'Autotune" is destroying popular music

[sixmile]

I blame the producers for being lazy, the artists for not being able to sing, and the record companies for spoon feeding this overproduced dreck down the public's throats.

http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100#/charts/hot-100

[kid a]

1. +1 I have this shirt

[sixmile]

2. Funny.

Celebrating mediocrity. Not what I pictured the future to look like when I was a wee one.

[rcrush]

3. I blame the millions and millions of idiots in America who eat it up.

I want to download garage band and use it to milk money from morons all over the country. I'll use whale sounds and mix it with the autotune in garage band and make millions!

[bluesbassman]

4. Pitch correction has been around for years.

You don't think all those 80's hair bands could actually sing do you?

[sixmile]

5. Not even close

Nice try, though

[Zodiak]

6. Hated it the minute I heard it from Cher

And it dismays me to see the effect so popular now. It just doesn;t sound very good to me, but then again, I am a rocker.

[cemaphonic]

22. And annoying as the Cher song was,

at least it was a creative (at the time) production gimmick, and not a crutch for tone-deaf singers.

[Aristus]

7. But you have to admit, this is freakin' HILARIOUS!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITT6bYYGVfM

I'm President Obama's biggest fan, and I still love this!... B-)

[XemaSab]

8. Damn skippy!

:rofl:

[kid a]

9. that was funny!

[LynzM]

10. I loathe it.

The only use of it I've ever heard that I didn't detest (and still don't really like) is in one of Live's songs...

[Orrex]

11. I've heard it said that autotune is good when used effectively

On the other hand, I have never heard it used effectively.

[Iggo]

12. I suspect that if you don't hear it being used...

...then it's being used effectively.

[Orrex]

13. Yeah, the same way that the banana in your ear keeps the alligators away.

Not only have I not heard it being used effectively; I've never heard of it being used effectively.

If someone can point me to a song in which it is used effectively, I'd be most appreciative.

[Iggo]

16. I could be wrong.

[Orrex]

18. Impossible!

[LostInAnomie]

14. I've heard you can blame ringtones for the rise of the overuse of autotune.

So the theory goes, the smaller, and less advanced speakers weren't up to the task of making non-autotune ringtones sound decent. When T-Pain came out people started noticing that his heavily autotuned voice sounded better on cell phones than other artists and was making more sales because of it. Since ringtones are big money record companies pushed artists to release at least a few autotuned songs they could put out as ringtones.

At least that's how the story goes.

[DarkTirade]

15. Not 'is destroying' 'Has destroyed' is the phrase you're looking for.

Has destroyed. Any good music that becomes popular now will need to build itself up from the ashes of the old.

[Blue_Tires]

17. up until now i've never even heard of autotune...

but that does explain a lot...

[Captain Hilts]

20. That's how they're able to select/create popular singers from traits disregarding ability to sing.

[Captain Hilts]

19. That's one of the reasons folks are so fascinated by Susan Boyle...

she can hold notes so well and doesn't seem to need to breathe while singing. They speculate on the circumference of her rib cage, etc.

Folks in voice watched some of those dodgy old films of her singing accompanied by out of tune and off-time back up and she was able to stay on time and in tune, for example. And even when she couldn't hear herself on the Britain's Got Talent tour, or whatever it was called.

Evidently, she can sing most songs in different keys.

She seems to be a weird combination of Barbra Streisand and Joe Cocker.

[XemaSab]

21. It has more to do with the muscles in the stomach and the control of the throat

I can hold notes for a long, long, time at a loud, loud, volume. :D

[Captain Hilts]

23. Yeah, but being able to do so in a din of noise and tension is the game breaker. nt

[Locrian]

24. not just autotune - loudness wars and nit picking

http://www.npr.org/blogs/monitormix/2009/11/the_death_of_mistakes_means_th.html

The Death Of Mistakes Means The Death Of Rock
By Douglas Wolk

Want to hear a really sloppy record? It's a good song, but the recording's a mess. The drums consistently drag the rhythm; the bass player isn't quite sure how his part is supposed to go. If you listen carefully to the end of the second verse (around the 48-second mark in this video), the whole band gets lost for a moment and ends up adding an extra beat by accident.

It is, of course, The Beatles' "Rain," as great a rock recording as anyone's ever made. And it's full of mistakes, accidents and inconsistencies that would be utterly unacceptable by the pop-music standards of 2009.

Now imagine what would happen if some band of 25-year-olds with radio aspirations wrote and recorded "Rain" today. That take would probably be thrown out, or at least digitally edited to fix the screw-up; even if they played it right, the drum track would get imported into ProTools and snapped back into strict rhythm any time it drifts behind the beat. The lead singer's wobbly notes, and the not-quite-in-tune bass guitar, would get fixed with AutoTune. The all-over-the-place guitar dynamics would be tightened up with a compressor-limiter. It'd still be a fine song, but the recording would be impossibly boring -- as frictionless and dull as the recordings even the best mainstream rock bands often end up making now.

[Throd]

25. How about Jimmy Page's solo between "Heartbreaker, Livin' Lovin' Maid"?

It is chock full of flubbed notes, but that is part of the charm.