This auto-tune, as well as being an outright mask for talentless 'artists', also gives the fans the really annoying come back for when you ask them why they like them...
"Well at least they can sing good"
and when you try to tell them that they cant and its auto-tuned, they wont believe it! Usually (when in debate with people in school about their musical tastes which is all too often), I move past that and ask them about the actual music and lyrics and for them to explain to me why they actually has any merit, they reply with
"I don't really care about that, I just like the voice",
I really hate this, yes there's a certain amount to be appreciated in the actual voice but not when it's auto-tuned!!! and having a good voice is pointless if your singing some crap with shallow messages and music that could be written by a small child!

My wife and I went to a restaurant a couple of weeks ago that was way out of our neck of the woods (we had to use some gift certificates before they expired). The place was the shits but much to our dismay all they played on their stereo was RnB. It sounded like one miserably endless banal tune w/ auto tuner on EVERY OTHER WORD that dude mumbled. Further proof that the world is ending, lol.

I cant remember the dudes name but I saw a bit of a interview with a record producer who has worked with a lot of trendy top 40 people and he said something like 'you don't need to know how to sing anymore' with auto tune and all the gadgets available in the studio. He went on to admit all he care about was making money for the label and that music is all about marketing and nothing else. They then played a selection of some of the hits he has made, all of which was incredibly banal garbage.

Moments like these I wish I had never turn on the tv lol.

I have said it before but to me it is all the fast-food mentality. People consume music now like it is junk to gobble up and spit out before finding something else to consume. The days of buying a record and treating like its your baby is over, people treat music like garbage with burned CDR's all over bedroom floors, Mp3 players and so on.

That mentality spread to labels, producers and everybody else years ago too so now they just churned out music like its junk-food. It is not art anymore, just a product that is regurgitated over & over again to keep the money rolling in. The auto-tune thing is just another symptom of all that.

Just think about it, a world of biebers and blacks. Talentless, pointless, soulless "music" that you can view via youtube and steal for free.

Ian Gillan is 65 years old and he doesn't need any fucking auto-tune! Maybe some of these younger "musicians" (if you can call them that) should take note! Technology is no substitute for talent!

Interesting topic, I would like to throw the following points up for discussion.

Could the same things be said for grind bands that use pitch-shifters in their vocals? I guess it has the same effect as auto-tuning in that it distorts the vocal into something different.

Also, what about guitar pedals? Is that not taking an instrument and digitally altering it after the fact?

Really just playing devils advocate because my opinion would have to be that every time I have heard auto-tuned vocals it has been bad and that it does indicate to me a certain lack of talent on the singers side.

I studied the whole auto-tune thing after Metallica released Saint Anger and there was all that talk about the 'loudness war' when it comes to making CD's these days. It was interesting reading about how fake everything is these days but it is not as new as most people think. Pop idols like Madonna and even Cher has had their voices totally altered for there albums. A producer who did a Cher album said, if we didn't change her voice this way, her recordings would be un-listenable because she can't actually sing lol.

For metal bands, there has been a fake-ness surrounding recordings for a long time especially in black metal. The clicky, sped-up double kick drums you hear on some bm albums sounds absolutely terrible to me and doesn't even enhance the heaviness of the band so I wonder why in the hell use it at all. I would rather hear a natural drum sound anyday, it might not sounds as fast but it sounds real and that is way better. Guitar pedals are different - you still need the music in your head in the first place however vocals are altered to such a degree that you are not even hearing the singers voice anymore. You are hearing a 'computer-manufactured' voice. I also think it is hilarious that people rave about these pop-stars but if you listen to a CD you don't even hear the person. You hear multi-tracked vocals, background singers all auto-tuned to death so how would you know if that person has talent or not anyway.

I want to discuss this a lot further but for now, I must run.

[quote="borninblood"lso, what about guitar pedals? Is that not taking an instrument and digitally altering it after the fact?[/quote]

Actually no, its not taking it digital. They allow you to sound different, otherwise we'd all sound more or less the same. Pedals and processors just add variety and flavor to what a guitarist already has. What they do with it afterwards is another story.

It is when the machine is doing the thinking instead of the artist is when it becomes fake.

Another thing I hate is these horrible drum sounds you hear during hip-hop songs, you might as well bang two fry-pans together or something. It has got to the point where the sound has become so far removed from what drums are supposed to sound like that they no longer sound like drums at all. Sadly a lot of people now think that sound is normal.

Yeah it reminds me of all these kids that spend big $$$ getting a huge stereo system for their car and then listen to nothing but bass turned up to 10 lol. It just seems pointless to me. Even a young friend of my wifes made me put a CD player in her car. She kept on asking me over and over again, will the bass be real loud ? She just didn't care about anything else and of course her favorite music is, you guess it - hip-hop.

I was not even aware of it, but apparently there is this thing that a lot of metal/rock/etc. acts have been doing where you can automatically replace the kick and snare on a drum recording so that a sampled kick and snare sound play instead... I guess this way the kick and snare sound EXACTLY the same every time they are hit and there is no variation in the sound.

I have no idea why anyone would ever want to do that.

I still jerk off manually

HAHA

http://www.turnmeup.org/

Loudness War Vs. Sales: The-Truth

On November 4, 2010, Earl Vickers presented his research paper at the 129th AES Convention in San Francisco with clear evidence that there is no connection between loudness and sales. (See the video below.)

Earl is the first to admit that further research is need on the subject, but his conclusions are striking. Here are a few:

Loudness is not correlated with sales figures
Loudness has almost no affect on listenerÕs preferences when comparing different songs
Listeners tend to dislike the side-effects of hyper-compression, and prefer more dynamic music
Content trumps loudness, especially on the radio

Go to the site and watch the vids.