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The thing about pitch correction is that it's used so ubiquitously nowadays in pop music (even when we don't realize it) that anyone who performs live and/or without tuning is sometimes held to an impossible standard. Very few people have perfect pitch, but people are so used to hearing perfectly-tuned voices that normal variations and idiosyncrasies of the human voice are starting to be erased. I may be wrong about this, but I have to wonder if that's why I find so many pop singers and Broadway performers sound almost indistinguishable to me. I'm not against the use of tuning or other effects, but like with instagram filters, everyone is presented with such a polished finish that they don't even seem (or in this case, sound) natural or altogether human anymore. I promise, I won't hate you if your intonation isn't 100% perfect. I want to feel like I'm listening to a real person and not a robot. Okay, I'm done ranting about it lol
It's like they used to say about over-coaching of young football players - it turns ordinary players into good players, and great players into good players as well. We're in danger of eliminating the great.
Right. Other reasons why real talent is overlooked are mentioned in this comment about multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter John Miles, "In the world of Rock music, there can be no greater travesty than the way John Miles' music has been ignored, especially by the weekly music press. Musical skill has never been high on their list of pre-requisites for stardom and as soon as John's fifteen minutes of fame had terminated in the mid-Seventies, the shutters came down with a resounding bang. 'Passé' and 'old-fashioned' were the usual glib diatribes flung insultingly in Mr. Miles' direction with every subsequent record release, yet to those prepared to listen, each and every album contained material that consolidated his status as an exceptional songwriting talent." (Gilby, Ian. "John Miles: The Venue, London." Electronics & Music Maker, April 1984.) Miles died on December 5, 2021.
Fantastic video! I love these Beth Roars documentary style vids. I'd add echo chambers and delays to this list. Record producer Mitch Miller was an early adopter of the echo chamber in popular music -- he described it as "putting a halo over the voice" -- 'cos he noticed that everyone sounded better when they sang in the shower or the bathroom because of the reflective tiles. Likewise, tape-delay, as used by Sam Phillips in the Sun Studios for Elvis Presley ('cos his studio was too tiny to have a proper echo chamber) was an incredibly influential sound as well, and still is. Also, apart from being a pioneer of the solid body electric guitar, Les Paul was the earliest musician to really exploit multi-tracking and overdubbing on popular recordings. The records that he made with his wife Mary Ford were incredibly ground-breaking. There are some great clips on TH-cam where they demonstrate their technique in real time, and we're talking the pre-rock n' roll era here. Well worth checking out.
This was excellent Beth. I would add that the invention of other electronic effects such as digital or analog echo and reverb also has changed things radically. In that case it enabled creative use and voice recordings to be recorded in spaces which were not acoustically interesting (small rooms, purposefully dead sounding vocal booths, etc. ) without sounding dry and unrealistic Also just as you mentioned the Gregorian chants needing to compensate for natural echo and reverberation, singers can now utilize electronic versions for specific effect. If for instance you sing a note(s) up to down or down to up in pitch over time with echo or reverb, it can create a beautiful pitch doubling effect as different pitches come back from the echo over the course of a vocal run or flourish mixing with one another. Just about every ballad which sounds haunting or chilling or which evokes some other feeling uses that technique to one extent or another. Singers often also have to consider how an echoed word sounds when it comes back from an echo so that if they sing a word that has an "s" or "t" on the end then perhaps they need to emphasize the vowels in the word rather than the consonants so that the echo doesn't come back as an annoying "s...s...s" or "t" sound but instead sounds full and round with a vowel.
RE: musical theatre, I never much thought about it before, but having 25+ people mic'ed, the sound guy must be a total wizard. I suppose it's the same show, the same venue, every night but that's still a challenge.
What i value in art? Storytelling,Sincerity, Perception, Craftmanship and above all of them LOVE in the broadest meaning there is!! Picked up and learned some lovely little facts from this!!
I'd say that another invention of note is multichannel audio input into computers via low latency firewire, thunderbolt and USB-C3 together with multi track digital recording software(Digital Audio Workstations-DAWs) such as Cakewalk Sonar, (Now Bandlab Cakewalk) with almost endless plugins for EQ, compression, effects etc, allowed home recording studios to flourish. Addins such as Rolands V-Vocal enables pitch correction of single or multiple notes and vocal alignment across tracks (all singers come in together and end together). Automated punch-in, punch-out capability allows re-recording of short time spans to quickly fix trouble spots. Also available is dynamic control of volume, panning and effects brings Nashville's Music Row studio capability into a room in one's house instead of a $100+/hr scheduled studio time. It's truly a great time to make and record audio.
Great idea and glad to see kate and the headset wireless mike there ... a pioneer of live pop because she wanted to dance and sing. A lot of people have forgotten that.
Apparently the first one her engineer knocked up was made out of a coat hanger. I was lucky enough to see her on her Tour of Life in 1979 and it was truly astonishing to see her sing and dance at the same time, the whole show was like nothing we'd ever seen before.
I listened to a radio show in which a common female singer was recorded singing "My Heart Will Go On". Then a sound engineer applied pitch correction to the recording. After that, he added reverb, which made the uneven vibrato less obvious. He improved her vocals so much that she almost sounded like a professional. As a kid, I had a rock guitar tutor with a great musical ear. I had to tune my guitar at the beginning of each lesson and had to play pitch-perfect bendings. This training is definitely one of the main reasons why it's easy for me to spot when a singer is off pitch. I have good singing pitch, just like my father and grandfather. However, even some great guitarists struggle with singing on pitch, and this shows me that good singing pitch is highly genetically determined.
Amazing job, Beth! Much appreciation to the time and effort you put into researching for these mini documentaries. And your delivery as the host/narrator is always top notch!!
Very nice and fascinating history lesson! One thing in particular rang a bell. You related how an early use of record technology was for comedy acts. I recently read that the Beatles famed producer, George Martin, originally came to their attention because he had produced several hit comedy records that the Beatles were fans of!
This was brilliant! I think I've been pronouncing Lavalier like a moron for the past thirty years. Now finally thanks to you, I can sound like I know what I'm doing.
Very nicely done. Naturally, everyone these days is all “a-twitter” over auto tune (melodyne etc). I recall the dust up over compression. With music it seems there is always something! Missing from these discussions is that recording…all recording….is an aural illusion. I think Beth does a good job here without getting into the weeds. At the risk of oversimplification, digital recording has basically made techniques and effects developed for analogue recording easier, less time consuming and added flexibility. Before auto tune vocals were often “comped.” Singers performed several takes (often dozens over hours) and a recording engineer and producer selected the “best” parts of each performance and, like film editors, “taped” the snippets of tape creating one whole performance. Vocals were also “shaped” by numerous techniques. Sibilance and breathing etc were removed by “ de-essing” and EQ which could also remove, attenuate or accentuate notes/syllables. Pitch was tweaked by slowing the tape or speeding it up. As Beth notes reverb is used, as is compression. And mic selection and placement can impact vocals greatly. The is also use of triggers. For example Producer Tony Visconti placed more than one different mic in front of David Bowie and Bowie’s vocal volume triggered one mic to shut off and the other positioned behind it to open up. Engineers also use delays. Vocals are often doubled. (Sometimes so artfully, we hear only one voice singing when it may be two or three.) It is not just vocals but every instrument that is subject to recording effects. Loops were done with tape. The great drummer Jeff Porcaro created a drum loop for Africa by endless over dubbing. The whole point is, the only “truth” in musical performance is sitting in an anechoic chamber listening to someone sing a cappella. Auto tune is barely noticeable or not at all is used to correct (comp?) a vocal. If it is obvious, then itis misused or intended. The famous Cher “Do you Believe..” is an intentional effect on what is a disco (EDM) dance pop song. Dancing to it in a club it is fun. Sitting in front of a home stereo listening to it. Not so interesting. At least for me. As Beth notes, music appreciation is personal taste.
Hi Beth! I came across your channel recently, and love all your in depth info about singing. I'm an opera singer, so I sing in a mostly acoustic setting that isn't heavily influenced by recording technology. I've gotten into recording recently, and find your comments about microphones really interesting! I do disagree somewhat that vibrato is used to cover up intonation - in my experience, microphones are often not very good at faithfully reproducing the sound of an opera singer's voice in a space, which results in the intonation sounding a little off and the vibrato to sound very wide in comparison to how they sound live (similarly to how tenors and altos sounded better with early mics). Intonation can definitely be an issue with the technical demands of opera that you highlighted, and it can certainly be easy to get carried away with vibrato as a byproduct of trying to find a good vocal placement, but I don't think that this is done with the conscious intention of hiding bad intonation either live or in recording. Sorry to nitpick! I just spend a lot of time thinking about this for my job so I'm quite passionate about it 😊 That said, I am so grateful for your content! Thank you for demystifying vocal technique with such a warm personality to boot 🙏🏻
Long time viewer, first time commenter. So if no one has not already said, I love your look. The way you now wear your beautiful hair. And I fell in love when you broke down how great was Freddie Mercury's voice. Also loved how you marveled at Ian Gillan's voice in "Child of Time." Everything about how you approach the subject at hand is a joy. As is your voice.
This was a really fascinating video. It seems obvious, now that I've thought about it a bit, but it never occurred to me before that genre was, by and large, a marketing gimmick. I've traditionally been one of those people who define myself by genre, so this has given me a lot to think about. Also, as someone with a voice in the baritone/bass register, who tends to sing a bit quietly, I now have even more appreciation for my mic. As far as what I value in art, specifically music, I tend to look at it in terms of the three traditions: folk, formal and pop. I can enjoy music from all three and I appreciate the focus on skill on the formal tradition and the entertainment value of the pop tradition, but I've always leaned much more heavily toward the folk tradition and its focus on authenticity.
I am amazed yet again at both the breadth and depth of your content. this one is a "must watch" for every live mixing board operator around the world!! I learned a great deal about mics, mixing, and effects when my church went from an analog system to a digital system some 10 years ago. it changes the way you must think about the signals you're processing. with analog, "a little tweek on the input" is good enough, whereas with a digital system you have to really define what it is you're trying to accomplish. I found that it's helpful to "play with it" using a pre-recorded dry track and just see what all the knobs, buttons and effects do. I've also found that I can only do that for about 90 minutes before I start getting "ear fatigue" and everything sounds the same. other industries have had the "top 5" that changed things forever (Automotive and Aviation come to mind), and the price of progress is....progress! BTW, how big is your production staff for these videos? ( I would guess 6 with a couple of you wearing 2 hats)
Well done, Beth! I really like the change of the pace program. Gotta say I hate autotune to " improve" someone's voice. As we see in "Get Back," the boys had to work harder to produce a "live" sound than the heavy production they had just used. The hard work to get the vocals right along with creating the words was a work of art by four individuals and not a production marvel. I like both, but the best thing about the creation of rock n' roll was the "live" sound feeling you got listening to it. You rock, Beth! Keep up the great work!
Hey Andy! Glad you enjoyed! I'm a doing more of these style videos on my other channel if you want to check it out: th-cam.com/video/CiRFsUrDq_4/w-d-xo.html
Multitracking was invented by guitarist Les Paul. Singer Bing Crosby helped Ampex develop tape recorders in the mid 1950s by giving them $50,000 dollars to facilitate their development. Walt Disney demonstrated multitracking on his television program in the mid 1950s using a singer (I believe it was Patti Page) and two tape recorders.
When she mentioned singers multi-tracking, I was hoping she'd give an example, as she had with other phenomena. You're referring, of course, to the Patti Page Quartet, who had a hit single in "With My Eyes Wide Open I'm Dreaming".
Insightful! Thank you so much for this video! If I could I would definitely put my vote on uninventing autotune. As a child of the 80s, I do prefer authenticity in singing voices. While Cher's song Believe was really fun first time listening to for the effect ... it is really annoying that autotune has become such a standard in contemporary pop - amongst other somewhat doubtful developments in the music industry.
The introduction of the first distortion pedal for guitar in 1962 ("Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone") contributed to the punchy, raspy vocal style in rock music.
Great video! I personally prefer voices in the raw - without auto-tune. It could be because I was raised on music from the '70s and '80s, but I find it harder to "connect" to a song/singer when the voice has been auto-tuned because of the loss of the natural vocal imperfections and vulnerabilities that draw me into a song. I think auto-tune can be cool when used as an effect, but that's about it.
With the exception of the invention of the phonograph, this all focuses on devices used to create the sound. I have sometimes wondered how what is popular in music has been affected by the popular sound reproduction devices used by the listeners (as opposed to the creators). For example, a documentary I saw made a point of saying how important car AM radios were for popularizing early rock and roll. So did the sound quality of a car radio especially lend itself to simple and direct rhythmic music? Probably no way to give definitive answers, but I think it would be interesting to see theories on that by people more knowledgeable than I.
I think you are on the wrong track (pun intended) here. The music on those car radios was often extremely complex production wise. Simple melodies and rhythms were/are always a factor in any popular music. What car radios did was increase availability. The next step was cassettes, which aside from bringing recorded music into your car but led to the walk man which allowed one to take their music anywhere. They allowed for consumer control (mix tapes etc). So, these devices made music more accessible. Now streaming, wi fi, blue tooth which removes the need for wires tethering listeners to devices. So, these advances had less to do with the music and everything to do with accessibility.
Think you missed one little wrinkle.,the jacard loom & in its musical guise the pianola ., which in the hands of IBM ., which had started from pianola sales ., used its identification systems to sort the US sensuous ( 1910? ) and in Germany to " sort " in the pre WW2 ..
I personally do-not like the auto-tune of entire vocals, it disturbs my listening. When used as an effect, that is a different matter as it is subjective art. Use of pitch correction technology can fix errors on a take when used sparingly and with precision. This can as Beth mentioned save time and money by reducing takes. When applied to an entire vocal input however, the nuances of the singer are lost to algorithm preferences for reassigning the input to a specific scale. What is unbearable to my ear is when re-releases of artists’ albums are auto-tuned during the remaster. When compared to the original the new release is an abomination as they are not correcting a pitch here or there but wiping away the legendary performances. There is simply no need to alter performances from the 70s of Queen, Simon &?Garfunkel, The Beatles, or even Bob Dylan’s unusual vocal style. There was artistry not only in the performances of these older tunes but also in their production provided by producers and sound engineers that is lost when rereleased are altered to be more in line with today’s consumer. It’s a travesty, and these songs albums and videos that are altered with these technologies should have a disclaimer - kind of like how in film there is distinguishing “Director’s Cuts” from the originally released “Theatric cuts.” It is simply fraudulent if you buy a new release of an album from the 70s that was important to you, and you then find they have auto tuned the vocals in whole or in part - without letting you know it has been so modified. It’s insulting to the entire team that worked with the artists to produce these performances and they should be preserved so as to retain the artistic integrity that made them successful in their day. I have no interest in hearing Joni Mitchell’s classics be reproduced to sound to the modern ear more like Billie Eilish, for example. Just as one should not attempt to view history through the lens of today’s social and cultural mores, the same is true of music. We should preserve the earliest recordings of all genres and eras as they were. One can allow for technology change from wax cylinders to discs of different types, and from analog tape formats and later digital tape up to the digital music we know these days from CD, MP3, FLAC, etc. These format changes can and should occur with the most minimal changes to the performance artistry. Auto-tune simply violates this concept and spoils the original intent, emotive artistry, and natural quality of the vocals be it Howling Wolf or Heart. Keep the integrity of the recordings always. In this way the music of an era can survive with bifurcation again and again with new producers altering the art of yesteryear.
before I watch...I am wondering if you had included the UNGO BOX.. used by Peter Frampton, Joe Walsh (Eagles) and others and many a cover band in the 80s and such! to follow !!!!
I read somewhere that the improvements in microphone and amplifier technology is a major reason why salsa singers went from largely sounding nasally in the early years of the genre to having a more natural and cleaner tone since the late 80s. Compare singers like Joe Arroyo and Celia Cruz with Marc Anthony and La India. I’m not sure how accurate this assessment is, would you be able to share some insight?
I still listen to Dark Side of the Moon. Re: Opera there is a video from Sean Daniel "When you're NOT prepared for the Power of an opera singer" here is the link. th-cam.com/video/VB7lYoVbiHM/w-d-xo.html Thank you for this history of recent music and the speed of technology in changing what and how we listen. Symphonic Metal is my happy place
I wonder how much latency the digital wireless microphone adds. While organists certainly learn to play ahead of the sounds that they hear, but would think that singing ahead of your dancing, or ahead of your accompaniment, or ahead of what you hear of the other singers in the performance, seems like an insurmountable task. Diversity reception seems, to me, to be a much better approach to handling drops in a physically dynamic performance.
The latency of digital wireless mics varies with make and model. Typically it is of the order of 2 to 3 milliseconds (thousandths of a second). Analogue wireless mics typically have zero latency (maybe the odd nanosecond if we are splitting hairs). At the time of writing, all the digital wireless mics I am aware of also use diversity reception, as do all truly professional analogue wireless microphones. There are some digital wireless mics, intended for speech or for video recording applications, with greater latency of the order of 19 milliseconds.
There are exceptions to the “zero latency” of analogue wireless btw, some high-end analogue wireless mic receivers incorporate digital signal processing (DSP) to improve the audio performance, but added latency is a by-product of this. Typically adding 1.7 - 1.9ms compared with “pure” analogue systems.
Autotune and pitch correction are a curse on music, in my opinion. If you can sing, then do it. If you can't, you have no business being there. The problem isn't so much trying to make the voice a perfectly in tune product, it's more that music companies are pushing 'talents' for their looks more than for the abilities. If you listen to the majority of modern Pop, you'll find the vocals are kept within a very few safe notes so the corrections are easier to do. Instead of celebrating a singer's range, we're inundated with bland sounds that rarely sound adventurous. Just as importantly, before autotune, a singer conveyed emotion with subtle nuances of the voice. Good singers knew to never take that too far. Newer 'singers' all seem to be whinging and crying, going so far over the top that I'd rather hear a dog howling. The so-called talent shows all use autotune, as well. We're being lied to.
Before digital pitch correction, there were a number of techniques utilized to accomplish the same thing. First, singers often had to spend hours singing any number of “takes” to get one “right.” Recording editors “comped” vocals by splicing tape (much like a film editor) taking snippets of vocals piecing them together to get one for the record. Pitch was altered by slowing or speeding up the tape machine. Vocals were often equalized or EQ’d emphasizing or attenuating passages or notes. De-essers were applied removing or adjusting sibilance. Elaborate delay’s were placed in the recording chain and compression was used. And so on. ALL BEFORE digital pitch correction was introduced. Digital recording basically offered all these effects and more cutting down endless hours of work for producers, engineers and yes, artists.
I never understood auto-tune slander honestly. It doesn't "improve" the voice. It doesn't make someone who can't sing on pitch a good singer. It's definitely not "cheating" because there is no race. I just see it as an effect different than actual singing. There is a reason why not everyone uses pitch correcting even if they easily could because some songs actually rely on being natural while some rely on that "glossy" auto-tune effect to serve the purpose. And that's totally fine. It's just way more than "singing on pitch". When you use auto-tune, you just give your music a different direction.
It's a synthesizer using acoustic vocal input as the controller. It's not singing. I have really good pitch (didn't realize how good until recently, ironically thanks to another of Beth's videos), and I find trying to sing with auto tune incredibly frustrating. It takes a full, on pitch note and ruins it completely. I've put a lot of effort into pitch and range as well as resonance, and auto tune strips all but the pitch from the performance. In fact, I'm teaching my 4 year old to sing and record with me and when he hears a cut with auto tune on my voice, it freaks him out. It's the sonic uncanny valley.
Magnetic Audio Tape ( analogue/analog) is still the best for sound reproduction over modern digital but not as convenient... Critical listeners with no problem of money issues buy factory tape reel albums at huge prices to listen to on high end reel to reel machines .. / Auto Tune could be the worst invention of all because it cuts into the soul of the natural ability, but for example Kid Rock used it for a sound effect on God only Knows and not caring about getting the pitch just right . It has a good use case maybe ..
One thing I like is when you know that a take is not absolutely note-perfect in all respects. You shouldn't expect an absolutely perfect live performance and as long as it doesn't result in an absolute train wreck, I'm fine with leaving those little bobbles in the final recording. Two of my favorite examples are Paul McCartney surpassing a laugh on the line "Writing fifty times" in Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and Vince Guaraldi's clams of a piano note in "Linus and Lucy" (done for A Charlie Brown Christmas) which you can hear at :49 at th-cam.com/video/x6zypc_LhnM/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=VinceGuaraldiVEVO
I certainly love technology and realize it has it's place, but I am not alone in finding an authenticity is a much more straightforward use of technology. I think Billy Strings is act / band that is a great examply of merging more traditional "porch music" and big shows, but I like going a bit more to the intimate side. Currently my favorite act is Sierra Ferrell and the band she is touring with right now is awesome. They are certainly using technology and even the traditional fiddle play has an effects foot board, but they also keep the raw intimacy of an appalacian sound. I chose this video because although it is recorded on site using all this great technology it is certainly a LONG, LONG way from an arena rock performance using autotune - and Sierra Ferrell is an incredibly singer and Beth, you really should take a look her. th-cam.com/video/hN0gFFy9ZnE/w-d-xo.html
Here is a better audio quality video of an indoors performance but I'm confident no autotude used: th-cam.com/video/p9-uXSOLja8/w-d-xo.html A songe Sierra Ferrell wrote.
Clearly it's the technology that makes this all possible. Every instrument is wired, and they are using effects pedals. The newer pickups and microphones that capture a quality sound on a fiddle or violiin is an amazing advance. Recording an 8 piece band outdoors on portable equipment - amazing.
@@scottmatznick3140 Welp, I'm not a Brit, so I don't know about him lol. Adam did collab with Tom Scott in that video where Tom discussed autotune (that video also featured Beth).
I intensely dislike autotune, especially when it's - totally unnecessarily - used to "perfect" out the minor imperfections in the voices of really great singers, who most definitely don't need autotune. In my book, the use of autotune in such cases makes the listening experience worse. The minor imperfections BELONG in a human voice, in my book. I wish the use of autotune would be restricted exclusively for effects on music that calls for it. Though I don't typically enjoy the use of autotune even then, at least if it was restricted to such use, I could avoid it.
Jackie Evancho stated at age 11? that she would never use Auto-tune on her performances/recordings..... stating, WHY BOTHER... IT IS FAKE. I do not know if that decree held true after age 14.
The "Autotune affair" is a very simple matter: if anyone is able to record a single with no preparation at all - not even a rudimental sense of rhythm - it is a bad thing. Moreover, is even more bad if you consider that the Market has imposed in the POPular music tons of "singers" that don't have any merit to be on the spot. The more the audience will be not educated to detect charlatans, the more people with no sense of music will be on the top. So, the main problemi is that producers and record labels, in order to do easy cash, have transformed a useful tool of calibration in a "way of life", in a genre.
Ok, love your stuff. But “Chinese whispers” is probably problematic. I know what you mean. In Canada we use the term “telephone game” to refer to the same thing, but to be honest it probably had Chinese in front of it initially. Just a heads up. Much respect I’m sure you mean no disrespect
I very dumbly never thought of it as it is such a common phrase used here. Seems very obviously rubbish when you think about it. Noted and deleted. It should update in an hour or so. Thanks for pointing it out.
@@BethRoars thank you for the action and the reply. I’m just a cis white guy, who tries to be mindful of my words. You’ve helped me become a better singer btw with your videos. Again much respect. Glad the days are getting brighter. Happy holidays
I very dumbly never thought of it as it is such a common phrase used here. Very obviously rubbish when you think about it. Thanks for pointing it out. I've deleted that sentence!
Just because you could go to a compline service at your local catholic or episcopal cathedral and turn your radio off to hear more Gregorian and less pop, no need to sacrifice “near anything”, but I could understand if a man of your taste finds the occasional Renaissance polyphony a little too racy But truly I’m just messing around. If you haven’t gone to a compline service it’s pretty lovely I used to go every week pre-covid
Excuse me but the claim that 'Crazy Blues' sold 1 million copies in six months is ludicrous. The Population of the U.S. in 1920 was 106 million....99 % of the population including children had phonographs AND bought this record ??????....ridiculous....
auto-tune is an abomination ......i seek outlive music with a solo or groups huddled around a microphone.....i never liked Bluegrass before....i listen to music when once per day i take pain meds (i'm 70,and an invalid) and while high on the meds auto-tune drives me nuts....also too much reverb.... does the same....plain pure tones with live instruments and voices are best......Try Hayden Bluegrass Orchestra...Norwegian Bluegrass .....lead singer is a stranger to vibrato
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The thing about pitch correction is that it's used so ubiquitously nowadays in pop music (even when we don't realize it) that anyone who performs live and/or without tuning is sometimes held to an impossible standard. Very few people have perfect pitch, but people are so used to hearing perfectly-tuned voices that normal variations and idiosyncrasies of the human voice are starting to be erased. I may be wrong about this, but I have to wonder if that's why I find so many pop singers and Broadway performers sound almost indistinguishable to me. I'm not against the use of tuning or other effects, but like with instagram filters, everyone is presented with such a polished finish that they don't even seem (or in this case, sound) natural or altogether human anymore. I promise, I won't hate you if your intonation isn't 100% perfect. I want to feel like I'm listening to a real person and not a robot. Okay, I'm done ranting about it lol
It's like they used to say about over-coaching of young football players - it turns ordinary players into good players, and great players into good players as well. We're in danger of eliminating the great.
@@silgen Yesss, like I'd hate to see real talent and skill be overlooked because an average person with a computer can do "the same thing".
Right. Other reasons why real talent is overlooked are mentioned in this comment about multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter John Miles, "In the world of Rock music, there can be no greater travesty than the way John Miles' music has been ignored, especially by the weekly music press. Musical skill has never been high on their list of pre-requisites for stardom and as soon as John's fifteen minutes of fame had terminated in the mid-Seventies, the shutters came down with a resounding bang. 'Passé' and 'old-fashioned' were the usual glib diatribes flung insultingly in Mr. Miles' direction with every subsequent record release, yet to those prepared to listen, each and every album contained material that consolidated his status as an exceptional songwriting talent." (Gilby, Ian. "John Miles: The Venue, London." Electronics & Music Maker, April 1984.)
Miles died on December 5, 2021.
I'm a history nerd and a bit of a music nerd, why can't I give this two thumbs up!
It surely deserves 2.
Fantastic video! I love these Beth Roars documentary style vids. I'd add echo chambers and delays to this list. Record producer Mitch Miller was an early adopter of the echo chamber in popular music -- he described it as "putting a halo over the voice" -- 'cos he noticed that everyone sounded better when they sang in the shower or the bathroom because of the reflective tiles. Likewise, tape-delay, as used by Sam Phillips in the Sun Studios for Elvis Presley ('cos his studio was too tiny to have a proper echo chamber) was an incredibly influential sound as well, and still is.
Also, apart from being a pioneer of the solid body electric guitar, Les Paul was the earliest musician to really exploit multi-tracking and overdubbing on popular recordings. The records that he made with his wife Mary Ford were incredibly ground-breaking. There are some great clips on TH-cam where they demonstrate their technique in real time, and we're talking the pre-rock n' roll era here. Well worth checking out.
Fascinating to see how art and technology influence each other and evolve together. Love your channel - it's both interesting and insightful.
This was excellent Beth. I would add that the invention of other electronic effects such as digital or analog echo and reverb also has changed things radically. In that case it enabled creative use and voice recordings to be recorded in spaces which were not acoustically interesting (small rooms, purposefully dead sounding vocal booths, etc. ) without sounding dry and unrealistic
Also just as you mentioned the Gregorian chants needing to compensate for natural echo and reverberation, singers can now utilize electronic versions for specific effect. If for instance you sing a note(s) up to down or down to up in pitch over time with echo or reverb, it can create a beautiful pitch doubling effect as different pitches come back from the echo over the course of a vocal run or flourish mixing with one another. Just about every ballad which sounds haunting or chilling or which evokes some other feeling uses that technique to one extent or another.
Singers often also have to consider how an echoed word sounds when it comes back from an echo so that if they sing a word that has an "s" or "t" on the end then perhaps they need to emphasize the vowels in the word rather than the consonants so that the echo doesn't come back as an annoying "s...s...s" or "t" sound but instead sounds full and round with a vowel.
RE: musical theatre, I never much thought about it before, but having 25+ people mic'ed, the sound guy must be a total wizard. I suppose it's the same show, the same venue, every night but that's still a challenge.
What i value in art? Storytelling,Sincerity, Perception, Craftmanship and above all of them LOVE in the broadest meaning there is!!
Picked up and learned some lovely little facts from this!!
I'd say that another invention of note is multichannel audio input into computers via low latency firewire, thunderbolt and USB-C3 together with multi track digital recording software(Digital Audio Workstations-DAWs) such as Cakewalk Sonar, (Now Bandlab Cakewalk) with almost endless plugins for EQ, compression, effects etc, allowed home recording studios to flourish. Addins such as Rolands V-Vocal enables pitch correction of single or multiple notes and vocal alignment across tracks (all singers come in together and end together). Automated punch-in, punch-out capability allows re-recording of short time spans to quickly fix trouble spots. Also available is dynamic control of volume, panning and effects brings Nashville's Music Row studio capability into a room in one's house instead of a $100+/hr scheduled studio time. It's truly a great time to make and record audio.
Great idea and glad to see kate and the headset wireless mike there ... a pioneer of live pop because she wanted to dance and sing. A lot of people have forgotten that.
Apparently the first one her engineer knocked up was made out of a coat hanger. I was lucky enough to see her on her Tour of Life in 1979 and it was truly astonishing to see her sing and dance at the same time, the whole show was like nothing we'd ever seen before.
I cannot tell you how much I enjoy these technical videos.
I listened to a radio show in which a common female singer was recorded singing "My Heart Will Go On". Then a sound engineer applied pitch correction to the recording. After that, he added reverb, which made the uneven vibrato less obvious. He improved her vocals so much that she almost sounded like a professional.
As a kid, I had a rock guitar tutor with a great musical ear. I had to tune my guitar at the beginning of each lesson and had to play pitch-perfect bendings. This training is definitely one of the main reasons why it's easy for me to spot when a singer is off pitch. I have good singing pitch, just like my father and grandfather. However, even some great guitarists struggle with singing on pitch, and this shows me that good singing pitch is highly genetically determined.
Amazing job, Beth! Much appreciation to the time and effort you put into researching for these mini documentaries. And your delivery as the host/narrator is always top notch!!
Very nice and fascinating history lesson! One thing in particular rang a bell. You related how an early use of record technology was for comedy acts. I recently read that the Beatles famed producer, George Martin, originally came to their attention because he had produced several hit comedy records that the Beatles were fans of!
This was brilliant! I think I've been pronouncing Lavalier like a moron for the past thirty years. Now finally thanks to you, I can sound like I know what I'm doing.
Very nicely done. Naturally, everyone these days is all “a-twitter” over auto tune (melodyne etc). I recall the dust up over compression. With music it seems there is always something!
Missing from these discussions is that recording…all recording….is an aural illusion. I think Beth does a good job here without getting into the weeds.
At the risk of oversimplification, digital recording has basically made techniques and effects developed for analogue recording easier, less time consuming and added flexibility.
Before auto tune vocals were often “comped.” Singers performed several takes (often dozens over hours) and a recording engineer and producer selected the “best” parts of each performance and, like film editors, “taped” the snippets of tape creating one whole performance.
Vocals were also “shaped” by numerous techniques. Sibilance and breathing etc were removed by “ de-essing”
and EQ which could also remove, attenuate or accentuate notes/syllables.
Pitch was tweaked by slowing the tape or speeding it up. As Beth notes reverb is used, as is compression. And mic selection and placement can impact vocals greatly. The is also use of triggers. For example Producer Tony Visconti placed more than one different mic in front of David Bowie and Bowie’s vocal volume triggered one mic to shut off and the other positioned behind it to open up. Engineers also use delays. Vocals are often doubled. (Sometimes so artfully, we hear only one voice singing when it may be two or three.)
It is not just vocals but every instrument that is subject to recording effects. Loops were done with tape.
The great drummer Jeff Porcaro created a drum loop for Africa by endless over dubbing.
The whole point is, the only “truth” in musical performance is sitting in an anechoic chamber listening to someone sing a cappella.
Auto tune is barely noticeable or not at all is used to correct (comp?) a vocal. If it is obvious, then itis misused or intended. The famous Cher “Do you Believe..” is an intentional effect on what is a disco (EDM) dance pop song. Dancing to it in a club it is fun. Sitting in front of a home stereo listening to it. Not so interesting. At least for me. As Beth notes, music appreciation is personal taste.
Hi Beth! I came across your channel recently, and love all your in depth info about singing. I'm an opera singer, so I sing in a mostly acoustic setting that isn't heavily influenced by recording technology. I've gotten into recording recently, and find your comments about microphones really interesting! I do disagree somewhat that vibrato is used to cover up intonation - in my experience, microphones are often not very good at faithfully reproducing the sound of an opera singer's voice in a space, which results in the intonation sounding a little off and the vibrato to sound very wide in comparison to how they sound live (similarly to how tenors and altos sounded better with early mics). Intonation can definitely be an issue with the technical demands of opera that you highlighted, and it can certainly be easy to get carried away with vibrato as a byproduct of trying to find a good vocal placement, but I don't think that this is done with the conscious intention of hiding bad intonation either live or in recording. Sorry to nitpick! I just spend a lot of time thinking about this for my job so I'm quite passionate about it 😊
That said, I am so grateful for your content! Thank you for demystifying vocal technique with such a warm personality to boot 🙏🏻
Long time viewer, first time commenter. So if no one has not already said, I love your look. The way you now wear your beautiful hair. And I fell in love when you broke down how great was Freddie Mercury's voice. Also loved how you marveled at Ian Gillan's voice in "Child of Time." Everything about how you approach the subject at hand is a joy. As is your voice.
This was a really fascinating video. It seems obvious, now that I've thought about it a bit, but it never occurred to me before that genre was, by and large, a marketing gimmick. I've traditionally been one of those people who define myself by genre, so this has given me a lot to think about. Also, as someone with a voice in the baritone/bass register, who tends to sing a bit quietly, I now have even more appreciation for my mic.
As far as what I value in art, specifically music, I tend to look at it in terms of the three traditions: folk, formal and pop. I can enjoy music from all three and I appreciate the focus on skill on the formal tradition and the entertainment value of the pop tradition, but I've always leaned much more heavily toward the folk tradition and its focus on authenticity.
Some genres of popular music have a focus on skill: progressive rock and progressive metal (Opeth, Cynic), for example.
Excellent summary. We enjoyed this. Hope you can do more along these topics, on how technology helps define what makes them sound like them.
I love the acoustic singing, singers, like for example haering you or Freya Ridings. It is so warm, so personal and no autotune 😘.
I am amazed yet again at both the breadth and depth of your content. this one is a "must watch" for every live mixing board operator around the world!! I learned a great deal about mics, mixing, and effects when my church went from an analog system to a digital system some 10 years ago. it changes the way you must think about the signals you're processing. with analog, "a little tweek on the input" is good enough, whereas with a digital system you have to really define what it is you're trying to accomplish. I found that it's helpful to "play with it" using a pre-recorded dry track and just see what all the knobs, buttons and effects do. I've also found that I can only do that for about 90 minutes before I start getting "ear fatigue" and everything sounds the same.
other industries have had the "top 5" that changed things forever (Automotive and Aviation come to mind), and the price of progress is....progress!
BTW, how big is your production staff for these videos? ( I would guess 6 with a couple of you wearing 2 hats)
Well done, Beth! I really like the change of the pace program. Gotta say I hate autotune to " improve" someone's voice. As we see in "Get Back," the boys had to work harder to produce a "live" sound than the heavy production they had just used. The hard work to get the vocals right along with creating the words was a work of art by four individuals and not a production marvel. I like both, but the best thing about the creation of rock n' roll was the "live" sound feeling you got listening to it. You rock, Beth! Keep up the great work!
Hey Andy! Glad you enjoyed! I'm a doing more of these style videos on my other channel if you want to check it out: th-cam.com/video/CiRFsUrDq_4/w-d-xo.html
Multitracking was invented by guitarist Les Paul. Singer Bing Crosby helped Ampex develop tape recorders in the mid 1950s by giving them $50,000 dollars to facilitate their development. Walt Disney demonstrated multitracking on his television program in the mid 1950s using a singer (I believe it was Patti Page) and two tape recorders.
When she mentioned singers multi-tracking, I was hoping she'd give an example, as she had with other phenomena. You're referring, of course, to the Patti Page Quartet, who had a hit single in "With My Eyes Wide Open I'm Dreaming".
Thank you for all the effort you put into these videos.
My pleasure!
this video is incredible! great job!
Glad you liked it! I'm doing more these types of videos on my new channel :) th-cam.com/video/CiRFsUrDq_4/w-d-xo.html
Insightful! Thank you so much for this video!
If I could I would definitely put my vote on uninventing autotune. As a child of the 80s, I do prefer authenticity in singing voices. While Cher's song Believe was really fun first time listening to for the effect ... it is really annoying that autotune has become such a standard in contemporary pop - amongst other somewhat doubtful developments in the music industry.
The introduction of the first distortion pedal for guitar in 1962 ("Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone") contributed to the punchy, raspy vocal style in rock music.
Fun to watch and very informative. As always!👍👍Thank you Beth.
Loved this, thank you!!!
Listening to this video through my beloved Sennheiser Momentum headphones.
Great video! I personally prefer voices in the raw - without auto-tune. It could be because I was raised on music from the '70s and '80s, but I find it harder to "connect" to a song/singer when the voice has been auto-tuned because of the loss of the natural vocal imperfections and vulnerabilities that draw me into a song. I think auto-tune can be cool when used as an effect, but that's about it.
With the exception of the invention of the phonograph, this all focuses on devices used to create the sound. I have sometimes wondered how what is popular in music has been affected by the popular sound reproduction devices used by the listeners (as opposed to the creators). For example, a documentary I saw made a point of saying how important car AM radios were for popularizing early rock and roll. So did the sound quality of a car radio especially lend itself to simple and direct rhythmic music? Probably no way to give definitive answers, but I think it would be interesting to see theories on that by people more knowledgeable than I.
I think you are on the wrong track (pun intended) here. The music on those car radios was often extremely complex production wise. Simple melodies and rhythms were/are always a factor in any popular music. What car radios did was increase availability. The next step was cassettes, which aside from bringing recorded music
into your car but led to the walk man which allowed one to take their music anywhere. They allowed for consumer control (mix tapes etc).
So, these devices made music more accessible. Now streaming, wi fi, blue tooth which removes the need for wires tethering listeners to devices.
So, these advances had less to do with the music and everything to do with accessibility.
That was really interesting Beth, and well researched... Thank you...
Happy Christmas to you all...x
Happy holidays!
Awesome episode ❣️😀👍
I love when you do these videos! 🤓
Think you missed one little wrinkle.,the jacard loom & in its musical guise the pianola ., which in the hands of IBM ., which had started from pianola sales ., used its identification systems to sort the US sensuous ( 1910? ) and in Germany to " sort " in the pre WW2 ..
good work, thank you
Thank you!!
@@BethRoars you're welcome!
Fascinating.
I personally do-not like the auto-tune of entire vocals, it disturbs my listening. When used as an effect, that is a different matter as it is subjective art. Use of pitch correction technology can fix errors on a take when used sparingly and with precision. This can as Beth mentioned save time and money by reducing takes.
When applied to an entire vocal input however, the nuances of the singer are lost to algorithm preferences for reassigning the input to a specific scale. What is unbearable to my ear is when re-releases of artists’ albums are auto-tuned during the remaster. When compared to the original the new release is an abomination as they are not correcting a pitch here or there but wiping away the legendary performances. There is simply no need to alter performances from the 70s of Queen, Simon &?Garfunkel, The Beatles, or even Bob Dylan’s unusual vocal style. There was artistry not only in the performances of these older tunes but also in their production provided by producers and sound engineers that is lost when rereleased are altered to be more in line with today’s consumer. It’s a travesty, and these songs albums and videos that are altered with these technologies should have a disclaimer - kind of like how in film there is distinguishing “Director’s Cuts” from the originally released “Theatric cuts.” It is simply fraudulent if you buy a new release of an album from the 70s that was important to you, and you then find they have auto tuned the vocals in whole or in part - without letting you know it has been so modified. It’s insulting to the entire team that worked with the artists to produce these performances and they should be preserved so as to retain the artistic integrity that made them successful in their day. I have no interest in hearing Joni Mitchell’s classics be reproduced to sound to the modern ear more like Billie Eilish, for example.
Just as one should not attempt to view history through the lens of today’s social and cultural mores, the same is true of music. We should preserve the earliest recordings of all genres and eras as they were. One can allow for technology change from wax cylinders to discs of different types, and from analog tape formats and later digital tape up to the digital music we know these days from CD, MP3, FLAC, etc. These format changes can and should occur with the most minimal changes to the performance artistry. Auto-tune simply violates this concept and spoils the original intent, emotive artistry, and natural quality of the vocals be it Howling Wolf or Heart. Keep the integrity of the recordings always. In this way the music of an era can survive with bifurcation again and again with new producers altering the art of yesteryear.
Hear, hear!
Hear, hear!
Bravo! Well said!
I couldn't of said it better myself this is exactly what auto tune is doing. It's stripping the music of its artistry
before I watch...I am wondering if you had included the UNGO BOX.. used by Peter Frampton, Joe Walsh (Eagles) and others and many a cover band in the 80s and such! to follow !!!!
Thanks for using a video from my favorite singer, Kate Bush.
Cool!!! Love your shows!!! Please do Gordon Lightfoot - Spanish Moss
I read somewhere that the improvements in microphone and amplifier technology is a major reason why salsa singers went from largely sounding nasally in the early years of the genre to having a more natural and cleaner tone since the late 80s. Compare singers like Joe Arroyo and Celia Cruz with Marc Anthony and La India. I’m not sure how accurate this assessment is, would you be able to share some insight?
Thanks for the presentation, but I'm confused by the paint brush.
I still listen to Dark Side of the Moon.
Re: Opera there is a video from Sean Daniel "When you're NOT prepared for the Power of an opera singer"
here is the link. th-cam.com/video/VB7lYoVbiHM/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for this history of recent music and the speed of technology in changing what and how we listen.
Symphonic Metal is my happy place
I wonder how much latency the digital wireless microphone adds. While organists certainly learn to play ahead of the sounds that they hear, but would think that singing ahead of your dancing, or ahead of your accompaniment, or ahead of what you hear of the other singers in the performance, seems like an insurmountable task. Diversity reception seems, to me, to be a much better approach to handling drops in a physically dynamic performance.
The latency of digital wireless mics varies with make and model. Typically it is of the order of 2 to 3 milliseconds (thousandths of a second). Analogue wireless mics typically have zero latency (maybe the odd nanosecond if we are splitting hairs). At the time of writing, all the digital wireless mics I am aware of also use diversity reception, as do all truly professional analogue wireless microphones.
There are some digital wireless mics, intended for speech or for video recording applications, with greater latency of the order of 19 milliseconds.
There are exceptions to the “zero latency” of analogue wireless btw, some high-end analogue wireless mic receivers incorporate digital signal processing (DSP) to improve the audio performance, but added latency is a by-product of this. Typically adding 1.7 - 1.9ms compared with “pure” analogue systems.
3:51 all our words are the last dying words of a person. Some of us are just more long-winded :D
Looking at your chapters, it reads like the lifespan of popular music. We need an auto tuned funeral dirge at the end.
Waiting for hairspray changing music in the 80’s
There’s a fascinating video on TH-cam of a modern metal hand trying to record on a wax cylinder, definitely worth watching if you get chance :)
Autotune and pitch correction are a curse on music, in my opinion. If you can sing, then do it. If you can't, you have no business being there. The problem isn't so much trying to make the voice a perfectly in tune product, it's more that music companies are pushing 'talents' for their looks more than for the abilities. If you listen to the majority of modern Pop, you'll find the vocals are kept within a very few safe notes so the corrections are easier to do. Instead of celebrating a singer's range, we're inundated with bland sounds that rarely sound adventurous. Just as importantly, before autotune, a singer conveyed emotion with subtle nuances of the voice. Good singers knew to never take that too far. Newer 'singers' all seem to be whinging and crying, going so far over the top that I'd rather hear a dog howling.
The so-called talent shows all use autotune, as well. We're being lied to.
Before digital pitch correction, there were a number of techniques utilized to accomplish the same thing. First, singers often had to spend hours singing any number of “takes” to get one “right.” Recording editors “comped” vocals by splicing tape (much like a film editor) taking snippets of vocals piecing them together to get one for the record.
Pitch was altered by slowing or speeding up the tape machine.
Vocals were often equalized or EQ’d emphasizing or attenuating passages or notes.
De-essers were applied removing or adjusting sibilance.
Elaborate delay’s were placed in the recording chain and compression was used.
And so on.
ALL BEFORE digital pitch correction was introduced. Digital recording basically offered all these effects and more cutting down endless hours of work for producers, engineers and yes, artists.
Te Amo!!!!
I never understood auto-tune slander honestly. It doesn't "improve" the voice. It doesn't make someone who can't sing on pitch a good singer. It's definitely not "cheating" because there is no race. I just see it as an effect different than actual singing. There is a reason why not everyone uses pitch correcting even if they easily could because some songs actually rely on being natural while some rely on that "glossy" auto-tune effect to serve the purpose. And that's totally fine. It's just way more than "singing on pitch". When you use auto-tune, you just give your music a different direction.
It's a synthesizer using acoustic vocal input as the controller. It's not singing.
I have really good pitch (didn't realize how good until recently, ironically thanks to another of Beth's videos), and I find trying to sing with auto tune incredibly frustrating. It takes a full, on pitch note and ruins it completely. I've put a lot of effort into pitch and range as well as resonance, and auto tune strips all but the pitch from the performance.
In fact, I'm teaching my 4 year old to sing and record with me and when he hears a cut with auto tune on my voice, it freaks him out. It's the sonic uncanny valley.
Hey beth ❤️ could you do a react creed - one last breath?
Magnetic Audio Tape ( analogue/analog) is still the best for sound reproduction over modern digital but not as convenient... Critical listeners with no problem of money issues buy factory tape reel albums at huge prices to listen to on high end reel to reel machines .. / Auto Tune could be the worst invention of all because it cuts into the soul of the natural ability, but for example Kid Rock used it for a sound effect on God only Knows and not caring about getting the pitch just right . It has a good use case maybe ..
One thing I like is when you know that a take is not absolutely note-perfect in all respects. You shouldn't expect an absolutely perfect live performance and as long as it doesn't result in an absolute train wreck, I'm fine with leaving those little bobbles in the final recording. Two of my favorite examples are Paul McCartney surpassing a laugh on the line "Writing fifty times" in Maxwell's Silver Hammer, and Vince Guaraldi's clams of a piano note in "Linus and Lucy" (done for A Charlie Brown Christmas) which you can hear at :49 at th-cam.com/video/x6zypc_LhnM/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=VinceGuaraldiVEVO
I certainly love technology and realize it has it's place, but I am not alone in finding an authenticity is a much more straightforward use of technology. I think Billy Strings is act / band that is a great examply of merging more traditional "porch music" and big shows, but I like going a bit more to the intimate side. Currently my favorite act is Sierra Ferrell and the band she is touring with right now is awesome. They are certainly using technology and even the traditional fiddle play has an effects foot board, but they also keep the raw intimacy of an appalacian sound. I chose this video because although it is recorded on site using all this great technology it is certainly a LONG, LONG way from an arena rock performance using autotune - and Sierra Ferrell is an incredibly singer and Beth, you really should take a look her. th-cam.com/video/hN0gFFy9ZnE/w-d-xo.html
Here is a better audio quality video of an indoors performance but I'm confident no autotude used: th-cam.com/video/p9-uXSOLja8/w-d-xo.html
A songe Sierra Ferrell wrote.
Clearly it's the technology that makes this all possible. Every instrument is wired, and they are using effects pedals. The newer pickups and microphones that capture a quality sound on a fiddle or violiin is an amazing advance. Recording an 8 piece band outdoors on portable equipment - amazing.
Oh no no Thomas Edison; you want to combine those and create dolls of dead people that crackle out the persons haunting last words...
When it comes to autotune, Adam Neely is the guy to reach out to!
Eh, I think Wings of Pegasus tops that game, now that he's stopped referring to himself as "British guitarist" at the beginning of every video.
@@scottmatznick3140 Welp, I'm not a Brit, so I don't know about him lol. Adam did collab with Tom Scott in that video where Tom discussed autotune (that video also featured Beth).
I intensely dislike autotune, especially when it's - totally unnecessarily - used to "perfect" out the minor imperfections in the voices of really great singers, who most definitely don't need autotune. In my book, the use of autotune in such cases makes the listening experience worse. The minor imperfections BELONG in a human voice, in my book. I wish the use of autotune would be restricted exclusively for effects on music that calls for it. Though I don't typically enjoy the use of autotune even then, at least if it was restricted to such use, I could avoid it.
Jackie Evancho stated at age 11? that she would never use Auto-tune on her performances/recordings..... stating, WHY BOTHER... IT IS FAKE.
I do not know if that decree held true after age 14.
I don't mind Autotune unless I can hear it. I'm old-fashioned. 😎
see what Angelina Jordan - Billie Jean (Jazzy Michael Jackson Cover)
The "Autotune affair" is a very simple matter: if anyone is able to record a single with no preparation at all - not even a rudimental sense of rhythm - it is a bad thing. Moreover, is even more bad if you consider that the Market has imposed in the POPular music tons of "singers" that don't have any merit to be on the spot. The more the audience will be not educated to detect charlatans, the more people with no sense of music will be on the top. So, the main problemi is that producers and record labels, in order to do easy cash, have transformed a useful tool of calibration in a "way of life", in a genre.
Hi 😍.. meet you again.. done like
Ok, love your stuff. But “Chinese whispers” is probably problematic. I know what you mean. In Canada we use the term “telephone game” to refer to the same thing, but to be honest it probably had Chinese in front of it initially. Just a heads up. Much respect I’m sure you mean no disrespect
I very dumbly never thought of it as it is such a common phrase used here. Seems very obviously rubbish when you think about it. Noted and deleted. It should update in an hour or so. Thanks for pointing it out.
@@BethRoars thank you for the action and the reply. I’m just a cis white guy, who tries to be mindful of my words. You’ve helped me become a better singer btw with your videos. Again much respect. Glad the days are getting brighter. Happy holidays
This was fascinating. I’m not an auto tune fan. I think it’s lazy music making.
😎✌🏻
How have people invented death growls?
I think it always existed :)
Wow... "Chinese Whispers" hitting my ear for the first time made me physically cringe. We call it "Telephone" over here. Oof...
I very dumbly never thought of it as it is such a common phrase used here. Very obviously rubbish when you think about it. Thanks for pointing it out. I've deleted that sentence!
woao
I would give near anything to get back to monks singing Gregorian chant in lofty cathedrals instead of Billie eilish's computer altered hushed tones.
Why though
@@Joshleslie871 because one fills my soul with heaven and one sets all of my senses on edge? Why do I need to justify musical tastes?
Just because you could go to a compline service at your local catholic or episcopal cathedral and turn your radio off to hear more Gregorian and less pop, no need to sacrifice “near anything”, but I could understand if a man of your taste finds the occasional Renaissance polyphony a little too racy
But truly I’m just messing around.
If you haven’t gone to a compline service it’s pretty lovely I used to go every week pre-covid
Excuse me but the claim that 'Crazy Blues' sold 1 million copies in six months is ludicrous. The Population of the U.S. in 1920 was 106 million....99 % of the population including children had phonographs AND bought this record ??????....ridiculous....
You talked about autotune but said NOTHING of T-Pain? Wow... have you heard his actual voice? Please give it a chance...
I love you're channel, But you are sounding like a Sennheiser commercial. Lots of others made as significant or more significant inventions.
auto-tune is an abomination ......i seek outlive music with a solo or groups huddled around a microphone.....i never liked Bluegrass before....i listen to music when once per day i take pain meds (i'm 70,and an invalid) and while high on the meds auto-tune drives me nuts....also too much reverb.... does the same....plain pure tones with live instruments and voices are best......Try Hayden Bluegrass Orchestra...Norwegian Bluegrass .....lead singer is a stranger to vibrato