Sound of the Year – 2009: Auto-Tune

Photo Credit: Clyde Robinson

A little over 10 years ago pop singer Cher released her 1998 hit, “Believe”. It was remarkable not simply for its success on the charts, but because it presented the public with the first widely heard effect called by the name given the device by its manufacturer: Auto-Tune.

Since then other devices which produce similar results have entered the market, but they all serve the same general purpose: pitch correction.

Artificial Pitch correction by studio technicians is not new, but its ease of deployment was. Prior to the introduction of these devices and software solutions, one way producers and engineers would correct a wobbly vocal performance would be to sample an entire vocal line from analog tape, then chop each line up into its component words or even syllables, and then manually trigger the vocal performance back onto tape, using the pitch modulation wheel of a synthesizer in real time  to  align and conform a pitchy performance into a stable, recognizable key.

The result was a pitch perfect performance –the equivalent of Photoshop retouching for singers. Except that over time, what started off as a transparent, corrective effect became a highly recognizable novelty effect when used to extremes, slamming off key performances into a rigid pitch grid that in turn transformed an organic performance into something resembling a robotic vocoder effect. Less retouched, so to speak, and more re-made.

Those who think musical performances should represent reality despise the effect, of course, suggesting those singers who use it can't actually sing. However, young music fans love the novel effect. There is a semiotic paper to be written here on why a new generation prefers its singers to sound synthesized and soulless.

Are we entering an age when we feel less than human? Or to attempt a positive spin on it, with mobile phones stuck to our ears and screens increasingly providing us a 24/7 pixelated lens to the world, maybe we actually feel more like cyborgs than humans, and therefore, no surprise, the general public's taste in music has evolved to reflect this transformation upon our psyche and the contemporary digital zeitgeist.

Whatever the reason, the use of Auto-Tune, whether employed only for pitch correction, or to distort and otherwise transform a performance, has become so ubiquitous, that it is arguably now nothing less than the sound of our times.

And that’s why Auto-Tune is the 2009 Critical Noise Sound of the Year.

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HOW THE SOUND OF THE YEAR IS SELECTED:

The Critical Noise Sound of the Year goes to that sound source, event, entity, happening or concept which so effectively produces wide response and reaction, whether intentional or not, such that it stirs collective emotion, inspires discussion, incites action, or otherwise lends itself to cultural analysis and resonates across the globe.

Prior Sound of the Year winners include The Housing Implosion (2008) and Mother Nature's Howl (2005)

Musician Under the Influence (of Technology)

As it happens, two weeks after concluding a series of articles on the effect technology has on modern music production, I stumbled on Nicholas Carr's article, 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?' (July/August), published on The Atlantic website. I found the article via a mention in a US News & World Report essay titled 'A Digital Dumbing Down?' about "The lively debate over the intellectual impact of digital culture", by Jay Tolson (August 28, 2008). Both articles are well worth consideration.

Naturally, after reading both articles, I felt completely 'on zeitgeist'.

Here's a thought provoking excerpt from The Atlantic article that touches on material related to topics discussed earlier this year in the Critical Noise blog:

"Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise...the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper."

Like Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus (Carr notes), bemoaning the development of writing, Carr spends a little too much time lamenting the suspicion that someone or something has been, "remapping the neural circuitry" of our brains, with the result that his own (and possibly everyone's) attention span is noticeably shorter. Others support Carr's argument offering the wholesale abandonment of print as anecdotal evidence to its truth.

Carr does have a point that can be supported by brain science, regardless. Repeated physical activities and mental tasks do influence brain structure –no doubt about it. Musicians for instance, demonstrate greater numbers of nerve cells in certain areas of the brain related to auditory tasks than non musicians.

And yet, I can't relate to Carr on his point because I still retain the capacity to juggle web surfing and a good book. Not to mention that children who should be most susceptible to a diminished capacity for concentration as a result of new technologies are still somehow able to digest a five to eight hundred page tome belonging to the Harry Potter series.

I do relate to Nietzsche’s friend, the composer, however, and I'm aware of the impact new tools have on my craft. Is there reason for concern? In some instances, perhaps. In one respect, technology IS killing musicianship; Guitar Hero is no substitute for actually playing a guitar. But music software and the  novel interfaces being invented to manipulate that software are  changing performance technique, composition and streamlining production in ways I find interesting, even exciting. A life spent building virtual worlds has never stopped computer scientist Jaron Lanier from also becoming a composer, a visual artist and an author.

Kevin Kelly (Wired), responding to Carr on his own blog, The Technium, suggests that perhaps Nietzsche's change in style was not the result of the typewriter interface, but the effects of age and infirmity. Kelly is possibly correct, but is he also such a unique animal in the universe that he alone hasn't recognized how punching keys creates percussive rhythms that may shape verbal and creative expression in a potentially different way than unaccompanied pen or pencil to paper? Kelly may as well argue no difference in musicality between sliding violin samples across a digital interface than actually playing a violin. Nonsense.

Maybe it's my age –younger than Kelly but not so young that I feel compelled to stay connected 24/7 to the digital social ecosystem. And maybe I don't surf as much as Carr, or perhaps I simply have a different relationship with technology from both men. I started programming music on computers, in BASIC, in the early eighties on a Tandy TRS-80, of all things.

Programming definitely influenced the way I filter information, be it incoming sensory data or outgoing communication. After dabbling in FORTRAN, the world has been ever after filtered through a lens some called Karma, others 'Cause and Effect', but which I know as the IF-THEN construct.

In fact, when selecting and connecting melodic information, thinking 'in FORTRAN' probably plays a bigger role in the formation of my aesthetic than I've previously given the construct credit for. And I don't think that's necessarily a negative.

What I do find interesting is not how unlimited information access or ambient awareness might be eroding our mental capacity or distracting our focus, but how emerging similarities between Modern Audio Production and Graphic Design might be due in no small part to the influence of the Graphical User Interface in both industries (Music By Design).

Increasingly, the lens which we interact with the world is a data chocked screen.

And common or shared software protocols make once dissimilar activities available to experts of one art form who may now choose to experiment with another. The result is a kind of hybrid artist who may not be able to function as a musician or designer in the analog world, but is quite capable of producing something worthwhile in both Photoshop and ProTools.

To Carr's point:

If I have any misgiving about the latest technological advances in music production, it's that so much professional equipment of yesteryear has been replaced by disposable TOYS, virtual and otherwise. New England Digital's pre ProTools music production synthesizer (Synclavier) was crafted with the same buttons the military used to build B52 bombers, and it felt like a Steinway/CRAY super computer blend under one's fingers.

In contrast, few contemporary music tools are constructed with more care and craft than Fisher-Price Toy Musical Instruments, except that Fisher-Price products are actually built to last. It seems that new millennium instrument manufacturers are determined to edge their own products into obsolescence, and do exactly this with each new update. Getting customers to trash last year's product on the false premise that the latest technological advance will increase musicianship is central to countless business plans.

But you'll never find a Pianist abandoning his or her piano, or a Violinist his or her violin. How many electronic musicians are using the same tools today that they were using five years ago? Not many, I bet. This strange circumstance appears to have produced a culture of artists who would rather forgo the development of a competent skill set in favor of access to a perpetually novel tool kit. And, no doubt, the music made by perpetual students will bear evidence of this circumstance.

The flip side, of course, is that good music teachers from all over the world have become instantly accessible to the dedicated few at the touch of a mouse. Also, the tools of music production are now relatively affordable, and therefore within the reach of nearly everyone who wants to express themselves with sound –regardless of whether their ambition is to be a professional or simply enjoy music as a hobby. This can only produce a positive effect on a culture where the Arts have practically disappeared from the syllabus (in favor of new laptops for social networking, perhaps?).

Closer to my point, and as others have noted we've entered an Age of Design.

In his organizational paper of the same name, Jeff Conklin writes in Age of Design (Clicking this link initiates a PDF download!):

"...the job of humanity is now shifting from understanding our world to being conscious about creating it —that is, designing it."

Whatever one calls it, this paradigm shift is informing both our aesthetic and our process. Maybe we do read invent less, and read far fewer books, but we're arguably making and creating more using the tools of collage and synthesis.

It's also possible any diminished interest in text is the result our cognitive systems are undergoing a reorientation towards (or evolutionary preference for) pictographic writing systems (SMS shorthand, emoticons, branding, etc...), over traditional communication via the written word.

As with Ancient Egyptians, our preference is to consume and transmit data in packages that resemble a modern equivalent of hieroglyphics. We're all suddenly thinking visually and purposefully –regardless of whether we're artists, musicians, writers, managers or anything else– we've become a culture of designers.

How often now is every thought, every concept, first conceived as an image? It's only after one sees the thing does one then translate it into spoken words, formal or informal text or even shapeless sounds and music.

Google may or may not be making us stupider, but computers and other electronic tools, and GUI ubiquity especially, are certainly changing the way we connect to reality, process information and communicate our thoughts.

Why use the word when a picture –or ideogram– is worth a thousand, and nuance requires negligible energy to bring meaning into focus. Of course, Text works as well as it does because it is both an image and it conjures a sound.

So, perhaps we are thinking less like verbalists, and more like visual artists?

I don't want to believe that we're dumbing down. I'd like to think we're actually 'Designing Up'.

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Online magazine EDGE has posted other responses to Carr's article. Contributors include W. Daniel Hillis, Kevin Kelly, Larry Sanger, George Dyson, Jaron Lanier, Douglas Rushkoff, W. Daniel Hillis and David Brin. Simply click the link to visit: The Reality Club

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To specifically read more about how digital technology is transforming music composition and production from a primarily aural-centric task into a more visual experience than it it ever has been before (the invention of musical notation notwithstanding) click the following links to visit Table-of-Contents pages for two different but related series of articles posted earlier this year on the Critical Noise Aural Intelligence blog.

Critical Noise 2008 Series 1: Evolution of the Music Designer

Critical Noise 2008 Series 2: Computers Have Changed My Brain

Kindle's Impact on the Music Industry?

The two most interesting things to me about the new Amazon e-book reader, the Kindle are:

(If I understand Bezos correctly...)

A) Once a person makes an e-book purchase, Amazon allows the buyer free access to all his or her purchases via storage on their server, at no additional cost. So if you own 300 e-books and carry around 200 at any given time, you can always swap out any titles any time you want to. In effect, your library rests on their servers.

B) Kindle is completely self reliant, no personal computer required.

Therefore a person can purchase and own all the e-books they want, forever, so long as they pay for them once; and so long as he or she accesses the content via hardware which isn't connected to the Internet, thereby preventing the copyright content from unauthorized duplication.

To me, this actually sounds like a reasonable model for distributing music files and other digital media.

I don't mean to suggest consumers should be prevented from amplifying the music they own from more than one device. Rather, if one allows that one can dock an iPod, for instance, on a variety of playback devices, from boom box to home stereo to car audio system, then allow that another similar device might also allow the consumer to amplify the music anyway they cared to, without also permitting them the capacity to move the actual files themselves from drive to drive.

This is unlike a subscription model whereby consumers 'rent' music, and lose access to it if they stop payment. Some suggest subscriptions as a viable future distribution method, but I like the Kindle plan better, where consumers pay once and retain free access to their music forever.

It follows that as long as one has unlimited and eternal access to his or her music, and the capacity to carry on their person as much as can fit on a given device at any given time –hundreds and thousands of selections– then both music producer and music consumer are served.

One member of an online discussion where I first initiated this idea (Kindle's Impact on Music Industry) queried how this model differed from previous protection technologies, such as copy protected CDs and DRM?

Here's the answer:

Consumers resist Copy protection on CDs because they want to be able to rip CDs to portable hard drives in order to customize playback. Of course, some also want to be able to copy content so that they may freely distribute it to others. I suspect that widespread general resistance to the format weighed more heavily on the former, although I do not have sufficient data to argue one way or the other. In my own case, I thought: if you can't listen to the music on your iPod, then what good is it?

I think it's also fair to say that even CD manufacturers don't believe copy protection works, or doesn't work for long anyway. Sooner or later, someone always cracks the code.

But even if it did, such CDs (at least as music transportation devices) would still only protect new music recordings, not recordings already ripped. Not to mention that generally speaking, CDs are simply becoming obsolete as the world goes increasingly digital.

As for Digital Rights Management, does DRM even work? Again, certainly not for files you’ve already ripped from your own CDs.

An ideal content distribution scheme must be easy, acceptable and convenient for producers, manufacturers, distributors and consumers alike, –even as it secures the rights of copyright holders.

As it happens, the Kindle appears to promise just that to authors, publishers and readers of the digital equivalent to novels, e-books.

The actual physical device aside, the content distribution and consumption model created by Amazon for Kindle content rests on these three points:

1) Consumers own the e-books they buy; free digital copies remain accessible on Amazon's server: They must purchase content from an authorized seller; in this case, obviously, Amazon. But once they do so, they are free to the change the content on their playback device at will, provided that the content –the e-book files– rest either on an Amazon server, or in their Kindle. Since a Kindle can hold upwards of 200 novels, plus access to a dictionary and Wikipedia, readers are guaranteed a virtual bookshelf of books and references to carry with them at any one time.

2) Proprietary file format: If a consumer purchases more than 200 e-books (@$9.99/e-book), the e-books that do not fit on their Kindle are stored on an Amazon server. The device is outfitted with a USB connection and spillover can also be stored on an SD card, but it's not as though you'll be able to open those files on Sony's e-book reader, Sony Reader. Back in September the New York Times explained "Amazon is using a proprietary e-book format from Mobipocket, a French company that Amazon bought in 2005, instead of supporting the open e-book standard backed by most major publishers and high-tech companies..."(NYT: Envisioning the Next Chapter for Electronic Books).

So, one wonders if the convenience of free storage at Amazon will be enough to dissuade consumers from trying to crack the files in order to make their own digital copies –if they know they can go back to Amazon at any time in the future in order to swap out any number of e-books for other previously purchased selections, at no extra charge, as many times as they like, forever (provided the number does not exceed the Kindle’s physical storage capacity). Further, one doesn’t actually swap out books off the Amazon server. The Amazon server preserves a copy of the e-book. Like the iPod, swapping off the Kindle amounts to deleting the file in order to make room for new content.

But the fact remains: You bought the book, and therefore you own it. Your copy simply and perpetually sits on Amazon's bookshelf, rather than your own hard drive (where it is subject to damage and accidental erasure, by the way). There it remains until you want to read it, which you may do as many times as you like, now and in the future.

3) Free wireless broadband distribution. Can you lend a book to a friend? Sure, the device allows you to email excerpts, but if you want to loan out an entire novel, just give them your Kindle –as you would a physical book. However, consumers are not given the capacity to rip Kindle content to their computer's hard drive, thereby making wholesale unauthorized distribution theoretically impossible.

Instead content is swapped in and out of the Kindle, and to and from Amazon, via a cellular connection. In this case by way of a direct EvDO radio connection to Amazon (and for which the book consumer need not sign up with Sprint to enable). Amazon makes the transfer of content from their store (or your library) to your Kindle as transparent as possible. Buying a book is just like getting a ringtone.

The bottom line: Consumers get access to all the books they can afford (at a fair price). They get unlimited access to all the books they purchased, anytime they want, forever. Perhaps most importantly, they can experience the books on a portable device that apparently fulfills reader experience expectations in every way that matters.

WHAT IF WE APPLY THE ABOVE MODEL TO THE DISTRIBUTION OF DIGITAL MUSIC FILES?

Of course, we can't literally use a Kindle because while it plays mp3s, its slow E Ink display isn't the optimal choice for navigating through a music library. Nor can we use the current Apple or MSN (or other) set-ups. We need a new device that operates within a suitably closed system: Let’s call it a 'kPod' (although I’d rather call it a Cryptonomicon [nerdy humor alert]), and you fill it up with content at the kTunes store. (For the sake of this overview: Despite some cries of monopoly, Apple's iTunes/iPod set-up is defined as an open system here because although Apple's AAC files are theoretically copy protected, a consumer's own files are not; not to mention the set-up is connected to the Internet, allowing files to move freely).

I imagine that a consumer might access the kTunes store via a Mac or PC in order to peruse selections, make purchases and manage their library. But the kPod itself will not connect to one's computer. Rather the Ktunes store sends the kPod content, just as Amazon sends the Kindle content, over a free wireless cellular broadband service.

As consumers retain eternal access to their purchased content they can therefore access previously purchase content at no additional cost. You bought the music; you own it.

If a consumer damages their kPod, they will certainly be liable for the cost of a kPod replacement, as they would be with any consumer purchase. But they will not be required to re-purchase music that they already own. All they have to do is log into their kTunes account and download their content from their library.

While the kPod is incapable of burning CDs, or making readable copies to external drives, secondary kPods or home computers, consumers will nevertheless be able to dock their kPod to any number of commercially available playback devices, such as their home stereo, a car sound system, or some other 3rd party amplification system. Docking will allow consumers to amplify the audio from a kPod, but it will not allow them to actually transfer digital files from a kPod to another device (capable of reading those files).

The bottom line is: Consumers get access to all the music they can afford (at a fair price). Unlike a music subscription, they get unlimited access to all the music they purchased, anytime they want, forever. They will certainly have to pay for any new music they desire, but they will only have to do so once. They will never again have to purchase the same song twice. Perhaps most importantly, they can experience their music on a portable device that fulfills listener experience expectations in every way that matters, and still protect the rights of copyright holders.

Add to that a store that offers every single recording ever made, from anywhere in the world, and free content from the public domain, and you may be on to something big.

One question remains: How will current owners with existing digitized collections of music get this content into the kPod without giving the kPod reciprocal ability to export content to distribution channels? Maybe there is no way (to do so). Or maybe imported content will be automatically transformed into the kPods proprietary file format before becoming functional (which in effect would also take care of DRM).

Whatever the decision or method, if producers of music can convince young consumers to choose kPods over iPods, they can offer those consumers something Apple isn't even doing: They can help a new generation begin building non-destructible music collections, and from a very young age, saving every title they purchase for future and unlimited use, on and from a perpetually accessible server, in an account in their possession –if not on their person– for their entire lifetime.

Or maybe music should just be free.

The Artistic Legitimacy of Electronic Music

Rap collective Wu Tang Clan made pop music history the other day by winning the right to license a sample from the Beatles. This event precipitated an argument in online music industry forum, the Velvet Rope, which pitched music production traditionalists against electronic musicians regarding the artistic legitimacy of modern production techniques.

Essentially the question is this:

Is music created by electronic means as legitimate as that which is created by traditional means?

It seems like a straightforward enough question, but given the relatively short history of recording itself, I was only able to arrive at a definition of ‘traditional means’ after some thought. And it’s quite an unwieldy definition, but here it goes:

Traditional Means of Music Production: Performed by live musicians expertly interpreting a previously written musical composition, whether together or one at a time, at the direction of a dedicated Producer, Engineer and/or Creative Director, which is then recorded in a multi-track environment; and its component elements modified, mixed and prepared for radio, broadcast or other distribution so that the resulting composite recording is simultaneously experienced upon playback as both a precise document of that moment in time, and as the best and most definitive performance possible of the composition in question by the artist/s performing it.

Contrast this process with the philosophy that defines ‘modern electronic music production’:

Modern electronic music production accepts that all sound sources –music, machine, noise, environmental sound, conversation and even prerecorded sounds– constitute viable elemental material for the experimental collage and composition into audio works, and that such resulting works are in fact musical in nature.

The irony of the contrasting definitions is that the latter methodology, in the form of musique concrète, wasn’t an afterthought but born nearly simultaneously alongside traditional means of music production. By this I mean the development of musique concrète occurred at roughly the same time as reel-to reel recording gained popularity. By this perspective so-called modern production isn’t so much traditional music production’s younger sibling as it is its fraternal twin.

That said, let us say that traditional musicianship, composition, arranging, theory, engineering/audio production are unique and expansive fields of study such that any one will consume one’s entire energies in order for a person to master it to one’s fullest potential. This has been demonstrated to substantial effect countless times.

By that standard, an electronic musician, being one whose craftsmanship draws from across all these skill sets, cannot possibly master them all, or even just one if he or she attempts to continue a cursory study of each. Therefore, the syllabus of an electronic musician results not in a virtuoso but produces a musical generalist.

This is by no means such a bad thing:

Walk into any modern music production facility and you’ll invariably find a musical jack-of-all-trades playing all the instruments of a composition he or she composed, arranged and/or programmed; dropping in samples and sound effects; directing other various musicians, singers and sound designers; producing a broadcast ready arrangement work. The result may sound like an experimental electronic music band one day, or it may sound like a jazz ensemble, classical orchestra or hip-hop track the next.

One might further note that any performance, no matter how traditional, –how live or alive– once transformed into an electrical current by pickup or microphone becomes ‘electronic music’.

This last point is exceptionally demonstrated by African band Konono N°1, founded over 25 years ago and who play traditional instruments through a handmade sound system –built from old car parts, megaphones and discarded amps (!). Each band member’s individual performance is traditional, but the effect of the collective amplified performance –as it spills out of the speakers– is a distorted, distressed Pan Africa Post Modern sound that is deeply infectious and absolutely electronic.

Follow this train of thought long enough and one invariably loses one's mooring regarding what is and isn't traditional; what is and isn't modern; what is and isn't electronic. In fact, come to think of it:

Isn't all music, once conducted through a pick up or microphone, electronic?

Latest Headlines: Entertainment Today

In related news, the Compact Disc was laid to rest this morning at a funeral in Bremerton, Washington, the birthplace of its inventor, James T. Russell.

Meanwhile, on the Velvet Rope, an online music forum known for its contributors from various segments of the entertainment industry, pundits were debating not just how to resurrect the disc itself, but they were also trying to figure out a way to hold the discussion in a medium that did not require the use of any computer technology.

One respondent is said to have suggested meeting at a bar, where they could discuss exactly how much cardboard a new Led Zeppelin Box set would require before consumers considered the package a collectors item. Unfortunately, most were unavailable to attend as they had prior obligations requiring the services of a television set, an iPod, a DVD player, a mobile phone, a PDA or an electronic game. Those who did attend finally found a suitable venue where the music would not overwhelm the urgent conversation.

The Compact Disc Is Dead

Digital Music News recently (October/2006) reported that EMI Music chairman and chief executive Alain Levy called the CD "dead.” He said: "The CD as it is now is dead, but a new version with added value will live on… There will always be a need for the physical product. You're not going to give your mother-in-law an iTunes download for Christmas…”

To my mind, it depends how you define 'physical product', 'added value'; and how you contextualize the download. If by 'added value' he means more digital media on the disc itself, then in my opinion neither Mr. Levy nor his team has quite thought the problem completely through. There is no 'added value' in content that one will eventually be able to download from the web (for free). Therefore, moving forward, 'added value' must indicate something other than elements found on the CD. We may as well dispense with the CD altogether, and invest our time defining an entirely different physical medium. Instead, let's think of the audio itself (and any other added content traditionally distributed on the disc) as the added value element, which we only make available with the purchase of Artist Branded Merchandise (created in or from a non-digital medium).

For instance: You might give your mother-in-law a pair of mittens, and they might come with a coupon redeemable for an Elvis Presley Christmas Album download. Even value-added CDs are just so much packaging, and you can't beat the value of a nice warm pair of mittens, especially if Elvis's handsome mug is embroidered on them.

What is unfortunate for the music Industry, is that digital audio technology is a catalog killer. Barring a hardware malfunction, consumers now only have to buy music once in a lifetime, and often they don’t pay for it all. Whereas, twenty years ago I may have duplicated several purchases in different formats in order to have my favorite music available on vinyl, 8-track and cassette –and I actually bought one artist's Double LP vinyl set twice because I wore out the records.

There is still a magnitude of worldwide customers converting to digital audio, notably in the Southern Hemisphere where analog formats are still prevalent. However, in North America and Europe, the days of repeat purchases (in order to accommodate different play back devices or even simple wear-and-tear) are very much over. Not to mention the fact that neither my kids nor yours will ever have to buy much in the way of old catalog recordings because they stand to inherit their parent’s hard drives.

I can already imagine entertainment companies sending lobbyists to Washington to mandate the destruction of media storage devices upon an individual's death under the auspices of simultaneously fighting piracy and protecting privacy.

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Click on any link below to read all the articles in the four-part Fall 2006 AUDIO AS ADDED VALUE series exploring exploring new paradigms for Music Distribution:

1. The Compact Disc Is Dead
2. Saving The Music Industry One Brand at a Time
3. Self-Referential Jingles are not Content
4. Synergy = Energy

Auto-Tune™ Goes Public

Auto-Tune™ is digital processing software used to correct the pitch of vocal or instrumental performances. It was introduced to the market in 1997, by Antares Audio Technologies. However, I’ve recently noticed the word/phrase ‘autotune’ being used as a generic term, –regardless of whether the lawyers at Antares, think that's a good thing or not.

Other trademarks have slipped into the public domain: Kleenex, and Xerox, for two examples. Henceforth, when I use the word as a descriptive, I will refer to ‘autotune’ and ‘autotuning’ (no capitalization; no hyphen).

I define autotune, or autotuning as:

Fixing or otherwise enhancing a vocal performance, using modern mojo.

Many point to Cher’s ‘I Believe’ as the first commercial pop song that brought autotuning to the general public’s attention. There are conflicting reports whether the effect on Cher’s voice was the result of an extreme Antares Auto-Tune™ setting (whose effects are usually transparent on minimal fixes), or the sum results of another technology. The British recording magazine Sound-On-Sound does a pretty good job of documenting that the song was in fact produced using Antares technology.

Whatever the technique, the result may be inhumanly perfect pitch, but the sonic artifacts that one hears as the pitch is centered to an absolute setting is not the result of a heavy handed producer, but rather an intentional artistic decision. Quite simply, –and most twelve year olds agree– the heavy-handed effect sounds cool.

What did recording engineers and producers do before Antares made Auto-Tune™ pitch correction available (there are other similar DSP solutions to correcting pitch, such as Melodyne™ (Celemony), which I also include as autotuning software).

Before the advent of either Auto-Tune™ or Melodyne™, producers and engineers might have used digital samplers to fix vocals –a painstaking task. Before samplers they might have ‘comped’ vocal passes (which continues to be a common technique). Comping is the art of splicing (now cutting and pasting) a number of vocal takes together in order to create one perfect master take. Equally common is the art of 'punching' in a new vocal or instrumental take over a pre-recorded take, that is recording a live bit of new performance over a bit of pre-recorded material.

Punching in a word or note here and there may not seem the egregious bit of studio magic that autotuning is, but punching in every single word of a lyric, or note of a solo– certainly is. On the other hand, if the end result sounds great, why not do it? Is the purpose of a commercial recording A) to document a musician's skill set, or B) to document the best performance of the work/song. The answer is invariably –but not always– 'B'.

There are other ways to create perfect vocal. For example, a touch of reverb or chorus has long been a producer’s best friend in this regard. Unlike autotuning, which centers the pitch, reverb, chorus and other similar effects serve to mask a poorly pitched vocal.

Effects aren’t just used to correct a vocal performance. Just as often they are used to enhance a vocal performance. Consider Alvin and the Chipmunks, for instance, and enjoy the technological marvel of slowing the tape down during record, and playing it back at regular speed (thus speeding up the vocals at the same time as raising the pitch).

One device, the Eventide’s H3000™, has long been a staple in recording studios for it’s ability to facilitate ‘Harmonization’ techniques – whereby a recorded performance is doubled and then the replication is re-pitched, and/or delayed, thus creating a harmony, of varying realism.

Vocoding –that robotic effect we sometimes hear, is essentially the sum of a a vocal signal modified by an electronically produced signal.

Some argue people who have no business singing are using autotuning to cover up imperfect performances. However, it is just as often the best musicians and singers who demand autotuning because they want to sound even more perfect than they are.

I sometimes wonder if there is also a racist or sexist component –or a bias against homosexual oriention– that underlies criticisms against autotuning and other similarly creative digital signal processing. I know that sounds patently ridiculous on the surface, but consider the DEATH TO DISCO movement during the nineteen seventies: At the time it was thought an innocent backlash against an overplayed trend. But from our current perspective, we can see that it was propagated by a mostly white, heterosexual American male population upon the collective popular works produced by either gay, European or African American artists.

Similarly, much of the bemoaning over autotuning, vocoding and harmonizing, comes across as a wholesale prejudice against urban, pop and dance music genres. Any armchair pop anthropologist has have to wonder: Is it the technology? Or the people using the technology?

Further, I’ve never once heard any guitarist decry the use of Fuzz or distortion. Yet, guitarists have been hiding sloppy technique behind torn speakers, overdriven amps and stomp box emulations of both since the sixties.

Remember a DC comic book character called Bizarro Superman? Bizarro Superman was Superman’s doppelganger: an Anti-Superman who was everything Superman was not. Thus Bizarro logic dictates black is white, strong is weak, good is evil, etc.

I’ve come to think of rampant distortion as Bizarro autotuning. Instead of centering guitar pitch, it masks it. That’s why it’s called distortion! –And it is the constant friend of many a hammered fingered rocker.

Auto-Tune, DSP, music production, sound effects

Synclavier II Summertime Seminar

On June 25, 1984 I was perhaps the youngest in attendance at The 3rd Annual Synclavier II Summertime Seminar. My unsolicited to calls to New England Digital must have garnered in Brad Naples, the Executive VP and Chief Operating Officer, a curiousity about who this eighteen/nineteen year-old kid was who kept calling about their products. Eventually I would own a Stealth black Synclav but to stop my incessant calling they loaned me a Synclavier II –Serial # 003140-K, outfitted with an incredible memory capacity of 64K! (<-----sarcasm alert="" br="">
Moreover, they invited me up to Dartmouth where the weeklong seminar was taking place.

Lecturers included:

Sydney Alonso: President of New England Digital and Chief of Hardware Design
Laurie Anderson: Renowned composer and performer ('Mister Heartbreak' had just been released)
Jon Appleton: The Dartmouth College Music Professor who had first conceived of such a machine/instrument
Denny Jaeger: Movie and television soundtrack synthesist and composer. Original consultant on Synclavier II development
Pat Metheny: Renowned guitarist and composer
Oscar Peterson: Renowned Jazz pianist and composer
Martin Rushent: Producer for the Human League, Go Go's, and more

Seminar attendees included both early adopters of the instrument, and potential customers:

Andrew Batchelor, Anthony Aliprantis, Barb Scott, Craig Harris, Dave Edgar, Dave Whittaker, Ed Morgan, Eric Morgeson, F. Navarette, G. Suarez, Gorden Kent, Jay McDonald, Jim Harris, John Slowiczek, Jon Kwasie, Laura Christman, Lee Blaske, Lee Kopp, Louis Resto, Mark Birmingham, Mastes, Mike Hoenig, Mike Thorne, Moreno & Gil, N. Schwartzman, Naut Humon, Neil Davis, Paul Burlingame, Raven Kane, Reed Hawthorne, Robin Halpin, Ron Friedman, Sherman Foote, Steve Short, Ted Amheiter, Tom Law, Tom Silverman, Torben Holme-Pedersen, Wil Roper, William Burnette, William Elliot, Michael Banks and Anthony Marinelli, and myself.

What did I learn? I wasn't the only audio geek on the planet! Hooray!


Synclavier, Synthesizer

It Was 20 Years Ago Today

Advertisement for then state-of-art microcomputer based Computer Music Instrument, The New England Digital Synclavier II – From the back pages of the Computer Music Journal, Volume 7, No. 1, Spring 1983.

Needless to say, I wanted one!

Synclavier, Synthesizer

There are Stars in Those Demos

Elias Arts received hundreds of demos every year –by mail and messenger. When I first started the demos were audio cassettes. Later they were DATS. By the time I left no one was using cassettes anymore and everything arrived in CD form or VHS. Engineers who wanted a job in the studios sent some of the demos in. Session musicians, singers and aspiring composers sent in the rest. 

Early on, Exec Producer Ray Foote had identified in me a discerning ear for talent; and so it was my task to review each new box of unsolicited material. At first I was honored that my bosses thought me competent enough, even discriminating enough, to sift through this catalog of work, never mind allow me to make recommendations on it. However, no sooner had I begun the task then I had the sick and sudden realization that very probably –at record labels worldwide– the fates of thousands of talented musicians and bands were in the hands of a few inexperienced gnats like myself. That said, I really loved listening to demos, so much so that rather than hand the task over to interns and assistants that followed me, I held on to that responsibility until I left the company several years later (having by then risen through the ranks to Senior Producer). 

I still love discovering a new talent. The combined responsibility of production duty and talent scout wasn't much unlike an Artists & Repertoire role (A&R) at a record company. But finding talent for a music house is perhaps a little different than its entertainment counterpart because one's selections always had to possess true musical talent . Sorry, if that offends anyone, but the truth is, people become music stars for all sorts of reasons, some of them not having to do with musical talent. Since we weren't in the business of trying to get clients to work with us because we were beautiful or had great dance moves, the only thing left, was to be the best in the world at providing musical solutions to creative problems, and capable of executing their successful resolution. 

A producer can’t always claim a writing credit, but there is nevertheless some personal reward in recommending a singer, a musician, an engineer, sampled sounds, adding to an arrangement, or contributing any other component that sells a track and sends the client back to the agency with an enthusiastic smile. Of course, sometimes one's contributions are compositional in nature, but that's not often the case, and it wasn't the primary focus of my job, which when I defined as inspiring other people to do their best. 

At any rate, on the very first day of reviewing demos, I listened to maybe thirty or forty cassettes in all. There was one that Doug Hall, another one of our composers had brought in, of his friend, Fritz Doody. And it struck me as above and beyond all the others. I couldn’t believe it still just sat in this box with all the rest, and so I repeatedly lobbied Ray and Alex to have a listen. And six months after that Jonathan Elias hired Fritz, a Hungarian American Rocker from New Jersey who had the Prince-like capacity to play nearly any instrument he picked up. 

I wasn't yet high enough up the ladder to command 'signing power', but thereafter anytime we needed to find a specialized, world class talent, Ray entrusted me with the job of locating and securing the right person for a specific job. It's always fun to identify someone with an amazing gift that perhaps the whole world has overlooked. 

As for Fritz, we soon learned he had a great ear. Long before the advent of Auto-Tune he was a master of 'fixing' singers. I remember how he'd roll an entire vocal performance off 2” tape; dice it apart into individual words and syllables; then sample each phoneme into a Synclavier and re-pitch them –one by one– up or down with a pitch wheel. Then he'd sew the newly tuned performance back together again; and –presto! (hours and hours later)– he lay a perfect vocal back to tape. No doubt, that's as close to handmade as recording gets, and it's not easy work. But Fritz's results were so seamless that upon playback it made some people who really had no business singing, think that they were in fact great singers. Later, Fritz would go on to win a CLIO for scoring a ‘Got Milk’ TV commercial famous at the time for featuring the Trix cereal Rabbit.

HBO ZONE: Creating a Sonic Identity

In 2000, long before the phrase 'Sonic Identity or ‘Sonic Branding’ was on everyone’s lips, Blister Media was commissioned to create a unique sound design treatment for a new HBO television channel, HBO ZONE, which was described to us as 'HBO for a GEN X audience'. Our resulting innovative audio packaging not only garnered us substantial acclaim, but the Television Industry community recognized us by awarding Blister with a Gold Promax statue, an award whose significance seemed all the more surreal since our competitors were some of the networks themselves!

While I had already won a couple of CLIOs, and Michael a mention in the New York Times for his work on games, it was this award that finally made me feel like we had arrived.

Both VIDEOGRAPHY and the online mag, digitalproducer.com, asked us to describe our process. What follows is one of the subsequent published articles.

–Terry O'Gara/ August, 2006

Creating a Sonic Identity for a Cable Network: HBO ZONE
By Terry O'Gara
First published by digitalproducer.com, October 1, 2000

Blister was commissioned to create a signature audio identity for the complete inner package introducing HBO viewers to the HBO Zone, an alternative urban movie channel. The package includes opens, closes, transitions, lower-thirds, bumpers, end pages and teases. In the opens, the camera flies through a maze of high-rise buildings to reveal the HBO logo glowing on a rooftop, then drops down below the city streets to a network of tunnels where individuals gain access to the HBO Zone through hand print identification. [Visual treatments were created by New York branch of the design firm, The Attik.] The 'story' behind each interstitial, Intro, Bump, etc. was that the viewer was to experience being transported from HBO to HBO Zone, or from a familiar world to an unfamiliar world.

The Network wanted a sound design treatment that was both emotional and visceral in content, non-musical, more sound design oriented than the typical Network logo. Our process for this project, the assembly of noise into something one might call a composition has it's roots in musique concrete, the process by which ambient sounds are recorded and then manipulated into electronic music pieces. (developed mid twentieth century by Pierre Schaeffer who was in turn influenced by Luigi Russolo's publication 'The Art of Noises'.

Our technique is a natural evolution of the 'art of noises': Our palette of sounds consisted entirely of a variety of noises, ambient sounds, found sounds and the like. And we could have accomplished it with comparable results using 1/4" tape, a reel-to-reel (or several) and a razor blade. But it would have been painstaking to do. So, we did not forgo the convenience of modern technology.

To accomplish our task we first created a palette of sounds from which to create our final electronic music compositions. To do so, we walked the streets of China Town with a Mini Disc Recorder collecting random ambient street sounds. Once we had about an hours worth of material we took it back to Blister and recorded the sounds into Digital Performer. Then we dissected each sound to its constituent parts so that, for instance, a sidewalk store clerk rustling through a barrel of live crabs was edited down to simply a rattle here, a shuffle there, scraping noises and the like. By repeating this process with each set of sounds on from the mini disc, we created a sound palette that sounded not like street ambiance at all, but rather like an endless variety of noise samples, each unique unto itself. Even the wind against the unshielded collar mic proved a useful sound once we sent it through a digital delay plug-in.

We then took the existing HBO fanfare most people associate with the brand and proceeded to 'dirty' it up. To give it a gritty overly compressed sound we recorded the logo from digibeta onto a 3/4" dub, and then again from the 3/4" dub re-recorded it onto a simple audio cassette. Then we sampled it off the audio cassette into the Power Mac G4 where we could use Digital Performer to edit it and add further crackle and pop to it.

Visually, transitions within the interstitial often looked as though they were interrupted by a channel change, or television static, or interference and the like. In today's world of remote controls those changes are often smoothed out by a soft and sometimes inaudible 'click'. So on a short trip to visit my retired parents in Florida I pulled out the old Panasonic black and white TV from my childhood (pre cable, pre remote, pre stereo) and proceeded to record random channel changing of otherwise static UHF channels. The resulting sounds are unarguably hard channel changes, perhaps an almost obsolete sound, certainly clunky, and now seemingly unique, but still immediately recognizable as interrupted transmissions.

We were also fortunate to be the recipients a DAT ostensibly recorded during the Gulf War of a transmission between a fighting crew in a helicopter and their command. It's mostly unintelligible but we garnered sounds from it, including beeps, crackle and feed back. We sampled as much of this as we needed, and again, put it into Digital Performer, and cut it up into components parts.

So, from China Town to the Gulf War and transformed in a digital studio 17 floors above New York City, we had our palette: literally hundreds of sounds which were then assembled via Digital Performer to correspond to, enhance the video, and also to stand alone as being recognizable as HBO Zone logos.

Again, not unlike creating a piece ala musique concrete, we basically created an audio collage out of hundreds of minute sound samples which were dissected and re-assembled using Digital Performer. After the usual presentation and revision process we were 99% done. Once our basic tracks were approved we then further sweetened them with electric guitar. But not with anything melodic. Rather we pulled out an old $35 electric guitar, plugged it in, and destroyed it in the stairwell of our building, running a cable back to the Power Mac G4 to record every step of destruction. The resulting sounds were hardly recognizable as a guitar. Again, splicing those sounds up into their component parts we then processed the lot through a Electrix filter factory to give them an otherworldly feel.

Once the final tracks were approved, we mixed them via the Mackie D8B, and mastered them using a DBX Quantum to make them 'pop' out on broadcast. We delivered the tracks on DAT at 48K.

Making the time and labor intensive project all the more worthwhile, we were honored by the Broadcast Promotions Industry in June 2000 which granted us the Gold Promax award for Original Music/Sound Design for Network packaging.

The Music @ The Beginning of The World

I don’t remember my own birth, obviously –or fortunately– even though I was not just there for the event, but apparently the center of attention. I imagine I heard a woman screaming and though I didn’t know exactly what a woman was, I instinctually and correctly understood which animal in the room was my mother. Records indicate I made my first appearance on the planet to a sold out crowd at midnight, between the 11th and 12th of March, in the city of Charlotte Amelia, St. Thomas, VI.

But of course, all of that is just hearsay. It’s just as possible that I was born on another planet, abducted by pirates, and abandoned here on Earth, where I was adopted by two humanoid-creatures while they were in the midst of conducting their own investigation of the blue-green planet. I think that would actually make more sense to me in a way, and explain so much.

However, if I were from another planet, then there would have to be calypso bands in orbit, because my earliest recollection of sound happens to be that of the Steel Drums which filled the Caribbean night air of my childhood, and later, floated up off my parent’s suitcase style record player. I have uncommonly early memories, but I won’t pretend to remember the names of any of those classic bands. I don’t even really remember the music, per say: I remember the sound of it.

As I stumbled towards maturity, and picked up a taste for popular American music, I left calypso behind with much of the indigenous music of my youth.

I have yet to return to St. Thomas, but I have often returned to steel drums, whether to attend a live performance or in recordings I've purchased. Something, I sensed as an adult, was different about the music that had once conjured in me a magical feeling. Had I outgrown it? Had living in United States re-engineered the way I heard things? I couldn’t quite put my finger on whether it was the music, or me –but I was cognizant of having a different reaction to it. Something in the way these contemporary pan players sounded was weirdly off to me.

As it turns out, quite the opposite. It wasn't that the new drums were off, but that they were on,–that is, they were perfectly on –or in– pitch. By happenstance I learned that modern pan players were using electronic tuning systems as guides while they hammered the instruments, when I knew that once they simply relied on their own ears. Over the course of my lifetime the practice apparently became ubiquitous.

While the steel drums from my youth were hammered as close to the tempered scale as human hearing allowed, that meant in practice that most often the resulting finished ‘pans’ were never exactly centered. However, it was just this off-tuning that created the ‘magical effect’ I remembered from my childhood: When a musician played a melody, the overlapping resonances of each note cascaded one over the other; the whole sounded just a bit richer because of each note's slight and uniquely different imperfection. In effect –no pun intended– each tone of each instrument was built with its own natural chorus.

Then along comes this new fangled technology whereby modern steel drums are now hammered until they're perfectly aligned within the bounds of western temperament. This should make for a better sound, right? Well, it does make for a different sound, which can be described as a purer tone, which is certainly better suited to playing in concert with other instruments. You know, sometimes –most of the time– it’s just nice when everyone’s in tune and playing in the same key. But see, hear, while the melodies might now all be right on pitch, it turns out the magic is all in the cracks.