Now. Here's what I was thinking about the now-unavoidable vocal effect back in late 1999 or early 2000.
Margasak – Maybe do something on the use of AutoTune, which seems rampant now. It was obvious, and intentionally so, on Cher’s “Do You Believe” but less subtle on J-Lo’s “Waiting For Tonight” – I was left wondering what was that metallic, too-crisp sheen on her voice. The Nashville folks producing artists like Faith Hill seem to have gone nuts with it. I wondered how Mary J. Blige got those nearly instantaneous synthesizer-like pitch changes, without a trace of a slur between notes. Metallica seems to have used it too. Why do singers no longer wish to sing? We’re not listening to human beings any more: we’re listening to computers.
This is especially jarring when paired with a video, such as Metallica's, where they simulate a live show.
My intended note to Margasak continued:
They can rationalize this by saying most pop singers today already use a boatload of digital processing – what’s one more effect when singers’ voices are already buried under synthetic room reverbs, slapback echos and choruses (which in themselves already help to hide some pitch inconsistencies)?...
Well, as a singer myself, I also have a problem with the gratuitous, excessive use of other effects -- especially to mask lack of skill or beef up an otherwise unremarkable voice.
Still, Autotune is on a different level. More than any other popular effect, it inserts an eerie un-humanness.
Unlike the spatial effects, such as reverbs and echoes (which aim to change the sound and character of the "room" around the singer), and to a greater extent than previous pitch effects such as choruses and harmonizers, Autotune alters the very character of the voice. It's not just an echo or a little extra gloss -- it changes the very timbre and tone. That's in addition to its flattening of the natural pitch variations that make us sound real.
Even with all those fake environments -– even if the singer had to do 20 takes to get it right -- at least we knew that when we listened to a record, the notes were real: we still had one thing that we knew the singer was actually doing. Now, we don't even have that to hang onto.
Also, consider another huge difference between today's digital solution to vocal mistakes (Autotune) and yesterday's analog solution (doing it over until it was right). One of those solutions is also known as practice -- it actually makes you a better singer. The other doesn't.
WHAT REMINDED ME to finally post this entry I wrote 2, 3 or 4 years ago, about a note I jotted over 20 years ago?
This video posted today by Rick Beato. Watch it. Beato is a prophet to today's lost musical generation.
