Saw a post on here recently in my feed from someone that I no longer follow (it was a retoot) and it reminded me that the reason I no longer followed them is because they asked if they could give me some feedback on my song, and I said sure, and then they sent 3-4 PRIVATE messages telling me my voice sounded fake, my drums sounded dead, and proceeded to give me pointers on what vocal comping was 💀
I'm laughing because it's so ridiculous, but I can see it bothers you and I hope you don't sweat it. Hopefully that guy grows and stops with that kind of nonsense.
And anyone who says "I can always hear Auto Tune" is showing themselves to be ridiculous and is not to be taken seriously.
I was stunned, then hurt. But there are a few things I’ve learned in all my years on social media, and that’s GET RECEIPTS. So while I was mulling over how to respond, I took screenshots of his messages.
He accused me of using AutoTune, and bragged about how important it is to do vocal comping to get takes that are in tune instead of “taking the easy way” of using AutoTune. He said it takes more work, but it’s worth it. 💀
He said he can tell when someone uses AutoTune, and my vocals sounded fake as a result.
I don’t use AutoTune. I don’t have AutoTune. I do use surgical pitch correction software (Melodyne) which is great for tuning up individual words/notes as needed. Because for me, the vocal quality, the enunciation, the expression, and the emotion are more important than being precisely in tune. Plus, being half-deaf, it’s hard to hear my own voice AND the backing track correctly to keep in tune.
I don’t have perfect (absolute) pitch. Very few people do, even amongst professional singers and musicians. It’s a gift that can’t really be developed—as in, singing a perfectly in tune, named note (“start singing on ‘G’” for example). Most of us can only hone our ear to stay in tune with the other singers/musicians performing with us.
If we all are 20 cents flat, as long as we’re all “out of tune” together, it will still sound alright. Except to those with Absolute Pitch. :scremcat:
My brother has Perfect Absolute Pitch. TBH it was kind of annoying growing up singing a note and asking him, “hey bro, what note am I singing?” And he’d sometimes say “you’re NOT. You’re BETWEEN NOTES.” 😟
My brother can basically act like a human tuning fork. But he is not much of a singer, so much as a drummer and a pianist. He tuned all the drums in marching band. He CAN sing, and sing in tune, but there is so much more to singing than being in tune.
But I digress. If not for my brother, I probably wouldn’t have had piano lessons. He got piano lessons starting at 4 years old, due to having perfect pitch. And little sister, who absolutely adored her big brother and thought he was perfect (b/c he did have perfect pitch, after all!) wanted to be like him and play piano too. So I started piano lessons as soon as my hands were big enough to touch/press down on all five keys at once (so…6 or 7?). And took piano lessons through to college.
But the point is, only singers with perfect pitch get every take 100% in tune. Pitch correction software, whether AutoTune, Melodyne, some other brand, or tuning notes “manually” (which you can do in many DAWS) allows those of us without perfect pitch to record without having to do 100s of takes to get literally every aspect of a vocal/lyrical phrase correct—timing, tuning, vibrato, enunciation, vocal mode, energy, dynamics, breath control, expression, etc. It saves time and $$ in studios.
And you still need to know how to sing pretty well in tune for any kind of pitch correction software to work. It can sound unnatural if you’re too far out of tune. If you are tone-deaf/too far out of tune, the software won’t work and will sound awful.
Of course that weirdly robotic/T-Pain effect can also be done on purpose as a stylistic choice. Cher, who can obviously sing, first pioneered this stylistic choice on her song “Believe.”
It was mind-blowing at the time.
I do anywhere from 10-50+ vocal takes for my main vocal tracks, where all those qualities listed above are all important (tho not equally so): timing, tuning, enunciation, emotion, vocal mode, etc., and about 4-10 takes for every backing vocal track, where “expressiveness” is not the main goal.
And then listen to each take and choose the best take per line.
So yeah, I know what vocal comping is. :welp: It is BY FAR the most time-consuming and tedious aspect of producing vocal-forward music.
Sometimes I deliberately avoid a vocal take that I have sung too “straight” (that is, without vibrato) because I know that tuning it at all will make it sound fake.
Vibrato is the tiny fluctuation/oscillation in pitch that can make a voice sound warm and more expressive. Stringed instrument players can also incorporate vibrato by wiggling the finger pressing down on the neck of their instrument as they play. Singers do that with their vocal cords. 10/
Singing with or without vibrato is a stylistic choice, and vibrato is often used when notes are held out for longer.
Singing without vibrato all the time can sound like a boys’ choir—younger, eerie, angelic, a bit cool (not warmly expressive, as with vibrato).
When singing with a choir, you usually don’t want too much vibrato, as you risk standing out due to your pitch fluctuating too much or too differently from those around you. 11/
The first time I introduced other artists to the Magic of Vocal Comping and Pitch Correction they were blown away. They had no idea this was how it was done, and that it was industry standard. If you don’t need it, more power to ya, but every singer I’ve produced has NEVER opted to not use these techniques once they hear the difference.
One lady was deeply offended by how much I had to tune her vocals (you might guess who iykyk) but she didn’t want to go back to the “raw” vocal take.
But there I go again being all educational instead of telling my story about RECEIPTS.
So I checked out the music of this fellow artist who had criticized my music, and… well, I personally think he could have done with more vocal takes, more expression, and YES, some TUNING.
Also his mixing was not great; he could’ve used more compression and EQ (5k boost) on his vocals, his timing of his drums were kind of sloppy, and his vocals did not sound particularly expressive, imho. 13/
But whatever! He’s creating a different style of music from me, too, and obviously mainstream, hi-fi professional level pop music is not his goal like it is mine. Do I hit that goal? Eh…not quite, but it IS what I’m aiming for, at least.
And I suspect what he thinks is AutoTune is mostly all the other effects that are more prominent in mainstream music—tightly compressed vocals, EQ, a bit of distortion or reverb sidechain, etc, that allow the vocals to come forward more in the mix. 14/
As for my drums sounding “dead,” yes they’re MIDI-controlled samples, and I had to tone down the velocity after I played them on my weighted keyboard, which I use as my MIDI controller. And I compress them a lot.
But I don’t see the need to make the timing sound less precise or make the dynamics fluctuate more to sound real when they’re not. That’s not important in synth pop.
In addition to my brother, my spouse is also a drummer and heck yes I get his approval on how my drums sound. 15/
So yeah, this guy probably meant well, but he didn’t consider that perhaps different genres have different standards, and PERHAPS I do know what vocal comping is, and PERHAPS I’m related to two drummers who had no issue with my drum production.
And PERHAPS being so critical in private messages (when I explicitly state NO DMs in my bio) is a bad idea and will invite judgement in kind.
I really struggled with how to respond. I invited the feedback, and it WAS informative, but kind of rude. 16/
Before I could figure out how to thank him for his feedback but also defend myself, he deleted his messages!
I have no idea if he thought better of what he said & hoped I hadn’t seen them, or if he only saw the “NO DMs” in my bio after the fact & thought oops, better get rid of this evidence that I did the thing she said not to do! Or what, but THIS IS WHY I TAKE SCREENSHOTS.
And why I say No DMs. I think it makes ppl think more carefully about how they write if they know others can read it. 17
Anyway, don’t DM me unless we’re already in a conversation and you want to reveal something private about YOURSELF like personal identifying info. I will keep your secrets (b/c I have ADHD and will probably forget).
Also, I DO welcome feedback, but it will be better received if it’s concrete and helpful rather than patronizing and presumptive. 18/18
Addendum: He also unfollowed me. I only unfollowed him because he unfollowed me. Otherwise I was just going to ignore the incident as if it didn’t happen, since that’s what him deleting the messages seemed to indicate he wanted to have happen.
But maybe he just got so enraged by how horrible my music was that he wanted nothing more to do with me.
@mxtthxw
Oh yeah I had heard that T-Pain was actually a great singer as well! I didn’t know how hard he worked to sing OUT of tune so he could achieve that cool AutoTune effect, tho!
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