How to change autotune music forever – Culture

You probably heard more gongs today.

On the radio, TV, YouTube, Spotify or in concert. Sometimes the sound is quite clear, but you haven’t noticed most of it. In the same way that you don’t think about the birds singing outside the window, or the low noise of the refrigerator.

But there was a time, not long ago, when this sound did not exist. This story begins where it ends.

I think it was like yesterday.

It was then that they were still showing CD commercials on television. He was nine years old when a magical woman suddenly appeared on the stove screen. Her face had a wax texture. It shone like a lamp, with long lashes.

But what caught my attention the most was his metallic voice. It was as if it were from another world.

“Do you believe in life after love?”

Cher’s super hit “Believe” from 1998 conquered the charts all over the world. The song reached the top in 23 different countries, including Norway.

The producers did not want to admit at first what they had done with their voice. They did a cover story, where they explained the robotic effect of using a kind of vocoder pedal that combined two voices into one sound.

But the truth, however, emerged quickly. It turned out that the song was infused with a new digital tool, which automatically matches all the sour notes:

Automatic adjustment.

Trondese producer duo Seeb remembers well when the tool made its fiery entry into the world of music in the late 1990s.

– When he arrived, no one had imagined he would come. No one had asked for it either. The bad came and took over, says Espen Berg in Seeb.

He and his partner Simen Eriksrud were some of the first to use autotune in Norway. Long before most people threatened. But at the time it was almost embarrassing, and no one to speak out loud, at least not publicly.

Unlike Cher, they also used the tool, since the same inventor thought it should be used.

In the subtle way.

The petroleum engineer behind autotune

If you worked in the oil industry in the 1980s, Andy Hildebrand is probably a household name. He developed a new method for finding oil, the goal of which was to bring dynamite down to the seafloor and then analyze the sound waves from the explosions. The sound echoed the locations of the black gold, without the need to drill to search.

The method was a great success, saving the Exxon oil company by $ 500 million. Andy realized that the technology he used was worth a gold mine. Maybe you could use another area too?

On the phone from his home in Puerto Rico, he murmurs when the idea occurred to him that it would change the world of music forever.

– I had lunch with my business partner and his wife in 1996, and talked about what I should do next. My partner’s wife sang in a church choir and wondered if she could make a box that would make her sing cleanly.

Andy and the others around the table shake their heads at the proposal. But then the mathematical genius began to reflect. This was actually something I had previously worked with in the oil industry: analyzing and editing sound waves.

A year later, self-tuning was a reality.

– The producers threw themselves at me. I never imagined that it would be so popular, and I didn’t realize how much this had to say to the studio. Before, songarans had to sing many gongs in the hope of achieving one Good recording. Now you could go in, sing ein go and see again, says Andy.

An important point for Andy was that the regular listener should not correct that the autotune was in use. He made various settings to camouflage the effect. The two most important are “tracking” and “tuning speed”.

The “monitoring” regulates how much the program should vote.

The “tuning speed” regulates the time the tool will spend tuning in a sour tone. 0 to 400 milliseconds. In quiet songs, it is especially important that the corrections do not happen too quickly, since a natural voice has a smooth transition from tone to tone.

It was really bad for fun that Andy also entered the value “0”. So the tone is tuned in at the exact moment it is sung. Then the listener will find that his voice jumps up and down like a ladder.

In the video below, they can correct a brief penalty with reset speed on four different levels. 400, 74, 15 and 0.

The inventor was slightly surprised when he heard Cher’s “Believe” for the first time. “She scoffed a lot the? ‘It was his first reaction.

Yes. That is exactly what she did. Its producers set the retune speed to “0”. And Cher loved it. When the record company suggested removing the strange effect, the speech did not emerge. The rest is history.

Autotune was renamed the “Cher effect” on people. The extreme shape, with “0” in tuning speed, was thus the hallmark. The effect was seen by many as a fun trick. Few, however, knew that this was just the tip of the iceberg.

The truth is that you have probably heard several thousand songs with self-tuning, without knowing it.

Matched the Norwegian sound

Manufacturers around the world download the autotune on their computers once it was released. Simen and Espen at Seeb were no exception. They were already fully testing self-tuning on their own project, before Cher hit the charts with “Believe.”

– The first thing I used in autotune was Inifinity. Do you think that dance group? Espen asks.

The sim seen in the song “Happy” from the album “www.Happy-People.net” in full studio. It is like getting a fist from growing in the middle of the meat. Obviously I think this. This song is the sound of the children’s disco (and probably also the wax record) of the late 90s.

– But is it really self-tuning here?

– This is actually the only song on the album that no it has its self-adjustment. But then I got the hard drive and downloaded it. So it required a lot of computing power. With Windows 98 and many other guidelines. Turn off that song!

Espen looks sternly at Simen, who smiles, waits a few seconds before partially obeying the companion’s command and turning down the volume of the self-tuning song.

– Obviously I used pseudonyms on this album. So I was so cool I didn’t want my name on things I couldn’t bear, Espen explains.

Today, Simen and Erik have become so accustomed to listening to 100 percent pure tones that they simply feel physically bad about listening to pop music without self-tuning.

– It’s so sour! It is terribly horrible, says Simen.

And only so it is said. This also applies to bands and artists much larger than Norwegian Infinity. The song that has affected Simen the most lately is one of her 12-year-old daughter’s favorites.

– She listens to Beyoncé’s song “Halo”. And there it is it is not automatically tuned. I can’t bear to look at it, that’s it. I can’t do it, he says desperately.

Both Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z managed a long time (perhaps for for a long time, according to Simen) to stay away from self-tuning. Jay-Z was close to being an activist against the voting tool. But now they have both bodies for the great self-tuning cross.

Simen and Espen, on the other hand, have been our loyal users of various voice aids for the voice for over 20 years. After Infinity, the band Briskeby toured and debuted the album “Jeans for Onassis” in 2000.

– So, auto-tuning was used all the time, but I was nervous about using it. For the members of the band, it was a little sure that it was voted very hard, Espen mimr.

– So did you use it weakly?

– No … it was actually quite smooth in the end, he replies, laughing.

The album was a great success, and the band won a total of four awards with the Spellemann Prize the following year. With such a remarkable mark, one would think that someone also pointed out the use of self-tuning on the album.

– No one commented on it?

– No, no, Espen answers. At that time, if someone heard any sign of correction, people were very negative. There was something wrong with that.

The safest thing was to stop pretending it was nothing. Autotune was used extensively in Norway in the 1990s. But always with great care, and to correct sour tones. Amongst the profiled artists, the tool never addressed itself.

In the United States, on the other hand, it was quite another. Jennifer Lopez was one of the first in the series to experiment with the effect after Cher, with the 1999 song “If you have my love.” This was by far her biggest hit, but the sharp autotun at least hits a person at heart. .

The boy Faheem Rasheed Najm was only 14 years old when he sat at home on the stoves and heard the fascinating voice of the J-Los robot. A few years later he would become one of the best pioneers before modern hip hop.

The fight against self-adjustment

Faheem wanted to learn everything there was to learn about self-tuning and therefore began to study the tool in depth. He spent six and a half years exploring the mathematics behind the algorithms and how the tool worked in the various configurations.

In 2005 he released his first album “Rappa Ternt Sanga” under the artist name T-Pain. The album was innovative and experimental. But what was this? A rapper who could also sing with the help of self-tuning? This had to be tested by several.

Lil ‘Wayne, Future, Snoop Dogg, will.i.am, Chief Keef …

When Kanye West released the album “808s & Heartbreak”, there was no going back. Self-tuning and American hip hop were like husband and wife. Rolling Stone magazine ranks the album as one of the 40 Most Innovative Albums in History.

Autotune was also supposed to infiltrate Norwegian hip hop, but here the rappers sat longer on the fence. A small exception was the group Tromder Bromstad Billionaires, and the 2009 song “Kakk up remix”.

In an interview on Lars Vaular’s old blog, the Trunders said they hoped self-tuning would take them to the next level. But many suggest that it may have been a bit good early to the party.

During the year, many people began to be very afraid of what self-tuning was doing with music. Was it really the opinion that everyone should look like robots? Where were the real, natural and authentic things? The wardrobe had to sit in its place.

A full tubing was placed to stop the nausea. He even got his own protest song, signed Jay-Z, called “D.O.A.” (Auto-tuning death). In the song, the rapper strongly attacks his colleagues.

«This is an anti-automatic melody, the death of the ringtone (…) You all niggas sing too much. Hitting you too much again. »

At the same year’s Grammy Awards, the indie band Death Cab for Cutie wore turquoise ties on their dress jackets.

– why? asked an MTV journalist.

– To raise awareness of self-tuning abuse, vocalist Ben Gibbard responds.

Christina Aguilera showed her resistance by wearing a t-shirt with the inscription “Auto tune ice for coños”. As if that wasn’t enough, Andy’s invention turned out to be one of Time Magazine’s 50 Worst in History. List of crocs, plastic bags and spam email.

Andy Hildebrand himself received many hate messages and death threats due to his invention. One day a producer approached him with a rude expression on his face.

– He said it had changed his life. ‘Before, my job was to find good songars. Now my job is to find people who look good, ” he said. For now, everyone could sing with self-tuning, Andy mutters.

– What did you answer him?

– I said I hoped you liked your new job.

– But do you understand why people were angry?

– I usually explain that it’s not my fault. I just built the car. It is not I who lead you down the wrong path. That’s what manufacturers do when they use the effect too much.

Opposition to self-tuning was also visible in Norway. Judging by the fact that more coffee was poured when the metallic voice emerged during the 2009 Norwegian Talents finale! Many drivers reacted angrily, but TV 2 turned blue because autotune had been used.

In Dagbladet, Fredrikstad artist Name was taken to the wall because he had used the tool in one of his songs. He decided to blame the manufacturer, saying he was skeptical of the trend.

According to the media, people were tired of self-tuning in the late ’00s. It was a problem, something that no one would associate with.

Facebook had some of the same problems at the time. One person after the other deleted their account. In addition, many of the public boasted, in chronicles with headlines like “Goodbye to Facebook” and “Made with Facebook”.

They should dispense with digital help and appreciate the analog world around them.

But they returned, one by one, hat in hand.

Autotune 2020

According to music magazine Pitchfork, autotune is used in 99 percent of pop music today.

– Can you really vote?

– Yes, I would say voices. Today it is absolutely impossible to release commercial music without voting first, says Martin Sjølie.

Write and produce music with Norwegian artists such as Sigrid, Maria Mena and Ingebjørg Bratland. In addition, he has worked with Sam Smith and is the most played band of the moment in the world: the K-pop group BTS.

Martin usually uses autotune for one day. (Not only in the voices, but also in instruments such as the violin and the guitar). However, he notes that the tool remains a taboo for many in the music industry.

– I think even if it’s something everyone Many users feel that the audience thinks they are cheating. Still, most artists say, “Oh, get a self-tune, then! I can’t bear to look at myself without it.”

– But is it really true that artists like Sigrid use autotune?

– No, she uses almost nothing, Martin replies.

However, that does not mean that his voice is not completely corrected. The tool that Martin uses in the city is self-tuning, let’s say little sister: Melodyne. It is also a digital tool for tuning tones. But they still differ significantly from the older brother.

Autotune is often applied as a filter on a soundtrack, so it sets the parameters for the chorus quickly, and the soft tool must tune the sound.

In Melodyne, all tones extend beyond the horizontal stripes on the screen like on a piano. After recording the song, one can easily adjust the individual pitch up and down.

– It is totally revolutionary software. She has been away for 15 years, but it just keeps getting better. Now you can even have three songars in the same audio file, and enter and vote for one of them. At first I thought it was an April joke.

Martin shows on the computer how he used Melodyne in Sigrid’s song “Sucker Punch”. When he puts his voice on, we see the notes settle. almost perfectly adapted to the horizontal stripes on the screen.

– She delivers extremely well. This raw recording is from Giske’s studio. She needed to sing two gongs, so we had it, says Martin.

Sigrid is one of the best vocalists Martin has ever worked with. But since Sigrid is a flesh and blood human being, and not a robot, it would be impossible for him to sing 100 percent pure all the time. Martin comes in and blinks at some notes. A little up here, a little down there.

In the image below, you can see various tones from Sigrid’s song “Sucker Punch” on Melodyne. The stripes behind symbolize the black and white keys on a piano. If the tone is exactly in the middle of the strip, he is completely pure.

Play the raw recording, then the recording with changes to Melodyne. Do I hear a difference?

– Can you play it one more time?

Martin plays them from time to time. Then one went after him.

Is not difficult. I see on the computer screen that there is a difference in the soundtracks, but my ear is not as trained as Martin’s to correct those little nuances.

– I released the single “Brother” with Ingebjørg Bratland a couple of years ago. When the song was broadcast on the radio, NRK received a phone from a listener who intended to correct the auto-tuning being used.

– And perhaps it was undoubtedly not positive?

– It was a scandal. But the funny thing is that no It was autotune on that song. He had corrected something with Melodyne, but not at the party he had reacted to. Ho sings with such precision and has such a popular tone that it’s hard to come by, and then he experienced it as a mechanic, Martin explains.

Autotune and especially Melodyne can be very difficult for the regular listener to correct. But somewhere, far in the head, we hear it anyway. Or rather we are no hear. We don’t hear any sour tones. I’m not a little sure once.

– The audience has become so used to the correct voice that we feel it is bad or unfinished if auto-tuning is not enabled, Martin says.

Still, there are plenty of pop artists who still swear to keep their voices 100 percent natural.

– If you listen to “Someone like you” by Adele, sometimes she will sing directly sour. She cannot understand the notes. But it still has to be done because it is high.

Adele is known for staying away from various digital voice tools. For fun, we compiled a raw recording of his voice from the song “Hello,” and uploaded it to Melodyne on Martin’s machine.

– Ho sings so well that’s it but we see it’s a little too low says Martin.

On the screen we can see that the tones are lying a little low relative to the minor F scale the song enters.

One of the reasons Adele is still “kosher” is that she surrounds herself with acoustic instruments like piano and strings. This also has a natural “surreal” tone, making your voice better suited to the soundscape.

Still, Adele is a rare exception. But how much self-tuning do we actually hear in pop music today? I let Martin take a quick look at the VG list.

With his trained producer ears, he hears self-tuning on 18 out of 20 songars. Among the artists we find very talented vocalists, judged by Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran. Two of the songans on the list, on the other hand, have more doubts about Martin:

The only one is “Bad guy” by Billie Eilish. There are plenty of other vocal effects at play here, and it’s hard to recognize the auto-tuning in your talking voice.

The other is “Higher Love” with Kygo and Whitney Houston. Here Kygo has created a new version of the song with Whitney’s vocal song from 1990. Seven years before Andy Hildebrand invented self-tuning.

We can safely say that vocal vocals have become the norm in modern pop music. Autotune is also increasingly used “live” at concerts. But what about Norwegian hip hop? As mentioned above, rappers in Norway were sitting on the fence when their American colleagues gloated in the autotune group.

How bad is it today?

Self-tuning in Norwegian hip hop

– At first with T-Pain and Kanye, one turned everything to maximum and tried to sing within the tune of the car. But now they’ve started experimenting more with setup and how they usually do it, says Ole Torjus Hofvind.

The hip-hop producer is best known for his collaboration with Cezinando, producing the rapper’s last two critically acclaimed albums.

You get good help from self-tuning when you work in the studio. Not only during recording, but also throughout the composition process.

– It is one thing to sing, but what happens when you use the voice in a strange way within the effect? When you make strange guttural sounds that don’t mean voice, but still go into auto-tuning. You understand?

“Æææææuuuæææhhh»

Ole Torjus makes some strange sounds with his throat, which is more reminiscent of Mongolian throat song than Norwegian hip hop.

– So do you have an autotune in your ear and just make weird noises to see what’s going on?

– Yes, it has become something we do a lot of rap. When autotune is on, nothing is “wrong”. You can scream, whisper, shout, or just throw notes. Without self-tuning, the right wing was totally over, but in context, the right wing seems bold. It is a very effective way of creating new songs.

Sounds fantastic and that it is incredible. In fact, self-tuning can help any woman make music. You don’t need to be able to sing or play any instrument.

– Many rappers are not trained to write songs. They do not come from an “singer songwriter” background. So, to a large extent, it has become the way of writing. We start with a “beat” as the musical foundation, so any woman can try adding some notes.

– You too

– Yes, I think I was in a session with Young Ferrari. There they were missing a choir, so they asked me if I could try adding something. Then I started singing that “gibberish”, and suddenly the word “left” came.

– The left?

– Yes, I don’t think the concept of “left” was there before, but I started thinking about “left”. Not the party then, but the word. So I started singing “lefties”, “lefties”, “lefties”, many gongs.

In 2017, Young Ferrari (with Medina) released the song “Left”. Ole Torjus is credited as a composer.

Ole Torjus is constantly trying to go new ways in music. This is easier said than done when everyone uses the same tool. Recently, a particular feature has been working smoothly again.

– It hardly lasts a single day without listening to a new song on “New Music Friday” on Spotify that uses “harmonizer” in the intro or bridge.

“Harmonizer engine” is a tool from the creators behind the autotune that creates voice harmonies. The tool can make a single voice stand out as a full chorus. The effect has become very popular through bands and artists like Bon Iver and Francis and the Lights.

When Ole Torjus was going to produce the first Cezinando album, he wanted to do the same. But to stand out from the crowd, he opted for a slightly different solution.

Rather than using autotune (which had harmonics created automatically), he chose to use Melodyne (where one enters and corrects a tone manually).

– What I did was take the original soundtrack and duplicate it with lots of gongs. Then I move the notes up and down, and create harmonies with one voice.

– So this was a little way to do it?

– Yes, or really in a more cumbersome way, unnecessarily buzzing and very tedious. But some gongs have to try to do it in a different way, although I realize that few of the listeners will perceive or understand the difference between this and a regular “harmonizer”.

Towards the end of the song “We are perfect but the world is not”, you can correct the few seconds with the harmonies that Ole Torjus has spent hours doing.

Ole Torjus has occasionally edited Cezinando to the extreme on the last two albums. Still, critics have been full of words like “honest,” “emotional,” “personal,” and “sensible.”

Is it really possible?

So that both are very edited
and at the same time deeply human?

Honest music?

– Music is not a competition to be good at singing. It’s great when people are good, but it’s not just about playing the tones. It’s about surrender and emotions, says Ole Torjus.

It is supported by Espen in Seeb. Think long before self-adjustment, and think that artists manage to express themselves freely now that they have the means available.

– Before, you didn’t necessarily focus on emotion and empathy. If you didn’t sing pure, it would be impossible to go on. So if we had to choose between a clean recording and a full one with energy, then we had to take what was pure, Espen mimes.

Both the artist and the producer feel that they deliver “honest” music with autotune. That is why many of the best vocalists use the tool themselves.

That being said: Seeb producers can still date back to the 70s and 80s. These decades are known for their extremely good vocalists, who can sing clockwise. and delivering energy and emotions in abundance.

– I was lucky enough to go through the raw vocal tapes to “September” from Earth, Wind & Fire. It was ‘perfect shade’ after all! The loudest they had was the self-tuning, Espen says enthusiastically.

– But you must think that there were much fewer artists then. Then it was for the best, says Simen. Before, there were 10 pieces on top. Now there are 1000 – and everyone generally self-tuning.

: Earlier this week, inventor Andy Hildebrand sat at his home on the stove in Puerto Rico and watched a documentary from the Middle East. Then suddenly, he heard the self-tuning in a way he had never heard before.

– They even used autotune in the cry of the prayer towers. Don’t worry a bit, but with full effect. Perhaps it is easier to pray that way? I do not know

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