I was stoked!

I get over there, meet all the guys and they are ready to jam. They give me a mic and the first song is Knocking in heaven’s door. I know the lyrics and I’m ready to go. “Mama take this badge from me”...

We all look at each other with a complete look of WTF, me included. It was so bad, I mean so bad that everyone was shocked. I kept going and it was terrible. Hearing myself on a monitor, and not through my own bones, and reflection from the shower wall or car windshield, along with the original artist. Oh my God, I was bad.

When the song was over it was silent. I was the first to break the silence and say “holy shit, I’m fucking terrible!” Everyone laughed, agreed, gave me props for singing the whole song knowing I was awful. The band mates flipped the guitarist guy shit for bringing me in to audition. They asked me to stay and sing the rest of the jam session as it’s better to jam with a terrible vocalist than with none (not sure I believe that), so I finished the session. Probably 15 or so songs that could have been sung better by a parrot. After that, with the exception of one Karaoke song, I have and will never sing where anyone else can hear me.

I would be quite interested to hear what auto tune could do for me.

quote:

Originally posted by mcrimm:
This subject came you the other day with a friend who sings in our choir. I mentioned true-pitch software to make a non-singer a singer. She’d never heard of it. I guess most people haven’t

I've never heard of it but then I'm not a musician or audiophile. I do have 2 different radios playing all day long, though.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeNH:
Long story but interesting nonetheless-

Less Than Jake is a band I like. Ska band been around since the 90s. One of the guys in the band has a podcast and his thing is to have other artists on to discuss the story behind one of their songs. One of the episodes was a bandmate and they discussed how one of their albums released in 1998 was probably one of the first to use both auto tune and ProTools. They discussed how auto tune was just used to touch up the horns here and there and told the backstory of the software- that it was adapted from software used by oil companies to do sonic testing of potential oil wells.

And then Cher discovered it.

Nice to see a fellow LTJ/ska fan here! I listened to that same podcast, what I found really cool was how Chris said it forced him to become a better performer on stage because he wanted to recreate the harmonies between him and Roger from the studio. I haven't seen them in person but watching videos they do sound great live.

When I hear about autotune I can't help but think of the South Park episode where Randy Marsh is actually Lorde.

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
...
I would be quite interested to hear what auto tune could do for me.

"Put the crack pipe down and slowly walk away" LOL You can't be as bad as I am!

I used to wish I could sing.
Now I wish you could.

quote:

Originally posted by cne32507:

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
...
I would be quite interested to hear what auto tune could do for me.

"Put the crack pipe down and slowly walk away" LOL You can't be as bad as I am!

Oh, you have no idea. I’ll bad karaoke you to death, son. I’m the emperor of shit singing.

Let’s YouTube this shit. I’ll do my best to a song of my choice. You do yours.

Post the videos here for everyone to laugh at?

You down bro?

Tonight I was digitizing some old cassettes and found one of a vocal lesson from the 1980’s. I was astonished at how bad I sounded.
Must have improved since or they wouldn’t have let me in my current choir.

I grew up in the time before auto-tune. In listening to the bands that I like (Renaissance and ELP to name two of many)I reached the conclusion that was a great time in music. Technology had advanced the instruments and talented musicians exploited the new capabilities. Voice processing was not a thing.

We had this

Recording Engineers were doing analog Pitch Correction as early as the 1940s (variable tape speed).

This was widespread by the 60s and 70s.

And there were digital Pitch Correction solitions from Eventide as early as the mid-70s.

Modern software like Autotune just makes it easier, less expensive, and in the hands of most anyone.