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Comment by MichailP | Hacker News Reader

Are there some examples of Auto-Tune used with more subtle settings? Famous Cher song used it at setting 0, robotic sounding one, but there are 10 more to go, and they are increasingly more subtle.

Also related to this, at least I think, is the issue of turning recording into midi or sheet music. Now that would be a killer app... There is some good software out there, such as Melodyne, but it requires a lot of manual work and tweaking.

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It's been years since I've done music recording as a hobby so someone correct me if I'm wrong -- you can be guaranteed that almost all popular music is pitch corrected in some way. There's Autotune and then there are other ways of pitch correction as well -- Melodyne allows you to manually adjust pitch at a microscopic level. I was able to use Melodyne to perform manual pitch correction that sounded far more "natural" and non-exact than auto-tune.

Of course a lot of folks cannot tell the difference, but to me it's night and day. I couldn't stand Glee for instance because of how auto-tuned the voices were.

> I couldn't stand Glee for instance because of how auto-tuned the voices were.

This was pretty obnoxious when I noticed it; I don't mind if they use auto-tune for a one-off musical episode of a show, but for a show where every episode is a musical to use it (and not very subtly) was very off putting.

I have a little experience with the recording process, having been involved in the production of a contemporary a cappella album, and I think most people wouldn't believe how much stuff is auto-tuned. To my ear, if you listen to something like the Pitch Perfect soundtrack, a lot of it sounds quite obviously pitch corrected, but I will play it to musical friends and they are often surprised when I tell them there's some serious auto-tune going on.

Outside of the a cappella domain, I believe it's pretty prominent in most pop music, but my understanding is that the technology's gotten to the point where 95% of the time you can't tell apart machine correction from good tuning of the vocalist.

It's like CGI in movies - when it's done well you don't realize that it's being done at all.

And like CGI in movies, you get the best results when the source material only needs slight enhancements.

True. Inserting anything that doesn't exist in the first place, like a plane, train, animal, or monster is incredibly jarring for even the most casual movie watcher. It's a bit sad that we can't create convincing things out of thin air using CGI in 2017.

An odd source for related content, but you reminded me of this which I saw a few months ago: https://imgur.com/gallery/BdfNEko

Just about all childrens' shows with singing use it, I think. Some on harsher, obnoxious settings (Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood), some still very noticeable but toned down a bit (MLP). Someone could probably put together a spectrum of auto-tune settings samples from such shows.

I hate it because it's throwing off kids' sense of what a natural human singing voice sounds like. It's photoshop for the voice and is similarly damaging to one's image of self and of others.

Steven Universe isn't strictly a kids' show, but it has some noticeable imperfections in many songs which I think adds a sense of honesty without hurting the performances. I hate the perfection in Daniel Tiger songs, they will contribute to a generation of kids that cannot stand the sound of their own voices.

Here is Billy Joel using Auto-Tune live in 2007, with overly aggressive settings:

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmhTmKD6rXc

Same man, same song, in 1978, 1986, and 2000:

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcLV6gE6THg [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwwu5vYSShY [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQkXdRKMB9c

And now in 2015:

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovGwkScJRZ4

Now, while it's possible that he simply became a better singer between 2007 and 2015, subtler auto-tuning of the type conventionally used in pop production generally just makes the voice sound cleaner, thicker, more polished. Note that his style has also changed to favor staccato phrasing so as to limit stairstepping artifacts.

Let's all chip together and buy Meat Loaf a copy of Auto-Tune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0L-D6zj5U1g

> makes the voice sound cleaner, thicker, more polished

I think here you may be confusing Auto-tune with "modern" voice processing, which while happened together are quite different. Modern pop singers are overdubbed ridiculously with added distorsion, resulting in a "massive" (and slightly "robotic") lead voice.

Edit: You can clearly hear this "saturation" in the song Hello by Adele (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQHsXMglC9A), especially in the chorus. Compare with her natural voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yL7VP4-kP4

Maybe not subtle, but brilliant:

Songify / Auto-Tune The News / Schmoyoho: https://www.youtube.com/user/schmoyoho

No Fair - Trump ft. Eric & Don Jr. | Songify This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NkNcwzGCfQ

Obama Mic Drop: 1999: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbqtAuT4zbk

This bit from the new Beauty And The Beast film sounds like Auto-Tune in a noticeable way to me: https://youtu.be/6tMoE8siNo8?t=166

I'll try to walk you through what I'm actually hearing that makes me think there's Auto-Tune there:

- 2:50: Subtle, but as the first "oh" starts, it sounds like it quickly jumps from a slightly lower note to the correct one.

- 2:58: The word "part" has a classic Auto-Tune sound. The real recording probably went slightly off pitch as the note was held and Auto-Tune has made it perfect and a little robotic.

- 3:07: "Where" has a similar sort of robotic pitch slide sound as it starts as the "oh" did earlier.

- 3:13: "Discover" has a sort of a glitch in the middle as Auto-Tune tries to track across the 'k' sound in the middle of the word.

As someone else already said, songs in TV show Glee used it all the time in a fairly obvious (but still subtle compared to intentionally sounding Auto-Tuned) way.

I suspect this is one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYmn4E-kPSo

The lead singer's voice just sounds so thin, and unnaturally on-key (no vibrato).

I think you'd be hard-pressed to find verifiable examples because those higher settings are probably mostly used to cover up poor singing, and so nobody involved is going to volunteer that information.

This is definitely auto-tuned, and I would guess that 90% of auto-tune goes unnoticed as it can be applied a lot more subtly than this.

As someone who isn't a fan of vibrato, I've always suspected that some singers use it strategically to cover up pitch issues.

FWIW, I don't think modern auto-tune plugins have a problem pitch correcting singers using vibrato.

Melondyne is great with this. Complete lack of vibrato is usually an obvious sign.

I think auto-tuners get a bad rap. As an amateur musician, subtle corrections in post-production can save me days of recording to get the right take.

I didn’t listen to much of this, but the two seconds I heard “I guess it’s all the..” there’s definitely clear artifacting from either auto-tune or compression on the word “all”. And I’m listening on an iPhone.

Not a pro editor, but I know my shit.

Bon Iver uses it rather artfully in several of his tracks.

Ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZYVJlhnqxQ

Yeah, I've used it on "live" recordings with saxophone* to cut out the number of overdubs necessary. On subtle settings, it's impossible to hear the effect of it.

*Sax was the only non-fretted/pitched instrument in that recording.

One-handed Backhand Boys! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1b9INDFYfI

Pretty much anything by "Owl City" is fairly heavily autotuned, but not into Cher/T-Pain territory.

Technically not Auto-Tune, that's a competing product called Melodyne.

I stand corrected. Are there any fundamental differences?

The interface is different with some different parameters. I don't know how the actual mathematics involved compares, but the sounds you'll get out of it are a little different. It's still a good option to listen to to hear what pitch correction on vocals might sound like in general.

Melodyne is way more advanced : you can isolate individual notes and choose the pitch yourself, whereas with auto-tune you choose a scale and it automatically correct to the nearest note. See this link posted in another comment : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FScFKuXXM0

Lol, obviously didn’t read the article which had an entire section dedicated to how auto-tune has such a successful brand that it’s used in speech the same as Kleenex, Google, etc

I figured whether it was meant in a genericized way or not, it's still useful to point out the specific product used to someone who's wanting to hear what it sounds like, since they each have their own sound to some extent.

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