I'd be curious to know how a singer managed to sing far beyond his vocal range before Autotune or Melodyne were invented. Tape speed control, perhaps?

So "turning off all autotune devices and erasing all recorded lead vocals" before a gig would be not challenging at all for the vast majority of current singers, right?

By the way, I remember attending an Earth, Wind & Fire concert in the '80s, and the fabulous sound made Philip Bailey's voice on "Fantasy" even more exceptional.
An equally incredible sound at Maze's concert with Frankie Beverly...

 

Last edited: Jun 29, 2024 at 10:53 AM

Autotune and Melodyne have pretty distinct uses, even though there is some overlap.

But they're seldom used to extend the singer's vocal range far beyond their capacity. You don't add an octave or two with a plugin without drastically changing the sound character.

Melodyne is used to correct pitch, but wrong notes aren't off by 15 tones to begin with.

Autotune can also be used to "just" correct pitch, but people use it more as an obvious FX. It's an aesthetic choice, not a "haha fooled you" trick.

Before that, Eventide had the pitch shift market cornered, although it sounds even more obvious than autotune.

And before even that, engineers would re-record a take changing the tape speed to correct false notes.

So yeah, more than 50 years before autotune was invented, singers botched takes, and engineers had to alter them.

Depends on the singer, the genre etc.

There are tons of current singers who don't use lipsync or autotune.

There are also "real" singers from back in the day who use them.

It's not a "yesterday vs. today" thing.

 

This is not stupid at all.
It's a message encrypted by R2R's tool (alpha version).

 

Real singers, those who deserve to be listened to for their talent, do not need autotune or pitch correction tools. It's an insult to them. These tools are for wannabes, celebrities and manufactured singers of manufactured music. By all means use it as an effect but do you really believe those who do so aren't also using it to correct the rest of their vocals? I've worked with a great singer who I never heard sing out of tune once in over 20 years. Not a single note in thousands of gigs.

 

It's an incredibly ignorant stetement, especially for a musician to make. Music isn't getting worse, it's evolved and will continue to do so. The continuous organic evolution of music is usually lead by da yoof, hence ol' fogeys like dis guy won't dig it, as his own parents before wouldn't get his gen's stuff, 'is granny prob didn't approve of his dads no doubt.

By age of twenty odd, men begin to get set in their ways, this is an example merely that, therefore his opinion is completely, utterly und totally irrelevant.

Wot he und other oldies don't really understand is modern production, bet he thinks all dance tracks are the same boom boom boom, it's the intricacies and subtleties of todays spiffin producers that goes way over his head.

Reality is, Art movements say, Impressionism, Hip Hop, House etc do have, in particular periods of time, Golden Ages, songs from say, 50's to 70's was a golden age, history reveals this, so i see where guys like Beato are comin from, it's just too different for them to grasp, but only cos they shut off and don't listen, no patience to give it a chance, i'm bemused that musos like 'im can't grasp the fabulous stuff that's being produced today, mainly from da dance fraternity too.

 

You forgot to mention aging singers that were able to sing without pitch correction 30 years ago, but need it now. Remember Madonna at ESC 2019?

 

Madonna always needed pitch correction and autotune. But many pop singers could have used it over the years. Maybe the difference is that the ones that weren't good singers did at least have character, they were interesting individuals. These days they all seem to be following some kind of pop star template and technology fixes all errors. Any ordinary person who can't sing a note can easily be turned into a current pop star, there's zero depth there beyond jumping around a stage and lip syncing. Or those DJs who press play and pretend to twist the knobs. Live music, eh?

I think this is what Beato is getting at, it isn't the music, it's the industry.

̶A̶t̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶E̶a̶g̶l̶e̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶f̶o̶r̶m̶ ̶l̶i̶v̶e̶!̶

 

If music is getting worse today, why aren't there people taking action? The last time this may have happened would be Disco Demolition Night in 1979.

 

I think there's an underlying agenda behind all of that. There could be abuse of freedom, greed, moral decay, and pride in these circumstances.

 

Without it, they often did way more vocal takes in the studio.

 

They were pure FIRE. I think from time to time people miss the human element. Makes me remember an Aphex Twin concert in which he entered the stage, hit play and lied on a sofa. Clever sob.

 

Why pick on singers, all live musicians are guilty of playing badly, out of time, out of tune etc.

If live music was that great you wouldn't need recording studios, all singers, no matter how good, benefit from the technology that improves their vocal, even basic compression etc.

There is such a beast as a young fogey, (I'm speaking from experience) constant moaning about certain current production techniques marks one out as one, unless you're producing much better results that is.

 

...

 

Last edited: Jun 30, 2024 at 4:42 AM

Oh yeah, that NEVER happened before today. The music industry was a meritocracy, I'm tellin ya !

 

You gave the answer with the title:
The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse (Beato)

 

Okay, I will try to explain my POV in a different way...

Everyone agrees that, however complex and expensive it is, no mechanical watch can compete with the incredible precision of a $20 quartz watch.

But if you look inside a Vacheron Constantin or Patek Philippe from 1970, and compare their mechanism to that of today's most expensive quartz watch, you'll probably get an idea about the difference between "The Dark Side of the Moon" or "Thriller" and "1989" (Taylor Swift's best selling album).

You'll argue that a 2024 Patek Philippe mechanism, while more precise, is just as marvellous as the one of 1970, proving that today's masterpiece of craftmanship are even better than those of the past, and you'd be right.

While it's true that these Swiss geniuses continues to make extraordinary watches, when it comes to music - and despite all the technology which is far superior today to what it was back then -, no one over the past 40 years has produced something superior (nor even equivalent) to the Pink Floyd or Michael Jackson aforementioned records in similar musical genres.

So, yes, it's a question of "yesterday versus today": thanks to technology, the sound may (arguably) be better today than in the past, but because of technology, its quality (in the sense of artistic value) is lower. Turn it as you want, it's a fact.

 

Last edited: Jun 30, 2024 at 7:25 AM