TL;DR for those with shorter attention spans: it's my opinion that vocal tracks are needlessly over-saturated and distorted via warmifiying/preamp/tube emulation effects on far too many contemporary recordings, resulting in an unpleasant listening experience.
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Let me start out by saying I am (being Canadian, eh?) a big fan of WALK OFF THE EARTH and all they've accomplished over the years. Such an amazingly talented team, fun to listen to, but of late they - like so many others out there - have decided to go the route of over-processing (via saturation) the lead vocal tracks. Have a listen:

I'm now hearing 'super saturation' on more and more professional/industry-label vocal tracks and find it garish, distorted and disconcerting to the point where I have to ask, "Is this the new 'loudness war' kinda thing for this generation?" Do we need a movement to 'naturalize vocals' the way Maat/Pleasurize Music Foundation helped push for a return to better dynamics in mastering? Great analogue plugs are getting utilized out there, sure, but vocal saturation effects have simply gotten out of hand.

Listen, for example, to the purity of a vocal recording from the 70's and ask yourself, "What's wrong with clarity and clean vocal recordings/tracks such as this?"

Though style or saturation techniques may creatively employ vocal distortion at times (The Killers - Mr. Brightside or The Beatles - I Am The Walrus, for example) I will state for the record:
"Generally speaking, if you're going to 'go for that analogue sound' or that 'warm tube tone', at least acheive it without crushing the naturalness and life out of a singer's vocal performance."

Discuss.

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2023

Aliasing. The difference is modem productions are aliasing in the pursuit of (insert sonic character)

 

It's just there are more crappy singers with beautiful outlook. Then they cover it with puke in your mouth autotune or distord all the fine nuances out. It's so sad to listen radio these days. Call me old bastard, but I just love pure beautiful voice even with small mistakes then full quantized in pitch and time

 

It's a fad. Even relatively good singers cannot avoid using the technique to which the audience has become accustomed.
When the public again focuses more on quality than on good looks, such "embellishments" will go back into the trash.

yes sir, what would Beethoven say about what we call the best rock or pop songs ever

 

Beethoven would have liked Toto and the Ramones.

 

Voices have been slowly turning into car horns since the advent of autotune. Add that to mixes WHERE EVERY SOUND IS AS LOUD AS EVERY OTHER SOUND (especially in guitar driven rock) and it's all inevitable.

 

That just modern aesthetic, the same way older people in the 60s didn't enjoy the saturation on guitars. Older people will always prefer older sound, but that "gold" from the 70s is trash to someone who enjoy the sound from the 50s (and so on). Of course it's a general view, I'm sure some peope in their 40s enjoy this modern sound (personnally I'm good with saturated vocal, but I'm more annoyed by the "kid's music" aesthetic of modern pop and all the pitched up vocal trend)

At some point clean vocal will maybe come back, as a new trend (like punk or disco did) and after that saturated vocal will be an old school thing people will be nostalgic about, and it will come back.

 

More than likely... I'll be dead by the time anyone gets nostalgic for "that great production of the '20s", with luck

 

I think it has a lot to do with the singer's voice and his throat, the vsts don't generate sound, it's the singer who puts the effects with his modulations and intensity alternations, that's what I think because my voice is very weak and sharp, I laugh at my own voice I'm ridiculous sometimes.

 

Lou Reed, if he would to use an autotune plugin and saturation would just suck big time. There is beauty in imperfection.

Kintsugi!

 

I agree 100%.

I am also not a fan of vocals on top 200% and think they need to sink back into the bed of the song a bit more. However, if many people are putting so much emphasis on being present and clear on mobile phone speakers and small speakers that the baby is going out with the bath water. Have to sound good on TikToc is a thing now, unfortunately.

Can you imagine if the wired telephone was a reference point for audio engineers from it's inception to it's fall from grace after 2015. What a different world of sound we would have had.

 

Last edited: Jul 30, 2023

It's an aesthetic thing. Popular in the Urban and Pop music around the world.

You like it or not.

I heard way worst but I can understand why someone wouldn't appreciate it. There's many type of music I hate myself starting with Country and Western music but in the same respect, it is only based on musical taste.

Regarding the loudness war, nothing has came back to ''normal''. It has gotten way worst in fact if we talk DR. All the current billboard top ten is between -10 to -8db LUFS.

I hate to put it that way but for many years I hated the Reggaeton and Trap scene until I figure out that all my argument sounded like an old men yelling at clouds.

I since explored those world and have more work offer then ever before.

And as the old saying goes, opinion doesn't put bread on my table, work does.

If you don't like it, just don't pay attention to it and ultimately, don't listen to it nor buy it.

I'm also a Canadian, eh!?

So sorry.

 

Fix your ears with these:

Sara Quin:

Dodie:

2 tracks that the rawness of the vocals always grounds me.

 

my voice sounds like a child lol that's why i refuse to keep doing vocal work

 

I got good news for you (or maybe bad, depending how you see it) : you made it to that time, you maybe don't see it if you don't listen those release, but lot of young artist's music cover or use samples from the early 2000 tracks (those last 2 year was all about all R&B vocal in tech house track for exemple).

I grow up in the 80s/90s and remember my mom telling me that the music I listened was just 70s music reinterpretation (lot of hip hop and house music for me back then) and I was thinking something like "yeah mum, whatever..." (probably the equivalent of the "ok boomer"). And now 20 years later and I find myself doing the same with my young nephew music even though I always thought that I would never be that old guy complaining about modern music lack of creativity.

The funny part also is that the younger generation got a different view of those 2000 years. There's a lot of great music with each generation, but the younger one are nostalgic of what they were listening in their youngest years. For exemple I was in shock when I realise that "Blue" from Eiffel 65 and all this cheesy eurodance is considered classic for the younger generation. For me at that time, it was probably the equivalent of Baby Shark or something like that for them now.

I hope I'll live long enough to see Baby Shark coming back as a dance classic when young kids from now will be 25

 

- First of all it is just fashion, but a very morbid one for my taste. And it seems to have a 'great' future.
- Second, the influence of production/producers in shaping sound is way exaggerated, partly due to great possibilities of digital sound manipulation (mostly meaning: degradation) they have at hand. Tying to become 'authors' themselves, from creating the soundstage they ended up in penetrating into human voice itself. And it seems like they came there to stay.
- Third, it is a part of a greater cultural movement against the naturalness, like fancy plastic surgery, reshaped and cloned-like faces, mingling with gender, replacing natural instruments with synthesizers and replacing real socializing with glaring at social networks.
- Fourth, modern people can't sing. They do not cultivate their voices, many of them because they did not have any musical schooling or training, and most of them don't play any instrument and can't read music. With modern tech, the talent does not matter that much. Autotune is such a sad and poor replacement for real singing. So they get wrapped up and mystified with technology, advertized, and pushed into 'business'. The model of 'instant success' of musically immature people has permeated music deeply.
- Fifth, the adoration of machines. Modern people seem to have some subconscious need to integrate themselves with machines. Just look at futuristic projects of chipping people, creating cyborgs, brain implants, and integrating them into digital networks.

All vocal music nowadays sounds like a sad choir of robots. Or more precisely, like some unhappy creatures longing to and acting as if they really belong to some machine world.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 31, 2023

Sorry, but is one of my favorite songs, I can't avoid it.

ごめん.

 

Oh boy, here we go again.

 

very similar to Adam Neely's video about Led Zeppelin!

 

I think it's okay with distorted vocals in garage rock (it's definitely a big part of the whole genre) and other genres that are highly influenced by the 50's-70's, but it does sound a bit out-of-place in ultra modern electronic pop. There are ofc exceptions - like special effects vocal lines and whatnot - but the lead vocals should usually be pretty clean, with only subtle saturation for a fuller sound. When you simultaneously try to make it sound modern and vintage/lo-fi it can easily sound harsh and too much in-your-face.

I've worked with artists who wants exactly this (distorted garage rock vocals in modern sounding electronic pop) and it never sounds cohesive. The only way I've found to make it sound cohesive is to also make the music itself - the synths, electronic drums, bass etc - also very gritty, lo-fi, raw and imperfect. There are sadly not many artists who understand that they need to be thinking about this already in the sound design and recording stages. Trying to "fix it in the mix" is just not possible, at least not if you want to get the best result possible.