Auto-Tune always and forever
01:02:24 Share

Welcome to the verge cast the flagship pod test of the difference between reverb and d verb. I'm my friend David piers, and I have decided that I am going to relearn how to play at the guitar. So I have this guitar that sits behind me on all of my meetings and all of my podcast recordings.

And so people are often like, oh, that's cool. You play a tar, which your favorite song do you know a time of your life by Green day, like all this? And the answer is, I don't really play.

I used to I played a lot when I was a kid for a long time. I was actually pretty good at IT. But then I got to that point that you get to with a lot of things where my guitar teacher was like, you either need to try harder and care about this more, or just quit.

And so I just quit. Bad choice in retrospect. But like, I was twelve, we going to do. But now I have this guitar and i've decided i'm going, na, remember how to play IT. So I got this up musician that people really recommend and I really like so far.

IT just sits here on the ipad and IT tells me out to play and that actually uses the microphone to see if i'm playing IT correctly and gives you the sort of dynamic feedback as you go. It's not as good as having like a person to teach me, but I can do IT in my basement. So i'm calling IT a Victory. So far I have learned basically that this is .

a sea cord .

and not a chance. But you know, it's progress where we're in one day at time. Anyway, that is not what we here to talk about. This is the second episode in our many series, all about the future of music.

Last week, we talked to jack coin about track star and basically music content and how we, as fans, discover new music and how musicians discover new fans and be in the world. This week we're talking about a technology that I think you could argue is the single most important thing that has happened to music in the last two decades. And that thing is auto tune.

We're talking to charlie harding, who is a long time verge cast contributor and a friend of the show and also the coasts of the excEllent podcast switched on pop. I'll linked in the show notes. If you don't listen to IT, you should show its excEllent.

He's going to tell us all about the history of auto tune, how IT changed music, and maybe try to figure out with us if there's a way to take what happened to auto tune over the last two decades and think ahead as we get to A I and tiktok and all the other changes that are happening to the music industry. What can we learn from what has happened with auto tune that might give us a hint about where we're going the next twenty five years? All that is coming up in just a sec.

We have a lot of very fun songs to play. They are going to stick in rain for months and i'm very, very sorry about that, but it's going to be worth IT. It's gonna awesome.

All that is coming up. But I just remember that how to play A D cord. And so i'm going to go to out a bunch of times and feel very good about myself. I knew two chords now and basically, guitar player, this is the verge cast. We'll be right back.

Support for the verge cast is brought to you by new song cakes. hey. The nisson kicks is undergone a complete transformation, emerging as the civic ze cross over redefined for urban adventures, with a striking new exterior and a fully revamped interior boasting premium pictures.

The kicks experience has been totally enhanced to help you Better navigate city life, and the reimagine non kicks is outfitted with intelligent wheel drive so you can keep going rain or shine. Learn more at W W W dot needs on U. S.

A dot com slash twenty twenty five dash cakes. Intelligent wheel drive cannot prevent collision or provide enhances traction in all conditions. Always monitor traffic and weather conditions.

Welcome back. Alright, let's just get into IT. So chartly hurting, like I said, is a music journalist.

He's a professor of music. He's also the coasts of switched on pop. One of my absolute favorite deep wali music podcasts. I really cannot recommend ded enough. He's been on this show with us before, talking mostly about A I music.

We did a great epsom of him last fall where we tried to make a song with A I and I got weird and very fun. He was around for the whole laser bang craziness. We talked a lot about A I drake with him.

We ve talked a lot about A I with charley. Today we're going to talk about something different, and that is auto tune. But one of the reasons I wanted to have truly here to do this is that I think there might be some similarities between the story of auto tune and the story of A I.

So in order to do that, charlie is going to show up here and he's going to tell us the story of auto tune, how IT changed music, how IT changed the world. And then we're going to try to figure out if there's anything we can learn about what comes next. So here we go.

Let's just get into IT. Here's my conversation with chilly hearting really hurting. Welcome back to the show. It's been a minute. I N I was like having a reason to talk to, and this time was not about, like weird AI videos on youtube. This is.

imagine we will get A I because that is the topic. We will also get .

to A I ideot on youtube. I just realized that is where we are at here at some point, but we're going to take a minute to get there. Ah so I want to start like this.

This is sort of a like needlessly panic way to start this conversation. But uh, I realized the in prepping for this that when we talk about auto tune, we're kind of talking about a bunch of things, but also one very specific thing. So before we get into the whole story of what what is auto tune, what do people mean when they refer to auto oon today? And twenty twenty four, this is two different .

definitions of attune. This sort of formal definition is that there's a company called and tories that made a audio software tool called auto tune that is used to help people adjust the pitch of their vocal after they have recorded IT. Or actually, you can even record IT live into other student today that is also effectively use, it's an audio processing effect.

And uh IT is also second definition, basically become anonymous with any kind of pitch correction. There are many companies that help us do pitch correction. Uh and so when you say auto tune, you could either mean this audio playing in or you could mean any form of pitch manipulation in incorrectly.

Okay, so other soon is like the clean ex of the space is IT is both a thing, but it's also the name everybody uses to refer everything kind of, yes, exactly. OK got IT, so let's go all the way. Actually the beginning here, uh, you mentioned auto to on the product. Yes, where did you come from?

There are so many things in audio that have come from the military industrial complex ero space and in this case, the oil industry. Uh because auto tune was invented by a Candy hilDebrand who was a geologist who worked in oil and gas and he used techniques like the foyer transform analysis, which is used both in geo physics and in audio processing and he he helped find oil deposits using wave seismology tools.

I I don't quite know the science of the stuff. I'm a music journey um and he had this idea that he wanted to pursue his passion in music. He was a float and that is one who plays the flute declare and um and so he launched this software company in the nineties and built a tool that use some of the math and science that he had used in oil and gas to create a pitch correction tool.

Somehow the uh wave technology he used to identify oil fields also applied to how we can Better tune our vocals. So thank you. Oil and gas for direction. If there's any reason you didn't like auto tune, I just gave you another one.

Yeah right? It's for Better. For worse. I have to say no single part of that answer was remotely close to what I expected along.

Uh, so how how does he go from like guy max science project to actually being used? I think brief spoiler that we're going to get to share here very quickly here is shared the very, very beginning of that story. Or was auto tune kind of around in the .

industry before share happened? It's very close to share a the tool order tune launches in one thousand ninety seven shares, believe.

Which h is really the song where people start to recognize the effect isn't until the fall of one thousand and eight. The idea of auto tune was that IT would be a sort of subtlely effect to help slightly enhance out of tune vocal, not completely attitude. E, if he still had to sing pretty well in tune, but he could have sort of nudged the the bad moments back into tune.

And so there certainly worth some producers that we're using IT a before share. What share did is that SHE in her team took this tool and kind of abuse that they, uh, set the settings so that IT pitch corrected as fast as I possibly could in such a way that I created this this very a strange vocal effect that they started calling the share effect. I do have to note though, there is an important recording that came out before shares believe that also had IT this over the top auto effect. And it's very unfortunate that IT is kid rocks only god knows why really a few months before shares believe, they say that every man me is just like me yeah that's tough .

will get to share I think .

I think it's right to share. And the thing is that song was released as an album cut, not as a single, but after shares believe they are like, oh, that's that's a cool sound and we already did IT. So they later released a only got as well as a single, and so was often heard as having occurred after shares believe that was technically released beforehand.

So there in us, we've got oil and gas. We've got to rock. We're just we're IT in all the Marks right now.

some tough bed fellows on the broadcast today. So IT super interesting me. That is very at the very beginning, like months after this thing was launched, for this a sensibly, pretty straight forward purpose.

The end, totally.

it's already being used in this wild out there. Surprising ways did IT happen like that from the very beginning that was IT IT seems like got crazy before I got quiet in a really interesting way .

without the share effect was almost a one off, like some people started to do similar ish things you can think of, like maDonna's music, two thousand has a sort of pitch correction sound. Deaf punks, one more time in two thousand. One actually uses a different pitch correction tool.

But people start to mimic this effect. For sure, it's much more common than people are using. Uh, auto tune, the proper tool this is effect uh as like really gentle pitch correction and and so the share effect was kind of like, I think at first, kind of a one off novelty. Uh people were using auto tum though like you can hear IT very odd bly on um a song like maron fives SHE will be loved from two thousand two.

Where IT was supposed to be suddenly use. But there's something just like a little bit wrong with the recording and people picked up on the fact that, like, I don't know, there's something about that vocal which is slightly in human. I can't identify IT because it's not that like hard tuning share effect.

It's it's the auto tune tool, but kind of overused. And people started to complain, oh, this is the sign of the end of music. People aren't really singing there. They're doing something after the fact to.

you know make a glossy and shiny. Was that the reaction to share even because SHE was not trying to hide what was going on there?

No, no. When you listen to the song, believe um IT uses both a mix of tuning and no tuning in the verse. SHE begin with auto tune on and SHE sort of singing about you're trying to find love after a broken heart and there's the sort of feeling of like this this robotic um just going through the motions kind of person and the the vocal tune almost matches the the presentation of of the. Then, as he goes into the chorus, SHE thinks I believe in life after love, SHE actually drops the auto tue.

So it's actually this creative effect in which you're saying like I can feel robotic and like solness and then I can think of breakthrough and shares across the main vocalist. And so SHE turns that effect on enough to match the lyric of the song. When he came out, though, everyone like, wow, what is he doing? Not like, oh, she's not singing, uh, but that is a very strange and cool effect. I want to do that too, and share on her. Producers actually mislead people and didn't tell them what they do because they wanted to have this kind of cool, propriety tary sound that nobody else can.

I mic, that's so interesting. And at that point, auto tune, I guess, was new enough that we hadn't already sort of explore the edges of IT in that same way. Oh yeah.

absolutely horary novel to people they'd never heard a thing quite like IT but there is a whole history of other vocal processing techniques, tools like the vote coder or the talk box and people probably assume actually the producers misled uh interviewers and said, oh yeah, just like a vote coating tool, which is a tool that actually goes back to uh world's two IT was invented as a uh way of um encoding and decoding to be sent under sea that they wouldn't cop by german new boats.

I'm telling you audio is like all military industrial stuff. We wouldn't have recorded music if I went for a early sort of military audio tools. But in in any case, uh, they said he was this tool that have been around for decades and decades and decades so that they can have their, you know.

secret and sauce so interesting. So look quick, just give me like the the technical explanation of how auto tune actually works. Like you mentioned, its its job aversive is to take a pitch that using incorrectly and make IT the correct pitch. I understand that much yeah. What else is useful to understand about how auto tune actually works in or understand how people use IT?

Basically, it's a tool that is trying to identify what pitch are you attempting to sing. And then IT does what you call pitch quantitation, basically pushing the pitch that you are singing to, the pitch that you are trying to sing and you can do this at different speeds. So if i'm singing here um but i'm trying to sing here, ah IT would go ah it's hard to glide you to your pitch.

And when we think of the share effect or the auto tone effect that is turning that pitch speed all the way down to zero, meaning IT automatically immediately jumps your voice from one pitch to another. And when IT does that, IT creates this sort of digital artifacts. Ting that is unnatural, IT is strange, and IT is now very desirable. People like this sound and intentionally bake IT in how they sing, because IT is a fun.

creative effect, got IT OK. But in in theory, IT really is just that simple of like you, you have a pitch and you have a pitch that you want and order to make those the same thing.

yes. And so how fast does to do IT? You can maybe as broadly these little find tune premature, but basically fix my pitch OK. And you do this by started of saying, i'm trying to sing in this scale and, uh, you set your scale and then IT just knows that he, you're singing away off your scale. Me, x.

that for you. O, K, so in sort of that basic definition of that, I can actually understand why auto tune, if IT worked at the beginning, I M like IT did, would be an immediate gig in to hit, right? Like IT, from the way you describe that sounds like IT was like, you talk about maDonna, you talk about my five, you talk about like these are a plus list artists who are using auto toon, basically immediately do this thing, like come out and take over the music industry.

I mean, he definitely today is used on the majority of according. When I see majority, I mean, like over ninety percent of recordings. The only recordings that won't use attune are probably going to be, and I should say, use some kind of pitch correction.

The later recordings that don't use speech correction would be like a very naturalistic rocks song. Maybe in song, you're certain certain rappers you are not singing use IT. But the majority of of any sung folk is using auto de.

When I came out the gate, sure. I mean, any time that somebody needed to post process fix something, there was ata tune. Attune was the tool to use.

There have been tools for quantized rathmore that had existed before auto tune. So you could say, hey, you meant to hit the sare here, but you actually hit a little bit late. Let's magic back over. And so producers have always wanted to find ways to fix pitch problems, and they actually had really chAllenging, slow ways of fixing pitch.

All way back into the seventies, where you go into a piece of tape, there were digital procedures you would send IT to, and you could like nudge one little note a little bit north or south of where it's most of land. IT was very slow in the barriers. So people have always trying to perfect recordings that are slightly imperfect to make them more exactly in key.

So I just I keep coming back to the share thing because it's like i'm so vacated by the idea, like a lot of what you just described are sort of tools in a producers tool kit right later, things that in theory, you aren't sort of front and center in the recording. They're just designed to like solve a set of problems that you have. And I I think there was clearly a lot of that in how opportune is used and still is. And I think that, to your point IT, not every song sounds like believe, but if every song has our tune like that is being used in the way it's supose to, yes. But also IT became an instrument in a very real way, in a way that most of these technological things don't.

right? And that's thanks to the pain, right? So like IT goes from being the share effect to becoming the tea paye effect. T pain, who likes share, great singer um .

which no one knew forever. My favorite thing of that t pain, like everybody new share could saying before SHE did believe but we spent like a decade being like A T pain can sing and it's .

all because of about right? So share puts up believe in one thousand nine hundred and eight, five, four to two thousand and five deep pain. I'm spring is one of the first time that people hear this effect in the world of R N B.

S from the share effect to the tea pain effect. And pretty quickly, IT becomes the sort of way that people sing. In particular, IT gives rappers the classes of saying, and there are a number of early recordings, but the one that reissued of lander for folks is IOS and heart break. This on heartless in two thousand eight.

Not a particularly strong singer has the capacity to hit a pitch and singing Melody. Once that track is out the gate, every rapper realizes that they have the opportunity to start in bedding hooks into their music. And you know, often times, that is the course hook, the people sing.

And so, uh I I would says from share to t pain to cony and then everybody that's really iteration in this sort of late outs that the auto to effect becomes ubiquitous. IT would takes more than A A decade from shares belief before people start using IT as in the same way they might use distortion or reverb. IT just becomes another tool, the tool box that people are using as this overblown effect, not the gentle version of IT.

right? But I guess one key difference uh, is that at at least to my knowledge and you remote more in this that I don't remember they're being a huge cultural backlash against reverb. And yet there have been at least at least a couple that I can remember a sort of big, loud, angry moments. Where are the music industry or someone big in the music industry said, you know, we have to get rid of auto tune and it's reading everything that is destroying this thing we believe in what, just before we get into all that, make the case against auton. Like if you were put yourself in the position you truly hurting hate botto tune, think you should .

be exercise from the earth a because you could say that order to magnifies the voice. I'm having trouble saying this because actually .

don't believe IT, but we're just onna clip that part play OK.

like someone's unique vocal identity, is the way that they hit a pitch. Nobody things perfectly in pitch. We all scoop into our notes.

We use a brother differently. And auto tunes sort of, uh, you know, carves out all of those imperfections. Part of what makes a sound like ourselves makes a sound human. And so you could say that yet, it's a homogenizing tool. You could also say that you print stars who don't have proper vocal training and technique, but that's like the history of rocket role, are people who were not trained singers who sing properly with all their erno, but like rather have personality to their voice and maybe intentionally don't sing like Henry roland is a great example, like the intial tire world.

Like punk music is not about singing properly so I think both these arguments of IT homogenize the voice and and allows people who don't sing well to, uh, be stars are probably the primary criticisms in the odds after colonies record as more more people start to copy the sound. There were plenty of critics who are dislike everyone starting to sound the same. That's the age old criticism of all popular music.

Everyone sounds the same. There are still plenty of umer youtube or who like to talk about how auto and is still ruining music. And the reality is that auto oon only becomes more popular after that era.

Listeners want more of IT. It's not some cup ball of music executive being like a ha. We are going to give out to the people rather it's like clearly people are listening to this music and they want more of IT. The counter argument to auto tune hoogan ized voices is that like if you listen to drakes passion fruit.

IT does not sound like charlie xxxx t IT does not sound like travis Scott sick mode.

You can still identify who people are and I I love that about attune is that actually it's what you do is that makes IT your own way of recording I think about a kind of like um you know you pick up an old style phone. There's all kinds of ways the voice is being processed, all the loan information and the higher information is being cut off and all the dynamic, uh, uh, volume changes are also being squashed, compressed.

And they're doing that to save data on their own networks. And IT like, I mean, if you call me on the phone, I would immediately know it's your voice and not realized voice, right? right? Like the ear is so melt, able to whatever effects that we use to change IT.

I think that's awesome. So I think we're auto to goes from here is that people learn to use this effect to enhance their own creativity, their own artistry. Artists like drake start in pending really great hooks in his rabs because he can do sing in ways that he couldn't otherwise.

He's not a great vocalist, he's a great rapper and he's a great melodious. But like again, he's not trained to be a great vocalist singer. We don't get travel scot without attune. You don't get travel exec without order tune. People end up using to this the sound very creative, timely and IT explodes.

Okay, and do you think of IT in in your own world and work as sort of spirit ally different from any other tool that in in a in a tool kit that a producer and artist has? Like is IT does IT belong on the same level as reverb dorm? Or is IT something else entirely? I think .

about IT as a producer and as an educator and music as just an other tool to a box, for sure. I think that a lot of the backlash has to do with this question of, like what is human and what is in human. The same there's zer had the same kind of backlash in its development.

Oh, it's not a real person playing a real instrument. This is mechanical, doesn't sound as expressive me. Clearly those critics also lost the because the the sizer is one of the predominant sound of the music. Um I think about IT is just a Normal effect that anybody can use and um one that should be used creatively to enhance the feeling of a OK.

How has also changed it's what twenty seven years old now yeah is is IT functionally still the same piece of offer was .

in the nineties. And there are many. Attune is a software developer. Thus they need to constantly shop new things. They got to a growth man buying next. I think our well pass order tune X, I can't member the .

engagement matter of the change, the social network there somewhere.

subscription service theyve got everything. The reality is that actually a lot of people still like the auto une effect of yesteryear. And so if you use auto tune today, you buy the latest version of IT. You can turn on classic mode, so you can actually go back to how I use the sound um is much more naturalistic IT. There's a Better job of tuning your vocal in ways that are less obvious. But the effect, the authority of fact, that you will love, whether it's with tip ne or share or colony ever what you like is that hard tuning the thing which is in human, uh, and you like to to play with IT. And so most people actually just go back to the classic mode.

right? I want to dark about more about where we are right now with our tune. But first we have a quite.

Support for the verge cast is brought to you by nissan kicks. Hey, the nissan kicks is undergone a complete transformation, emerging as the size cross over redefined for urban adventure, with a striking new exterior and a fully revamped interior boasting premium peaches.

The kicks experience has been totally enhanced to help you Better navigate city life, and the reimagine non kicks is outfitted with intelligent wheel drive so you can keep going rain or shine. Learn more at W W W dot miss on U S. A dot com slash twenty twenty five dash cakes intelligent wheel drive cannot prevent coalitions or provide enhances traction in all conditions, always monitor traffic and weather conditions.

Are you back truly harting still here? Hi charlie. So I want to talk about order to kind of right now because, uh, I think you've mentioned this a little bit a couple of times, but I think the idea that the existence of attune has a changed.

The kinds of music that people are like able to make, who didn't to have certain kinds of skills or whatever before, but also the kinds of people who might be coming into the music industry has changed. So i'm curious if you look at sort of the the sweep of like who is making music in the music that they're making. Can you look at IT is like auto to and change shot of this, the fact that auto is everywhere and can make anyone singing sounds pretty good that has that changed the entire music universe? I can think about IT more .

like the development of the election. C guitar, a new instrument that people could pick up. And I created this new sound. And so I think produce Young producers today want to sound like auto tune, just as in the six, they wanted to sound like hendry ics like it's the sound that is attractive. And so yeah, IT does let anybody saying, but only lets people saying if they can sing with the order to in effect and that's probably the thing they're going for anyway.

It's likely surprising, by the way, that that that sound has been popular for this long, really like a long way into this world. And again, you go away back to t pin in the early ots and share even before that, unlike the idea that people like the sound of auto tune has lasted a really long time.

That's why it's more like a guitar or a distortion effect. It's a feeling that IT gives people. It's not about vocal tuning like this. This is what give people angry. So like I makes you in human.

But no, no, no, it's like the electric attar is also unreal, right? Like it's generating electrical signals that has to be amplified by amplifier. IT doesn't have all the acoustic properties of a beautiful accused katar, but IT also sings and speaks in its own unique way.

And so that's how I think about, I think, that Young people to produce music, what to sound like auto tune. I mean, truly, when you record with auto tune today, it's not a post processing technique. I mentioned IT earlier.

People put order tune on their vocal from the gets go, and they're trying to play with the effect to get IT to do this weird artifacts ting thing. This they would like all the things that IT does impose sely. That's why they use the classic mode.

They wanted to sound like this thing from one thousand hundred and eight. They don't want IT to sound like A A presti e pure tool that allows them to sing Better. It's not about .

that interesting. So explain that to me a little, but because I think one thing i've read a bunch is that one big shift was when auto tune went from a thing you did in post after you lay down a vocal track like IT was a IT was a post processing to to know something that you do live in the beginning. And there is a there is a line in there, a really good pitch fork story that you sent .

me about the history of attune.

There's a line in there that's basically like there are a lot of singers who have never heard their takes without attune. That is just my my brain exploded thinking about and so yeah, you mention like thinking differently about the way that they are actually making the stuff in real time because of auto tune. Yes, what does that look like? Like what would you be like in studio to record in in a sort of immediately post auto to universe?

I mean, people do this not in studio, but in home bedrooms. I am the bigger stars in the world. Would international travel to hawaii to record and record in arb b.

They bring a mice phone. They bring a portable small recording interface. Uh, often times they use one called the universal audio Apollo that allows you to run auto tune on this little interface live without any sort of late.

Cy, so that when you're speaking into your microphone, you to hear yourself through auto and then they're singing, trying to get IT to do things that make weird auto two ties out. I'm bad at singing with our tune. Yours like like you actually have to be good at using the effect to make a sound right. Uh, you have to intentionally sing slightly out of tune to get a sof bend back into tune. You have to if you see.

well, that actually IT doesn't get to do anything.

So IT doesn't be interest in I well, that way i'm not a vocals but like I am not good at using auto tune to make IT sound fun and creative. You actually have to be talented at using order to and practice with that. So yeah, it's I think you like bake into the sound before even goes into your software, but you can't turn IT off after the fact.

Now some people still do you, but like a lot of people don't want to hear what the voice sounds like without IT on this is what i'm saying work like I think of IT more like the electric guitar, because to play elective guitar with a lot of distortion is fundamentally different than playing classical guitar. And you ask a classical guitarist to play a super distorted electric guitar, they might not be able to control of the feed back that that creates. They might not be aware of how to get a two thing properly and vice versa. Like a fast leave guitar, electa guitar might sound absolute terrible and accuse a guitar. It's a skill that you have to learn to singing into auto tune.

So you you actually think of singing into auto tune and singing without order tune as just ugly.

Different skills. I think that they are related skills. But to make auto oes and good think you've ta a be good at IT a again IT doesn't necessary mean you have to not arguing that you have to go to a music school to learn how to do this, but you have to practice that IT like IT takes time.

It's a scale that you have to develop as a musician. When I do that, I don't sound good. Uh, IT is common that people will use auto tune to practice malians and you know use that as a way of, uh, dealing with the fact that they aren't good vocals. But I again, I think that if you want to sound like tea pain, you have to practice singing like tea pain yeah and you get tea pain is a great vocalist share or is a great vocalist.

There's just not doing the same thing as Franks and decades to go.

I ah a different way of singing.

Yes, I feel like they're going to be some people who hate that.

But I find that of I I think there are a of people will .

put charlie email on the shown, as you can tell myself.

thank you. I mean, I just know this through practice of working with musicians in studios. And some people are really good at using other tuna. Other people aren't.

Yeah, what how does that pretend to live music? Uh, is that the same? Is that the same sort of thing like as as auto tune has gotten more powerful. It's just present live the same way that is in recordings. It's fine.

Once again, there are both ways of using auto tune life. Some people need to have that effect on when they sing, because if you travel Scott in your performing live in concert, that is your sound. So they developed, ontario developed an order tune live tool that you can run you three of micron on a live stage.

It's not big into the microphone, is an effect down the audio change at some point. Sure, there is also tuning life used for that subber vocal tuning to help people, you know what, you're running around on stage, it's exhAusting. Ying, you might be out of breath.

You're not hitting your peaches as effectively. There's all kinds of ways that vocals are enhanced to sound more like the original recording. Subtle auto tuning is a one version of that also planned backing tracks of like a thousand cores vocals that are perfectly already tuned as another way that things sound more in tune. When your live according .

yes to you using the one, but there's fifty other use singing IT correctly around yeah yes 我 还 i know I .

always like back tracks。 That's because people expect the recordings that they hear. And when you listen to your favorite artists, they're usually in the corner singing at least nine versions of the track to add depth with coursing, like the thing that just makes IT some big and awesome. And you bringing a extra backup singers on tour is expensive, so might just play the backing tracks and had a little tuning to your vocal because you're out of breath. Those are all different ways that people use order to in life, either the order to in effect, or the part of more subbed pitch cache version .

of what's the like simplest, most mainstream version of that at this point. I think about the the maybe video is a good metaphor, right? Or at the very high end, you have super high end video editing offer, but we've boiled and all the way down the lake, you can edit pretty successfully inside of tiktok.

And that has made IT available to tons of people who doing tons of different things. Do we have that equivalent for auto tune? Is that just available to regular people in the way that like instagram filters are? Uh.

yeah I mean, there are iphone apps. There are like the other effects that have been developed by the gregory brothers, a who famously made order or to the news years ago. If you buy apple logic, which is there like ideal recording software, IT comes with their own free version of pitch correction.

Uh, every software developer that makes audio tools have tried to make their own auditory effect, and they are cheaper than the ontario version. So there's all kinds of way of getting into author tune. If you want to try to auto or your vocals, it's very accessible OK.

And is that is that a good thing? I feel like you you would argue that a good thing. Yeah yeah. I don't know what.

Like are you trying to argue that there should be like fewer paint brushes and paints in the world so that we can have more more I don't like, I think more creative tools for more people is great.

Yeah, I I support IT. So there is one sort of new backlash to this that I i've been thinking about a lot, and i'm curious to get your feedback. And so one thing I see on on tiktok, instagram and everywhere else these days is like these videos of singers in their kitchen or in like a garage or just wandering down the sheet singing these these beautiful soul form ties do do not want them talk king about. There's this one that's like a guy with a sulton pepper beard and he's just pouring coffee and his girlfriend understanding behind him, and he just starts singing into an ipod. And this sounds incredible.

we.

And i'm like, first, the the way I know this doesn't realize because airports don't sound like that and you're mine. But like all that aside, there's been this really fascinating thing where a bunch of singers have come up and gotten a lot of a lot of fans and a lot of fame and like record deals and themself out of these social videos. It's a very like natural musician creative way to come up.

But then in every single one of their videos there is this giant comment section saying, oh, they're using auto tune. I'd love to hear that sounds like without auto tune, it's auto tune and it's like on the one end, maybe the argument is who cares but on the other hand is like we're in this moment where authenticity is everything and also you're standing in your kitchen singing. So the idea that i'm supposed to process this like a professional recording, there's a disconnect there that I have always just wrap my head around how i'm supposed to feel about this. And i'm currently if if they were playing an electronic guitar, i'd be able to see the electric guitar, right? How you think about how about in that version of music that weren't right now, I think also has .

become a kind of like catchall for any that is post processing that makes things sound more perfect than they are. Yeah for example, like if i'm seeing in my kitten is going to be a bunch of river is bad, but there all kinds of tools you can use to get rid of river.

The fact, uh, there are ways that you can use just EQ and impressionable other very common tools and post processing to make your your voice sound Better so even if I record with an iphone, I can get my iphone to sound pretty close to a professional recording by having good processing tools. I said, I think auto tune has just been yeah as the catch all enemy for anyone who doesn't like uh music which is slightly on naturalistic um I I just want to say if you don't like the sound of auto tune, that's fine. Like I think it's sly fine to have your taste if you prefer house and ultra things, that's cool like if you prefer how punk rockers think, that's also fine.

There are different aesthetics and attune is just one of them and is the one is really popular at the moment. If you feel that it's like IT sounds unnatural, I don't like unnatural, that's fine, but it's just is another way of of singing. And I think that this this criticism is is a bit overblown.

Okay, I guess I agree to a large exempt, but I do think there is something that I I just can't sort out inside of me that there is something about auto tune that feels like hiding that like if you because I actually I buy the thesis, there are things that sounds like art too. But i'd do think and and maybe i'm wrong about this, that there is still A A real use of attune that is not designed to be seen, right?

Yes, if you're right, that ninety plus percentage of music is using auto a tune in some way like I know Taylor swift, not somebody people like she's ounds like auto tune but she's using IT and there are people who really pissed about that and yeah because they're like, oh, it's dishonest in some way that this isn't actually what you sound like. This is this is you this is the equivalent of like putting A A face filter on yourself before you post the picture, which is now another thing. People have sort of visual reactions to online in this moment of like fake authenticity and I don't know. Like do we need is there like an auto tune watermark that should exist on every song that uses IT?

I don't know. Well, okay. So so you you're getting at this question of authenticity with the pop star that we want something about us wants our pop star to be sitting right next to us, our best friend, telling their personal stories and that we know that they're recording IT in a professional studio, working with producers and song writers to make this presentation, which is exciting and enhances all of our emotions.

So there's always this conflict about what is real and unreal in recorded music. And I think especially in pop music and other forms, we don't expect our actors to be themselves in a film. And yet pop stars are putting on a performance.

And yet we have this expectation of they are who they say they are. You run a tailor swift, for example, and tailor soft uses all kinds of vocal processing in her music. On the song delicate SHE uses a vocoder a on the song midnight rain SHE uses a tool called format shifting, where SHE sort of shifts the voice to sound more masculine.

Uh, I don't like the moments in a tourist wift vocal where I can hear audible pitch correction done poorly, and I ve put IT done one or two times. Sometimes when you're producing a soul and you need to get IT out fast for whatever reason, getting these pitch tuning tools to sound natural actually is is a skill. You can get paid a good amount of money just to do the really slow version of hand drawn auto tune.

This is a big part of the craft. What you're trying to do is makes something which was a beautiful emotional performance be a little bit more in tune. And if you do IT wrong, you hear this like this weird artifacts, unpleasant. I don't like when I hear that, because it's the attempt of a naturalistic performance clearly being manipulated. You have to hide the tools you're using to clean things up in order for to sound good in the same way that a photoshop photo that is poorly done and you can see some kind of weird like the anatomy of the person isn't right? We don't like that even though we completely accept that every single magazine .

photo photoshopped, interesting. So there's a there's a real as long as you don't make me think about IT, I can rock with that kind of think. So it's like IT as soon as you put this know, cognitive distant in front of my face, it's gonna feel bad othe wise. I can sort of internalized that is happening. I just want.

have to think about IT. It's the same thing with C, G, I, right? So I just watched alien rome recently and the C. G, I of the a of android character is trying to recreate a deceased actor and IT doesn't work. It's it's so obviously in human.

And even though there an android IT just like IT doesn't look right, but the rest civilian roMilly is like full of C G, I. And at no point, and I like alien, just doesn't like feel alien enough to me. So it's it's all about the context in this presentation.

Anything which is supposed to be completely authentic, entirely natural, that is processed, we will perceive as that doesn't feel right, things that are presented as I am a pops are on a stage, and everything about me is like perfectly composed. We accept that there is. We accept.

We expect that things are going to have been enhanced. So I would just want to give everyone permission to be mad at auto tune at certain moments. But when it's intentional, back of IT, whatever, like the, if someone's trying to do IT let them do. If someone's doing IT poorly, find, criticize them.

I like IT, right? We got to take one more break, and then we're going to come back to talk about where we go from here. We're going right back.

Support for the verge cast is brought to you by nissan kicks. Hey, the kissing kicks has undergone a complete transformation, emerging as the city size crossover redefined for urban adventures, with a striking new exterior and a fully revamped interior boasting premium pictures. The cakes experience has been totally enhanced to help you Better navigate city life.

And the reimagine this on kicks is outfitted with intelligent all wheel drought so you can keep going rain or shine. Learn more at W W W. That is on U. S. A dot com slash twenty twenty five dash kicks intelligent wheel drive cannot prevent collision or provide enhances traction in all conditions, always monitor traffic and weather conditions.

right? We're back. Hello, charly. We've gone long enough without talking about A I videos on youtube, A I videos on youtube. So I wanted, I actually want to talk about basically two different pieces of where I think things might be headed from here. One is A I, and one is back to the kind of authenticity thing.

Uh, let's talk about the I first and I I bring this up because I think there is A A possible future for A I that looks a lot like the arch of auto to the users described. Where tool becomes available, some people use IT like a tool, and it's rendered mostly invisible. And IT does IT helps in the process, and IT becomes a tool, the tool.

Other people will use IT incredibly aggressively and show me, and I will allow new people to do do new kinds of things. Ultimately, some people will be pissed off about IT, but eventually IT will just be rolled into how the music industry works and may even become like the dominant aesthetic in the way that auto tunes could be totally wrong. But I I there there's something about that ryans to me with where A I might be headed. What do you make of that comparison?

Well, we'll d have to break AI down into all of the various ways that is being used for music, because AI is just not like a process that can be used in lot of different ways from different lro s to separating uh stem recording so you can separate the base and drums and vocals and instruments from the recording uh, to generating whole songs for you from prompt.

There are so many different ways that A I is being used, some of which are may be more invisible. For example, like if you use chat P T to help you find a ryme, there's no way that I can identify that you did that. Um except for that, sometimes ChatGPT makes really bad rimes Better and Better.

IT really likes to right like do and two .

and it's a great up chat yeah that's A I songs and orly and so use too many perfect rimes that kind of just overly sweet, really bad single syllable perfect rimes that's that's the tell. But I I don't think we've seen a tool yet that is marketed as an A I tool that has become a predominant sound in in popular music. There's all kinds of A I tools that I use in my music production, but I don't think of them as A I.

So like I used a diver plugging in after too much reverberation in recording and like technically is using a naral net, but IT doesn't really have a sonic fingerprint in the way that the auto tune does. So I imagine there will be some kind of effect that will use some kind of A I neural net in its thing that will become a sound. But the A I S as a methodology is sort of too broad to say that, well, we're going to hear A I in the future.

So IT s IT does. And I think I hadn't really thought about IT like that until you put like but IT is maybe the strength and weakness of a eyes that IT doesn't have a mark in its way like you can make you N A eyes song that sounds like anything, but it's never really gonna sound like itself in a way that is, I think by design, right, like all these tools are meant not to sound like themselves. They're all trying to mimic something else and they're all generally doing a bad job of IT and that maybe he would be more interesting if they had like if you and and made a song with sono, that IT sounded like something and and that maybe maybe there is something to that that is actually missing .

from this rules. If you try IT currently make an image of a person in di three or major ney, like a china has, there's a style, there's a default style and obvious all kinds of way you can get around that style. But it's weird, somewhat cartoony magazine, glassy, very thin, yes, like very White when there are .

the things right, like you look at the fingers and you look at the the lies, and like they have their tales.

tales exactly right now, if you use tools like sonar audio, they do have their tales. And perhaps you in twenty years, in the future, people like I want to use classic sono because I don't like the things that that does .

wrong with what are those tells like how would you describe this?

Okay, first of all, a lot of its trained and actually really low a sample rate and bit rate mp trees, just to like reduce the size of the of the data. And so there is this like grey hassi sounds like IT sounds IT sounds like a bad M P three from one thousand nine hundred ninety seven being played in winning APP. Or may be maybe like more reliable for folks to be like if you turn on A M radio, am radio has a like not quite high fidelity.

There's a low fidelity sound. The the sounds of instruments are strange. Like, okay, take for example, a horn section. If you try to make a like a funk song with horns, the great thing about a horn section is nobody hits the no at exactly the same time, at exactly the right pitch.

The excited is the subbed differences of new eight corns, all trying to do their thing at almost exact same time. And that actually quit. That, in human imperfection, is what makes IT severely good.

A I often times, just like, makes IT all too perfect. Same with vocals, the vocal sound actually pretty. ed.

And so you can identify these things in in addition to you, the vocals are the, the lyrics are, have way to many perfect crime exceler. I actually assigned my students to N. Y. U.

One of the assignments was go to sono prompt IT to write a song, great to that song, based off of everything that you ve learned in class now write your own song from the same prom. And all of my, a freshman students wrote significantly Better songs than the audio in most of them. Throw them out entirely. I asked them to try to incorporate elements of them into their tracking like it's too hard, it's too bad. So um but maybe this badness could be something that we we like in .

the future yeah and that comes back to the other thing I want to talk about with this authenticity think I think uh a theory that i'm starting to hear more and more from people is that the next phase of culture in so many ways is going to be a spin all the way back to again, whatever you want to think of is like court and authentic stuff.

It's got punk rock. Yeah.

it's right. Like IT. And we're going to people are going to deliberately start releasing vocals that sound worse because they are more honest somehow. And we're going to go back to, you know, not using the internet in the ways that we've been used, like this idea of just sort of rescuing all of this stuff because IT has made us not ourselves anymore. And going back to like I am going to i'm going to just put a bunch of instruments in a room and record like the beetles sixty years ago and that is the next thing uh, who famously .

use the music studio for all of its wild creative tools and use all kinds of post processing for call tools like very speed and it's so doing this but yes, I here you're .

going again again, the question is like how far back to you have to go to find something or authentic is a good one.

We're all going to play the man din guitar, benji and violin and you know singing in all timmy bands is what you're saying .

yeah like if if if I saying flat on the take, it's gonna flat on the record. And uh, I would say historically speaking, there have been a lot of people who want us to go that way and we have never, ever, ever gone that way. But I do think there's a reasonable argument that A I is like the end of a certain road of an authenticity that maybe we are due for a push back the other way think .

that's a completely acceptable expectation. Like we've seen that trend many times in the history of popular music in the rise of electronic uh recording and the the electric guitar, louder sounds and rocks and roll. You had the folk resurgence after the super highly produced era of the one thousand and eighty. You had brunch as a push back to that.

So I think it's completely likely that we're going to see new sounds and styles emerging that do try to hark into our most human sound as a push back to anything that is is A I at the same time, I wonder if we've already reach peak authentic um because if you're going on tiktok today, I feel like every other thing on tiktok is the tiktok shop is some sort of advertisement in its all filmed the exact same way IT doesn't matter if it's a crater with ten legs or of its progressive insurance. It's all like, hey, i'm holding my phone. I'm back that i'm just like talking naturally, just shoot in the breeze, whatever.

Oh, by the way, this is the progress of insurance. And so it's already been, quote that like the authentic human thing in video, has already been coopted by advertisers. So where people go next, I think I might be weird IT might be something like auto tune a that is, is the effect of the of the of the next new generation of music.

Do any theory about what that might be in in this world? Like what the, what are the teens doing that is gonna seem crazy to the old folks in a couple of years.

There's still using a lot of attune. There's it's not going anywhere right now. Uh, IT seems like we have like a uh, I I joked about everybody playing the mantle in and there does seem to be like a luminous style rechargeable and the the music of like no a con is a great example sticks and your mom, she'd thank you.

Six yes, exactly. So I don't .

think there is the emergent thing yet. People are loving oh, lot of fun making music on their computers because it's the easiest way to record. So I think we're seeing more like branching of many different kinds of expression than a litigation around one sound.

Can I tell you my theory and I am very are and I think that my theory is that the uh like voice memo demo is going to become an actual honest to god, like genera of music.

Oh interesting.

I think you see this all the time, right? We're like the a song will come out and then like charly poth does this all the time. He'll go on tiktok or or whatever at some late nitro and play his demo of the song where he's just like sort of inventing the Melody in his head and trying to get IT down into his phone and. That part of me is starting to wonder like maybe we are going to get to the point where the the polished thing and the unpolished thing actually get to live next to each other if if instead of they're just being sort of one canonical finished version of the thing, what we actually want is lots of different experiences of the same kind of thing all the way down to, just like the artist ripping into their phone for a minute. And that that like, we want to experience all of that as fans.

the new healthy record has multiple track that are exactly that. There are basically like voice memos and demos and things that are interspersed. And you know that that has a long history of like interlude tracks on hip hop tracks, the phone call. But I like that. I mean, I want to just point out one other trend that has popped up as well as like they've returned to one thousand two thousand thirties jazz or or what you might call classical pop with the artist like lava, who are making things that are a false nostalgia for a music which is one hundred years old and the Young people are into so yeah there's all kinds of thoughts. Um I don't know if I really want to hear a lot of people's voice members.

Now as we look at you know were twenty seven years in the auto in uh, which is a long time in the music genre and in pop music. Uh, do you think if you fast forward a while, we will look back at this is kind of an auto tune era in the way that we've had a sort of distinct eras and music and linger, but like the idea of auto to being kind of the dominant sound of music will go away and will be replaced by something else, and this will be the auto to moment? Or is this just gonna be how music is forever?

What's amazing about all listeners, whether they are a train musician or not, is they can turn on a recording and often tell you, oh, that's like an eighties thing, and I don't like the eighties in. The reason why they can do that is because snail drums were produced in a very specific way for the nineteen eighties.

There's lots of other production techniques about nineteen eighties um and every era has these desks ic artifacts of of their moment and you can and they place them in time the same way that your point shot code act photograph from the early two thousands screams are early two thousands you can even have A I generate things key point of go at photographs which are actually having a comeback. I've been at birthday parties recently. People are handing .

these things around to get that aesthetic yeah people are out here buying like cool .

pix camera from thousand exact and I think know twenty years in the IT may be that auto tone is no longer the predominant sound. I think that's probably likely. But when someone's like but I want to sound like know two thousand eight, they're gone to use that again as I know, as an active sort of creative discounter. So I think we have been in the other tune, decades will probably move beyond IT, but in the same way that like the electronic attar is not the most popular instrument today, but it's still ubiquitous in recording. I think that auto tune will be around in some kind of form and IT might just have to fade e into the background and pop ford later on.

who knows OK, but right now, we're still very much in the auto ta.

I mean, I think the cool record of the year was brought by geri xxx and he admits that he has no longer has the ability to saying without attitude because it's just so part first thing is like I don't sound go anymore and that record is amazing yeah .

if if auto tune is what IT took us a bread or ticket 不 be alright.

man.

Truly, thank you so much. As always, this is really fun. Thanks, right? That's IT for the version yesterday.

Thank you to charlie again for being here. And thank you, as always for listening. There's more on everything we talked about in the shown notes.

I highly recommend the pitchfork story on the history of auto tune. There's a ton of good stuff in there are also link to switched on pop. So many great epo des of that trial that you should listen to truly cannot recommend a highly enough.

As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings or other auto oes songs that belong in the cannon of auto over the years, please tell me you can always email us at version cast at the verge shot com, or call A T line eight six six first one one we love hearing from you. We have a bunch of fun hotline stuff coming up between now the end the year to get your questions in. This show is produced by liam James, will poor and eric comas.

The verge cast is verge production, and part of the box media podcast network will be back with your regularly scheduled programing on tuesday and friday. Lots of news, lots of stuff going on. Glad to fun things to talk about. See them.

Off the top of your head, give me A A, A intro to auto tune play list. But I like for for somebody who was like, I wanna experience auto tn. What are sam times? You would just recommend off to .

stop your head OK. I won't first go to other vocal processing techniques, and you have to listen to like craft works h trans europe express using the vocoder. You have to put harder, Better, faster, stronger from death punk, not auto tune. Technically you have to listen to some talk box like show me the way by Peter Frankton living on a prayer by bon joe california love by two pock and tray and then you know obviously you need to have love pop on there because I mean what is to without holy pop um you need a what else has to go on there um is certainly travel Scott highest in the room the entire album of brat but if anyone song i'm more for three six five than a three sixty so i'm going to say three six, five drakes in my feelings shares believe tea paint i'm sprong and i'm not going to recommend more in five you'll be .

loved you also left out blue by iphone sixty five, which I found personal .

outrageous but I would have to have like a consumer warning on that players if you put blue on there because IT IT is a devolution ear warm. But I did say, little wings, holy pop. So, you know, true, proceeded with caution.

Support for the verge cast is brought to you by any song kicks. Hey, the kissing kicks is undergone a complete transformation, emerging as the civ size cross over redefined for urban adventures, with a striking new exterior and a fully revamped interior boasting premium peaches.

The kicks experience has been totally enhanced to help you Better navigate city life, and the reimagine non kicks is outfitted with intelligent all wheel drive so you can keep going rain or shine. Learn more at W W W dot needs on U S, A dot com slash twenty twenty five dash cakes. Intelligent wheel drive cannot prevent collision or provide enhance traction in all conditions. Always monitor traffic and weather conditions.