OK, I've had enough of Auto-Tune. It's been 12 years since Cher's Believe was a hit song and I admit, the effect was mildly interesting in 1998, but enough is enough already. We are done...quit it.
According to urban legend, Groucho Marx once interviewed a woman with an extraordinary amount of children on his TV show.
Groucho: Why do you have so many children? That's a big responsibility and a big burden.
Woman: Well I think that's our purpose and I love my husband.
Groucho: Well I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.
Well said Groucho...and that same philosophy can apply to those producers and artists who love them their Auto-Tune.
Don't get me wrong, I love my effects as much as the next guy and have no problem using them to enhance or alter the sound of a voice or instrument, with one very big caveat. Using it MUST HELP TELL THE STORY!!!!
Now I own a large number of effects processors and plug-ins, including pitch correctors. The problem I have with Auto-Tune is not that it's being used, but in the way people use it. It's become a crutch used to prop up not only bad or mediocre performances, but even for perfectly healthy and talented singers. In the same way that drum machines have sanitized the natural ebb and flow of tempo, Auto-Tune is ripping the life out of otherwise GOOD vocal performances by some very talented performers. Grow a set you all!!!
Everyone from Manhattan Transfer to Black Eyed Peas to Faith Hill to the producers of Glee (Ryan Murphy...I'm talking to you) are using Auto-Tune in what I believe to be the antithesis of creativity. For example; although Glee is a well written and clever comedy, it's ultimately a story about the struggle of a bunch of outcasts finding redemption in music....as great singers. In truth, at least some of the cast members are extremely talented vocalists, yet the producers have made the decision to pitch correct each performance to within an inch of their lives. What is the point? They take some great, albeit ultra-commercial songs and make them sound like Up With People inhabited by robots. It's the musical version of pornography. Stale, clinical, boring, a bit creepy and supremely tasteless.
The Black Eyed Peas are a band that at one time used Auto-Tune in creative ways, but what once was an interesting effect used cleverly by them has become a "let's use it on every song" bore.
I've heard from engineers who tell me that young singers are coming in and imitating the beat you into submission perfection of Auto-Tuned vocals. No slurs, no vibrato, no dynamics. They are getting so used to hearing vocals that have been Auto-Tuned that they no longer accept the reality or emotional value of a real performance. Is the art of learning a craft and taking pride in being good at what you do is becoming a thing of the past. Are we beyond quality on only care about building a facade or quality?
The McMansion of Mediocrity has taken over the world. It seems to be what we strive for.
We should be very grateful that the producers of the likes of Otis Redding, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, the Beatles and thousands like them never had these tools or there is a good chance we would have been deprived of some legendary performances.
To add insult to injury...the engineer who created Auto-Tune was Andy Hildebrand an engineer for that great music institution Exxon. Filler up with an A Sharp please.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The Loudness Wars
Anybody who has been working in audio for more than 20 years is acutely aware of the loudness wars in all of our lives. From music production, to broadcast to film, dynamic range has been reduced while overall real and perceived levels have increased.
Some argue that this is not such a bad thing. It's a tool to get your music heard by more people. I have just the opposite viewpoint. The public may not be cognitively aware of the loudness wars, but the consequences are obvious. Whole industries have been spawned from the public's inate hatred of the loudness wars. TIVO is a prime example. When a commercial comes on 6 to 10dBFS louder than the show you choose to watch, what do you do? You jump for the remote to either mute the audio or fast forward through the commercial. Marketers, producers and corporate executives have insisted on turning their pitches up to agonizing levels. Almost all mixers have heard the mantra to "Make sure our commercial as loud as the other ones"...just so that the intended audience can turn them off.
In the music world, which should be immune to the loudness wars, it's even worse. Not even country and acoustic music have been spared the reduction of dynamic range. Many a country song starts with solo acoustic guitar and ends with a full band including drums electric instruments played through Marshall amps all the while staying within a 2dBFS dynamic range.
We've managed to almost completely eliminate one of the greatest tools in the audio/music toolbox...dynamics. How did this happen? Simply put; we got lazy.
In the old days (like 30 years ago), we used to do two versions of a mix. If not that, at least two versions got mastered. One was for the album, which kept the original dynamics of the song/arrangement, and one was for the radio. We allowed and even encouraged the mastering engineer to put the squeeze on a mix in order for the radio station to get their full signal as far as possible within their legal broadcast range. It was simply a compromise we were willing to make in order to expose the greatest amount of radio listeners to our music. The good mastering engineers could do this very well.
Then came the CD. Most of us were excited that at long last, the physical dynamic limitations of the vinyl disc were a thing of the past. Listeners could now hear music as it was intended to be heard. That idea went away quickly as the marketing departments discovered that not only has dynamic range been extended overall, but that you could simply turn everything up and overpower the competition. The beginning of loudness wars had almost nothing to do with audio quality. It was a sales gimmick, pure and simple. Then as budgets went down, the "singles' mix" became a thing of the past and everything was mastered with loudness in mind.
The good mastering engineers did not like it, but for a while, they managed to keep it under control. Then came the home studios, even smaller budgets and the "why do we need mastering engineers?" phenomenon. The squeeze turned into the squash and rather than using compression as an effect to achieve a unique sound, it became a mandatory component of mixing, mastering and marketing music.
Today, heavy compression is used almost as a starting point and not as a tool to enhance a musical composition. That leads to the question; have dynamics in music become a quaint tool of the past? If so, it's a sad era in the creative world. We are losing one of the key elements of emotion and feel that make music unique. Music becomes Muzak. It loses its spark, its element of surprise, its ability to draw them into another world vs bludgeoning them with it . It becomes something used only to sell cereals, cars, clothing lines and Viagra.
Does it have to be this way? No...absolutely not. Especially since the main stream music business is now, more than ever, in the control of the musicians, producers and engineers. We can market our own music, not over the radio, but over the internet. We can control what we put out and re-educate our listeners. We can give them something many of them have never heard. A big dynamic range. Beethoven knew it, the great film composers knew it, the best jazz, rock, blues, R&B and country musicians knew it. Dynamics is one of the greatest tools in a musician's or a mixer's arsenal of tools. Let's use it...not lose it.
To find out more about the dynamics war, check out these resources.
1. Turn Me Up!
2. Overproduction
3. Why Music Sounds Worse
4. Anti-Loudness Day
5. The Future Of Music
6. An audio/visual example of light and heavy compression
Some argue that this is not such a bad thing. It's a tool to get your music heard by more people. I have just the opposite viewpoint. The public may not be cognitively aware of the loudness wars, but the consequences are obvious. Whole industries have been spawned from the public's inate hatred of the loudness wars. TIVO is a prime example. When a commercial comes on 6 to 10dBFS louder than the show you choose to watch, what do you do? You jump for the remote to either mute the audio or fast forward through the commercial. Marketers, producers and corporate executives have insisted on turning their pitches up to agonizing levels. Almost all mixers have heard the mantra to "Make sure our commercial as loud as the other ones"...just so that the intended audience can turn them off.
In the music world, which should be immune to the loudness wars, it's even worse. Not even country and acoustic music have been spared the reduction of dynamic range. Many a country song starts with solo acoustic guitar and ends with a full band including drums electric instruments played through Marshall amps all the while staying within a 2dBFS dynamic range.
We've managed to almost completely eliminate one of the greatest tools in the audio/music toolbox...dynamics. How did this happen? Simply put; we got lazy.
In the old days (like 30 years ago), we used to do two versions of a mix. If not that, at least two versions got mastered. One was for the album, which kept the original dynamics of the song/arrangement, and one was for the radio. We allowed and even encouraged the mastering engineer to put the squeeze on a mix in order for the radio station to get their full signal as far as possible within their legal broadcast range. It was simply a compromise we were willing to make in order to expose the greatest amount of radio listeners to our music. The good mastering engineers could do this very well.
Then came the CD. Most of us were excited that at long last, the physical dynamic limitations of the vinyl disc were a thing of the past. Listeners could now hear music as it was intended to be heard. That idea went away quickly as the marketing departments discovered that not only has dynamic range been extended overall, but that you could simply turn everything up and overpower the competition. The beginning of loudness wars had almost nothing to do with audio quality. It was a sales gimmick, pure and simple. Then as budgets went down, the "singles' mix" became a thing of the past and everything was mastered with loudness in mind.
The good mastering engineers did not like it, but for a while, they managed to keep it under control. Then came the home studios, even smaller budgets and the "why do we need mastering engineers?" phenomenon. The squeeze turned into the squash and rather than using compression as an effect to achieve a unique sound, it became a mandatory component of mixing, mastering and marketing music.
Today, heavy compression is used almost as a starting point and not as a tool to enhance a musical composition. That leads to the question; have dynamics in music become a quaint tool of the past? If so, it's a sad era in the creative world. We are losing one of the key elements of emotion and feel that make music unique. Music becomes Muzak. It loses its spark, its element of surprise, its ability to draw them into another world vs bludgeoning them with it . It becomes something used only to sell cereals, cars, clothing lines and Viagra.
Does it have to be this way? No...absolutely not. Especially since the main stream music business is now, more than ever, in the control of the musicians, producers and engineers. We can market our own music, not over the radio, but over the internet. We can control what we put out and re-educate our listeners. We can give them something many of them have never heard. A big dynamic range. Beethoven knew it, the great film composers knew it, the best jazz, rock, blues, R&B and country musicians knew it. Dynamics is one of the greatest tools in a musician's or a mixer's arsenal of tools. Let's use it...not lose it.
To find out more about the dynamics war, check out these resources.
1. Turn Me Up!
2. Overproduction
3. Why Music Sounds Worse
4. Anti-Loudness Day
5. The Future Of Music
6. An audio/visual example of light and heavy compression
Doing Our Jobs..That Boring Metadata
Over the last few months, I've been working on a project archiving old analog music masters for one of the major record labels.
It's been quite revealing. I've found that unlike the studio where I was brought up, many studios and even record labels took very little care in aligning their tape machines, printing project tones and keeping complete, accurate and well organized notes on the boxes and paperwork.
I get a great many tapes with no project tones or tones way out of whack when compared to MRL reference level tapes. When they do have tones, often the frequencies are not NAB/AES or any European standard..or they are mislabeled. I get Dolby encoded tapes with no Dolby tone or worse, not even marked as being Dolby encoded. I get tapes marked mono that were recorded using a stereo head stack. Many tapes with leader cutting off the end of fades. Some with very audible bias rocks caused by poor alignments or machine maintenance. There are truncated or misspelled song titles, incorrect song times and tapes that have been stored so poorly that there is mold growing on them.
These were all firing offenses at some studios and I held the mistaken belief that not providing proper alignments, project tones and complete accurate project information with the tapes was tantamount to a capital offense for a recording engineer.
Oh how wrong I was. This was from an era when there WAS paperwork. There were boxes to write on, stick on labels, track sheets and in the later years, floppy disks with automation data.
Unfortunately, things have gotten worse, not better and though there have been some attempts to educate the creative and technical public about the issue, it's still not something that most recording schools prioritize.
Today we have ProTools, Logic, Digital Performer, Nuendo, Cubase and other applications. We have .wav, .aif, mp3 and some older file formats (SDII for example) in many different resolutions. Paperwork is no longer needed, yet most if not all of these applications leave out some boilerplate and in my opinion VERY important best practices.
There has been an attempt to make project sharing between different applications easier, yet it's far from perfect. The biggest problem is in documentation. How often have you received a project that is labeled Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, etc, without ANY qualifying information on what that track was or what alternate or selected takes should be used. I receive a group of mixes where none of them are labeled MASTER...or where two or more takes of the same song are labeled MASTER.
Most of these applications allow you to enter notes and relevant track and take information, but none of them FORCE you to do it, and few, if any allow you to export and print this information easily and in a form that is discernible by a secondary user.
Most people are lazy, or simply don't have the time to enter the information needed to fully document a project so that future generations, or even the mixer can make sense of the dozens, hundreds or thousands of bits of useful information needed to decipher what "original intent" of the artist or producer was.
These are also things that are not stressed in many of the overpriced recording schools of the day. They teach you some techniques, but real world useful information is relegated to an hour or two of afterthought during the course of a two year program.
This is growing problem that needs to be addressed before it becomes a crisis. All it takes is a little forethought and some planning.
Credit must be given to people like Charles Dye, Bob Ludwig, Maureen Droney, Eric Schilling, the P&E Wing of NARAS and others who have been working diligently to get some standards going. You can download some of these guideline documents on the P&E Wing Website. We've got to do more. Coming up with a standard that is taught to the new generation of engineers and producers is something we all need to consider...and soon.
It's been quite revealing. I've found that unlike the studio where I was brought up, many studios and even record labels took very little care in aligning their tape machines, printing project tones and keeping complete, accurate and well organized notes on the boxes and paperwork.
I get a great many tapes with no project tones or tones way out of whack when compared to MRL reference level tapes. When they do have tones, often the frequencies are not NAB/AES or any European standard..or they are mislabeled. I get Dolby encoded tapes with no Dolby tone or worse, not even marked as being Dolby encoded. I get tapes marked mono that were recorded using a stereo head stack. Many tapes with leader cutting off the end of fades. Some with very audible bias rocks caused by poor alignments or machine maintenance. There are truncated or misspelled song titles, incorrect song times and tapes that have been stored so poorly that there is mold growing on them.
These were all firing offenses at some studios and I held the mistaken belief that not providing proper alignments, project tones and complete accurate project information with the tapes was tantamount to a capital offense for a recording engineer.
Oh how wrong I was. This was from an era when there WAS paperwork. There were boxes to write on, stick on labels, track sheets and in the later years, floppy disks with automation data.
Unfortunately, things have gotten worse, not better and though there have been some attempts to educate the creative and technical public about the issue, it's still not something that most recording schools prioritize.
Today we have ProTools, Logic, Digital Performer, Nuendo, Cubase and other applications. We have .wav, .aif, mp3 and some older file formats (SDII for example) in many different resolutions. Paperwork is no longer needed, yet most if not all of these applications leave out some boilerplate and in my opinion VERY important best practices.
There has been an attempt to make project sharing between different applications easier, yet it's far from perfect. The biggest problem is in documentation. How often have you received a project that is labeled Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, etc, without ANY qualifying information on what that track was or what alternate or selected takes should be used. I receive a group of mixes where none of them are labeled MASTER...or where two or more takes of the same song are labeled MASTER.
Most of these applications allow you to enter notes and relevant track and take information, but none of them FORCE you to do it, and few, if any allow you to export and print this information easily and in a form that is discernible by a secondary user.
Most people are lazy, or simply don't have the time to enter the information needed to fully document a project so that future generations, or even the mixer can make sense of the dozens, hundreds or thousands of bits of useful information needed to decipher what "original intent" of the artist or producer was.
These are also things that are not stressed in many of the overpriced recording schools of the day. They teach you some techniques, but real world useful information is relegated to an hour or two of afterthought during the course of a two year program.
This is growing problem that needs to be addressed before it becomes a crisis. All it takes is a little forethought and some planning.
Credit must be given to people like Charles Dye, Bob Ludwig, Maureen Droney, Eric Schilling, the P&E Wing of NARAS and others who have been working diligently to get some standards going. You can download some of these guideline documents on the P&E Wing Website. We've got to do more. Coming up with a standard that is taught to the new generation of engineers and producers is something we all need to consider...and soon.
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