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Guys, I'm actually really sorry to open that thread and I know that some people will be pissed. But I'm participating in this forum for years and I know that the majority of posters are treading ideas and topics quite fair and respectfully. so here it is:
I'm listening to the current roadwork vol. right now and recently amongst other mp-lps to it's a love cult; and listening to them and comparing other music and especially vocal performances, I'm curious and concerned if they used autotune to get their singing to the right notes while mastering both lps! my evidence are that there are parts where the vocals are yodeling a lil bit unnaturally. to my mind there are natural tonal nuances in between two singing notes missing.
oversimplified they are singing to good tonalwise – it's makes me curious because I saw them live several times in the period the recordings where made for intrepid skonk; and everyone who did that too should slightly understand what I'm trying to say…
I just wanna analyze that with people who I think also care like me! I hope you understand.
btw incredible and beautiful recording on the new roadworks! stunning!
Yeah, it's no big secret that some vocalparts on Roadwork 4 were auto-tuned. Esspecially on the song Wishing Well where Bent in some places almost turns into a smurf here & there.
You can compare the Roadwork-version of Wishing Well with the original live-version here:
As for It's A Love Cult, I'm not sure if they used auto-tune on that album.
Is this common nowadays? Every other Bon Iver review mentions the term "autotune" and I have have been wondering about it because I have not heard about it before. I guess this is something only tech/gear-nerds can decipher? Is it important? I mean they also play the Fuzz Pedal and all kinds of other shit.
Well… unlike most technical enhancements you can use, autotune is cheating in most people's eyes. Instead of actually being able to sing well, you can just sing a passable take, and the magic of autotune will make it note-perfect.
It's really common nowadays – when my band recorded a demo a couple of years ago, the producer insisted on employing autotune on the vocals – even though our singer sings *really* well. The producer didn't accept any part of a phrase to be even slightly off-key, and used autotune to save time.
If it's done well, you really can't hear that the vocals have been processed – it's simply the adjustment of the end of a phrase here, the beginning of a phrase there and so on. But if it's done badly you do get the "smurf" effect, where some notes have been transposed a full half step or more. Autotune can sound so ridiculous, and is so simple to use, that it lends itself easily to humour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bduQaCRkgg4
EDIT: Also, I think the use of autotune on Roadworks is really annoying, and does detract a bit from my enjoyment of some songs.
The autotuning on Wishing Well is even more stupid since Bent's vocals sound pretty good to me on that clip.
I agree on the stupid smurfotune on Wishing Well. However, within their limitations in budget and technology, Motorpsycho have actually been "cheating" vocalwise since the very beginning. I've been listening to Lobotomizer quite a bit lately. For one thing, the album ain't half as bad as i remembered, despite the drums. Second thing, check out the pitched down vocals on Eternity. Haha! On Summertime Is Here, recorded a few years later, it's a funny effect taken to the limit and beyond on a song that is a bit of a joke in the first place. On the rather pretentious Eternity I'd say it's bordering on cheating, although not in the sense of digitally enhancing a bad performance. "Dammit, I can't sing in that low pitch. Who wrote this shit? Me? Uhm, would you please speed up the tape, mr. PlayRec?"
If that's true: Fine by me. A long long time ago bands used to re-record vocals on so called "live" records when these were fashionable and therefore important enough to be released. So MP use autotuning to keep the listening experience easy on the ears. I thank them.
Cheating? Well there's pride involved. As a musician you don't really want your screeching, tour abused vocal chords heard for all eternity on a piece of music that was picked of the lot to be released because from the playing point of view it would be the best performance. And if we want the "true" odd note experience, there's more than enough fan recordings around.
there is a soundboard recording of a motorpsycho concert in bielefeld from 2008 or 2009 (correct me if i'm wrong) which had to be taken down..i think stickfrau asked for it…but i once had the chance to listen to that recording….guess what? the "vocal performance" of bent was really bad…guess that was the reason it was taken down…so i think bent is really vain about thiese kind of things…
One can get a pretty clear view of the boys feelings about autotune/pitch when viewing the tussler dvd – one the "gag reel". At the end bent is singing the harmony vocals for "Highway Zen", and states that any sourness on the vocals can be fixed with autopitch if it gets annoying while mixing. So there you go! They're using it, and don't seem to care that we know.
Personally i think it sucks abit. Instead of hiding behind such ridicilous aids like autotune, why not just focus abit more on actually getting the vocals right in the first place?!
Yeah and also…the worst case of auto tunage on RW4 in my eyes is the chorus of TBPR&B. Bent sounds like a synth at times.. Not good!
They actually full-on admitted to fixing vocals in the liner notes accompanying the Haircuts DVD: "the odd out-of-key vocal line is still left in there, but the main offenders have been excised and replaced for your listening pleasure."
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