Pitch Correction
I recently read a fascinating article about pitch correction in recorded music. This guy collected ten of what he considered to be egregious examples of “auto-tune abuse in pop music” and put a ten second clip of each one into a nice little mp3 for us to listen to.
It actually surprised me. While some of his examples are probably using pitch correction for a specific effect, I can’t deny that this guy has a good ear and a good handle on a real problem. When listening for it specifically, I couldn’t deny the overuse of this kind of thing, even in performances by people who I consider to be talented singers, such as Avril Lavigne, Natasha Bedingfield, and that guy from Maroon 5. Okay, his name is Adam Levine, but I hesitate to share the fact that I know that off the top of my head.
Then, not an hour after reading that article, I was listening to “Tetragrammaton” by The Mars Volta, and I came across the section in the middle that uses about a million pitch corrections over the course of thirty seconds. In one interview, The Mars Volta’s vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala explained that on that particular song, his bandmate liked the first rough vocal take so much that they decided to use it as the final version, despite some sections during which Bixler-Zavala struggled to find a tune. On some of these moments, the band used pitch correction to force the vocal performance into something they felt sounded better.
And that little bit of “Tetragrammaton” does sound pretty cool, at least for a little while. But it brings up one of Hometracked’s main points: “…an auto-tuner isn’t a shortcut to a perfect performance. If you can’t sing the song properly, no amount of post-processing will make it sound like you did.” And I couldn’t agree more. It’s bad enough that there doesn’t seem to be enough focus on vocals and harmonies in some pop music. But trying to work around mediocre vocals to make them sound good anyway is just stupid.
Although…The Mars Volta isn’t exactly what you’d call pop music, but they aren’t the only band that misuses this effect.
And as far as using pitch correction for an effect goes, it’s overdone and overrated. It sounded cool for Cher, and it’s sounded cool for a few others, but it’s not as though throwing in some cool vocal pitch bends is going to make people go, “Ah! Now they’re offering me something new and innovative that I’ve never heard before!” If you want something new and innovative, it’s more important to put it in the music than in the production.
Not that I expect the pop music world to understand that.