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Does Anyone Else Hate Auto-tune?

knotscott

knotscott

Super Member
The use of auto-tune seems to be on the rise....at least with some of the vocal music I listen to. I'm sure the technology of auto-tune processing and the techniques for using it are improving, but I'm noticing it more and more. In some cases it's barely noticeable, if at all, but in other cases it sounds like Peter Frampton's talk box. It's one of those things that's hard to un-hear once I notice it. I'd honestly prefer to hear the natural gifts people were given, especially those who have amazing voices.

Anyone else noticing and bothered by the use of auto-tune?
 
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I am kinda meh about it. Maybe because it does not seem to be used in the music we listen to. And if "they" do use it you can't tell.

I really do not concern myself with what genres I do not listen to are doing. That seems to be worrying about things just to worry :dunno:
 
My wife’s favorite album last year has auto tune on one song. She grips gripes about it, but I feel like it was creative choice by the artist to go with that particular sound in that one particular song, and not all of the other songs on her album.

Otherwise, auto tune doesn’t really factor into much of anything I’m ever listening to.
 
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0b11011001 said:
Cher used it for a particular effect, and I like it.

I blame people for trying to make mediocre singers, sound better.
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Willie Nelson's Countryman album has autotune!
Swear to god - what an obscenity - Autotuning Willie!!
The man was not meant to sound like a synthesizer!
 
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knotscott said:
The use of auto-tune seems to be on the rise....at least with some of the vocal music I listen to. I'm sure the technology of auto-tune processing and the techniques for using it are improving, but I'm noticing it more and more. In some cases it's barely noticeable, if at all, but in other cases it sounds like Peter Frampton's talk box. It's one of those things that's hard to un-hear once I notice it. I'd honestly prefer to hear the natural gifts people were given, especially those who have amazing voices.

Anyone else noticing and bothered by the use of auto-tune?
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Hate it, like I dunno what….
Yeah like a ground hum that can’t be found for a week
 
Auto tune is just the precurser to full AI music. It is absolutely inevitable that AI will steadily invade pop music because of the enormous cost advantage of producing it. Already we see hit songs that are fully AI. I think the more common answer will be to have bands and use their song ideas as a platform with AI handling all the repetitive production stuff, effects, editing, corrections and what not to shorten the production cost and time to market. Music is business. And in business time is money. And money is the central point of it all.
 
DesertRatt said:
Auto tune is just the precurser to full AI music. It is absolutely inevitable that AI will steadily invade pop music because of the enormous cost advantage of producing it. Already we see hit songs that are fully AI. I think the more common answer will be to have bands and use their song ideas as a platform with AI handling all the repetitive production stuff, effects, editing, corrections and what not to shorten the production cost and time to market. Music is business. And in business time is money. And money is the central point of it all.
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Really sad, but true. Maybe an upside is that some musical geniuses might use AI to take actual human music further.
 
knotscott said:
Maybe an upside is that some musical geniuses might use AI to take actual human music further.
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I suspect that for the "general public" that will be true. They will hear new things and probably embrace it. It will make music cheaper, and the public always likes that. The idea of "better" is densely tangled up in the various philosophical arguments about "what is art?" You know, we all thought Photoshop would destroy the art of photography, and for some it has. But, for the public, they could care less, how images get made. They just enjoy being wowed by something that have not seen before. The fact that most photography is simply "scroll food" to be fed into the endless conveyor belt of social media, doesn't get the public riled up.

It won't be long before there is a $4.99/month competitor to Spotify that offers endless streams of this AI junk music. Why pay $18/mo? for tunes?
 
It’s a completely legit processing tool that’s become overused. Eno uses it on his album Another Day On Earth.
The algorithm started as a sound shaping tool created by an EXXON Geophysicist and Mathematician called Andy Hildebrand. During a lunch at NAMM he asked a group what they wanted to see invented, a women joked a box to help her sing in tune….so he popped off and did it.
I can just about make Brownies.
 
I appreciate singers who back in the day, were recorded on tape in the studio without electronic trickery after recording.
Sarah Vaughn was mentioned in a previous post.

She is just one example, many artists before and after her and continuing today could and can nail it without help.

I also appreciate Chet Atkins’ early albums before he got into producing and adding strings, horns and background singers.
“Workshop” is a great example of pre-production Chet.

Then there is overdubbing pioneered by Les Paul.
I suppose that there was hand-wringing over that, maybe similar to auto-tune?

Look at the number of pedals a guitarist has on stage-don’t see many complaints about that…

I am only pointing out that other tools came before auto-tune. And that I personally appreciate low production music.


I also appreciate the tremendous effort that it took for special effects in movies that are pre-computer.
Even dating back to the old black and white Flash Gordon movies.

All my humble opinion.
 
Does it matter how many effects pedals a guitarist uses? I mean, does an electric guitar does not sound like an acoustic guitar. Before all the effects pedals, guitarists were experimenting with distortion to get a different sound.

I say all this to say that I don’t think this is the same as making a mediocre singer, sound better. The same goes for orchestral arrangements and backup singers. That is down to personal preference.
 
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