Ha! We can edit our comments on TH-cam to correct a typo and the comment will be flagged ‘edited’, but a performer can produce an entire album or even a live performance miming or autotuned and there is absolutely no disclaimer!
Amen. I wonder if some research could be conducted having various age groups listening to vocals before autotune/pitch-correction vs after the computer takes over? I am 66 years old and these corrected vocals sound terrible. I can't stand them. I am a classically trained vocalist myself, starting in 1965, for a boys choir and participated in choral singing for 25 years. Perhaps younger listeners just don't notice the difference and their ears are not trained to hear it.
@@don7294I've noted this on other videos Fil has made about this - it is (clearly) generational. What we expected (wanted?) from live shows & artists/bands we saw is not at all what this generation - for the most part - wants/expects. In a couple other comments I've said these "live" shows are not concerts but rather "entertainment experiences". I was watching some songs by artists on The Midnight Special show today. Great example of what you are talking about.
Fil, yes, I heard the processing immediately! Such a pitch corrected mechanical sound! Michael's voice had so much expression! It is difficult to believe that anyone enjoys the corrected version of music! I find it very offensive to my ears!
Hey, my cousin was a midi sample, out of Asheville. She gave her voice away to part of the Moog family up there. One day she just wouldn’t turn back on, and… I can’t talk about it, but the midi sampled voices, on a keyboard, were people too. 😆
Even if I had never learned anything about pitch correction/autotune from Fil, I'd still know I want Michael's vocal. My natural ears want natural sounds. Great work, as always Fil!❤
I smile when I hear the unadulterated vocal by a great vocalist like MJ. It’s like the difference between eating a delicious home-cooked meal and eating ultra-processed GMO junk food.
I’m the singer in the video at the end. I started watching this channel around when the Ken Tamplin stuff started. I really enjoy these videos. Never in a thousand years did I think I’d see myself on it 🤣 I consider it quite the honour!
I enjoy the Sing It Live stuff but I'm well aware of how it's 'produced'. The keyboard guy (producer) is very, very good at what he does. Did he have a falling out with the HSCC bassist? Seems like there has been a big split between them! I do like the guy with the curly hair on guitar purely because he has a Dream Theater guitarists guitar 😂
Once you hear what changes in compression sound like, you'll hear the same with voice manipulation and pitch correction. For me this is madness. It's like having rotten meat and adding salt and garlic to it to hide it before dinner.
Whilst cooking it suddenly dawned on me an analogy of pich tuning my chef friend would appreciate. Scratch cooking involves adding your choice of seasoning and spice to a recipe that's is exactly your taste on any given occasion. Auto tune is someone else adding whatever they felt made your own cooking better. He was shocked and after watching this video he said he would be outraged if someone acted as a third party intermediary in his food creation. So auto tune is infact removing the "flavour" from the singer 😉 😂 He enjoyed my meal 😂
Thank you so much for the work you do Fil! Please don’t ever stop! As an artist who doesn’t use auto tune/ pitch correction you’re like therapy to me, restoring my confidence because comparing your voice to computers masking as humans is really harmful to your self image.
I think those two channels come from being together at one point and then one or more members separating from the original band. I usually love their covers but some vocals move me more than others, i guess you're helping me understand why. The HSCC recently posted a cover of Toto's "I'll Be Over You" and i loved the vocals and now you make me wonder if it was partially pitch corrected lol. I wish you could analyze that one just to make sure the vocals are at least mostly live, because i did love that cover in particular.
Really damaging here...not the video but the comment section. Goodness gracious. I love Fil/WoP and I love Darren/SiL. Two great channels, two brilliant musicians. Everything Fil says here is true. But what is also true is that the coverage this video gives us in 18 minutes and 7 seconds is about 0.2% of what Darren is doing. The other 99.8% of it is hard work. Setup, costumes, prep, learning the songs, scheduling it, assembling the band, arranging, producing, putting 7 or 8 people in a room for a few hours and doing a few takes. BTW these people all have other jobs. Darren records it, stays up late mixing and editing. Sure there's a bit of autotune in there and it's not the greatest thing I agree. But it is such a small part of the overall production. These are incredibly devoted and talented people making music together. Aside from the autotune it is certainly MOSTLY amazing and real and heartfelt. The comments section here is butchering the entire effort because of what this video points out. Sadly many or maybe most of the people making comments have never sang in front of a live audience, or recorded, or risked throwing their "talent" out for the world to judge, or tried to produce something like a song and produce it well which takes a massive amount of work by the way. Fil I love you bro but think about the bigger picture before you invite all of humanity to gang up on a tiny fraction of music production in this case and throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. $0.02.
It's what is left after the voice isolation work is done, including some of the post-recording effects like reverbs, delays, and double tracking. The software cannot separate those out from the signal that created them.
Good singers know that being slightly sharp brings an agitation and excitement to the vocal, though the audience won't know. Next singing slightly flat, will come across more relaxed, the opposite of sharp. Both cases no one can tell, but they feel the emotion. Better than robo vocal.
That last one is heavily autotuned but I wouldn’t assume it’s live. They are obviously doing tons of work on these tracks in terms of EQ, compression, tuning and that gated delay. Of course that stuff can be done live but I’d bet a mix engineer/producer spends several hours doing post on all these. They just sound so fake. Everyone is trying to make “live” sound produced like a studio record. It’s silly and makes it worthless to listen to.
I think Fil did a video a while back that highlighted parts of a performance that were ‘a little off pitch’ but we still enjoy listening to that song immensely. I’m thinking of an Eagles song where the guitar is just a little harsh at one point but we love hearing it. And a Boston song where the vocal goes a little over the top but we can’t get enough of it.
Yeah there's tonnes of those songs. You'll find that if you shift the tuning of a song by the right amount of cents, it'll have a reference pitch (and the according intervals) which resonate a lot more with different parts of the body, f.e. 2 cents sharp and the throat starts buzzing, 44 cents sharp and it's the forehead, 46 cents and it's the heart. Just a little something I've noticed in my own research.
Hi Fil, The short answer is NO! Once it has been pitch corrected and/or autotuned, it is no longer live! I find corrected music very grating on my sense of hearing! It is difficult to comprehend that many people have the ability to listen to this mechanical , robotic sound! Thank you for another great analysis video! My ears have been assulted..off to the ear doctor now ! 🤣😅
The ear doctor says that CSNY’s “So Far” album will restore your hearing. If you prefer something crunchier, all Alice In Chains (including most Jerry Cantrell solo songs) will do the same.
@SuziQ. Thanks for the advice! I seem to be suffering from pitch correction ear, according to my doctor! 😅🤣 Your suggestions will definitely bring my hearing back to a normal level!
I want to vomit when I think of these machines (the producers) changing music from decades ago. There's something not only anti-ART but anti-HUMAN about the whole sickening enterprise.
I’m always suspicious when a song in my music feed is titled ‘re-mastered’. Personally I enjoy authentic live performances on TH-cam performed by bands I love. And even live in person cover bands that do not use trickery.
"Listening to the expression" as a way of quantifying the impact of music and singing is so fantastic! As a singer (who's nowhere NEAR the talent level of MJ) I can't tell you how much I appreciate the work you're doing. It really helps unravel years and years of conditioning to try and be "pitch perfect". I often struggled against that and questioned what I had to offer as an artist. Thank you!
Sing it live was formed after a break up with HSCC. I have watched most of their videos and musically they sound great but all tracks are heavily edited, however, most people will not notice it.
Yeah. Not a coincidence that Fil has analysed them both in consecutive videos. Sing It Live tried to get ahead of this video by uploading a video of their mixing process yesterday.
@@SuziQ. Most people can't or don't care. Perhaps if they knew what was happening, then they would care??? Don't get me started on the radio - that should be part of Fil's side project!
A few years back, Darren Mullen, the main man behind HSCC and now SingitLive dropped a video showing us the differences between a raw recording and the processed one of a live HSCC performance done in his basement studio. As a novice to post production engineering before this, I could appreciate the necessity to clean up the noise so that the end product can be more generally enjoyed by common viewers like me. Just compared the HSCC or SingitLive videos to those of raw live recording put up by fans attendinding concerts on youtube and feel the difference. If I was in the concert itself, I wouldn't mind the noise but watching a video, I would prefer more those with a certain level of cleaning up. I have watched most of the videos uploaded by both the above mentioned channels and I am aware of the 'processed' element in place all the time but thanks to Fil, I got to see more details. There are so many TH-cam channels out there relying on editing and post productions to make the end products presentable. The choice is ours to enjoy or not. Just my opinion.
Great work as usual Fil. I don't know whether they'll be pleased with you calling Sing It Live a sister channel to HSCC. I feel there is a little animosity between the two, I may be wrong. I have been watching these two channels for a long time now, and it seems the man behind Sing It Live is Darren Mullen, who used to be with HSCC. As a guitarist of about 60 years, I think that these bands are very good, almost too good sometimes. Someone has posted some videos of HSCC live gigs in the Philippines and they are nowhere near as polished. Probably recorded on a phone, so I guess we can't be too critical. I think both bands are extremely studio and tech. savvy, so processing will be rife unfortunately.
I said that 20 years ago, when I was first shown why so many new metal bands, had similar sounds, and drums were synched up, with the same one or two bars, used for all of the rhythm track on guitar, bass is the same and the singers have pitch correction, and/or the same vocal take just reused for every chorus, so there’s no differences. It was quick, and get them in and out, record the next band, type of crap, or they couldn’t afford studio musicians, for stuff they couldn’t do. Then auto tune became an effect, that was so popular it had people who could sing very well, using it. I made a joke about Cher being just a robot now. Like she’d had so much plastic surgery, that she had to get robot vocal cords. Many made those jokes when she had that hit, and everyone denied it would ever become used by people, who could actually sing, let alone become standard for pop music.
Won’t mention the company, but at a big AI robotic product demonstration, it was said the robot was not really responding to the reporters questions, but it was a human in a back room giving the answers remotely pretending to be the robot. Just saying…
Never thought of it in exactly those terms, but yes, why ARE we trying to make humans sound like robots & robots sound like humans?!!! Great title for a show Fil !
@@ichirofakename that reminds me of a Star Trek Generations episode where Data played an instrument perfectly (because he’s an Android) and put his audience to sleep. There was no heart in his performance.
@universalassociates6857 I remember that! Unfortunately, humans are slowly being conditioned to things like auto tune and are becoming more accepting of humdrum crap.
Hi Fil, being a fan of ur channel n Sing It Live, could u look at 1 of their best live performances. in my opinion, where they are at a club doing Meatloaf’s Two out of Three ain’t bad, performed by the producer who is playing piano, please. 👍🇦🇺🇬🇧
I just saw Sabrina Carpenter sing Espresso "Live" at Coachella on TH-cam. At about 2:34 minutes in she pulls the microphone away from her mouth, but you still hear her singing. Girl needs more practice lip syncing.
There was an episode on the Star Trek Brave New Worlds television series where the Enterprise went through some space anomaly that caused all the crew to break out in song. I thought wow how could they all be such great singers! Now I think I know why. Even the Klingons were doing a coordinated song and dance on their battle cruiser bridge.
Modern music is perfect for robots. Being human, I prefer not quantized, not pitch-corrected music when live was actually live and recordings kept the expressions and imperfections.
Hello Fil, great work as usual ! I have a suggestion for another video : Everyone keeps calling Autotune "The Cher Effect" in reference to the song Believe. It actually made me wonder...in that very song, aside from the vocal glitches obviously used as an effect, we are led to assume that the rest of her performance is "natural". But is it, really ? Is the whole of her vocal track pitch-corrected as well, even if it's done with much more subtlety ?
I can hear every pitch corrected modulation stand out from the rest of the vocal line. I suspect more people will start noticing it and in the future it is going to date everything with it to this timeframe. It will be thought of as cheesy as the first decade of CGI.
This is very similar to the difference between a live drummer who hits with different velocity and a drum machine that gives each beat with the same velocity. It's like listening to a robotic voice without the natural timber of a voice. For me, it just grates.
You must have the most sensitive ear on the planet! I doubt I could see on my oscilloscope what you can hear naturally. I am constantly amazed with your videos.
The things people will pass off as “live” now, that’s the problem with technology, every time we invent something to make a job easier (like auto-tune) we lose a skill along the way. Great video, soon humans will be competing with AI when it comes to making music, can’t wait to see what’s considered “live” then, LoL.
For us, but someone just asked if they’re used in country music or hip hop- genres that have been saturated with auto tune and Melodyne for over 20 years.
"The point is the main objective is expression and the by-product of that is pitch. If you nail the expression, it doesn't matter where the pitch is. As you can see you can be between notes but you're still going to connect and the vocal is still going to make sense." Yet another favourite Fil quote!🤘
Much like when Photoshop and Green Screen started to be used. Models in bikinis with unrealistically long legs, flawless skin tones, fake backgrounds and Green Screen. Remember "Kardashian butt" with models being padded out to look like a bottom heavy Santa Claus shaped like an upside down turnip? Unrealistic but I fear this will become an "industry standard" for the music industry and just as damn stupid but at least we are now aware of the trend thanks to Fil and his analysis videos.
The terrible thing about the insidious pervasiveness of pitch correction/autotune in *all* "music production today ("live" and otherwise) is that it is not considered a big deal anymore. In fact, I would argue it is assumed to be an integral component of everything music today. Those of us who grew up enjoying the complete absence of autotune/pitch correction have yet another advantage over the computer-generated fakery that is today's "music." Another win for the boomers!
The Boomer generation was the first to grow up in an era where musical fakery was possible, and as it became cheaper and more sophisticated, became more pervasive as well. There was plenty of artifice before AutoTune, yet AutoTune becomes the villain in the story because some people need to feel the music they grew up with was somehow superior. That there was a Golden Age between the mid 60s and 70s was due to a disruption in the business model that gave the artists a lot more leeway vis a vis the suits. If music is weaker today, it comes from industry consolidation leading to fewer artists being promoted to avoid cannabilization of market share and that, since the rise of video games, boys not caring nearly as much about music as they used to. The demographic that matters most is "girls discovering boys" even more so today, and the best industry efforts go into capturing that market.
@Fil, I just listened to the original cover, sounds like whatever you used to extract the vocals is also adding a bit of artefact to the extraction. That said, still fully agree with your analysis...
Maybe the new standard is just a matter of space . Instead of it being "a live" performance , it's an "alive" performance . Meaning the performer was living at the time of the recording . Everything else is subject to change .
No. But also keep in mind people have been going into the studio and touching up live performances for a really long time. I know from first hand knowledge some popular rock live albums in the 80s that were completely redone in the studio. It's not any worse is it? I don't support it though. Even classical albums since the beginning of time can be a cut from several nights of performances and rehearsals. Pitch correction has been done since the 70s using tape machine tricks and pitch bending, it just took longer and was usually quicker just to re-sing it.
@@danieldebono7116 I thought it was just one who did her own singing on the records. IIRC they didn't start singing live in performance until the end when FF was preparing to let them go and work on his next act..
Thanks Fil. I had wondered why so many covers of emotional songs from the 1960s to 1990s sounded bland and emotionless. I assumed naive singers adding no emotion. Now I suspect Pitch Correction is the real answer.
Reviewing Tiny Desk Korea might be an interesting project. Tiny Desk is being known about not manipulating sound, but would that really be the case with idols in a country where labels famously know for wanting their products to look and sound perfect all the time? They even made one singer to apologise from fans for having a secret boyfriend. NMIXX's recent performance has received a lot of praise about their live vocals. But were they really live?
Remember all those live albums back in the last century ? Overdubbed to improve the product and the set order changed to fit the vinyl...and they were great and still are. There is nothing new except that the technology has changed...and the bands didn't all sound the same!
Loved this: "The main objective is expression and the byproduct of that is pitch. If you nail the expression it doesn't matter where the pitch is." But the modern music industry worships pitch above all else (well, after money 😂), and the byproduct of that is losing expression and emotion. They are a slave to pitch now.
@@cindi1313 Lucia Popp was singing with the proper joyful abandon required of her character...she just had a memory lapse and sang a joyful b-flat where b-natural was the note in the score.
Who remembers the Star Trek Next Generation episode where Data played an instrument perfectly (because he’s an Android) and he put the audience to sleep with boredom. There was no heart in his performance because it was perfect.
Yep, and there's an episode where Data realises another character is an android because they perform the sane song identically during practice and the final performance, which humans just can't do.
Hi Fil. I enjoy your analysis videos. They teach people a lot and explain a lot of nuance's in music. I do have a question for you. Have you ever listened to the Tori Holub videos or shorts. At first, I thought she Lip Syncing her Karen Carpenter covers. But listening more closely, I think she is really singing (because she does not sound exactly like Karen C., but very close), however, it sounds like she is double or triple tracking her voice (which is fine to balance out the pitch differences). DO you think there is Pitch correction (snapping notes to the lines) on her voice just by listening to it? Karen didn't need to snap notes to the line. Tori also appears to sing very close to Olivia Newton-John. It is pretty cool!
Fil analyzed one of Tori’s Carpenters covers. Tori and her producer joined the comments. She’s 100% live and natural. I love her ONJ covers (I prefer ONJ to KC).
“But Fil…please…it’s not about how technically incorrect their voices are but it’s about the tone and expression of their voices which is more important!”🤦🏻♂️ - as said by the marketing ghouls at the record companies
I thought version 1 on the left was a cover version. I grew up listening to Jackson but didn't even recognise his voice there!!! Literally unrecognisable. It sounds like the sort of music you hear in a supermarket.
I can't even say that these are average singers having their vocals improved. Microphone technique and vocal quality were just not up to scratch. Oodles of echo too, to make them sound fuller.
I was in a rock band in high school in 1965 . i was the lead vocalist , if you can call it that 😂 and sang songs that didn't require a 'good' voice but did require a lot of energy and enthusiasm . In those days no one cared how well you could sing . The audience just wanted high energy and a strong beat . That was really what R&R was all about when it first appeared even though there were some great voices with massive character like Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , etc.
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Ha! We can edit our comments on TH-cam to correct a typo and the comment will be flagged ‘edited’, but a performer can produce an entire album or even a live performance miming or autotuned and there is absolutely no disclaimer!
Good point!
Very apt analogy!
Spot on.
They are mostly going by the idea, that if you can't tell, it doesn't matter. Which has some logic to it, but can be problematic.
Ya. At the very least music should be labeled as to what sort of processing has been done to it. Just be honest.
My new must watch as soon as a new video is posted channel. Love what you are doing for us normal everyday vocalists!!
me too but doesn’t it seem like he’s getting frustrated? I almost want him to take a break from this and just listen to birds for three months.
"...does it STILL count as ‘live’?" Hell no.....
I love how you always react with a big smile when actual singers are doing their thing without correction
Autotune is so grating on my ears, and it takes the soul and individuality out of the performance.
Amen. I wonder if some research could be conducted having various age groups listening to vocals before autotune/pitch-correction vs after the computer takes over? I am 66 years old and these corrected vocals sound terrible. I can't stand them. I am a classically trained vocalist myself, starting in 1965, for a boys choir and participated in choral singing for 25 years. Perhaps younger listeners just don't notice the difference and their ears are not trained to hear it.
@@don7294I've noted this on other videos Fil has made about this - it is (clearly) generational. What we expected (wanted?) from live shows & artists/bands we saw is not at all what this generation - for the most part - wants/expects.
In a couple other comments I've said these "live" shows are not concerts but rather "entertainment experiences".
I was watching some songs by artists on The Midnight Special show today. Great example of what you are talking about.
It hurts my ears.
Fil, yes, I heard the processing immediately! Such a pitch corrected mechanical sound! Michael's voice had so much expression! It is difficult to believe that anyone enjoys the corrected version of music! I find it very offensive to my ears!
Somehow I wonder if Michael is rolling in his grave listening to these sounds.
@glamgal7106 I am sure Michael is definitely rolling in his grave! 😥
When you employ pitch correction to that extent, you're a midi sample on a keyboard, not a vocalist.
Hey, my cousin was a midi sample, out of Asheville.
She gave her voice away to part of the Moog family up there. One day she just wouldn’t turn back on, and…
I can’t talk about it, but the midi sampled voices, on a keyboard, were people too. 😆
@@CorbCorbin 😂
OP, untrue by definition.
But you are still a live performing midi sample.✌😆
Even if I had never learned anything about pitch correction/autotune from Fil, I'd still know I want Michael's vocal.
My natural ears want natural sounds.
Great work, as always Fil!❤
You are teaching by illustration which is the best way
I smile when I hear the unadulterated vocal by a great vocalist like MJ. It’s like the difference between eating a delicious home-cooked meal and eating ultra-processed GMO junk food.
Michael Jackson was one of the greats. Beautiful voice and no auto tune. A true vocalist.
I’m the singer in the video at the end.
I started watching this channel around when the Ken Tamplin stuff started. I really enjoy these videos. Never in a thousand years did I think I’d see myself on it 🤣
I consider it quite the honour!
I enjoy the Sing It Live stuff but I'm well aware of how it's 'produced'. The keyboard guy (producer) is very, very good at what he does. Did he have a falling out with the HSCC bassist? Seems like there has been a big split between them! I do like the guy with the curly hair on guitar purely because he has a Dream Theater guitarists guitar 😂
@@ALMELMUSICit’s a whole thing! It will make a great documentary someday
Nothing honorable. Change your name to Shawnthesnakeoil.
@@Shaunholton looking forward to it 🤣
@@lawwdogg1digrYou think he had control over the processing?
sad times for music :(
What i call 'faceless music".
I agree. These are very depressing times for music. The machine has taken over the human being.
Why are they even bothering to produce it? Its like accidentally buying dairy free cheese and then you take a bite..😖
Once you hear what changes in compression sound like, you'll hear the same with voice manipulation and pitch correction. For me this is madness. It's like having rotten meat and adding salt and garlic to it to hide it before dinner.
Processed pitch corrected vocals are not like a box of chocolates - you always know what you’re getting: the same all the time.
Totally processed pitch corrected vocals are more like a bag of uniform chocolate chips made from polysorbate 80 and sucralose.
Walk, Forrest ! Walk !
Whilst cooking it suddenly dawned on me an analogy of pich tuning my chef friend would appreciate. Scratch cooking involves adding your choice of seasoning and spice to a recipe that's is exactly your taste on any given occasion. Auto tune is someone else adding whatever they felt made your own cooking better. He was shocked and after watching this video he said he would be outraged if someone acted as a third party intermediary in his food creation. So auto tune is infact removing the "flavour" from the singer 😉 😂 He enjoyed my meal 😂
I think it's called Texas sharp shooting where you shoot at the wall and draw bullseyes around the holes.
@@garyfranco7827
😁
😂
Thanks Fil ❤
No to pitch correction! Not live performance
Great update as always Fil
as to the question sked NO a 1000 times NO Once u do anything to the voice after it has been preformed live makes it no longer live.
The processing sound is like nails on a chalkboard.
I don't matter if it's sharp or it's flat it's pitch corrected it's pitch corrected
Thanks Fil! You're the man!
Thank you so much for the work you do Fil! Please don’t ever stop! As an artist who doesn’t use auto tune/ pitch correction you’re like therapy to me, restoring my confidence because comparing your voice to computers masking as humans is really harmful to your self image.
I think those two channels come from being together at one point and then one or more members separating from the original band. I usually love their covers but some vocals move me more than others, i guess you're helping me understand why. The HSCC recently posted a cover of Toto's "I'll Be Over You" and i loved the vocals and now you make me wonder if it was partially pitch corrected lol. I wish you could analyze that one just to make sure the vocals are at least mostly live, because i did love that cover in particular.
Really damaging here...not the video but the comment section. Goodness gracious. I love Fil/WoP and I love Darren/SiL. Two great channels, two brilliant musicians. Everything Fil says here is true. But what is also true is that the coverage this video gives us in 18 minutes and 7 seconds is about 0.2% of what Darren is doing. The other 99.8% of it is hard work. Setup, costumes, prep, learning the songs, scheduling it, assembling the band, arranging, producing, putting 7 or 8 people in a room for a few hours and doing a few takes. BTW these people all have other jobs. Darren records it, stays up late mixing and editing. Sure there's a bit of autotune in there and it's not the greatest thing I agree. But it is such a small part of the overall production. These are incredibly devoted and talented people making music together. Aside from the autotune it is certainly MOSTLY amazing and real and heartfelt. The comments section here is butchering the entire effort because of what this video points out. Sadly many or maybe most of the people making comments have never sang in front of a live audience, or recorded, or risked throwing their "talent" out for the world to judge, or tried to produce something like a song and produce it well which takes a massive amount of work by the way.
Fil I love you bro but think about the bigger picture before you invite all of humanity to gang up on a tiny fraction of music production in this case and throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. $0.02.
Counterpoint: Nope.
Why does it always sound like they are in a tunnel??
Likely due to the processing. A dead giveaway.
Bad reception 😂
Sounds like a bucket to me😂
It's what is left after the voice isolation work is done, including some of the post-recording effects like reverbs, delays, and double tracking. The software cannot separate those out from the signal that created them.
Yes. Reverb.
Good singers know that being slightly sharp brings an agitation and excitement to the vocal, though the audience won't know. Next singing slightly flat, will come across more relaxed, the opposite of sharp. Both cases no one can tell, but they feel the emotion. Better than robo vocal.
Violinists have done that since time immemorial.
That last one is heavily autotuned but I wouldn’t assume it’s live. They are obviously doing tons of work on these tracks in terms of EQ, compression, tuning and that gated delay. Of course that stuff can be done live but I’d bet a mix engineer/producer spends several hours doing post on all these. They just sound so fake. Everyone is trying to make “live” sound produced like a studio record. It’s silly and makes it worthless to listen to.
I think Fil did a video a while back that highlighted parts of a performance that were ‘a little off pitch’ but we still enjoy listening to that song immensely. I’m thinking of an Eagles song where the guitar is just a little harsh at one point but we love hearing it. And a Boston song where the vocal goes a little over the top but we can’t get enough of it.
Yeah there's tonnes of those songs. You'll find that if you shift the tuning of a song by the right amount of cents, it'll have a reference pitch (and the according intervals) which resonate a lot more with different parts of the body, f.e. 2 cents sharp and the throat starts buzzing, 44 cents sharp and it's the forehead, 46 cents and it's the heart. Just a little something I've noticed in my own research.
The last video is definitely not live auto tune, certainly post production.
Hi Fil, The short answer is NO! Once it has been pitch corrected and/or autotuned, it is no longer live! I find corrected music very grating on my sense of hearing! It is difficult to comprehend that many people have the ability to listen to this mechanical , robotic sound! Thank you for another great analysis video! My ears have been assulted..off to the ear doctor now ! 🤣😅
The ear doctor says that CSNY’s “So Far” album will restore your hearing. If you prefer something crunchier, all Alice In Chains (including most Jerry Cantrell solo songs) will do the same.
@SuziQ. Thanks for the advice! I seem to be suffering from pitch correction ear, according to my doctor! 😅🤣 Your suggestions will definitely bring my hearing back to a normal level!
Never noticed that MJ goes 'off grid' !
Nice analysis, thought provoking.
Not pressed play yet, but the answer is NO !
Excellent.
I want to vomit when I think of these machines (the producers) changing music from decades ago.
There's something not only anti-ART but anti-HUMAN about the whole sickening enterprise.
I’m always suspicious when a song in my music feed is titled ‘re-mastered’. Personally I enjoy authentic live performances on TH-cam performed by bands I love. And even live in person cover bands that do not use trickery.
"Listening to the expression" as a way of quantifying the impact of music and singing is so fantastic! As a singer (who's nowhere NEAR the talent level of MJ) I can't tell you how much I appreciate the work you're doing. It really helps unravel years and years of conditioning to try and be "pitch perfect". I often struggled against that and questioned what I had to offer as an artist. Thank you!
Sing it live was formed after a break up with HSCC. I have watched most of their videos and musically they sound great but all tracks are heavily edited, however, most people will not notice it.
And, most people won't notice it because they aren't listening to ISOLATED vocals.
@@elizabethmiller7291,
I can hear it on the radio, when the vocals aren’t isolated.
Yeah. Not a coincidence that Fil has analysed them both in consecutive videos. Sing It Live tried to get ahead of this video by uploading a video of their mixing process yesterday.
@@SuziQ. Most people can't or don't care. Perhaps if they knew what was happening, then they would care??? Don't get me started on the radio - that should be part of Fil's side project!
Ah good. I was curious about sing it live, although I do enjoy watching the channel. 🫣
Bring back the fireworks 😂😂
😂
Thumbs 👍🏻
A few years back, Darren Mullen, the main man behind HSCC and now SingitLive dropped a video showing us the differences between a raw recording and the processed one of a live HSCC performance done in his basement studio. As a novice to post production engineering before this, I could appreciate the necessity to clean up the noise so that the end product can be more generally enjoyed by common viewers like me. Just compared the HSCC or SingitLive videos to those of raw live recording put up by fans attendinding concerts on youtube and feel the difference. If I was in the concert itself, I wouldn't mind the noise but watching a video, I would prefer more those with a certain level of cleaning up.
I have watched most of the videos uploaded by both the above mentioned channels and I am aware of the 'processed' element in place all the time but thanks to Fil, I got to see more details.
There are so many TH-cam channels out there relying on editing and post productions to make the end products presentable. The choice is ours to enjoy or not.
Just my opinion.
Great work as usual Fil. I don't know whether they'll be pleased with you calling Sing It Live a sister channel to HSCC. I feel there is a little animosity between the two, I may be wrong. I have been watching these two channels for a long time now, and it seems the man behind Sing It Live is Darren Mullen, who used to be with HSCC. As a guitarist of about 60 years, I think that these bands are very good, almost too good sometimes. Someone has posted some videos of HSCC live gigs in the Philippines and they are nowhere near as polished. Probably recorded on a phone, so I guess we can't be too critical. I think both bands are extremely studio and tech. savvy, so processing will be rife unfortunately.
How beautifully sang by Michael 💗
The concept of identicalness .. interesting thought provoking
Nooooo. MJ bad tour is amazing, sing and dancing at same time
Why are we trying to make humans sound more robotic and trying to make robots sound more human? 🤖
A lot of shareholder value is created in the process.
I said that 20 years ago, when I was first shown why so many new metal bands, had similar sounds, and drums were synched up, with the same one or two bars, used for all of the rhythm track on guitar, bass is the same and the singers have pitch correction, and/or the same vocal take just reused for every chorus, so there’s no differences.
It was quick, and get them in and out, record the next band, type of crap, or they couldn’t afford studio musicians, for stuff they couldn’t do.
Then auto tune became an effect, that was so popular it had people who could sing very well, using it.
I made a joke about Cher being just a robot now. Like she’d had so much plastic surgery, that she had to get robot vocal cords. Many made those jokes when she had that hit, and everyone denied it would ever become used by people, who could actually sing, let alone become standard for pop music.
Won’t mention the company, but at a big AI robotic product demonstration, it was said the robot was not really responding to the reporters questions, but it was a human in a back room giving the answers remotely pretending to be the robot. Just saying…
Never thought of it in exactly those terms, but yes, why ARE we trying to make humans sound like robots & robots sound like humans?!!! Great title for a show Fil !
I don't know.
Just a matter of time till human singers are replaced with robosingers.
That time is already here. Commercials are using AI voices and it's just a matter of time before an AI voice becomes a star.
It started in a previous century. The people that knew, couldn't say.
@@ichirofakename that reminds me of a Star Trek Generations episode where Data played an instrument perfectly (because he’s an Android) and put his audience to sleep. There was no heart in his performance.
@@petealba707It’s so sad
@universalassociates6857 I remember that! Unfortunately, humans are slowly being conditioned to things like auto tune and are becoming more accepting of humdrum crap.
“Live” recordings have pretty much always had corrections in them. The difference is the way it’s done and how much.
If it's pitch corrected or auto tuned, it's not live! Thank you, Fil, for another awesome analysis! You're the best! Rock!
Hi Fil, being a fan of ur channel n Sing It Live, could u look at 1 of their best live performances. in my opinion, where they are at a club doing Meatloaf’s Two out of Three ain’t bad, performed by the producer who is playing piano, please. 👍🇦🇺🇬🇧
Fil, my answer is NO! That is not at all what I would call live!
I just saw Sabrina Carpenter sing Espresso "Live" at Coachella on TH-cam. At about 2:34 minutes in she pulls the microphone away from her mouth, but you still hear her singing. Girl needs more practice lip syncing.
Very common for artists to sing on top of vocal tracks, rather than them pretending the track is the lead track.
SingIt Live are an off-shoot of HSCC Band, the last video you posted. So those two channels are basically related.
There was an episode on the Star Trek Brave New Worlds television series where the Enterprise went through some space anomaly that caused all the crew to break out in song. I thought wow how could they all be such great singers! Now I think I know why. Even the Klingons were doing a coordinated song and dance on their battle cruiser bridge.
One is feed it at 4:50 clearly very different
Modern music is perfect for robots. Being human, I prefer not quantized, not pitch-corrected music when live was actually live and recordings kept the expressions and imperfections.
Gosh, how striking it is in this example even though they haven't done a massive amount to some of it.
@singitliveworld Sheesh. The point of the channel is being "live," yeah?
No is the answer.
Hello Fil, great work as usual ! I have a suggestion for another video :
Everyone keeps calling Autotune "The Cher Effect" in reference to the song Believe. It actually made me wonder...in that very song, aside from the vocal glitches obviously used as an effect, we are led to assume that the rest of her performance is "natural". But is it, really ? Is the whole of her vocal track pitch-corrected as well, even if it's done with much more subtlety ?
I can hear every pitch corrected modulation stand out from the rest of the vocal line. I suspect more people will start noticing it and in the future it is going to date everything with it to this timeframe. It will be thought of as cheesy as the first decade of CGI.
This is very similar to the difference between a live drummer who hits with different velocity and a drum machine that gives each beat with the same velocity. It's like listening to a robotic voice without the natural timber of a voice. For me, it just grates.
You must have the most sensitive ear on the planet! I doubt I could see on my oscilloscope what you can hear naturally. I am constantly amazed with your videos.
I wonder if Darren will chime in???
There’s a comment from Singitliveworld in this comment section, I assume it’s him.
No. That would be like getting answers wrong on a test and then changing your answers to pretend to get a better grade.
'pretending' is the key word here :)
Close, but it is more like getting all the answers all wrong then going back afterwards and change all the questions so they become right.
Good point
wait! You're saying I was wrong to do that?
I’d love to hear your analysis of the CMA performances from last night
The things people will pass off as “live” now, that’s the problem with technology, every time we invent something to make a job easier (like auto-tune) we lose a skill along the way.
Great video, soon humans will be competing with AI when it comes to making music, can’t wait to see what’s considered “live” then, LoL.
are these types of pitch correction and tuning also used widely in country music or hip-hop?
Yes!
It is so easy to hear the processing...
For us, but someone just asked if they’re used in country music or hip hop- genres that have been saturated with auto tune and Melodyne for over 20 years.
"The point is the main objective is expression and the by-product of that is pitch. If you nail the expression, it doesn't matter where the pitch is. As you can see you can be between notes but you're still going to connect and the vocal is still going to make sense."
Yet another favourite Fil quote!🤘
Much like when Photoshop and Green Screen started to be used. Models in bikinis with unrealistically long legs, flawless skin tones, fake backgrounds and Green Screen. Remember "Kardashian butt" with models being padded out to look like a bottom heavy Santa Claus shaped like an upside down turnip? Unrealistic but I fear this will become an "industry standard" for the music industry and just as damn stupid but at least we are now aware of the trend thanks to Fil and his analysis videos.
The trolls are just jealous of your great analysis and also jealous of your huge number of subscribers ! ( 440k hurts them ! )
They’re jealous of his hair, too.
440 kilo hertz !
The terrible thing about the insidious pervasiveness of pitch correction/autotune in *all* "music production today ("live" and otherwise) is that it is not considered a big deal anymore. In fact, I would argue it is assumed to be an integral component of everything music today. Those of us who grew up enjoying the complete absence of autotune/pitch correction have yet another advantage over the computer-generated fakery that is today's "music." Another win for the boomers!
The Boomer generation was the first to grow up in an era where musical fakery was possible, and as it became cheaper and more sophisticated, became more pervasive as well. There was plenty of artifice before AutoTune, yet AutoTune becomes the villain in the story because some people need to feel the music they grew up with was somehow superior. That there was a Golden Age between the mid 60s and 70s was due to a disruption in the business model that gave the artists a lot more leeway vis a vis the suits. If music is weaker today, it comes from industry consolidation leading to fewer artists being promoted to avoid cannabilization of market share and that, since the rise of video games, boys not caring nearly as much about music as they used to. The demographic that matters most is "girls discovering boys" even more so today, and the best industry efforts go into capturing that market.
@Fil, I just listened to the original cover, sounds like whatever you used to extract the vocals is also adding a bit of artefact to the extraction. That said, still fully agree with your analysis...
To quote the great Neil Young, ‘Rock and Roll never dies. It just…’ gets pitch corrected.
I think "blatant" is the word you are looking for when describing how some auto tune jobs are worse than others.
Maybe the new standard is just a matter of space . Instead of it being "a live" performance , it's an "alive" performance . Meaning the performer was living at the time of the recording . Everything else is subject to change .
😂😂😂😂😂
They can do a "live" hologram tour when they're dead.
As Ren wrote in his song *Money Game 3 *...if you manipulate the data, then the lie will sell itself...*
I've been using an AI songmaker that does it all for you and it sounds like this :)
No. But also keep in mind people have been going into the studio and touching up live performances for a really long time. I know from first hand knowledge some popular rock live albums in the 80s that were completely redone in the studio. It's not any worse is it? I don't support it though. Even classical albums since the beginning of time can be a cut from several nights of performances and rehearsals. Pitch correction has been done since the 70s using tape machine tricks and pitch bending, it just took longer and was usually quicker just to re-sing it.
Is it live? No it is a mechanical voice and not enjoyable to hear at all. Thank you for this instructive analysis.
The SingIt Live founder posts in-depth videos of how he edits the audio.
But, does he indicate underneath the other videos whether and how they have been edited?
If Milli Vanilli were around today, no one would bat an eyelash at what they did.
Outside of USA, very few people did. Europop does not demand "authenticity" the way rock did.
@Spo-Dee-O-Dee that's not the same though. Milli Vanilli never actually ever recorded the vocals they were miming to.
@@danieldebono7116 Neither did Boney M and no one cared either.
@Spo-Dee-O-Dee not 100% accurate. 2 of the 4 Boney M members sang on the studio recordings, while they all sang live.
@@danieldebono7116 I thought it was just one who did her own singing on the records. IIRC they didn't start singing live in performance until the end when FF was preparing to let them go and work on his next act..
Thanks Fil. I had wondered why so many covers of emotional songs from the 1960s to 1990s sounded bland and emotionless. I assumed naive singers adding no emotion. Now I suspect Pitch Correction is the real answer.
Reviewing Tiny Desk Korea might be an interesting project. Tiny Desk is being known about not manipulating sound, but would that really be the case with idols in a country where labels famously know for wanting their products to look and sound perfect all the time? They even made one singer to apologise from fans for having a secret boyfriend. NMIXX's recent performance has received a lot of praise about their live vocals. But were they really live?
Remember all those live albums back in the last century ? Overdubbed to improve the product and the set order changed to fit the vinyl...and they were great and still are. There is nothing new except that the technology has changed...and the bands didn't all sound the same!
Don't these people know that they can't sneak one by Fil?
Loved this: "The main objective is expression and the byproduct of that is pitch. If you nail the expression it doesn't matter where the pitch is." But the modern music industry worships pitch above all else (well, after money 😂), and the byproduct of that is losing expression and emotion. They are a slave to pitch now.
No matter how much you are "feelin' it", turning major into minor from sheer brainfartery can ruin the performance.
@ Turning major into minor would definitely not be ‘nailing the expression’ either, it would be completely changing the expression.
@@cindi1313 Lucia Popp was singing with the proper joyful abandon required of her character...she just had a memory lapse and sang a joyful b-flat where b-natural was the note in the score.
No. Next question.
It's kinda like "washing and waxing" a car that you've already sold.
It's just so disappointing. It makes me wonder if anyone can actually SING anymore. Well, we know that you can,at least ❤
Who remembers the Star Trek Next Generation episode where Data played an instrument perfectly (because he’s an Android) and he put the audience to sleep with boredom. There was no heart in his performance because it was perfect.
Yes! That is exactly what is happening today.
Yep, and there's an episode where Data realises another character is an android because they perform the sane song identically during practice and the final performance, which humans just can't do.
Hi Fil. I enjoy your analysis videos. They teach people a lot and explain a lot of nuance's in music. I do have a question for you.
Have you ever listened to the Tori Holub videos or shorts. At first, I thought she Lip Syncing her Karen Carpenter covers. But listening more closely, I think she is really singing (because she does not sound exactly like Karen C., but very close), however, it sounds like she is double or triple tracking her voice (which is fine to balance out the pitch differences). DO you think there is Pitch correction (snapping notes to the lines) on her voice just by listening to it? Karen didn't need to snap notes to the line. Tori also appears to sing very close to Olivia Newton-John. It is pretty cool!
Fil analyzed one of Tori’s Carpenters covers. Tori and her producer joined the comments. She’s 100% live and natural.
I love her ONJ covers (I prefer ONJ to KC).
live is "as it was" edit the vocals after that clearly is NOT live.
MJ would NEVER need to use pitch correction live or in a recording studio.
“But Fil…please…it’s not about how technically incorrect their voices are but it’s about the tone and expression of their voices which is more important!”🤦🏻♂️
- as said by the marketing ghouls at the record companies
Just another way they destroy our individuality and take the soul and heart out of everything!!
I thought version 1 on the left was a cover version. I grew up listening to Jackson but didn't even recognise his voice there!!! Literally unrecognisable.
It sounds like the sort of music you hear in a supermarket.
I can't even say that these are average singers having their vocals improved. Microphone technique and vocal quality were just not up to scratch. Oodles of echo too, to make them sound fuller.
I was in a rock band in high school in 1965 . i was the lead vocalist , if you can call it that 😂 and sang songs that didn't require a 'good' voice but did require a lot of energy and enthusiasm . In those days no one cared how well you could sing . The audience just wanted high energy and a strong beat . That was really what R&R was all about when it first appeared even though there were some great voices with massive character like Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , etc.