Autotune - Should it be considered an art? - Page 8
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keeblur
United States826 Posts
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Sfydjklm
United States9218 Posts
On April 10 2011 11:36 StyLeD wrote: The auto-tune "originals" in mainstream music have used autotune for a while and have their own distinctive style. They're good (T-pain, BEP). But someone like Kesha, who without autotune would just be another country singer or failed mainstream artist... i actually found Kesha to be quiet good before she got famous, and personally think autotune has killed whatever talent she had. | ||
Blacktion
United Kingdom1148 Posts
But it doesn't. It takes zero skill and zero thought on the "artist's" part. Take Rebecca Black for example, her parents paid Ark to make a video for her. So she was given a song to sing, music to sing it to and because of autotune she didn't even have to sing it well. I'm sorry but it you don't write lyrics, don't write music, cant play an instrument and cant sing in tune in what sense are you a musical artist? /rant | ||
corpuscle
United States1967 Posts
Autotune and vocoders are completely different, in that one doesn't necessarily apply pitch correction. Daft Punk, Kraftwerk, Cynic, Styx, etc. used vocoders, T-Pain, Rebecca Black, Kanye West, etc. use autotune. You can use vocoders to pitch-correct, but then you have to use a keyboard or guitar to give the frequencies, like what Imogen Heap or Peter Frampton do. Second, someone was saying that guitarists using distortion is the same as autotune being used, which is just silly. Besides the fact that playing with distortion actually makes it harder to play cleanly since it exaggerates your mistakes, no guitarist has ever said "well I want to play this lick on clean channel but it sounds like shit, so I'm just gonna crank the distortion and it'll sound good." A semi-accurate comparison might be the heavy use of noise gating in a lot of modern metal/hard rock, which removes a lot of the fret noise and unwanted scratching that plague sloppy guitar play. As for the actual thread topic, I don't think it's really fair to say that using autotune doesn't require skill. You can tell if someone really can't sing even if it is autotuned (see: Rebecca Black), and there are some artists who clearly have practiced singing into autotune and know how to make it sound better. Obviously there's a lot of trash out there that people just slapped autotune on, but there's a lot of trash out there that some producer just slapped more mild pitch correction on. It hasn't really been important to sing on pitch in recorded music for decades now. | ||
holdthephone
United States523 Posts
What takes vocal talent is irrelevant. By that logic all electronic music is garbage. | ||
Sadist
United States6980 Posts
Hes the only one id consider who has any type of skill with it. | ||
DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
On April 10 2011 19:47 TALegion wrote: Auto-Tune is a joke. It's literally means for an insignificant vocalist to get away with their inferiority. There's nothing more to it. Why just plug the words into Text-To-Speech, as far as I'm concerned. It takes just as much effort. turns out that can be pretty artistic too | ||
DamnCats
United States1472 Posts
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Kazius
Israel1456 Posts
Autotune is NOT art. It is a tool of producers and musicians. It is no more art than a piano is art... meaning, autotune has more in common with a musical instrument (or a couch) than a stand-alone piece of art. It's usage can be art. It usually is. Just most of the time, it's cheap pop-art. Sometimes it's tasteful and well done. Vocal talent is art, just made by the singer, not the composer or producers. With all due respect, saying autotune is not art because it takes away from the purity of the vocals is like saying distortion on guitars is not art because it doesn't sound acoustic anymore. It's misinformed, and unrelated to the discussion. And considering the MASSIVE amount of production work that goes into tweaking mainstream hit vocals (equalizing, spacial imaging, reverb, chorus/ensemble, and yes, editing so it will be right on rhythm and ON TUNE) in every song, this point should be null and void, just as it will be as soon as that fad goes the way of the vocoder (remember that fad guys? *shudder*). | ||
LecheS
Mexico21 Posts
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corpuscle
United States1967 Posts
Be a little more open minded. It's like saying screamo is all shit because it's just people wailing -- and a lot of it is terrible, truthfully. I just want to point out that the scream vocals you hear in screamo, hardcore, extreme metal, etc etc actually take a lot of practice and skill. You obviously aren't trying to argue that, and I'm not disagreeing with you at all since you're right, but I hear a lot of people say "well that guy can't sing, he's just growling and shrieking," and it couldn't be farther from the truth. | ||
DoctorHelvetica
United States15034 Posts
On April 11 2011 02:34 Kazius wrote: As someone who makes music (and makes money off of it from time to time): Autotune is NOT art. It is a tool of producers and musicians. It is no more art than a piano is art... meaning, autotune has more in common with a musical instrument (or a couch) than a stand-alone piece of art. It's usage can be art. It usually is. Just most of the time, it's cheap pop-art. Sometimes it's tasteful and well done. Vocal talent is art, just made by the singer, not the composer or producers. With all due respect, saying autotune is not art because it takes away from the purity of the vocals is like saying distortion on guitars is not art because it doesn't sound acoustic anymore. It's misinformed, and unrelated to the discussion. And considering the MASSIVE amount of production work that goes into tweaking mainstream hit vocals (equalizing, spacial imaging, reverb, chorus/ensemble, and yes, editing so it will be right on rhythm and ON TUNE) in every song, this point should be null and void, just as it will be as soon as that fad goes the way of the vocoder (remember that fad guys? *shudder*). Good point. People not involved in music production don't realize how much editing is done to "natural" vocals, really not that much less than anything involving autotune. Very few records are produced with the vocals being "natural", it just doesn't happen like that. On April 11 2011 02:36 corpuscle wrote: I just want to point out that the scream vocals you hear in screamo, hardcore, extreme metal, etc etc actually take a lot of practice and skill. You obviously aren't trying to argue that, and I'm not disagreeing with you at all since you're right, but I hear a lot of people say "well that guy can't sing, he's just growling and shrieking," and it couldn't be farther from the truth. Why does it matter how much skill it takes? If it was the easiest thing in the world does that make it somehow worse? Would you stop liking it? | ||
corpuscle
United States1967 Posts
Why does it matter how much skill it takes? If it was the easiest thing in the world does that make it somehow worse? Would you stop liking it? I don't think it matters if something takes skill, though I've heard almost nothing in music that sounds good and requires no skill. I just wanted to comment on the fact that some people immediately hear a vocal style that isn't traditional singing, and say "that takes no skill, and therefore is bad, and the artist is bad" when a lot of work actually goes into what they're doing. Applies to autotune, applies to scream vocals, etc etc. | ||
Ryndika
1489 Posts
phow there i said it. :o | ||
Torte de Lini
Germany38463 Posts
This is art. This is the whimsical voice of a diva who has not only control in her voice, octaves that needs two hands to count with, but sincerity of her talent reigning purely from her voice alone and complimented by instruments. Autotuning is purely, as others have said, a tool to from the music industry to not only assure that one's voice has no faults, stability and consistency, but also gives a generic aftertaste on everyone's voice, that electronic one-dimensional face that bores me, but also lies to the ears of the listener. It lowers the standards of talent, saturates the industry with the same one-time wonders who write about the same cliche normalities of a materialist: drugs, drinks, party, women (or men), sex and probably ignoring moral values in exchange for a good time. | ||
RoarMan
Canada745 Posts
It's how you use the tool that makes it art. There are many times where the use of Auto-tune is done in a fashion where it's not to make up for the singers lack of vocal ability but to enhance it. This is one of the songs I find where Auto Tune is used in an artistic fashion. | ||
Johnnybb
Denmark486 Posts
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Fontong
United States6454 Posts
User was warned for this post | ||
MilesTeg
France1271 Posts
I never listen to radio, nor do I know anything about the latest pop songs though, so that might explain why I disagree with the consensus. But I just don't see why autotune would be any less compatible with art than any other instrument, human vocal cord included. What matters is the result, not the amount of effort or skill that was put into it. | ||
Torte de Lini
Germany38463 Posts
On April 11 2011 03:47 Fontong wrote: Not going to lie, most of the people in this thread are uneducated when it comes to music. In fact, its pretty clear that people here don't know what music is. To dismiss an entire mechanic as nonmusical just because poor artists utilize it is simply ignorant and close minded. I like how you criticize those who give an opinion, but don't give your own. | ||
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