Thursday, November 5, 2009
Crickets / Music Compare and Contrast
Posted by Miles Raymer on Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 6:59 PM
I am very happy that somebody made a song based around Carl Sagan talking and whooping. Sagan was an amazing man, and since he was also a devoted pot smoker I'm sure he would've dug the song's super-chill vibe. I'm just kind of bummed that so many people, even ones who write for respected online music publications, keep referring to it as being "Auto-Tuned" when in fact it isn't.
Not to be annoyingly pedantic—I try to keep it in check, I really do—but perhaps a lesson in some of the major methods of electronic voice alteration used in music might be in order. After the jump, some examples.
This is Auto-Tune:
Auto-Tune is the name of a Pro Tools plug-in that was intended to correct vocal pitch by basically asking for a list of all of the "right" notes in a song and shifting off notes to the closest correct one. Then dudes like T-Pain figured out that by tweaking it in the right way you could get a weird robot voice out of it and then—according to cranks—pop music was totally ruined forever.
This is a vocoder:
A vocoder uses filters to mix the vocals with the signal from a synthesizer. Since the pitch is determined by the synth and not (as with Auto-Tune) by the vocals themselves, you can "play" the vocals in the same way you can any other keyboard sound, giving them whatever melody you prefer—you can even play the vocals as chords. Prog rock and Italo disco were very big on the vocoder.
This (about 2:30 in) is a talk box:
The talk box is probably the most insane effect ever. It takes the signal from an electronic instrument and runs it through a little speaker sealed inside of a box. The sound comes out of the box through a plastic tube that you put into your mouth, and as you form speech shapes with your mouth it changes the sound of the signal to cause it to approximate speech. Peter Frampton is its most famous user, but Peter Frampton doesn't have shit on Roger Troutman so he's not my example.
Here is the Sagan song. Sounds like a vocoder, no?
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The term 'auto-tuning' has turned into something like photoshopping - even if you don't actually use the Anteres Auto-Tune software itself, the digital effect itself is now known as auto-tune. That said, I do think that John Boswell (the dude who made the Glorious Dawn video) actually did use auto-tune for this. First, on his site he lists the tools he uses to make his music, one of which is Cool Edit Pro, and you can get an auto-tune plugin for Cool Edit. Second, he made another slightly less mindblowing song at about the same time called "The Auto-Tune Infomercial Ballad." I think what may be mixing you up (if I'm right) is that the song is just REALLY FUCKING GOOD which puts it in at least a similar category to the other awesome jams you've posted it along with. Anyway, I've emailed him to find out for sure and if he has time to reply I'll post his answer. Pedantic, yes.
This debate would be much more compelling- and educational!- if you made your respective arguments with your voices processed through your favorite vocal filter effect. Put that shit on YouTube!
via Mr. Boswell:
"The author is right about everything he says, except that today auto-tune programs have expanded to be pitch selective, not just corrective. I know it can be confusing, because I have chosen melodies and layered harmonies, but there is no carrier synth involved, so it's not a vocoder. I use a program called Melodyne, which isn't the original Antares Auto-tune, but can be considered auto-tune. It digitally corrects the pitch variation but allows for high degree of control over note selection."
Not sure if that gets us any closer to the language the music journalists should be using to describe it, but there you go.
@MikeB
Thanks for your research! I guess it's not Auto-Tune (in the strict sense), but it's also not a vocoder, despite an output that behaves in some respects like a vocoder's output.
And yeah, you're right--I don't exactly anticipate music writers starting to refer to vocals as "Melodyned."
All the same I'm happy to know more about the software. Like Miles, I'd previously thought of Auto-Tune narrowly, as a single specific program--one that regularizes an existing melody but can't create a melody where none was before. It looks like the reality is quite a bit more complex. Vocals can be auto-tuned without using Auto-Tune, and they can be bent to a new melodic shape without using a vocoder. Huh!
@MikeB
I agree. Good work on that.
Still sounds like a vocoder to me.
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