Can Auto Tune Fix Singing This Bad

Jul 21, 2010 Celemony Melodyne is the best one I've seen so far. I use it a lot. (and my singing is absolute rubbish.autotune kind of gives you a t-pain sound if you dont know how to use it or you edit to much, and Melodyne fixes it naturally. ANDY HILDEBRAND: Generally, a bad-sounding singer using Auto-tune is going to sound like a bad-sounding singer who happens to be in tune. We can't fix that. We can't fix that. Nov 02, 2017  Me and DeeWhatever do the AutoTune challenge! Testing whether anyone can actually sing with autotune! Vote in the upper right corner for who won the challenge!!

  • By David Levin
  • Posted 04.01.09
  • NOVA scienceNOW

Oct 03, 2017  I challenge my friends Andrew, Rob, Dave (from Boyinaband) and YOU to a test - can you hear when someone uses Auto-Tune or not? We made other test. Sep 20, 2015  Auto-tune can now be accessed by anyone in the world, meaning anyone with dreams of becoming a singer can easily get closer to it. On the one hand, this is a brilliant thing; it promotes inclusivity and the idea that anyone can achieve their dreams if they want to.

Learning to sing like Aretha Franklin isn't something you can do overnight. But over the past decade, recording studios have been fudging things a bit with software called Auto-Tune, which enables them to change the pitch of sour notes. In this interactive, find out how it works and see if it can make even hopeless singers, like some on the NOVA staff, sound tolerable.

Learn what pitch is, then listen in as Auto-Tune corrects the bad pitch of several NOVA staffers.

Transcript

Pitch Perfect

(SECTION 1: THE BASICS)

DAVID LEVIN: Before we start, let's take a step back to the basics. To understand what Auto-Tune software can do for, well, untrained singers, you need to understand how the sound of a musical note is made.

It all starts with something vibrating – It could be the metal of a bell,

[bell rings]

or the skin of a drum,

[drum sound]

or a string on a guitar.

[guitar sound]

ANDY HILDEBRAND: With the human voice, it's the vocal cords vibrating over and over.

DAVID LEVIN: That's Andy Hildebrand – He invented the Auto-tune software.

Can Autotune Fix Singing This Bad

Can Auto Tune Fix Singing This Bad

ANDY HILDEBRAND: When you hear an 'A', you're hearing 440 vibrations per second.

[Singer singing A440]

DAVID LEVIN: A 'B' is about 492 vibrations per second,

[singer singing B492]

DAVID LEVIN: And a 'C' is around 587.

[Singer singing C587]

ANDY HILDEBRAND: That's about right.

DAVID LEVIN: So the faster the vibration, the higher the pitch. Simple enough. But pitch isn't the only thing that determines the way a musical note sounds. The shape of an instrument plays a role, too. That's why a bass…

[acoustic bass note]

…sounds different from a banjo,

[banjo note]

…even when they're playing the exact same note.

[acoustic bass and banjo together]

In humans, the size and contours of the spaces inside our heads and throats color the way our voices sound.

ANDY HILDEBRAND: The human voice resonates based on the shape of the throat, the nasal passages, and the speaker's mouth.

DAVID LEVIN: So no matter what note someone is singing, their voice is still unique and recognizable. Jonathan here…

JONATHAN: Hello.

DAVID LEVIN: …will always sound like Jonathan, and Cass…

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CASS: Hey there.

DAVID LEVIN: …will always sound like Cass. Even if they sing at the same time.

[Jonathan and Cass singing together]

DAVID LEVIN: But what if they want to improve their singing voices? What can Auto-Tune do for them?

(SECTION 2: AUTO-TUNE AT WORK)

('DETECTING PITCH' BUTTON:)

DAVID LEVIN: The first thing that Auto-Tune does is figure out the pitch of a note that is sung or played into the computer. It's recorded as a red line on this grid.

An 'A', for example, would fall on this line. A B-flat would fall on the line above it, and a G-sharp would be on the line below. But singing those exact notes is hard, especially if you don't have any training.

('TWEAKING NOTES' BUTTON:)

DAVID LEVIN: So let's say you're trying to hit an 'A', and you're a little off.

[bad singer with warbly voice]

Okay, a lot off. Your pitch—that's the red line—wavers back and forth around the right note. Auto-tune can tell which parts of the sound are higher or lower than they should be, and it's able to nudge them back into tune.

[singer's voice corrected in Auto-Tune]

It can even help out if you sing the wrong note entirely. For example, if you hit an 'A' when you should have been singing a 'high G'—Auto-Tune can bump your voice up to the right note.

Here's a slightly better singer. Those red lines are the original pitch of her notes. The blue blocks show where it's been corrected.

[singer's voice in Auto-Tune]

It takes some serious mathematical processing for Auto-tune to make these corrections sound natural, though. If it only altered the pitch of someone's voice, it might sound like this:

[chipmunk voice]

ANDY HILDEBRAND: You get a chipmunk effect. It's not their voice anymore.

DAVID LEVIN: So Andy Hildebrand designed Auto-tune to avoid this problem. Rather than just shifting a singer's pitch, the software also models the shape of the singer's mouth and throat.

ANDY HILDEBRAND: So we, like, cut their neck off, listen to their vocal cords, change the pitch, and then glue their head back on. (Laughs) And we do that mathematically in real time. And that's how we can change the pitch of a singer without creating the chipmunk effect.

DAVID LEVIN: Auto-Tune can't make dramatic changes in pitch—say, going from 'middle C' to a 'high A' without sounding mechanical and robotic. But some musicians and record producers actually seek out these effects. They're using Auto-Tune to make new sounds.

('TO THE EXTREME' BUTTON:)

DAVID LEVIN: Auto-Tune creates an unnatural, robotic effect when its settings are pushed to the extremes. But that can sometimes be a creative tool. Musicians from Cher to T-Pain are using it on top-40 albums.

By shifting a note too high in Auto-Tune, you can give it a thin, ghostly effect:

[singer's voice processed into high, ghostly sound]

DAVID LEVIN: And by making rapid adjustments in a singer's pitch, you can make the voice sound robotic. You might recognize this one.

[Singer's voice processed into robotic sound]

DAVID LEVIN: Andy Hildebrand never meant for Auto-Tune to be used this way. But right now, Auto-Tunes signature effects are all over the radio.

AH: This effect is found in every music genre from Dollywood, to Reggae, to Country, Pop, Hip-Hop… everywhere.

DAVID LEVIN: That's great for top-40. But what about the NOVA staff? Can Auto-Tune help our amateur vocalists sound like the pros?

(SECTION 3: THE GRAND FINALE)

('ARETHA FRANKLIN' BUTTON:)

[Aretha Franklin singing My Country 'Tis Of Thee' at inauguration of President Obama]

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('NOVA STAFF' BUTTON:)

[NOVA staff singing 'My Country 'Tis Of Thee' out of tune]

'NOVA STAFF AUTO-TUNED' BUTTON

[NOVA staff singing 'My Country 'Tis Of Thee'; Auto-Tuned version]

('THE FINAL VERDICT' BUTTON:)

A Change Is Gonna Come is a 1964 single by R&B singer-songwriter Sam Cooke, written and first recorded in 1963 and released under the RCA Victor label shortly after his death in late 1964. The song has gained in popularity and critical acclaim in the decades since its release. Sam cooke a change is gonna come download free. Though only a modest hit for Cooke in comparison with his previous singles, the song came to exemplify the sixties Civil Rights Movement.

ANDY HILDEBRAND: Generally, a bad-sounding singer using Auto-tune is going to sound like a bad-sounding singer who happens to be in tune. We can't fix that. If they've got a poor tone quality, or a poor style, or don't support their diaphragm and get an even volume, we can't fix those things. (laughs)

Can Auto Tune Fix Singing This Bad Boy

Credits

Images

(guitar, banjo)
© istockphoto/Don Bayley
(drum)
© istockphoto/Diane Diederich
(bell)
© istockphoto/Alex Kalmbach
(bass)
© istockphoto/Jake Holmes
(Harold 'Andy' Hildebrand)
Courtesy Harold Hildebrand
(Jonathan Loewald; Cass Sapir; Cass Sapir and Jonathan Loewald; David Levin; Darcy Forlenza, David Levin, and Jonathan Loewald)
© WGBH Educational Foundation
(T-pain)
© AP Images/Jason DeCrow
(Cher)
© AP Images/Mitchell Zachs
(Aretha Franklin)
© AP Images/Ron Edmonds
updated 6/2/2009 10:01:02 AM ET2009-06-02T14:01:02
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The following sentence might come as a huge shock to teens and Millennials, so stop tweeting for a second, kids, and get prepared for a totally outlandish statement. Here it is: Once upon a time, pop singers were actual singers.

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Yes, I know. That’s hard to comprehend since the pop charts are now dominated by artists who use Auto-Tune, the software plug-in that corrects the pitch of those who can’t really cut it in the vocal department and turns their vocals into robo-voices. While everyone under 30 recovers from that revelation, here’s what I mean by “actual singers.”

Singing Autotune Free

Back in the day, pop artists like Frank Sinatra and the Beatles used to be able to record albums in just a few days. Country musicians like Patsy Cline and George Jones trudged through grueling tours in out-of-the-way rural locales yet still missed nary a note. R&B musicians like the Supremes and the Four Tops navigated their way through complex choreography but still belted out songs out like their lives depended on it.

And while today, we still have singers with massively impressive pipes, a whole lotta them could never have rocked it for real like the Motown gang. These days, artists are able to get by on looks, publicity and aid from Auto-Tune.

You can hear the robotic, processed sound of the plug-in on recent hit records like “Blame It” by Jamie Foxx and T-Pain, “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga and “Right Now (Na Na Na)” by Akon. It’s also heard on tracks by Kanye West, Britney Spears and Lil Wayne. When West attempted to sing “Love Lockdown” without the plug-in on “Saturday Night Live,” the results were none too impressive and got ridiculed online. You can hear 10 examples of “Auto-Tune Abuse in Pop Music” on Hometracked, a blog geared toward home recording enthusiasts.

Paula Abdul also uses Auto-Tune on her new song, “Here for the Music,” which she performed (i.e. lip-synched) on “American Idol” May 6. It was evident just how artificial Abdul’s vocals were when she was followed by Gwen Stefani, who gave a warts-and-all live vocal on No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.”

Country and rock singers are said to use Auto-Tune to protect themselves from hitting bum notes in concert. Pop singers use it when they have a hard time singing while executing complicated dance moves (raising the question as to why they’re letting their dancing take precedence over their music). Auto-Tune has become so ubiquitous that indie rockers Death Cab for Cutie wore blue ribbons at this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony to protest its overuse.

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Building the ‘perfect’ beast
The prevalence of Auto-Tune comes from two longstanding pop music traditions — the desire to alter the human voice and the quest for perfection at the expense of real talent and emotion.

The first of these can lead to inspiring moments, as the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones noted in an essay last year. Pioneering voice tweakers include producer Quincy Jones, who punched up Lesley Gore’s vocals with double tracking on “It’s My Party,” and George Martin, who gave us a childlike sped-up John Lennon on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Later on, Peter Frampton wowed audiences with his talk box guitar effect and a decade later, vocals were being put through harmonizers to get jarring outer space effects.

Of course, to pull off any of those effects, you had still had to be able to sing. With Auto-Tune you don’t.

Then there’s the quest for perfection. By the 1970s, producers were able to edit or splice together vocal takes from various tracks and eventually they started to use hardware that corrected vocal pitch to create “perfect” performances. When the sound editing program Pro Tools became the industry norm in the 1990s, kludged-together vocal tracks became the norm.

But too much meticulousness in pop music strips away passion. And the very reason we listen to music, noted the late rock critic Lester Bangs, is to hear “passion expressed.” Auto-Tune makes people sound like robots. And if there’s no feeling, why listen at all?

Some people apparently aren’t listening anymore. Sales of major label CDs are down. But more authentic sounding music still has fans. Paste magazine recently reported that indie music is selling more, and the one area of commercial music that’s remained popular is “American Idol,” where you can’t fake it (unless you’re Paula Abdul).

The producers speak
A lot of producers like to use Auto-Tune because it saves time, says producer Craig Street, who has worked with Norah Jones, k. d. lang and Cassandra Wilson. “If you have a smaller budget what you’re doing is trying to cram a lot of work into a small period of time,” Street says. “So you may not have as much time to do a vocal.”

Craig Anderton, a producer and music writer, observes that Auto-Tune “gets no respect because when it’s done correctly, you can’t hear that it’s working.

“If someone uses it tastefully just to correct a few notes here and there, you don’t even know that it’s been used so it doesn’t get any props for doing a good job,” Anderton notes. “But if someone misuses it, it’s very obvious — the sound quality of the voice changes and people say ‘Oh, it’s that Auto-Tune — it’s a terrible thing that’s contributing to the decline and fall of Western music as we know it.”

One producer who dislikes Auto-Tune is Jon Tiven, who cut his musical teeth in the punk rock era with his band the Yankees, and went on to produce soul singers Wilson Pickett and Don Covey as well as Pixies founder Frank Black. Tiven thinks Auto-Tune has led to the destruction of great singing.

“I don’t know how many levels you want to drop the bar for what it takes to become a successful musical person,” Tiven says. “You could sacrifice on some levels, but it would seem to me one of the first things you would really be hard pressed to sacrifice is if the person could sing in tune or not.”

Street says the like or dislike of Auto-Tune largely comes down to aesthetics, and likens people’s feelings about listening to unnatural sounds with the way some people feel about unnatural body modifications, such as breast implants.

And that makes sense. After all, today we have models and actors whose faces and bodies were never intended by nature, reality TV that’s not real, and sports “heroes” whose strength comes from pills not practice. It’s totally understandable that the commercial pop world would embrace an unnatural aesthetic. Whether audiences will someday want pop singers who are first and foremost singers remains to be seen.

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