Impact of Autotune and Beat detective.

[meloco_go]

OK, so AT and BD were around for twenty years or so. Our ears (or maybe younger people's ears) are used to the quantized/pitch-perfect records.
Do you feel it had an impact on those singers and drummers who are ACTUALLY good?
Sometimes I feel that young singers who can really sing have this really precise note articulation, which was not at all common to great singers back then before AT/BD. And younger drummers, I mean it's natural to slightly delay first not after the roll to get some tension in, and I hear some younger guys having this really precise, almost metronomic feel.

[nobby]

Call me old-fashioned, but BD and AT are tools to be used to fix something that's broken. Like there's a note or beat that's bugging you in an otherwise perfectly good track. I don't see a point in using them on everything as a matter of routine. If the musicians are tight, there should be little perceived difference.

And I'm a little tired of hearing it used as an effect, personally.

Before BD there were metronomes to play to for a metronomic feel. There was Drums & Bugle corps. I've yet to see any young guy play drums with more precision than Buddy Rich. And there were people who sang with perfect pitch.

Maybe it has become more common and I haven't noticed it. What I find annoying is when AT is used on a vocal track that I seriously doubt needed it while leaving an artifact.

This hasn't been beet detected and it doesn't sound that sloppy to me

[meloco_go]

Call me old-fashioned, but BD and AT are tools to be used to fix something that's broken. Like there's a note or beat that's bugging you in an otherwise perfectly good track. I don't see a point in using them on everything as a matter of routine.

I agree.

If the musicians are tight, there should be little perceived difference.

I think therein lies a rub. Tight performances are not necessarily on the beat and on the note. Great musician create tension by deliberately (or subconsciously) creating imperfections.
But the widespread application of AT and BD creates this "expectation" that everything HAS to be perfect.

Maybe it has become more common and I haven't noticed it.

I might be imagining it. But I do believe that is the case. And I don't mean that great musician before were sloppy either.

This hasn't been beet detected and it doesn't sound that sloppy to me

That's an interesting example. I feel it is precise to the point of unnaturalness. It's VERY cool, don't get me wrong. But that's actually my point.
People CAN be this precise. But would the idea of reaching this precision ever cross the mind of a performer before AT and BD were around?

[nobby]

Call me old-fashioned, but BD and AT are tools to be used to fix something that's broken. Like there's a note or beat that's bugging you in an otherwise perfectly good track. I don't see a point in using them on everything as a matter of routine.

I agree.

If the musicians are tight, there should be little perceived difference.

I think therein lies a rub. Tight performances are not necessarily on the beat and on the note. Great musician create tension by deliberately (or subconsciously) creating imperfections.
But the widespread application of AT and BD creates this "expectation" that everything HAS to be perfect.

I don't know. I hate to bring up the genre issue but maybe there are a couple of sub-genres that I don't deal with in which that's the case.

I might be imagining it. But I do believe that is the case. And I don't mean that great musician before were sloppy either.

The fact that you wonder if you're imagining it makes me wonder the same thing

To me, focusing too tightly on absolute precision all the time indicates a problem in the music. The people in charge of writing and producing music have all these powerful tools to use to distract the listener from the occasional pitch or timing imperfection; Words, chords, melody, harmony, arrangement, production.

The listener isn't looking at a grid to make sure the beats line up perfectly. Who cares what mix engineers think? They are only .02% (or whatever) of the population

[...]

That's an interesting example. I feel it is precise to the point of unnaturalness. It's VERY cool, don't get me wrong. But that's actually my point.
People CAN be this precise. But would the idea of reaching this precision ever cross the mind of a performer before AT and BD were around?

Yes. When precision is important to what you're trying to express. That's why we used to practice to a metronome and do our vocal exercises to a piano.

Sometimes, as with the drum line above, precision is the name of the game. But when you have an actual song, that should be the listener's focus.

I don't want to get into genres, but some music may require a little more than others. Punk Rock can be sloppy. With Reggae, the intricate "riddim" can fall apart falls apart without a high degree of precision.

I was thinking of a Buddy Rich drum solo. He seemed to be hitting the hihat with absolute precision in terms of timing; the accents were what made it cool.

When I was using an early digital sequencer, I recorded a drum machine into it to make a model of a production. The "roll" feature of the drum machine sounded awful for a rock Song (this is widely used in Electronica where it's supposed to sound artificial as an effect. As is AT).

It sounded like a machine gun. At that time, the only way to fix it was to individually change the velocities of the notes. Later, software would allow you to feather in a percentage of imperfection globally. I don't think I actually changed the timing, though.

But any kind of human precision has been around since long before AT and BD. I'm skeptical about their having much impact.

[nobby]

Here's a bit of satire on the subject. I'm not familiar with Autotune. I've used Melodyne a little bit. But I think Little AlterBoy can make me sound like Lorde if I get the formant adjusted just right

[meloco_go]

Check out this article:
https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/3964 ... -pop-music
I do believe over time an expectation builds up when certain practices get repeated.

[keks]

This hasn't been beet detected and it doesn't sound that sloppy to me

This is kinda cool but utterly not about music.


To get back to the initial question, I find these totally unmodulating voices and rhythms gratingly tiring to listen to.
And for me there lies the rub ind making good music: Making it as tight as necessary without loosing the good kind of funky.

[meloco_go]

There is no statistical study and a total of one anecdote

Yep. But I do find a lot of the older recordings "imperfect". In a cool and natural way. The question is will younger people who grew up listening to modern productions get so used to the sound of AT and BD, that it would affect their natural performance.
In my case, I grew up listening to a lot of "big" sounding records from the '90s and '00s, and a lot of records from '70s which are held as exemplary sounding just don't make the cut for me.

I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of younger people look for a chink in the Beatles armor because they cast such a long shadow.

True.

So if you could zero in on the trouble spots and tell me where they show up on the timeline, maybe I can learn something. The "Frère Jacques" part at around 1:03 sounds a bit flat, but other than that, nothing is jumping out at me.

Yep. But now YOU are used to this sound.
A lot of what we consider right or wrong is just "conditioning". For example, Arabic quarter-tone music seems weird to some, but to the natives, it's totally OK.

[edit] I think this post was supposed to be Meloco_go's -- the quoted text was mine. I probably screwed something up :p

[Bob Olhsson]

Music is communicating emotions. Part of the process is tension against even time and pitch and its effect on breath and heartbeat. Out-A-Tuna and Beat-Dick are a head trip that has ruined the effectiveness and profitability of popular music.

[John Eppstein]

Music is communicating emotions. Part of the process is tension against even time and pitch and its effect on breath and heartbeat. Out-A-Tuna and Beat-Dick are a head trip that has ruined the effectiveness and profitability of popular music.

Exactly!