Comments on: Public Enemy

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:36:42 +0000

I can honestly say I’ve never used Autotune. I think it’s better, on balance, just to get a shit-hot singer. There are one or two marginally out-of-tune bits on our albumum, bit I like them. An acquaintance of mine uses Autotune, but has placed me under strict instructions never to let the singer in his band find out. She’d be mortified.

I reckon Katie Melua’s tuning is good. It’s her tone of voice I can’t stand. Something about what she does to vowels, especially “oo”, just winds me up the wrong way.

By: PooterGeek

PooterGeek — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 18:25:36 +0000

In other news, Antares released a fresh update of Auto-Tune for Macs this week, with---I am not making this up---a new "Humanize" knob.

By: PooterGeek

PooterGeek — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 15:41:12 +0000

I'd say that most of them are. It's called "comping" and it's been going on for decades. Though these days it's much easier.

By: Tim Almond

Tim Almond — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:46:03 +0000

An ex-professional musician friend of mine told me that vocal tracks are now broken down by syllable, tuned, and then put back together. Some vocal tracks you hear are made up the artist recording the vocal a number of times, and the best bits of each are used.

By: PooterGeek

PooterGeek — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:28:33 +0000

Out-of-tune good: Jon Anderson, Joan Armatrading, Jimi Hendrix, Seal, Sting

Out-of-tune bad: Chris de Burgh, Dido, Katie Melua

By: Squander Two

Squander Two — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 13:18:53 +0000

I share your pain. It never ceases to amaze me that people can listen to, for instance, badly tuned radios, without screaming and ripping off their own ears. People actually seem not to mind. Weird.

The interesting thing is the difference between singing out of tune badly because you can’t sing and singing out of tune well because you’re a genius. Shara Nelson very rarely hits the correct note, but always hits the right one. Similar things could be said about the fine line between bad rhythm and beautiful phrasing – Slash’s guitar playing springs to mind: he’s so far off the beat you have to wonder whether he can even hear the rest of the band, but he is, without doubt, brilliant.