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Comment by andrewzah | Hacker News Reader

Autotune and melodyne are just standard now. Good usage is not really detectable. What people forget to note is that you still need to know how to sing in the first place. Autotune plugins can only do so much...

These plugins really exist to save time for large studios, not make bad musicians better. Time is money for studios, so they don't want to waste it on multiple retakes when someone can be close enough to make small fixes with melodyne. For session work, market effects still pressure people to, well, not make mistakes like that. A great singer is still going to be in higher demand than a decent one, because then the studios don't have to spend much time at all fixing their vocals.

Also, -noticeable- autotune can be desired. It's a musical choice. In that sense it's no different than using a vocoder, etc. I personally do not like it but that's the beauty of music; there's something for everyone.

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I used to not like autotune at all in music, but then I think I heard an interview with Grimes (?) who basically said (paraphrasing) "oh, I love autotune. Yes it's artificial and detectable, BUT it brings the vocals even closer to the music, which makes a more powerful impression.

Ever since then, it's not bothered me nearly so much when the vocals are tuned. The track hits harder. Yes: it's true the voice loses some of it's natural beauty, but in turn, you get music and voice that follow perfectly.

I think the big difference there is trying to use it to just hide imperfections vs. consciously making it a conspicuous part of the music. For someone like Grimes, adding in blatantly artificial manipulation fits in perfectly with the rest of her aesthetic.

Autotune used as an artistic style is something I used to dislike out of... snobbery, I suppose. It's a perfectly valid choice for an artist.

Now, I really hate hearing it in kids' songs. Sung by kids, for kids, and sounding so flat and blah. Much like laments against modern "beauty" productions, I think excessive autotune presents kids with an unrealistic expectation for their own voices.

It is totally detectable, unless it truly is a one off tweak. But that is almost never what happens. Maybe a great vocal will get a tweak to save otherwise great take, and that is fine. Good thing.

But then the whole production sees similar things all over the place and it gets cleaned right up technically. Time, levels, the works right?

And the energy is diminished, could be lost.

Like fashion, this will all cycle in and out. Young people hear the humanity in music made prior to these and other tools and it appeals.

Little things, like a change in tempo, small vocal errors, inconsistency, all add up in a track.

I bet some time from now, could be as little as a decade, maybe two, we will look back at all this and chuckle.

Like you say, there is nothing technically wrong with any of this tech. And it could all be used very differently from how it is today too.

Recently, I have been going back through great live shows. Fantastic! And I still get that tingle from the realization someone delivered it live, to a crowd. And yeah, not so perfect, but oh so very human too.

"It is totally detectable."

Good application of it is not, no. When we hear obvious autotune vocals, it's a deliberate aesthetic choice.

I believe what you're talking about is how modern production is about producing "perfect" song recordings, and mapping everything to a click track/beat grid. Now that is totally noticeable compared to music made a few decades ago. I do agree that it makes music sound sterile. This is separate to autotune/melodyne being used.

"I bet some time from now, could be as little as a decade, maybe two, we will look back at all this and chuckle."

Maybe the main industry studios will, but music in general isn't determined by what those folks are doing. There are more indie publishers than ever, and so on.

I made an edit, because I do agree with you.

And yes! The indies are all over the place. Love it.

Those hi hats. Argh

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