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Death Cab For Cutie have taken a political stand against AutoTune, the devil scourge that puts the moral turpitude of our nation’s teenagers at risk, exposing them to savage robot noises, leaving them confused and helpless. All that bleeping and blooping and buying of dranks! Thank god there’s Ben Gibbard—savior of the flaccid—to speak out about this national dilemma! Death Cab wore suits and blue ribbons (pictured above) to the Grammy Awards to raise awareness of the fact that T-Pain would benefit from the fun, flat sound of a Chris Walla production.
Said Gibb:
Auto-tuning is a digital manipulation, a correction of a singer’s voice that is affecting literally thousands of singers today and thousands of records that are coming out… We just want to raise awareness while we’re here and try to bring back the blue note… The note that’s not so perfectly in pitch and just gives the recording some soul and some kind of real character. It’s how people really sing.
Oh yeah, that’s what’s soul is! Real soul is not Kanye West retreating to his studio and pouring his broken heart out about his ex-girlfriend and passed mother. Real soul is having the hyper-aware posturing to name an album something post-ironic and cutesy like We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes.
This complaint is as boring and short-sighted as complaining about how “drum machines have no soul.” Why don’t you take it on down to Guitar Center and you can bond with the 37-year-old assistant manager on how people don’t make records like Kansas any more.
Death Cab For Cutie vs. Autotune [Music Radar]
Damn you Weingarten, your protest is invalid because it was not handwritten on parchment and then given an imprimatur. Come back when you do things like Plato did. (Then again half the time he sounded drunk off his ass.)
Agreed 100%. God forbid people should use any sort of technology to inspire their creativity.
So many good points, but my favorite is: “…T-Pain would benefit from the fun, flat sound of a Chris Walla production.”
Apparently the word “spoof” in the first graph of the Music Radar post was a little too subtle.
@Ted Striker: If you’re taking a “lighthearted stance” you’re still taking a stance.
Is that a Rush lyric?
Seems like he’s not talking about auto-tune so much in its T-Pain “auto-tune as almost an instrument” application, but more in the Britney Spears “auto-tune as a trick to make people think I can sing” kind of use.
On a related note, Ben Gibbard is weak.
Kanye? Soul? Really?
Thousands of pop-punk/emo bands retreat to their studios and bedrooms to cry about their ex-girlfriends too, that don’t make it soul.
Look at that picture! “We’re so white, we’re opaque” is the obvious subtext. They even telegraphed the joke by wearing charity ribbons.
I’ve always found them to be boringly earnest, but here they’re at least funny about it. To be outraged by this (while still claiming to understand the intent) is to fail.
Can I request a mild moratorium (it’s like a lighthearted stance) on the “this = that” arguments regarding AutoTune? Not liking AutoTune = not liking drum machines = not liking anything modern = Guitar Center? Isn’t it equally likely that AutoTune will date itself a la Yamaha DX7s? Or even age badly, like yarling?
fuck autotune. it’s ignorant to defend it in this manner. i’m not a fan Death Cab, but his point IS valid. Kanye West has every right to pour his heart out into his songs, too bad he doesn’t have the talent to actually sing them. maybe if his ego wasn’t so huge he could humble himself to take some voice training and properly find his true singing voice and make something this IS AUTHENTIC, rather than APROXIMATES authenticity.
while i recognize yr comparison to “drum machines have no soul,” lets continue yr parallel. drum machines can of course have soul when programmed with skill, but there was (and to a degree, still is) a time where every pop song had drum machines just for the sake of having drum machines – because it was cheaper, easier, fashionable, and lazier than actually getting a real drummer. all aspects of music creation benefit when some real god damned effort goes into it, rather than taking the easiest/laziest computer assisted way out. we see this time and time again with all music that continues to hold up to the test of time.
Death Cab For Cutie = the anti-soul.
@Mike P.: Oh yes, it’ll age badly, positioning it for a huge comeback around 2028.
Some rapper’s 2028 album: “Autotune & gloom”
I have my own concerns regarding pitch-correcting: namely, that its overuse may be passively instilling in audiences a false set of expectations of what the human voice *should* sound like, much the same way that Photoshopping pics of models so they resemble living hourglasses may conceivably fuck with the body images of young women. (Though YES, OBVIOUSLY the stakes are somewhat lower when it comes to Autotune.)
I don’t think the answer here is banning or boycotting or what have you so much as encouraging greater music-production literacy: we have to remind people that no modern-day record is a transparent document of an actual performance, but rather something that’s been crafted, toyed-with, tinkered, embroidered, etc.
And yeah, I don’t think Gibbard is talking about what I guess could be called “the T-Pain effect”–Autotune as vocal decoration–so much as using Autotune to create the illusion of an technically “perfect” vocal performance.
@ConfidoBoyd: Bingo.
I really love this blog (though I’m guessing that some sort of offense will be taken with my referring to it as such), but sometimes trying so hard to be Lvl. 2 Hipsters backfires. I liked 808s & Heartbreak, but it’s far from “soulful” and it’s probably not very sincere, either.
The new autotune versions have a humanize knob which keeps some bad notes in.
Ya, it’s getting pretty retarded.
As a singer, I always found autotune disconcerting. Mostly because I hate seeing that stupid bar aching to pull my notes back in tune. It’s enraging at times. But it inspires me to get better takes so my engineer doesn’t get the satisfaction of thinking he’s better than me with his toys.
In reality though, good singers still sound better than mediocre ones to untrained ears with or without this so I don’t get too bitchy about it. And this has been going on for far longer than however long Antares has been around anyways. It just was never this easy and cheap to do.
Hey, hey. Chris Walla produced the Thermals’ Fuckin’ A. Which is not flat. But it is fun.
Speaking as someone who actually *uses* autotune regularly (well, Logic “Pitch Correct”, but the algorithm is the same) I’d like to clear up some misconceptions:
1) It doesn’t make a vocalist sound perfect. A bad vocalist is still a bad vocalist, just one that’s slightly more in tune. As the T-Pain effect shows, when you set the delay time to 0, you get an unnatural, robotic effect. If you set it to anything more, it will correct, but it takes time. A bad vocalist will still hover around the note if they can’t hit it until Autotune brings it in line. Said tolerances are also so that it does not squash natural vibrato.
Recently I heard a terrible vocalist, who got autotuned, and afterwards she still sucked. It was hilarious – she was so far out of tune that AT didn’t know which pitch to assign so it wobbled back and forth.
2) It goes on a lot more than you’d probably think. I know it’s used pretty much in every genre to tighten up close harmonies, fix that one clammed note the singer made during take 4 so you don’t have to spend another $1000 on studio fees to re-record it, etc.
3) It can be done live, but it usually isn’t because it’s a pain in the ass. Software generally has too much latency and hardware is a pain to control.
4) If it hadn’t been for Cher, we likely wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Plus, Doesn’t anyone else think it’s just really cool in a nerdy way that autotune developed out algorithms used by geologists to find oil?
@Ben!: i think there’s a ton of soul in 808s. it’s a flawed work, sure, but what unedited spew from the heart isn’t? signed, a blogger.
@Ben!: Yeah, you really don’t have a good argument here. You sound like you just hate Kanye. Which is a personal decision and has nothing to do with what he’s doing musically.
@nulldevice: This is very helpful, and yes, I love that geologists/nerd fact.
Death Cab has little reason to talk about anyone else’s music, but if they want to make hating autotune the next big “indie” fight (can’t you just see The Arcade Fire taking it to the barricades on this one?) then they’ll quickly expose themselves as pretentious twats. Take a page from Pearl Jam, Bono, et al: if you want to be taken seriously, get a real cause.
i mean, i was thinking maybe they’re taking the piss out of “oh wow, white rock star with a ribbon, I’m saving the world,” but seriously they could of used that moment to take up any cause and they just did a lame joke.
@slowburn: Except that I don’t, and I really enjoyed 808s a lot. As a matter of fact, I had largely ignored him up until I got my hands on the album, which I liked enough that I decided to delve into his older stuff, too.
@Maura Johnston: I don’t buy that it’s “unedited spew.” Also, I’d expect a little more introspection from something that’s supposedly “from the soul.” 90% of the album amounts to a list of reasons why he resents his ex and why she was wrong and he was right. While we can all relate to those sorts of feelings, I just don’t see that they’re particularly honest or the result of any soul-searching.
@Maura Johnston: @slowburn:
To be fair to Ben, he was spurred on by my original comment. The point was against the authors contention that Kanye’s work was instantly granted status of having soul because his ‘pain’ has been somewhat public knowledge. Any artist from Death Cab to The Dixie Chicks to Fall Out Boy that write about their personal life should thus be granted the same level of ubiquitous ’soul’ that the author has granted Kanye. Just because you don’t see or know about their pain doesn’t make it any less profound.
I also somewhat agree that Kanye’s actions often contradict himself which leads to his emotions being construed as insincere even thats not the case.
@Maura Johnston:It’s a little inappropriate to call it ‘unedited’ since we sat and watched as he repeatedly edited and tweaked the album through his blog interactions.
@ Everyone else: if you’re taking the DCFC statement seriously then you’ve fallen into the joke, take a step back out.
@eriq78:
Yep. Autotune is weak.
I’d also like to take this moment to go off-topic and mention that Idolator refuses to let me use an avatar. Every time I upload it, it disappears.
@Ben!: They’re all against you!
I should try uploading one now that you mention it.
@Ben!: we’re plagued by server problems thanks to our status as the adopted-but-not-totally-gone child of the gawker media family. see also the mysterious blank pages you get faced with from time to time.
FYI: I was at Guitar Center this weekend and overheard a conversation where two people were talking about the merits of buying/using Auto-Tune.
@slowburn: Wait, are you saying Pearl Jam and Bono aren’t pretentious twats?
I just want to chime in here that there is absolutely no way they are NOT talking about Kanye/T-Pain Autotuning, via MTV:
I mean yes, it’s obviously a joke, but I do think this is comparable to wearing a “charity ribbon” to, e.g., protest the drum machine because it’s destroying “real” drumming — it’s a total Disco Sucks move. Being “lighthearted” about it doesn’t change the message and meanwhile makes it all smug and gross.
(Ben Gibbard also doesn’t seem to know what a blue note is. T-Pain’s entire career is basically him using Autotune to slide around blue notes in cyborgian fashion.)
“A little use is OK, but there is a difference between ‘use’ and ‘abuse,’ “
So, it is okay to use auto-tune if you don’t need it, but are simply lazy.
I’d suggest a similar strike against electronic guitar tuners, but I’m afraid someone might take me up on it.
OKAY IDOLATOR! WTF IS UP WITH THE TITLE!? NO WHERE DID MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE, NOR DID HE COMPARE ANYONE TO HIMSELF/DCFC/OR ANY OTHER INDIE ROCK GROUP!
NOW, ONTO THE REAL TOPIC AT HAND…AUTO-TUNE WAS MADE TO CORRECT THE SUBTLE MISTAKES MADE BY REAL SINGERS, NOT TO TOTALLY MODIFY SOMEONE’S VOICE FOR AN ENTIRE ALBUM! THAT’S NOT SINGING!!! AND I CAN GUARANTEE THAT GIBBARD HAS USED AUTO-TONE AT TIMES, BUT FOR THE RIGHT REASONS
AND YOUR ARGUMENT ABOUT KANYE “POURING HIS HEAT OUT” HAS ABSOLUTELY NO VALIDITY IN THIS PREMISE. DAMN. QUIT CRYING FOR ATTENTION WITH POSTS THAT MAKE OTHER PEOPLE LOOK BAD FOR NO REASON AT ALL! JESUS CHRIST!
Kanye knows he’s being a selfish, sad bastard prick on “808s”, that’s sort of the concept of the album. It’s also why using the distancing–but warm at the same time–sound of auto-tune works well.
Like “Lonely Island”, this is “funny” but it has this condescension behind it that’s really uncomfortable.
I don’t understand this post at all. Nowhere in his comment does he mention black people, yet the poster felt the need to tie this in. To me, this seems like an extremely unfair amalgamation of Ben and a racist thought. I have many problems with this post, which I will attempt to detail in the following. It seems to me the poster made a rather racist remark in tying the use of autotune with black people, because Ben Gibbard certainly did not, and yet the post clearly states it right in the title. Also, Mr. Gibbard did not go out of his way to speak out in this instance, he just honestly answered a question he was asked. Finally, the poster should be embarrassed concerning the comment slighting Chris Walla as a musical producer. Mr. Walla has produced two critically acclaimed albums by the Thermals, two critically acclaimed albums by Tegan and Sara, two critically acclaimed albums by the Long Winters, one very critically acclaimed album by the Decemberists, one critically acclaimed album by Nada Surf, and the only album by the Postal Service. Cokemachineglow had this to say about “Picaresque” by the Decemberists, “they sound much bigger and more proficient than before, but never intrusively so” ([www.cokemachineglow.com]). Allmusic said of “When I Pretend to Fall” by the Thermals, “shimmering space rock guitars and budding string arrangements carry the melodies of “Blanket Hog” ([www.allmusic.com]) Drowned in Sound said of “Give Up” by the Postal Service, “(The Postal Service) fill its forty-five minutes with a world-weary warmth and idealism” ([www.drownedinsound.com]) These are just a few examples attempting to showcase the warm reception that Chris Walla’s production has received and deserves. The fact that the flatness described in the post above is absent in Walla’s work is abundantly clear. Finally, I must say I’m disappointed with the fact that the spirit on Gibbard’s comments were taken out of their context in the post. Mr. Gibbard’s spirit was to say that there is an undeniable element in music that defies logic, the idea that lacking perfection can sometimes create more beauty than perfection itself. His sentiment is that real soul is laying yourself out there on your music, without the need of electronic sampling to improve the tone or pitch. Regardless of the style of the music, real soul music is named that for a reason, it’s the bearing of one’s soul. Regardless of what form you take for doing that, that form is best left unaltered, or you simply don’t have soul music.
I know I’m a little late to this since I’m more of a night owl. But in my experience in music production. The biggest abuse of vocals has been layering and double tracking. Auto tune simply bends the note into shape, but double tracking is what gives most vocals today that heavy powerful thick sound you hear on the cd. It’s one of the biggest reasons (apart from crappy sound systems or sound anomalies of a live event) why performers in concert sound thin or tinny and nothing like they do on the cd.
Auto-tune will not make a bad singer a great one. It will just make them be in tune. Double tracking has been around forever but is most often overlooked in these discussions. Even in pure analog recordings you can apply a Pitch shift by simply adjusting the vari-speed switch on many recording machines. All auto-tune did was bring that ability into digital recording while given the producer much greater control over the pitch variables. Sorry I didn’t mean for this to be so long :)
why is everyone taking this seriously?
Wait, it’s publicity and it’s working.
Never mind. Go on.
So, taking this all in, we’ve learned that there is no way that the She and Him record is without autotune- Ben Gibbard (who is getting an unfair amount of grief here, but totally serious in his jihad) really ought to annull that marraige and put a recently heartbroken and vulnerable Zooey Deschanel back on the market so that she can find me out in a bar late one night, and I’ll put on a Death Cab Song on the jukebox, and she’ll begin weeping and I’ll say- yeah, fuck that guy. And she’ll be all, yeah, yeah, and I’ll say, you were awesome in almost famous, and she’ll choke back a tear, and say, “thanks,” and that will be the story of the time I made Zooey Deschanel cry.
@slowburn: Got to agree…that was an embarrassingly pretentious move. I actually felt BADLY for how ridiculously they were playing into their stereotype.
I feel similarly frustrated that many people these days don’t value live performance if the vocals don’t sound exactly like the records, but I don’t see how this “effort” does anything besides stroke the Cab’s own egos and those of their fans.
I also like that even with a shorter cut, the bass player simply cannot have a good looking head of hair.
Mike Barthel’s response to this whole thing totally pinpoints why it’s kinda icky:
[barthel.tumblr.com]
“Which means that the statement he’s actually making is ‘my culture’s values are superior to your culture’s values.’” <- yep
am i the only one who thinks the headline of this article is a bit inapporporiate
“Death Cab For Cutie Wishes Black People Could Be As Soulful As Indie Rock” no he said he hates autotune not all black music in fact i usally don't care about the race thing but thats slightly annoyed me since I mainly listen to indie music, hate autotune and the closest thing to hip hop i listen to is gym class heroes and occaisonally kid cudi. what do you think the inital response would be if any of the bands like bloc party, tv on the radio or Lightspeed Champion read that?
Well, I believe Death Cab For Cutie do use this effect or a similar one themselves. The only difference is that they use it with more subtlety.
“A Lack of Colors” is a good example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jduFDgIr598
Listen especially closely at the 0:29 mark…. 99% sure they use auto-tune there.