Red Mosquito

McParadigm wrote:In a studio setting, you have pristine audio being fed to you at comfortable volumes through the highest quality equipment available. You might be recording a single song that day, or a single stanza. Maybe you're just punching in a single syllable….that might be all you’re doing vocally, that day.

You don’t have to worry about whether your voice will still be up to the task of shouting and straining an hour and a half from now. You can also hear your own performance pretty clearly, right as it happens. If one take of the song leaves you a little sore, you can take a break and have some tea, or whatever.

Autotune is a tool. Just like a distortion pedal is a tool. Just like all electronic manipulations are a tool. I would assume by default that a 60-year-old rock singer aiming for some of these howls and soaring performance points would absolutely use autotune in the studio.

Frankly, I would prefer that they use a little of it live, too. I’d rather they let the tool make up that last 6% of the distance to a note, and thus preserve his voice. Seems smart.

stip wrote:what does autotune actually do?

Kevin Davis wrote:I don’t oppose Autotune on principle, but I would not want to see PJ’s live shows move the direction of artificially “fixing” their performances in real time. I expect some sweetening on a studio record, but in concert, the fact that the band is onstage playing with live ammo is part of what makes the performances exciting — knowing that they are humans working within the realm of human limitations is what makes it feel amazing when they occasionally do things that seem superhuman. To me having an autotune pedal (or whatever) on standby would feel a bit like an MLB hitter using steroids — sure, it “improves” performance, but it would strip the thing I am watching of some of what excites me about it to begin with.

sweeper wrote:

stip wrote:what does autotune actually do?

The original intent was to clean up imperfections and essentially keep vocals at the correct pitch. That's how Watt would be using it here (to the extent he is using it at all).

In the late 90's, beginning with Cher's "Believe" song, producers also began to use it as a distortion effect. The rapper T-Pain took the distortion approach of that song and made the distortion the centerpiece of his music. It was hugely popular for him but he was largely panned in the hip hop community for being inauthentic. Auto-tune didn't really immediately catch on with other rappers as a result since it would have hurt their credibility. Somewhere after that Kanye West started using auto-tune in the same way that T-Pain did and he received critical acclaim because he's Kanye West. That opened up the floodgates for other rappers to do it as well and it became a popular production technique. A band like The Killers uses it a lot as a distortion effect as well.

warehouse wrote:i hear pink floyd every time i hear this song. i heard 'breathe' on the radio the other day and i feel like i hear parts of that, especially the intro to 'time'. 'shine on you crazy diamond' maybe? the guy who sings 'have a cigar'?

stip wrote:‘and i hope that today and every day is grand’ is a great example of the base words elevated by the delivery. one of my favorite little moments on the record