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For the bedroom musician, recording was a pain until software gave them an option that was fast, flexible and sonically indistinguishable to the untrained ear. Then the pros went crazy with all of that power and turned making music into a mad science of sonic construction.
The trouble is that the tools that turned the everyman into a recording artist have been abused by professionals who chop, mix, and process everything to hell. Sometimes that’s called for as with hip hop, experimental noise, and electronic music. But there’s comes a point when perfecting the pitch of a singer’s voice sounds wrong. Fine editing and processing tools designed to enhance songs end up making music sound unnatural when they’re overused—much like it looks terrible when you process an image too much in Photoshop. Even with a pro at the helm, over-editing only achieves a sound akin to the look of models on magazine covers that resemble people, but are really soulless shadows of the real thing.
Audio guru Steve Guttenberg writes about this problem in this month’s issue of Stereophile. He got to talking to some industry folk at a convention, and it turns out that there’s an emerging consensus that producers are overdoing it.
A few engineers talked about superstar vocalists who record literally hundreds of takes of a single song, then leave it to the editors to assemble from these a single “perfect” performance, a fraction of a second at a time. Pardon my snark, but imagine how much better records by James Brown, the Beatles, or Led Zeppelin would have been had they had Pro Tools in the 1960s and ’70s. Sadly, it’s a tool that some artists can’t resist using to the point that there’s nothing left of the original performance.
Most people probably think that those old records are perfect. When you hear that slight glitch—the crack of John Lennon’s voice or a note that’s slightly flat—it just brings you closer to the artist and makes the music better. I’d never go so far as to say we should go back to the analog days—heck, auto-tune started out analog anyway. The point is that everything should be used tastefully. When there are infinite possibilities it’s what you don’t do that makes the music human. Stereophile]
Image via bORjAmATiC/Flickr
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“The trouble is that the tools that turned the everyman into a recording artist have been abused by professionals who chop, mix, and process everything to hell. Sometimes that’s called for as with hip hop, experimental noise, and electronic music” – as a signed EDM artist, I want to take a professional approach, but as an anonymous website user, I want to tell you this. How about you learn about music production? Learn what a VST is, a compressor, a saw tooth, a pulse wave, detune, chorus, resonance, cutoff, automation, wavetables, EQ, flangers… ETC ETC. Put 3 years into learning a DAW, then make assumptions. People not want a clean mix, not scratches and popping all over a record. Sure, the autotune thing is annoying – but if that is what an artist wants, it’s their creative RIGHT to use it. That’s what great about music – it’s all in the artists hands, they can do WHATEVER they want and if the listeners don’t like it – they can press the little skip icon. It’s not like slapping on Autotune or Melodyne onto a vocal track automatically makes it perfect. You need to move each part to the correct pitch and key and it has that “robot” effect to it. Many people think that loading up autotune automatically makes everything perfect. Ignorance is bliss I guess. I imagine you as one of the “if it ain’t vinyl, it aint djing” guys too.
I don’t have a problem with using computers for anything. As long as they don’t autotune the voice. That sucks.
In fact, any instrument (including vocal chords) used, should not be tampered with. Anything that is completely digitally created, do whatever and I don’t mind.
Espy:
AS a musician, sound designer, music software programmer, occasional producer and composer for film who knows what a VST is, a compressor, a saw tooth, etc. I would say: How about you learn about music? Learn what singing in tune is, playing on tempo, practicing until you can actually play thing correctly and then make assumptions. 3 years to learn a DAW? try one year to really learn DSP and how digital audio works, then a couple of months for any particular DAW. Try 10 years of practice to really master singing or playing an instrument and then make snarky comments on a well written article. Ignorance is bliss I guess…
“if the listeners don’t like it – they can press the little skip icon” Trust me, I use that skip button a lot, and it’s one of the reasons I no longer buy chart music. Not only that, if the artist relies on those tools too much, then I doubt they’ll be worth seeing live at a gig.
I can understand the frustration of the purists when a kid comes along and presses one button and achieves something you’ve spent years learning, but thats the name of the game. Technology is always moving along and making things easier for musicians to get their ideas bounced down from their brains. The purists are wrong in saying that anybody can do it now. It still takes a hell of a lot of imagination. I’ve been doing it over ten years (unsuccessfully) now and i’ve watched it get easier and easier to make music, but it’s still F**king hard. I’ve used auto-tune before, why should i throw away a good take because one note went slightly flat when i’ve got a tool to correct it? You’ve still got to hit that note on stage.
Since the 50s the last generation has moaned about the new generations music and the new toys they make it with. Electric Guitars, Distortion, Synths, Samplers, Computers and now Auto-tune. Some people over-do it, but that’s up to them, it will stand or fall on it’s own merit. Spend more time working on your own music instead of bitching about how others make theirs.
Rant over. (to be honest i sort of forgot what i was on about then)
A nice post. Deffo been over used and has taken the soul out of music!
Each generation is more creative and professional than the one that came before, this is something people tend to overlook. But over-production isn’t an issue in music, like it isn’t an issue in cinema, we have a word for it and it is called ‘professionalism’ – and if it didn’t sell it wouldn’t be applied. But people also tend to over talk Auto-tune, sure it is used by some artists, but it is one small thing in a digital audio production arsenal, and some may even debate that it is not even the best tool for pitch shifting. And I currently hear in a lot of modern productions using distortion and warping effects to break up a production, more so than effects used for perfection.
And let us look at The Beatles without the production of George Martin we would never have heard of them, it was the talent of the producer than got them noticed, sure he wasn’t using our current digital tools, but if he had them he’d have used them without a doubt.
Exactly. Also, if you don’t like it, don’t listen to it. Simple. There’s more than enough amazing music out there to discover.
And this is why the Foo Fighters’ “Wasting Light” recorded live & analog in a garage, and without any digital trickery, was the best mainstream record of 2011.
As a guitarist I’m happy to stitch together a couple of takes to save time (and therefore money), but never to make something I couldn’t play at all. That just isn’t the case with a lot of artists recording today
Auto tune, the Milli Vanilli of our time…