What's with all this Autotune business..?

The trend towards using Autotune as a vocal effect has become so prevalent in some types of music that it almost qualifies as a genre. Frankly, the sound of it slathered over a voice, especially a male one, gives me the creeps. Is it just me? I'm not decrying it out of hand since it can be useful when used properly but when it is used for its own sake it find myself being irritated by it almost from the off. Even barking Swedish dark metal doesn't have me prodding for the skip button quicker. Okay I'm an "older" listener, the internet thinks I should be buying "occasional incontinence" pants and the doctor wants to take a routine look up my bum so well outside the 16-24 demographic but I consider myself quite catholic in my tastes and wouldn't dismiss any musical genre per-se ( though my jury is out on ragtime and some of the fustier variants of trad jazz) but I'm far from being a philistine and taste, at the end of the day, is something that can not be accounted for. 

Is Autotune nearly a genre...

Did I say genre? The use of Autotune is becoming ubiquitous in many mainstream contemporary popular music styles. The name, which is the trademark of Antares Audio Technologies (though other pitch correcting processes are available) has, like "Hoover" and "Band aid" come to represent all forms of pitch correcting technology and to the public "that "Cher" sound" Since her release of "Believe" put the effect (and remember, prior to this Autotune was widely used as a tool to correct any unwanted "jazz"-notes in an otherwise on-point performance) into the public consciousness as a "sound". It also receives a fair share of derision from people who watch "The Voice" and "X Factor" when they believe it is being used to "cheat" to make a mediocre voice sound "better" when in fact probably most if not all vocal recorded vocal performances use the technology in some form because it is an incredibly valuable and useful tool when properly used. It's use as an effect is likely attached to some anecdotal story like the genesis of the infamous Phil Collins gated reverb effect (see what I did there?) which arose from technical serendipity and the ability to recognise its possibilities. 

Unctuous? Moi..?

Cherilyn Sarkisian (Cher) is a much loved and well liked performer whos voice perhaps is a little too well known to be exciting and new, so adding a effect which creates a sort of synthetic intimacy (like the proximity effect of close miking plus some musically harmonic phase distortion, like when someone is singing softly close to your ear down a tube) does add a little frisson, however, the sound of some (probably) precociously bearded millennial strumming on his lute and attempting to acoustically insinuate his way into the bedroom of some teen about the same age as my daughter with an unctuous and sickly  meandering non-tune with questionable lyrical value delivered through the harmonic sausage machine that Autotune has become raises my ire so much, sometimes I worry that a little bit of wee might come out.

BBQ sauce...

Yup, some square probably said the same about  The Beatles and their trademark backing vocals that made all the girls loose control of their faculties (and some of the boys) but that was different. That required craft. Autotune is like BBQ sauce or the Red Goop that you squirt on your ice cream cone. Worse of all it is used like a hailing signal or Station Ident the way Scousers (love them, love them all) sometimes do that "eeeeh" thing at the beginning of a sentence. As if declare "this has got Autotune, its the sort of music you like". It could even be considered as a faux genre in the same way that "indie" has become.  This would be preferable since I can be pretty well be sure that if I am going to hear music that at least will be engaging in some way It will not be smothered in Autotune. Failing that, a warning of some sort?  Some kind of filter?

Style vs. substance...

So to those Autotune fanciers out there, who think singing like ventriloquists on helium is a turn on, consider reviewing your personal style guide. Its  almost always a complete deal breaker for me, comedy and irony being the only acceptable application I would approve, oh and Cher of course. Sorry, but even the best song can be rendered inaccessible by that goop in a way that even the Lowest-Fi recording couldn't.  

Or maybe its me.

Spotify? I don't even know what it is...

A friend, who despite being an accomplished and talented singer-songwriter commented that they did not know what Spotify was the other day. This is no detriment to their ability to get gigs or reach an audience as they built their reputation prior to the digital domination of music watershed which I would estimate took place just after the turn of the century. They simply did not know what it was. In explaining, I thought that saying that it had pretty much replaced radio for the 16-24 demographic was pretty fair. 

Try another flavour...

I had forgotten about juke boxes because they are a rarity nowadays and as are mix tapes because Spotify has replaced them as well. Youth culture expresses itself differently than when some of us were in the 16-24 age group but little seems to have changed in the intensity and passion this group directs towards the music it consumes and identifies with. The biggest difference is the sheer diversity of styles and sheer quantity of content available. It is less and less likely that people in general and the all important music consuming youth market identify with a particular brand or artist in as much as they are approving of a set of production values which present their ears with a relentless stream of similar sounding, usually highly processed audio product.

Fourteen hours per minute...

Over fourteen hours of content is uploaded to Soundcloud every minute, clearly it is impossible to listen to so much material in real time, unless of course, there is a team of eight hundred and fifty or so people listening to the stream. Well, that's if they are going to listen to all of it, and what would be the point?  Music is a time based medium, it has a beginning, a middle and an end. A musical composition almost always ends (resolves) to the note on which it started so the first seconds of a piece of music can tell you this. within two or three notes it is possible to discern if the key is a major or a minor, is it happy or sad? The tempo is either fast or slow and where are the pulses in the rhythm. If you are looking for a cheerful tune that you can go running to then you can know fairly reliably within seconds if the next track on the playlist is going to be suitable. If not, hit "skip". So within a few seconds (it is estimated that this is around seven seconds)  a decision whether to listen on is made. If the track continues to be tolerated for thirty seconds then that counts as a "play" for most streaming platforms.

Don't waste my time with long intros...

The genre, style, loudness,  production values, and emotional valency are all quickly discernable without listening to the whole track, so if hardcore techno is not your bag you can quickly jog on to the next. With more complex genres the finger hesitates to hit that "next" button for as long as the ear and brain take to be sure they know where things are going which is the true meaning of entertainment. Long intros, of course, are risky as repetition and variety must be finely balanced. Too much repetition will make any impending novelty stand out and if, like me you are offended by heavily pitch shifted male vocals, you will not only skip to the next track but develop an aversion to that artist for having wasted so much of your valuable time before revealing this to you.

Very very frightening me...

Consider if Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody never existed but was uploaded to Soundcloud tomorrow. Do you think it would be curated into a popular playlist and become a viral hit? If not, ask yourself why and consider if the very way we consume music is affecting the sort of music we produce. I think it is, and its not good.