boston herald
Fixing flats
Paula pitchy? Not with an Auto-Tune up!
By Christopher John Treacy / Music | Thursday, March 13, 2008
Paula Abdul would never survive as an “American Idol” contestant.
Idol participants aren’t permitted to use the popular digital device Auto-Tune to polish their performances. But Abdul’s new single, “Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow,” is slathered with enough pitch correction to make music from howling cats in the alley.
Sure, Adbul’s song is catchy, just like Janet Jackson’s “Feedback” and Kylie Minogue’s forthcoming CD “X.” But in all three cases, the vocals just don’t sound very human. They aren’t; they’re partially computer-generated.
“Sometimes (Auto-Tune) is used as an effect, other times it’s to compensate for complete inability or lacking confidence,” said Rob Jaczko, chairman of the Music Production and Engineering Department at Berklee College of Music. “The software is set to maintain a certain pitch; notes falling outside the determined key get grabbed and pulled up or down in real time to blend with the others. To me, it actually sounds really awkward.”
The awkwardness is a robotic tone that fluctuates depending on how fast and far notes get yanked: pull hard and you get the vocoder-like distortion of Cher’s “Believe,” Daft Punk’s “One More Time” and Snoop Dogg’s “Sexual Eruption.”
But Abdul’s single is indicative of how that (questionably) cool robot sound can double as a smokescreen on a vocal that’s quite possibly beyond the singer’s reach.
“I would dare to say that (pitch correction) is in almost all music you hear on pop radio to some extent,” explained Adam Taylor, head engineer at Camp Street Studios in Cambridge. “When used properly, it goes by you real quick. But there’s a big difference between using it and overusing it. It’s one thing to apply it to a vocal to merely round out a few notes, but another entirely to use it as much as, say, the Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow duet.”
“Picture” - the Rock and Crow collaboration that ironically was nominated for Vocal Event of the Year at the 2003 Country Music Awards - offers an example of how Auto-Tune can be used extensively but still sound natural. Well, almost natural. “When taking a vocal run, the natural voice kind of slides through the notes,” Taylor explained. “With Auto-Tune, a stairstep effect is created, like the singer is stopping perfectly square on each note as they progress.
“It’s become popular enough that listeners hardly notice it anymore,” he continued. “Their ears have become trained by modern standards and expectations. Now that Top 40 radio demands total perfection, Auto-Tune has become a useful tool gone wrong. The glory of good harmony has always been in the slight imperfections. But today, people want to sound like the Chipmunks.”
Auto-Tune has become so ubiquitous that Taylor says even indie rockers use it, although “very gently” given the genre’s focus on ragged authenticity.
Of course studio tampering is nothing new. It’s just never been this sophisticated before.
“In the ’80s everyone used the Eventide Harmonizer which let you shift the pitch of an audio signal by using a dial,” Taylor said. “Cyndi Lauper and Madonna may have done some straight singing, but they often had help. Before that there was vari-speed, a manually operated device similar to the sliding band on DJ turntables. Even Al Green used to punch his vocal takes in line-by-line sometimes. The studio has always been about smoke and mirrors.”
Gotcha!
The public is catching on to Auto-Tune and other pitch correction strategies used to “help” today’s singers. The Internet offers plenty of comments from fans and experts on the topic, including these examples of pitch-correction usage that are significantly more subtle than the so-called “Cher Effect.”
Maroon Five, “She Will Be Loved.” Pay particular attention to the words “smile” and “rain.”
Avril Lavigne, “Complicated.” Check out the way she sings “driving,” “way,” “when” and “you’re.”
New Found Glory, “Hit or Miss.” Listen for the word “thriller.”
Rascal Flatts, “Life is a Highway.” The entire vocal sounds Auto-Tuned and digitally harmonized, but it’s most obvious on the word “drive.”
Dixie Chicks, “The Long Way Around.” You can really hear it on “parents” and “but I.”
