I didn’t mean to imply that you were implying it was a secret, though. My “I’m afraid” was supposed to be of an expression of oh-isn’t-it-a-shame-type regret, but my English skills are slipping from having written in little but bloody Cobol for the last month.

“It is commonly thought because she explained it in interviews. It’s not a gossipy showbiz secret, I’m afraid.”

“Commonly thought” doesn’t imply any kind of secret. I used the phrase because the congnoscenti (probably rightly) don’t put much trust in someone of Cher’s standing to know exactly which effect was applied where. Like Madonna, she has people to twiddle her knobs for her. (In fact, she almost certainly has people to twiddle knobs for her people’s people.)

It is commonly thought because she explained it in interviews. It’s not a gossipy showbiz secret, I’m afraid. (Though I forget whether it was Auto-Tune or one of its competitors.)

As you say, Queen Catherine, I think most non-classical musicians agree that there are ptiching errors that matter and others that don’t, but people have wildly different tolerances. Also, context is crucial. Ella Fitzgerald farts out at least one humdinger bum note on one of her Songbooks (it’s too low in her range for her to cover it properly) and my first thought when I heard it was: “Maybe the strings are out.”

So far I haven’t fiddled with my published recordings or photographs like that. I don’t prescribe to others, but, while I have been very strongly tempted, I probably won’t do it myself.

Excellent harmonies by the way!

Thank you.

As such anything that streamlines the workflow of manufacturing will be used always.

Most singers are on a salary if they’re lucky or fixed musicians union rates. They don’t get royalties so much now. But even so a singer taking only two shots, even, at a song is twice as much time and money wasted as on a single take.

I reckon every commercial release, without exception, will have been corrected electronically. You’re right: you can hear the artifacts most of the time, but most people aren’t bothered by it, any more than they are by the occasional flange-like modulation of extreme MP3 encoding, or those hideous squares that flicker over our TV screens caused by compression. And kids don’t know any better.

To be honest, I couldn’t hear anything bad about your first example. Some singers made a handsome living without pitch fixing: Sting was a notorious “always slightly sharp” singer, and it’s only the Western tradition of classical music that insists on the precise 12 tone scale. It’s a tuning compromise afterall, and is mathematically wrong. As a guitar player yourself you’ll be familiar with blues notes that depend upon being somewhere in between for their flavour.

I don’t know whether its important that the music-consuming public know whether their stars aren’t quite as talented as they sound. It isn’t quite the same as buying chicken that retains water because it has gelatine made from argentinian cow hooves injected into it in a shed in Holland.

My gut feeling is that there is a scam to some degree, and my nature makes me want to shout “Robbie can’t sing you know!” But I don’t suppose anyone listening would be bothered. They don’t want the gory details: just the end product in all its processed pre-packaged goodness. Indeed Robbie Williams is just a chunk of imported pork steak sealed in carbon dioxide to preserve freshness.

I also have a deep suspicion that all very fast widdly guitar is also treated with pitch fix (maybe not real time). It’s probably true of all lead guitar on commercial recordings too.

And how much music is just a collage of cut and pasted loops? The only practical result is that amateurs like me end up sounding even more rubbish.

I think we live in a world where technology would allow a pro studio to put together a full commercial quality recording in half a day tops. I don’t think it will be long before the creative side of songwriting is automated either. There’ll be no royalties to have to cough up at all then. Maximum streamlined profit.

The only thing that truly bothers me is that half of this software is still very very expensive relative to my purse. Even though I might now have the equivalent in software of Abbey Road in the early seventies sitting on my laptop, it’s still hard work.

Excellent harmonies by the way!

I’ve got a copy of a package called Melodyne which can do truly amazing things with both pitch and timbre. My aim was to create harmony vocals and so on, but the truth is I’m too lazy to dedicate the time to it.

One great feature of Melodyne is that it will convert a tune to MIDI information and/or notation. So for the non-schooled, you literally can hum it and then play it, or at least write it down for someone else to play.