On a performance like this...

  • Thread starter Thread starter famous beagle
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Mr. Honesty said:
Well im pretty damn familiar with this band and thats not how they sound, even on the record. My guess is that the vocals were processed live, or possibly after, hence the obvious fakeness in the vocal tone. Ive heard the demos dude, they dont sound like this.

Well im not going to fish trhough the entire performance for individual words that are obviously being shifted too high or low. It should be fairly obvious to anyone whos worked with tuning software of any kind where the mistriggers are. The dead giveaway is when the program tries to tune S sounds. Also, like i said before, voices naturally get thinner or more wavering as the notes are held, its part of human expression. And thats where the autotune shows because you dont sing in tune as youre breathing or starting and stopping a particular word. And yet, autotune will try to tune these things, and it sounds fakey. Dont get me wrong i love tegan and sara, but its processed very obviously in these performances. Particularly on the word "head" int eh second video, and the way Saras voice sounds when she doest the low harmony in the first video.

Just listen to the low harmony and tell me that isnt very obviously processed with a tuning program of some kind, either live, or in post. You can hear the formant lock in and not let up no matter what her inflection is. Thats the giveaway of processed vocals.
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Well, I'm not at all familiar with Tegan and Sarah (this is the first time I've heard of them), nor do I have much experience with auto-tune. I've never used it, so I don't know the tell-tale signs of it. Besides the obvious uses, like the Cher tune, or a lot of the R&B/hip hop stuff, I can detect its more subtle use in guys like Uncle Cracker or something like that. But the Tegan and Sarah tunes didn't scream it out to me.

Like I said, though, I have no experience with it.
 
Autotune or vocal processing what's the difference?

The album recording, autotuned or not, was heavily processed as is the vast majority of commercial vocals.

Does Shania come with a money back guarantee if what you hear is not original? Where do you draw the line I EQ my voice or I like the the frequency response of an SM58? Do I sound exactly like that if I sing out?

All our talents, unless we are busking with an acoustic are mediated by technology; the only problem is when an artist claims to be skilled when in fact the technology is doing the job for them. Then they should be critised - but I'm not sure that is what is happening here?

It never been about what you've got - it always about how you use it - that is the razor blade between integrity and whore! Still I've known some (metaphoric) whores with a lot of integrity.
 
Whatmysay said:
Autotune or vocal processing what's the difference?

The album recording, autotuned or not, was heavily processed as is the vast majority of commercial vocals.

Does Shania come with a money back guarantee if what you hear is not original? Where do you draw the line I EQ my voice or I like the the frequency response of an SM58? Do I sound exactly like that if I sing out?

All our talents, unless we are busking with an acoustic are mediated by technology; the only problem is when an artist claims to be skilled when in fact the technology is doing the job for them. Then they should be critised - but I'm not sure that is what is happening here?

It never been about what you've got - it always about how you use it - that is the razor blade between integrity and whore! Still I've known some (metaphoric) whores with a lot of integrity.
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I suppose everyone has to draw the line as to what they consider acceptable in terms of processing and what's unacceptable to them.

To me, using pitch correction on a vocal is unacceptable, because it crosses the line of allowing technology to do too much of the work for you. EQ and compression do not cross that line for me, because those are things that change from venue to venue and situation to situation anyway.

In other words, the timbre of someone's voice is going to sound different if you're in the room and you're just hearing them sing acoustically or if you hear them through a LDC with compression and EQ. And the vocalist can't really control that. (They have control over their tone, obviously, and they'll strive to sound their best they can acoustically, but they don't have control over a producer or engineer's EQ and compression settings.) But the pitch will not change in those two examples. That's a constant. That's something they do have control over.

I guess it just comes down to how it feels in your gut. It doesn't bother me to use delay on guitar to get an Edge effect or Eddie Van Halen-"Cathedral" effect. That's probably because the delay is always reacting exactly the same way to your playing. So if you're rushing ahead of the beat, the delay is rushing ahead of the beat too. Or if you're bending flat, the delayed note will be flat too. But it does bother me when people grab individual notes or kick drums or whatever in pro tools and nudge them so they're perfectly in time or autotune them so they're perfectly in tune.

I suppose it's probably because many people work for a long time to acquire those skills (playing in time or singing in tune), and it doesn't seem right to claim to be able to do those things when you're not really able to.

Maybe it wouldn't bother me as much if an artist included a disclaimer in their album that said "I used autotune because I couldn't sing this song in tune and we edited the crap out of the drum and bass tracks on this song because the drummer and bassist couldn't play in time."

I dunno ... opinions?
 
Mr. Honesty said:
This is what human voices sound like without tuning help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z2XTkAoKlg&feature=related

Beautiful, awesome, fantastic, but... human.

The two vids that i am claiming to be processed were made AFTER the band had signed to a major label, so its possible there may be something to that, but that is speculation for sure.

I dont think tuning is cheating, i feel no moral or artistic obligation to do it either way. But its not at the point where it cant be detected in performances.
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With all due respect, there are many many artists out there who sing beautifully, fantastically, and awesomely without any form of fx or pitch correction.

Just a basic example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7mGjSZpdpk

If you don't get goosebumps at the end from the amazingly tight (and unprocessed) harmonies, there's something wrong with you.
 
U guys should hear the shit on the radio where I live (Nth East Asia.) You'd think autotune was just recently invented - it's like a fad - nearly every pop song has it. It makes one wanna puke.
So, I downloaded the thing but can't make head nor tail how to use it as a plug in or otherwise. Basically it's just junk.
 
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