Change.org petition from Fil/Wings of Pegasus for albums & singles to disclose if a singer's voice was pitch-corrected

[highplainsdem]

(Cross-post from the Lounge.)


Fil - Wings of Pegasus - is a British musician with a very popular YouTube channel. And he's absolutely right that pitch-correction should be disclosed.

His video about this is posted below, but first I want to link to the petition and quote some of what he wrote there:

https://www.change.org/p/disclosing-pitch-correction-use-on-a-singer-s-voice

Recently after featuring performances by very well known singers on my YouTube channel ('Wings of Pegasus') I was surprised to learn that the general public didn't realise the singer's voices had been manipulated by pitch correction. This means the voice we're hearing wasn't the recorded voice, but a post edited version that has been tuned to be more accurate to pitch, then released.

A lot of people have asked how this is allowed to happen, as they didn't know that the singer they were a fan of wasn't singing as accurately as is being portrayed. Many have mentioned that if they knew the voice was being pitched digitally, it would affect their decision making in buying new music, as they would rather support a singer who didn't rely on technology to pitch their voice but one who has trained or has the ability to be accurate naturally. In every day life, it is viewed by some as similar to buying a 'fake' product, but being charged the same as the genuine article, as you aren't made aware that it isn't an original.

I think there is certainly something that needs addressing here, as there are so many regulations on 'false advertising' and a customer knowing exactly what they're paying their hard earned money for, but in music all of that is seemingly not considered. There are no indications given to the customer of something that could greatly affect the customers view of the artistic value of what they're purchasing.

-snip-

I would propose that pitch corrected (including autotuned) vocals on releases are signified by a logo or emblem on the single/album cover. This would give the customer the peace of mind to know what they are listening to and potentially buying.

[Eko]

1. That would be anything coming out now pretty much.

[TwilightZone]

3. And for the past 25+ years.

It's been heavily used since the late 90s.

[Eko]

4. I still know plenty of people putting out albums 7-15 years ago that did not use it.

Since then its pretty much everybody. A famous producer of a lot of bands complained about having to use it on one artist he did in the early 2000's, so at that time it was looked down on. 2015 is about when I noticed it needing to be used on all recordings, albeit on a minor level. We we just doing minor fixes for the most part unless you wanted that T-pain sound. It wasn't that the singers required it for the most part, it was us mixing engineers using it to make it sound better for the artist and the consumer. Cause that's what we do. Was it right, was it wrong? It's not like every sound on every album hasn't been altered to sound better to the artist and consumer for a long time, including fixing the notes of an instrument played, pitch wise, time wise, where it was actually played, eq wise. Re-amping it, compressing it, adding effects, changing the note values themselves octaves above or below. Might as well make a law stating that all recordings are to be untouched and unedited. With amps that have no eq or effects or distortion so we can hear what the electric guitar sounds like on a clean amp, same with the bass so no low end, Keyboards that can only sound like one piano, no reverb, no echo, no delay. No panning in the mix so everything comes out of all the speakers at the same level and time. No guitar in the left side, drums in the center, vocals in the center and bass in the left. Keyboards moving left to right would be illegal. You ever seen a keyboardist run from left to right on a stage? Impossible unless you are using a keytar and those things suck and the ones that don't are very heavy. Good luck running left and right with that. The act of mixing a song and producing a song is an artistic level in itself. Trust me, you would not like the beatles anywhere as much or your favorite band if we didn't use our talents. If you think so, give me a song and I'll tell you why you are wrong in detail.
Eko.

[ProfessorGAC]

5. While You're Accurate...

...I think you're a bit too far out there.
For instance, an organ, or even a synth needs to be played. Using a Moog in 1974 seems unrelated to pitch correction today, to me.
Distortion is a tonal decision, and you & I don't need an engineer to get that. In your experience, how many times have you added distortion in production or post?
Reverb is a natural phenomenon. Using a digital device to simulate performing in a cathedral is still simulating a natural sonic phenomenon. Don't think that is in the same class with pitch correction. The former adds icing to the cake, the latter changes the cake.
Changing a note or timing rather than retaking is closer, and I don't like that either.
If you hear my stuff, you'll hear a flaw here & there. That's because almost everything is first take. But, I'm not seeking a mass audience & commercial success. I'm just an older dude with a hobby. For me, the playing is more important than the product.
While you're right about the importance of engineering and mixdown, I think there is quite the chasm between pitch correction of a vocal & traditional sweetening.

[Eko]

7. I talked with two other engineers today about this

and they both agree with me. There are quite a few times you add distortion in mixing. From vocals to snares, bass and kick drum. Compressors are not natural, nor are eq's. Reverb is natural, so is a voice. Why is using tools to create reverbs ok but using tools to fix vocals not? How is artificially creating something ok but artificially fixing something not? There are only 2 parts of music, pitch and time. Why is it ok to move something in time but not move a pitch?

[ProfessorGAC]

8. Well, To Start With...

...I never said I thought it was ok to time correct a part. So, you attributed something to me I never said. I am opposed to that, too. Play it right. Skilled musicians have been doing that for a millennium.
For clarity, I was talking about distortion on guitars, so I accept your experience on doing it on other instruments for different reasons.
I think my point on reverb was clear. It's a natural phenomenon and it's adding to ambience without having to record in a highly reflective room. I see no parallel to pitch or time correction. There is no natural phenomenon that makes me hear an off-pitch note as correct.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
I see a huge fifference between augmentation & correction.
BTW: at high volumes, compression is a natural phenomenon. As you know, at lower volume it takes 10dB for something to sound twice as loud. As volume goes up, that delta dB goes up. At 100dB, in takes nearly 12 more to ve twice as loud. Besides that, again, compression strikes me as augmentation to make parts blend mire easily in the human ear. I fail to see how that is anything close to actually changing what was played or sung.

[Eko]

9. My question about moving something in time

was not to you specifically since you had already said you do not like it. It was more to are they going to pass a law about that as well? I think sometimes people forget that music is an art, not just a performance. The making of it is an art, the performance, the mixing, production, all those things. Jimi couldn't perform a lot of his songs live like they were on the album, should he not have made them?

[JenniferJuniper]

2. Love Fil, btw

Pretty much all his videos are worth watching.

[highplainsdem]

6. A few interesting reads I found online - and some additional comments.

From a professional singer and voice coach posting on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ethics-using-autotune-singers-perspective-ali-garrison

The problem with using autotune to correct pitch, is that it is inherently unethical. There are myriad sonically cool and creative uses for this tool, I'm certain. But in terms of altering ("improving" ) a singer's performance, it then becomes like using performance enhancers in the olympics or airbrushing human models in advertising images. It has grave, and insidious socio-political implications. A performer is presenting something that is fraudulent and gives the false perception that they are "perfect", when they are indeed human and fallible like everyone else. The singers stop learning proper technique because they begin to rely on the technology to "take care of it". They get lazy, instead of figuring out why their pitch might be suffering, and working it out technically. Or it ceases to allow the subtle gradations of pitch to be governed and artistically chosen by the singer, who needs to be carefully considering the style, genre and character of the music, the time and the place. So then the next generation of singers is falsely influenced and believes that they must shoot for a standard of performance that is actually an illusion and impossible to achieve without conforming to the same crutches as those who came before. Then we also get the problem that is rampant in today's music culture, which is that many people in the industry don't respect what it takes to sing well, and many young singers don't thoroughly train or commit to the long process required to truly KNOW this art form. Furthermore, it is damaging in more ways than just within the professional milieu. I've seen how it effects some of my students...how it stifles them. This so-called "ideal", takes a lot of the pleasure and delight out of amateur singing due to social expectations, self-consciousness and fear that a person can't "measure up" to this perceived, false standard of perfection. But then, perhaps we should also be asking ourselves what is perfection and beauty all about anyway?

Of course, I am posting from a particular bias...as a fully trained, professional singer of 35 years and a voice teacher of 18 years. It stands to reason that producers and engineers love auto tune. Saves money and time. But it makes singers sound whiny, shallow and generic, merely reflective of so much of the current top 40 aesthetic and industry "standards" out there. Depth and colour in the tone of a singer is paramount, and ironically, autotune, steals this very thing. Some of the singer's most important, identifying characteristics are being forced by a piece of technology to bow down to that fascist bitch, pitch.

-snip-

Article from The Verge, 11 years ago:

https://www.theverge.com/2013/2/27/3964406/seduced-by-perfect-pitch-how-auto-tune-conquered-pop-music

-snip-

“I’ll be in a studio and hear a singer down the hall and she’s clearly out of tune, and she’ll do one take,” says Drew Waters of Capitol Records. That’s all she needs. Because they can fix it later, in Auto-Tune.

-snip-

However, good luck getting anybody to cop to it. Big producers like Max Martin and Dr. Luke, responsible for mega hits from artists like Ke$ha, Pink, and Kelly Clarkson, either turned me down or didn’t respond to interview requests. And you can’t really blame them.

“Do you want to talk about that effect you probably use that people equate with your client being talentless?”

-snip-

In 2009, an online petition went around protesting the overuse of Auto-Tune on the show Glee. Those producers turned down an interview, too.

-snip-

2014 article from The Conversation:

https://theconversation.com/auto-tune-and-why-we-shouldnt-be-surprised-britney-cant-sing-29167

-snip-

I believe that out of all these tools Auto-Tune gets singled out because the most basic human emotional response to music is the response we have to singing, and finding out that there was some software robot moving the singer’s notes around make us feel cheated.

It messes with our sense of legitimacy. So much so that artists sometimes feel the need to clarify that no digital trickery took place on their productions.

Brisbane singer Katie Noonan has specified that no Auto-Tune was used on her vocals in the line notes of her records, and American pop star Christina Aguilera has proudly sported an anti Auto-Tune T-Shirt. She since admitted to using Auto-Tune, but only as a creative effect.

-snip-

Ultimately, we need to recognise and acknowledge acts such as Britney Spears as entertainment rather than an expression of musicality. We should just try to make sure that the tools of the trade used in making pop stars pitch perfect don’t interfere with the development of singers who actually want to be able to sing.

Now, my own comments.

I dislike pitch-correction (including auto-tune) for the same reason I dislike people using AI to write. It's fundamentally inauthentic - and unethical when presented as authentic. And I believe most people feel that way. We want to hear singers, not people pretending to sing well. We want to know what writers have written, not what AI or a ghostwriter wrote for them (unless there's a story we want to hear from someone who doesn't have the time or talent for professional writing - many celebrities, for instance).

I know this technology has been around for decades. And I'm more tolerant of technology being used to alter the sound of instruments. I have a friend in the industry who loved the Eventide Harmonizer but dislikes auto-tuned vocals. I understand that and sympathize with it.

And I sympathize with that vocal coach, quoted in the first excerpt above, and the author of the third article, worrying that singers just won't bother to develop skills they need.

As for why Fil brought this up now - he's been more and more concerned by the fakery he''s discovering.

Pitch correction including auto-tune is NOT comparable to doing multiple takes to get a vocal right, or even to splicing recordings to patch the best version together. A singer doesn't have to be able to hit an auto-tuned note at all.

And it's particularly sad that auto-tune has become so common that it's now being used on vocals - good vocals - recorded live decades ago. Like Randy Meisner's. Fil posted a rant about that last summer, and I posted it here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1034104347

[highplainsdem]

10. The reasons for signing given at the Change.org link are worth reading.

https://www.change.org/p/disclosing-pitch-correction-use-on-a-singer-s-voice/c