Auto-Tune. Now used on Simon and Garfunkel.

[strawberry]

popular art
youtube intagram tiktok.. is like ice ice baby
not being michael jackson, bee gees .. you cant be no matter how much try
it was risky gamble to invest into something that could go bust

now somehow need to get constant growth of profit
I think modern popular musicians are face/actors reading script and are owned by record company . and voice is not important factor , probably reason to pay less

[Terry Bites]

michael buble had autotune fail during a live performance
Still his music sounds just as bad with or without enhancement. When will Canada stop exporting musical misery to the world?

[John B]

Huh, I hadn't seen that before, I always thought he was perfectly proficient without it and may be he is. It's hard to hear exactly what he was doing due to the recording quality and the pitch correction interfering, but it sounds like he was bending into notes and throwing the pitch correction off, leading to the artefacts.

But what's more interesting is the artefacts when the piano is playing by itself in the intro. Did the mix engineers run the whole master bus through an autotune? This is like shot-at-dawn level mistake. 

If I was Michael I would have been pissed as well, afterall it does negatively affect his brand name. Assuming that he didn't have a choice in such things, it's probably something negotiated with his manager.

[vwestlife]

They're doing the same thing with drums. They "quantize" the recording so that every drum hit lines up exactly perfectly with the tempo. It ends up sounding like a drum machine, because that's basically what it is -- a recording cut and pasted together on a computer. Rick Beato has ranted about it in several videos:

[DougSpindler]

Age old complaint by old people.  It was about 500 years ago people were complaining that the printed book is just not the same as one hand made by scribes.  And then it was music on wax cylinders aren't anywhere as good as a live performance.  Then it was records, radio, TV, magnetic tape, CDs, DVD, and now it's autotune.  Ask some young kid if they think if old outdated music from the 50s and 60s is better or worse than today's autotune computer music?  They will probably say no.

[David Hess]

It is not just Autotune.  Is dynamic range compression applied as a result of the Loudness Wars is an improvement?

[DougSpindler]

Don't today's loudness stem from women signing Arias at the top of their lungs?  And did they have any musical talent?

[John B]

Age old complaint by old people.  It was about 500 years ago people were complaining that the printed book is just not the same as one hand made by scribes.  And then it was music on wax cylinders aren't anywhere as good as a live performance.  Then it was records, radio, TV, magnetic tape, CDs, DVD, and now it's autotune.  Ask some young kid if they think if old outdated music from the 50s and 60s is better or worse than today's autotune computer music?  They will probably say no.

You're comparing mediums to a process though. Wax cylinders, records, tapes, digital audio are all iterative attempts at objectively recording sound, whilst being totally agnostic to what is being recorded.

As I said earlier in the thread, autotune can be used as an interesting form of synthesis. But how it's mainly used is to "fix" music and in that comes a whole host of value judgments about what music should sound like.

[DougSpindler]

Age old complaint by old people.  It was about 500 years ago people were complaining that the printed book is just not the same as one hand made by scribes.  And then it was music on wax cylinders aren't anywhere as good as a live performance.  Then it was records, radio, TV, magnetic tape, CDs, DVD, and now it's autotune.  Ask some young kid if they think if old outdated music from the 50s and 60s is better or worse than today's autotune computer music?  They will probably say no.

You're comparing mediums to a process though. Wax cylinders, records, tapes, digital audio are all iterative attempts at objectively recording sound, whilst being totally agnostic to what is being recorded.

As I said earlier in the thread, autotune can be used as an interesting form of synthesis. But how it's mainly used is to "fix" music and in that comes a whole host of value judgments about what music should sound like.

Yes and no.  The recorded mediums were meant to be a replacement for live music.  This resulted in poor quality which in the 100+ years since wax recordings were made technology has been attempting to fix.  First intended use for Autotune.  Just as artists like the Beatles used the technology to improve the quality of recordings as an instrument to produce music, artists today are using Autotune as an instrument as well.  (Second use of Autotune.)

[Rick Law]

If I use auto-tune in a live concern, can it correct if I pressed the wrong piano key or pressed the wrong note for violin?

I don't know the answer to the above, but I am guessing it is a "yes".  If so, it is acting more than an instrument and more a correction device.  If one uses an bow-and-arrow set that self-guides, does hitting that target with that device made one a good archer, or does it not?  It is still a good shoot when it hits the target.  But should the credit goes to the person, or the credit goes largely to a good device?

[fourfathom]

If I use auto-tune in a live concern, can it correct if I pressed the wrong piano key or pressed the wrong note for violin?

I don't know the answer to the above, but I am guessing it is a "yes".  If so, it is acting more than an instrument and more a correction device.  If one uses an bow-and-arrow set that self-guides, does hitting that target with that device made one a good archer, or does it not?  It is still a good shoot when it hits the target.  But should the credit goes to the person, or the credit goes largely to a good device?

Well, frequency (pitch) is only one aspect of a performance, and often not the most important one. 

I've worked on recordings where autotune and overdubbing were used to correct a recorded live-concert vocal (the usually good singer was suffering from a cold and travel-fatigue).  It salvaged what would have otherwise been an unusable performance.  By the way, when I heard the original recording and I commented on the off-pitch singing I was told they would use autotune.  This was a live concert, so I asked about instruments bleeding into the vocal mics.  They said not to worry.  When they were finished, I could faintly hear the instruments de-tuned by the same amount that the voice was pitch corrected, making an interesting beat-note.  It bugged me, but nobody else seemed to notice or care.  In the end it sounded great, but I could hear the artifacts.

[DougSpindler]

Take a look on YouTube someone analyzed Karen Carpenter's singing.  Turns out she could hit a note and stay on it perfectly with her all 100% natural autotune. Turns out her recording was a bit flat and live performances were spot on. 

I think Tiny Tim is also said to have been pitch perfect.  He was very well educated in music theory Tip toeing through the Tulips.

[Ed.Kloonk]

[Ed.Kloonk]

May or may not be of interest to you..

Early 8-Bit Sound Digitizers

[RJSV]

Yeah FAKEs that stay around a while tend to aquire a sort-of lingering 'cultural funk'; analagous to bad 'smells'.

  We've got a 'couple' politicians, one Xtra bad, in particular with the 'FAKE Botox treated' face, lookin like
terminator 2, RIGID, PLASTIC...

People aren't fooled,  by the 'plastic looks' and most may not be, with the FAKE processing of their music.
They just, adjust, perhaps occasionally thinking;
  'Whew...that lady has vanity, bad...'.
But they don't say nothing.

[Rick Law]

In my opinion, the bottom line is, auto-tune can achieve better "mechanical perfection" but that better mechanical perfection doesn't equate to better music.

Music is what?  Not just a series of notes, but instead it is a communication to convey feelings and emotion via sound.  People do buy the same piece of music from different artist because they communicate different emotions and communicate them differently.

The pauses, the way the note transit from one note to another, the volume of a note, and the rise and fall of a note, all convey information -- all adds to the whole of the performance.

Typical music prodigies achieved their "mechanical perfection" at an early age, but never having experienced say for example "a broken heart from being abandoned by boyfriend/girlfriend".  Thus, they do not have the romantic depth in feeling that someone older with actual romantic relationship experience has.  So, be it instrumental or vocal, their playing often is "wooden" as compared to older musicians.  They could imitate how other artist convey the emotion, but in doing so, they are not conveying their own emotion -- they don't yet has that emotion to convey.  Auto-tune will at best make an "amateur level skilled" musician sound like a good prodigy but fails at delivering the emotions that make the music come alive.

In my opinion, yeah, live performance with an audience is better - because the artist's emotion and the audience's emotion feed on each other.  There is a positive feedback loop there.  Recording of course will depend on the media as different media may miss the more subtle qualities differently.

Until "Commander Data" achieve his dream of having emotion, his experience in life will never equal that of a human.  Same for AI today.

EDIT: typo correction, mistyped "node" which should be "note" in a few places.  Musical notes is a thing, musical nodes isn't.

[DougSpindler]

Music is a form of art.  And just as art is in the eye of the viewer, music is in the ear of the listener.  Art like music is a business and the artists and promoters charge as much as they can to make as much money as they can.  If you don't like auto-tune music, don't buy it. 

Is Auto-tune that different from lip-syncing? 
Or having Marni Nixon ghost sing for Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood and many other stars any different?
Check out the Dave Clark Five on the Ed Sullivan show.  Someone didn't press the play button at the right time.

[MrMobodies]

I have a question... At this place I go to they sometimes do Karaoke.

They have this adjustable peddle thing where the microphone connects into it which they say is suppose to make their voice sound better than it is.

Is that some form of auto tune?

[DougSpindler]

I have a question... At this place I go to they sometimes do Karaoke.

They have this adjustable peddle thing where the microphone connects into it which they say is suppose to make their voice sound better than it is.

Is that some form of auto tune?

Invite me.  If when I sing it sounds like Elvis Presley then it’s Auto-tune.  If everyone leaves, it’s not.  It’s probably a reverb box.