The Control Room

I've come to a startling realization. Ferrol Sams wrote a book called Run With the Horsemen. In that book, a character says "Call Dr. Redwine, she done it herself." I forget the exact circumstances, but the book, and the other two in the series are worth the read if you can get your hands on them. And that line sums up my current understanding of vocal tuning.

In case you don't know me, or haven't been paying attention, I don't like vocal tuning. I can hear it. And I've taken a lot of heat for not liking it from different people. My biggest objection, to be clear, is when it's used to allow vocalists to perform feats they simply cannot do themselves, because that's when it's most obvious, and most heard. But what have we done to ourselves that someone should call Dr. Redwine?

Simply put, somewhere along the way we got the idea that everything should be perfect. Think back to those first albums you loved. Maybe there was nothing fancy about the vocals, but they were good. Maybe they weren't perfect, but it's not like anyone was singing out of key. Has music gotten so bad that everyone uses tuned vocals these days?

The answer is no. And by no, I mean it's not that bad, but everyone does use tuned vocals. Why tune the vocals if you could sing them? The simple answer is cost. It's much more complicated than that, but I'll explain.

You see, making an album is expensive. And the most expensive part of making an album is the time you spend in the studio. The fewer takes you can get something in the better. Now suspend you disbelief for a moment. Recording vocals is hard. No, it's nerve wracking. You don't just walk up to the mic and belt out a song. Even the best studio musicians in the world rarely get vocals in one take.

The problem isn't hitting the right note. It's that even if you wrote a song, you don't always get the words right. I know, that sounds really bizarre, but it's true. Or you don't get your breathing right. Or maybe you don't enunciate something correctly. Maybe it's a combination of things. By the time you get a vocal track that's correct in everything (except maybe pitch) you can spend longer tracking vocals than anything else on a modern rock album. Which is why by the time they finish punching in and out and doing 10 takes, they'll use the best bits they have for what can't be fixed, and since they can tune stuff - it doesn't really matter if the pitch is perfect or not.

So when I took some heat recently about Demon Hunter using tuning, I could already hear that it was true - there was vocal tuning done. But I've listened to their live album enough to know there's no way that was tuned. It's not perfect. So I was interested in knowing if they would use any tuning in their recent Nashville show, and so were a few other people.

Four bands played that night, and I could tell just by listening, two of them were using vocal tuning, and two were not. Ironically the two that did not use tuning were, in my opinion, the better parts of the performance. Demon Hunter did not use tuning. I know they didn't because no one would use tuning if it let stuff by, and the vocals weren't perfect. But does that mean they were bad?

No. No, the vocals were great. It was refreshing to hear a person singing showing what they were capable of, and what they weren't. So Ryan slipped off the end of a few long notes. Big deal. The rest of the time he did really well. Perfect? No. But he's human. It's not like he can't sing. Heck, you try it. Sing just one Demon Hunter song. I'll let you pick.

So why do people use tuning if they don't really need it? Because the public demands it. Because we want cheaper (read free) music that's perfect. We'll slam anyone who makes a mistake. I'm not talking about little miss hot stuff singing flat all the way through a live performance on the grammy awards. I'm talking about ....anything. We don't want to hear imperfection, but once we have perfection, we don't want to pay for it.

I've got a whole rant about the music industry and how and why things broke. I'll put it into words, and drop it in here for you. But for now, I'll leave you with this thought: If you can't sing soprano, don't use vocal tuning to add you singing a soprano part to your song. If you can't sing at all - don't. If you feel obliged to clean up your vocals with auto tune because you aren't perfect - then as a consumer of music I'd like to apologize for the fact that perfection is being demanded, and no one wants to pay for it.

I recently asked what was up with all the hate for Nickelback. I was informed that (and please, correct me if I'm wrong) it was "immature, childish, simple music". What's wrong with that? I can understand not liking it if you are so involved in main stream life that you hear people driving around with it cranked up in their cars all the time or something, but other than the potential of suffering from being overplayed, what's wrong with simple music?

The purpose of music is to communicate. Music conveys feelings, provokes emotions and makes connections between people who otherwise might have very little in common. Ever looked around you at a concert? How many of those people were the kind of people that might be in your social clique? Probably some of them, but certainly not all, right? But they're into the music, maybe they get the same thing out of it you do, maybe not. But where are you if no one understands your music?

Does music have to be complex to enjoy it? Country music used to be identifiable by it's simplicity. It's not too much more complex, now that it's gotten very pop like, but still, simple. Look at Cash. What part of any of his songs don't you understand? It's simple. But what the way he said what he said made you listen. He didn't have flourishes and trills on every syllabe that came out of his mouth, but still it's called singing. It sounds like to me most vocalists figure you have to use at least half an octave change on every syllable in order to be called singing. I like to call this "over singing".

Why to people over sing? They try to do all these vocal gymnastics, and they figure out they can't. They they bring auto tune into the picture, and that's when vocals really get screwed up. There should be rule in music. If you can't sing it, don't. Because honestly, I don't want to listen to auto tuned vocals. Don't believe me? Do you think simple (and indeed imperfect) vocals and simple music can't be good? Go to youtube, I know you know where it is, and search for "America Horse With No Name". Go ahead, listen to it. It's a great song. And I submit to you that simple music that is made honestly would be much better than the overworked mediocrity that's being pushed by the industry today.

Every time someone opens their mouth and says something, especially on the internet, one question should be on the tip of everyone's tongue. What's your expertise? In other words, why should we listen to you? What puts you in a position to know what your talking about. So I'm going to tell you a little about me, and drop a few non-bombshell ideas as a why of introducing myself.

I'm a 30 something guy who has returned to college to major in Audio Engineering. As such, I'm taking recording industry classes at MTSU, and thinking a lot about music, and the industry I plan to call home. And boy does that open a Pandora's Box. Because if you know anything about the music industry, right now you probably think I'm pretty stupid, because everyone knows the recording industry is struggling to make money. The recording industry blames the illegal downloaders. The downloaders blame CD prices and stores going out of business. What a mess. I'll clean that up for you in a minute.

No, I'm thinking, seriously. It's been said that if you have a job you love, you never work a day in your life. I've heard so may bands live that sound good, and picked up their albums and been disappointed. For lack of a little engineering the albums were horrible compared to the live performances. Well, I love music, and I think I can help some of those bands.

So how do you get around the problems the record industry has? I have a professor who constantly reminds his class that WE are the future, WE have to solve the problem, and we have to do it because the people who are running things now obviously can't figure it out. I believe him, but I don't claim to have a solution yet. But I know what the problem is. Problems. Are. I know what the problems are. Or at least some of them.

Development. Back in the day, record labels used to develop artists. Some of those great bands we got used to didn't make one thin dime with the first two or three albums. They just didn't sell. They didn't get a lot of radio play. They didn't get a lot of attention. But the labels stuck with those bands because they saw potential. Today, if your first album doesn't pop a top-10 single, you're probably going to get dumped. What, don't believe me? Ask around. I'm not going to start dropping names, but I'm sure you can find at least a half a dozen industry pundits who will tell you it's true.

Downloaders. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you. See, there's a new generation growing up in the world that's never had to fight for anything, never had to pay for it. Every generation prior to ours has had to pay for everything, sometimes with their lives, simply for the right to live how they want to. But this generation, even with the current war in the middle east, has't had to pay. That body count? It's just a number on TV. That war? It's not real, the reasons were faked, right? No one but the old administration wanted that war to start with, so we'll just ignore it. Even the war in Vietnam meant more in the US than this current war, and the price isn't registering with this generation. We are (and I'll include myself, because I know my age group is included) an entitlement generation. We think we have a right to whatever we want, or think we need. So we can just download something for free instead of buying it. Who cares if the artist gets paid? Aren't they making music so what we can listen to it anyway? I'm not saying anything new, I'm just repeating what no one wants to hear for the 1000th time.

Quality. And we'll start with those downloads. It's garbage. You take those 128K (if you're lucky) mp3's and play them on a high end stereo, or a good set of headphones, and you'll hear the artifacts from the psycho-acoustic compression. Except that no one has high end stereos or good headphones any more. Everyone listens through horrible little tinny sounding computer speakers, or earbud turned up so loud I can tell what they're listening to from the other side of the street. I'm not kidding, it's happened. And with something turned up so loud, how can you even tell the quality is bad? You can't. And the actual quality of the music? I'm not making a blanket statement, but the music being made today sucks. My professor was talking about the development issue I mentioned above, and he said it was as damaging to the industry as illegal downloading. I fired back that it was worse, because there was music being made today that wasn't worth downloading, illegal or not.

Loudness wars. Everything is loud now. Every recording made has the dynamics compressed right out of it. If your recording isn't louder than the next guy's recording is, it's no good. At least that's what they'll tell you. Now, everything I listen to music on has a volume knob. And if I want it loud, I'll turn it up. But I'd like to hear some dynamics in my music. And you won't get it today. I find myself breaking up modern recordings with older tracks, just to hear something that isn't loud all the way through.

I'm running out of time, but that's an idea. That's what I see as the problems. Or some of them. And I love music. That's my best qualification for what I'm telling you. But I'm also taking classes about stuff like this. And I think about it a lot. Because people should be recording great music, in ways that make great recordings, and those recordings should be bought be people who love the way they sound, especially when they listen to them on something that sounds good. Not everything will be this industry-boring to people who just want to know what I think about music. But for those who want to think about it, this stuff will be around too.