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Comment by cheschire | Hacker News Reader

I could see this being used in the same way that auto-tune type effects are added to singers voices. The editing of music videos could include a tool like this to make sure all of the dancers behind the main one are moving just right.

And just like auto-tuned voices, it will come off as janky and fake.

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The autotune you refer to as "janky and fake" is when autotune is used with intention to create that sound as an artistic syle. Autotune is used across most pop (and other) music, but in such a way that that you never realise it is there.

It is similar to special effects. People complain about how bad and fake they look, but this is only for the effects that are bad enough that they are noticible. People don't realise the sheer amount of special effects being used in scenes they never realise they are being used for.

But similarly, it could be used as a "janky and fake" artistic syle. Because no one's ever seen it before, it will look wrong in unexpected ways, and therefore somewhat fascinating.

Stylus noise, fret noise and mp3 compression artefacts are other "mistakes" deliberately introduced.

You just described T-Pain’s reasoning for using auto tune (he doesn’t actually need it but instead uses it stylistically).

I think you’re onto something here as well about how it may well get adopted as a ‘style’ in someone’s music video.

It is still noticeable in normal performances. You can hear unnatural overtones from autotune used as intended. Even more so when supposed singers use it live and have to stay glued to their mic to isolate any outside noise.

Interesting! Do you have examples where it is possible to hear these unnatural overtones?

Pick up any modern pop record. Some are worse than others, but all are auto tuned.

Just Google worst auto-tune for examples, because it's so common now, most people don't notice it. Here's a list of some examples:

http://www.hometracked.com/2008/02/05/auto-tune-abuse-in-pop...

Also, if you're not really musical you might have a hard time picking it out. I found that as soon as I learnt an instrument, songs suddenly became layered and I could pick out and distinguish different instruments, and notice mistakes.

I'm pretty sure many of those examples are purposeful uses of autotune for effect

I've played piano and sung for most of my life, but I wouldn't have recognized many of these if you hadn't pointed them out, though I do recognize many structures and mistakes in music.

It seems to be more about recognizing the small glitches, rather than something involving overtones, which I would really have liked to learn more about how to recognize them. I have long found that autotuned singing sounds a bit more "metallic" to me.

Thanks anyway, the sound samples are useful in recognizing it better.

I don't think T-Pain is trying to sneak autotune past anyone...

It's easier to hear in modern country music because the vocals are still trying to sound natural. Male singers are more obvious.

There is nothing "artistic" in overusing autotune. It is just a tool to "mask" that that person can`t really sing at all and is overused in popular/commercial genres where there is an abundance of untalented musicians. I can`t imagine anyone saying that obvious autotuned songs sound good.

I don't understand this attitude at all. So something that doesn't seem artistic to you simply isn't artistic for anybody else because you decided that it isn't? Autotune is just another processing like reverb, delay, whatever. You think they didn't use any processing on Beatles' records? You think non-autotuned singers don't use a TC-helicon or whatever when they're performing live?

Autotuned songs can sound good, just as non-autotuned songs can sound bad. I'm as much a music elitist as anybody, but thinking that you have the one true objective idea of what music sounds good or bad is just childish.

There's a difference between using it deliberately and using it because the singer can't sing.

I wonder if in 20 years time it will sound incredibly dated, much like 80s synths do today.

I'm not particularly against auto tune and ultimately most people don't even notice it being used, but I do sort of understand where the GP is coming from.

If your idol can't actually sing, and you saw them live and it's rubbish, wouldn't you feel cheated?

Sure, I agree with you for the most part. Except that if you're going to see one of these autotune singers live with the hope that they're able to sound exactly like the record then you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Would you feel cheated if you found out that the magic show you went to in Vegas was just sleight-of-hand and trickery? :)

I personally dislike it too, but I'm not going to say it's not artistic, because to someone else it might be. People get so caught up and passionate with their art of choice that they sometimes forget that it's all just entertainment in the end. Whether it be Hillary Hahn or some teenager making beats in Ableton and throwing in the stock vocal effect.

About 80s synths, I think a lot of us, or at least I personally associate that cheesy sound with mass-produced digital synths put out by Yamaha, Roland etc. It's all variety and I love it. My dad still has a DX7 and a D-50 that I'm hoping to inherit.

A lot of people can't tell that someone's auto-tuned. They're not aware enough.

Like most people wouldn't even realise there's a bass line vs a guitar.

As for 80s synths, in my opinion there are a lot of otherwise great songs that are ruined by those travesties. I totally appreciate they were breaking new ground, but remastering some of those tracks with modern synths would make the songs sound a lot better.

The Killers, and many other tremendously popular (and talented) bands that have intentionally replicated the overproduced 80s sound, would like a word with you

>I can't imagine anyone saying that obvious autotuned songs sound good.

Well just look at the status quo of popular rap music then - tons of artists are aiming for the obvious autotune style and tons of people are listening to it (so I assume they think it sounds good). I'm not sure what you mean by "artistic", but it's definitely a sound people try to achieve on purpose in their music, so I think it does deserve some recognition as "art".

T-Pain is a great singer, and I'm pretty sure he's the first person a lot of people think about when they think about autotune.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIjXUg1s5gc

Let me introduce you to Bon Iver's "22, A Million"

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN61gg9VNXPomdZu0UY_w...

Kanye West used autotune to great effect in 808s and Heartbreak, one of the seminal albums of this century

Very true about using it to great effect in 808s and Heartbreak! I remember hearing one of those tracks and finding it fairly nice to listen to. Then I heard him live on SNL and his singing voice was close to non-existent.

No-one ever says Cher can't sing, but her 'Believe' song also uses Autotune in a very distinct way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Uu3kCEEc98

Practically all singers use "pitch correction", which is essentially "autotune that's not done for artistic effect".

If done properly, it's not really janky or fake sounding at all.

Maybe for recorded mainstream pop music that is true, but we can tell because the performance then sounds bowdlerised and dull.

It can't really help with a live performance and a for a good singer, recording multiple takes is going to be faster/more economical, punching in/out is so easy and with modern digital DAW's like ProTools (which does this by default) it keeps all your takes for you anyway - no need to waste another track on your 24 track tape or tape over the previous one.

Here's another viewpoint:

https://www.quora.com/Do-all-most-singers-use-pitch-correcti...

Fantastic vocal performances were captured all throughout the last century without the parachute of pitch correction/autotune. I'd rather listen to an imperfect take with flaws than to a machine assisted correction any day. Each to their own I guess.

I don't think it's always the case that you -can- tell. I think it falls nearly into 'Rumsfeld classification':

Known Knowns - done for the clear effect, which is audible by everyone (as popularised, but not invented by Cher, T-Pain, etc).

Known Unknowns - ones where most people wouldn't notice, but if you've listened to autotune a lot you'd swear it's been done (sustained notes with vibrato added seem to be clear contenders here to me, such as one in 'Angels' by Robbie Williams

Unknown Unknowns - There are lots of recordings I've worked on for people (mixing, mostly) where the vocal sounds perfect, and it's actually been autotuned/processed. Subtly, but still processed. I only know this because the person who's done it has confirmed it. In the context of a mix there's little evidence, if any at all. And if you listen to backing vocals of the last decade versus BVs from say 30 years ago, you really hear the difference - not because modern ones necessarily sound like they've been worked on, but because the old ones sound just a little bit out of tune in comparison.

I've done work on singers' recordings where I've fixed the pitch and they haven't even noticed it on their own voice, in isolation (which really is the sound everyone knows best). If done well (and appropriately), it doesn't turn it into awful processed rubbish, it can tweak an otherwise brilliant performance and make it near-perfect. I say this as a recording engineer who loves the sound of a band playing together, and would always sacrifice separation / absolute recording quality for the communication and feel that you get with a live band playing together how they normally do - I wouldn't sacrifice personality for pitch, but I think you can improve on nearly everyone's performance in some places.

Having said that, the flip side of this is that people think 'they can fix that in the mix' when they've not given a great performance... and that's never the case!

> it can tweak an otherwise brilliant performance and make it near-perfect

That's what I'm getting at - "perfect" is something that the human voice does so infrequently on its own so when we hear the "perfect" performance, we know it's been doctored.

As a point of reference, I look back at something like the Boswell sisters. Some of their early stuff was recorded in mono direct to wax disc but they were so skilled, well rehearsed and sung as a unit so closely bonded that the resulting sound is fantastic despite the primitive technology. The three individual voices aren't even recorded to seperate tracks since multitracking wasn't invented then.

Granted you can't really draw a direct comparison between that and Robbie Williams, Cher or T-Pain, but I know which I'd rather listen to any day. There are a lot of singers I've seen live and talked to over the years who wouldn't be caught dead touching up their stuff, or letting an engineer/producer do it behind their back - even if it meant missing out on a commercial recording contract.

I do appreciate where you're coming from though. I'm a little old fashioned I guess in that sometimes the mistakes that made it through improve the performance in my mind. It reminds you that the performers are human.

Vocal perfection is about attitude and projection, not pitch.

Autotune is orthogonal to creating that perfection. If someone has it Autotune won't take it away, no matter how obviously it's used.

If someone doesn't have it, Autotune won't give it to them.

I agree with all your points. I think the obsession with completely perfect vocal performance has gone too far for my personal taste. Modern mainstream pop records have a combination of too many takes spliced together for one "perfect" take, together with minor correction of the odd note here and there and the end-to-end result is "too perfect" for my old ears. There's no mistakes or personality in many of these records and it sounds boring to me. That's all. I'm not claiming to have the only valid opinion on the matter, or that all modern music is like that, and I also know I'm also not alone in my thinking and taste.

As someone who likes to write and produce songs but can't sing, I'd say that auto-tune and pitch correction are a Godsend. It means I can try out new ideas without having to rely on a vocalist.

Modern production tools have mostly eliminated the need to work with a band. I can create music that I want to create with complete artistic freedom. Auto-tune is just another step in that direction.

I think you make a good point. I can't sing well either and I love to track multiple instruments in my home studio, and I couldn't do that nearly as well without modern technology.

I guess I'd rather listen back to my crappy vocals and think hard about what I didn't like about them though, and work on improving that rather than try to make it something it's not with pitch correction. But everyone has a different way of working that works for them I suppose, which is why I ended my original comment with "each to their own".

Except you have no idea how any of those "fantastic vocal performances" were processed. Vocal effects go back a good 50 years.

Indeed, in terms of digital effects. And obviously there was experimentation with analog processing earlier than that, John Lennon's use of ADT on his vocals with the Beatles comes to mind and of course other analog effects like reverb go back to the 1940's. But I gave an example going back to the 1930's in my other comment above. The Boswells were one the biggest recording act in the world in the early 1930's and they didn't need any of that stuff.

Of course musicians have been able to splice their parts together since multitrack came into wide usage, eg. the guitar solo in Stairway to Heaven. But I kind of feel like use of digital correction is a bit overdone right now.

I appreciate I'm stepping into mostly subjective territory here though. It's like if somebody said to Hendrix, "hey Jimi, tune your guitar man". Or told Knopfler to stop playing dead notes, or Slash to stop missing notes altogether while not jumping off a drum riser. They could do those things but then to me it wouldn't feel like them.

I don't think I'm the only person who feels this way, but it's definitely personal & subjective.

Oh I agree. I think it's possible to dislike or even hate all the over-processed and over-produced commercial music that's been coming out for the last 2-3 decades while at the same time accepting that there are others out there who might genuinely like that kind of music.

I definitely understand your point about Hendrix, Knopfler and Slash. There's something beautiful about virtuoso playing that still sounds "raw", you know what I mean? I grew up obsessed with shred guitar, and there was a lot of that in the 80s/90s. There are younger guitar players on youtube these days who are miles ahead in terms of technical proficiency and production/effects but some of that authenticity is lost.

I recently saw a video of Ritchie Blackmore talking about Satriani's playing and how it's almost too technically perfect and loses some of the soul. I tend to agree. I have great respect for both of them though.

I've always felt that way about Satriani and Vai to a lesser degree too. It's funny how specific we can be about what we like and don't like. Here I am extolling the virtues of sloppy or "more natural" singing and playing, but I can't listen to 90% of punk music for more than a few minutes.

I feel the same about Vai also! Now imagine a Bob Dylan with a technically-brilliant voice that's able to sing in tune. Would people feel differently about him? :)

Recording is not the problem. Cutting and splicing the best bits of all those recordings is very labor intensive.

.. and depending on the singer, can be nigh on impossible. Some are incredibly consistent in terms of timing and phrasing (making editing easy), while with others each one is unique, and only large sections can be used with each other.

I want to plug Jacob Collier though, who doesn't use pitch correction because it's less in tune than where he wants to place the notes naturally, up or down a few cents depending on the note's relationship to the prevailing chord.

He's a maestro, love his iharmu vids especially

Yeah, I suspect the closer you are to the optimal voice/movement the better the effect is.

Good parralel.

And the same way some song makers have used autotune to adjust synthetic voices like Hatsune Miku’s, would this have any use as an external filter to smooth out synthethized videos ?

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