Auto-Tune 8

[red7flag]

Here is a quick review of that studio software:
While I am not the one using this product, I will pass on our Engineer's feedback. He finds this product extremely easy to use. The feature he likes the most is that once turned on will correct all notes in a track with out being told. He states that you can correct a single note when needed. He likes that you can leave slight imperfections as the tuning is done on a sliding scale. He has played the before and after on vocals and the difference is remarkable, but not to where it sounds fake. The voices retain their own character. This program can be applied to instruments, for example fiddles, and bring the play in tune with the song. Great program and well worth the price. Our studio is really pleased with the results.

[red7flag]

Here is a link to the Antares Auto-tune 8 page.
http://www.antarestech.com/products/...Auto-Tune_8_66
Sorry I meant to post that with the review. Oh by the way, NFI.

[foldedpath]

Avoid it like the plague, if you want to retain the natural sound of humans playing music. Especially the tiny and subtle variations in pitch with acoustic instruments in traditional genres. What does "pitch" mean exactly, with the "Piper's Cnat" in Irish trad?

Otherwise the robots eventually win. And they have no reason to keep us around. I will never, ever use this for any recording I'm involved with. Learn to play.

Just my opinion as a certified Old Fart who has been playing music and recording musicians for what seems like forever. We will die off eventually if the robots don't get us first. But I hope some snippets of human-made music survive.

[pit lenz]

[Mandoplumb]

Ron Thomson (Dry Branch Squad) says that if we all learned to read music we wouldn't need musicians, we could just all look at the written music page. With these Auto-tune we don't need talented singers just let any one screach into a microphone then auto tune it, or random notes on an instrument and auto tube makes it music. Would probably work about as well as auto-correct. I'm glad I'm in my 60 and probably won't live to see much more of this computer generated garbage.

[BrianWilliam]

Is it too early for popcorn?

[Jim Bevan]

A promoter calls you up and offers your quartet a fun-sounding, respectably-paying gig, Saturday 4pm at the State Fair, the Coors Beer Tent -- if the weather's good, the audience could number maybe a thousand. Of course you take it. "How many mics and DI's does your quartet need?" You tell him. Do you stop and think that a hundred years ago, the promoter would have needed to hire a sixty-piece orchestra to entertain a thousand people? Does your conscience bother you that by taking the gig, by using mics and DI's and a PA, your harmless little quartet will be putting fifty-six musicians out of work? Of course not. Why not? Because the technology that you'll be using existed when you started gigging way back when. To you, it's always existed, it's the norm, the status quo, it's just the way things are done. Along comes a new piece of equipment, some brand-new technology that attempts to deal with yet another quality-of-perfect-performance obstacle, and it's "No way, that's cheating!"

I'm sure that my already-in-tune three year-old will not have much opinion one way or another about
Auto-Tune when she's older -- it'll be just another handy fix-it tool like EQ or compression. But that new 0tt0-c0mp0z v.sicks that debuted last year at NAMM 2030 "That should be outlawed!"

[Folkmusician.com]

I use Autotune and Melodyne (one version old on both). I personally get much better results with Melodyne after A/Bing them.

I have never had good luck with the "auto modes", but do find it very useful in enhancing/saving, recordings. I can't stand the obvious pitch shift effect, or anytime it is used heavily or incorrectly and you notice it. I do hear this a lot and I think it gives it a bad rep. When it is used tastefully, we never notice.

There are a couple of times I had to use it a little heavier than I would like. I was mixing songs from a music school that has a recording studio for the students. Some of these students are pretty talented but still in the early stages of learning. I was able to drastically improve their vocal tracks. They are still practicing and improving, they know they have a ways to go, but in the meantime their demos are actually pretty impressive.

Now, reading of "heavy usage", you are envisioning obvious pitch correction, but that was not the end result. In auto mode, it sounded terrible, but hand drawing the pitch correction, it is not obvious unless you really pay close attention.

I have also used it on singers and players that have good pitch, and in these cases you can put the fine touches on a recording and I do believe it improves things. For the record I am mostly a traditionalist and love classic recording back to the one mic in a room days.

[foldedpath]

I use Autotune and Melodyne (one version old on both). I personally get much better results with Melodyne after A/Bing them.

I almost mentioned Melodyne as a better choice in my earlier semi-tongue-in-cheek rant, but I didn't want to encourage anyone.

There are a couple of times I had to use it a little heavier than I would like. I was mixing songs from a music school that has a recording studio for the students. Some of these students are pretty talented but still in the early stages of learning. I was able to drastically improve their vocal tracks. They are still practicing and improving, they know they have a ways to go, but in the meantime their demos are actually pretty impressive.

Is that helping or harming the students though? I mean, shouldn't they have a strong incentive to improve their skills? Or are you teaching them that everything can be fixed in the mix? Honest question.... I'm not trying to disparage what you're doing, just curious what the general take is in music schools these days.

Full disclosure: I've done things like demo CD recordings of young Classical musicians where I've used extensive slice and dice editing to correct individual notes, or in some cases entire phrases using material from different takes in the same recording session. I think one CD had something like 80 edits. This is considered normal in the Classical music world. Perfection is expected. But pitch correction is not as common as splicing, because it can screw up the intent of players who might be intentionally varying pitch for expression, on instruments like violin or flute where this is possible. You don't want to mess with that. So a botched note gets replaced from another take, and not pitch-corrected. It's different from the pop music world, or glossy Country music, where everything is pitch corrected to the nth degree these days.

Not messing with pitch is also a concern in many non-commercial traditions like Irish trad, where a note like Cnat might be intentionally played a bit sharp on pipes and fiddles, or fiddle intentionally played a bit "off key" for a rougher sound. There are genres like Irish/Scottish trad, OldTime, and even Bluegrass where the music loses something essential if it's polished too far in pitch or rhythm timing.

So when I'm recording musicians in these genres I will only slice and dice from alternate takes, not pitch shift or time shift. It keeps the music authentic-sounding to my ears. It also means I can pass on recording musicians who can't at least play in decent pitch and timing. I'll fix mistakes with editing because we all make mistakes here and there, but I won't make them sound fundamentally better than they are.

Basically, it's about where you want to draw the line. This is just my personal decision and I know the recording industry and even hobbyist recording these days is moving in a different direction.

[Bill Burch]

Auto-Tune is just another tool..you can choose to use it or not. Digital is here to stay, whether it's the Zoom Hn4 recorders many of us use or a Snark tuner. Just like a splicing block in the old tape days. Or your DVR...gone of the days having to get home at a certain hour to watch your favorite show. Or anyone who enjoys the multi-cam view of your favorite NFL team. All are enhancements of the live experience.

I too am of a certain generation (I saw the Beatles perform live in the early '60s). But I've also relished the remarkable development in recording technology and the opportunities its provided as a audio production business owner and as a musician. And like many of you, I was turned off by the extreme usage by Cher and now featured on nearly every rap and hip-hop record. Remember SynDrums?

Bill

[Mandoplumb]

Lester Flatt started half his notes flat ( is that where his name came from) then slid up to pitch. Poor old Johnny Cash never made it to pitch, where would they and the music they made be if their " faults" had been corrected.

[Bill McCall]

I certainly recognize multiple takes and edits in recordings, but I expect live performances not to be 'pitch enhanced'. its not so much a slippery slope, but to me is a bit of fraud, assuming you want to see talented performers using their skills. And the voice enhancing tool is not a tool 'like a telecaster'. Ymmv

[Folkmusician.com]

Is that helping or harming the students though? I mean, shouldn't they have a strong incentive to improve their skills? Or are you teaching them that everything can be fixed in the mix? Honest question.... I'm not trying to disparage what you're doing, just curious what the general take is in music schools these days.

I hear you on this, and I am not 100% sure either way.

If someone did their best at that point in time, and realizes what they need to work on, I honestly don't see any harm. For me, it is a lot like tuning by ear. I wouldn't expect everyone to tune their instruments entirely by ear before recording. Most sessions would be a disaster.

On the other side of the coin, I do run into the "fix it in the mix" crowd who don't realize or care about their weaknesses as a player. Someone insisting on singing high tenor, who can't actually reach the notes. How many times have we heard this on a bluegrass recording). I recall being given a newly released CD (local group) and the guy was so proud of his High Tenor part. He was telling me about it before I had a chance to hear the CD. So what is the first thing I notice? Yep, obvious, extreme (and poorly done) pitch shifting! With his enthusiasm, I am not sure he even realized this had been done and must not have known how bad it sounded. That or he just didn’t care. This album was done in a reasonable studio, and the basic recording and mixing was fine.

With the first group, I find that they really wan’t to know what was fixed, how far off it was, and wan’t to analyze the before and after. This is where I feel good about it.

The later group… It is not something I like to be a part of, but any of these professions (Photography, Audio, Video), are faced with the same dilemma. You are hired to use technology to produce the best results possible with a given resource. The vast majority of gigs falls here. Events need to be cut to look interesting, Brides want to look beautiful and Husbands want to sing High Tenor. hehe If I take a job like this, I need to do it to the best of my ability.


I will say, I am putting a lot of effort toward moving away from hiring out and concentrating on just doing my own projects. Client work is very stressful. Luckily, this is a second source of income for me, so I can be more choosey than someone that is solely relying on clients for their livelihood.

[Mandoplumb]

If you have to mechanically put the tenor singer on key he is no more a tenor singer than the man sitting behind the keyboard of a player piano is a piano player. Almost anyone can play a radio. Just my humble opinion.

[almeriastrings]

I have Melodyne installed in the studio, and have found it useful on occasions for manually 'nudging' a vocalist's note to where it should be. Not they could not have done a retake, and got it right there, but used carefully it can save time. It is very transparent and pretty much undetectable used like that. The 'Auto Mode' is not up to much, however, and heavy use certainly is detectable. I've never even tried it for an instrument.... just on vocal takes where there is a slight error and you'd have to get the person back in the studio again to fix it. Five minutes in Melodyne and it is fixed. Impressive results and technology, but I would say that if someone finds they need it all the time, something is wrong and they need to fix things at source.