Well back in the the mid to late 60’s in an interview someone asked Jim Morrison (it was caught on video) where do you see you Rock Music going, he said in the future I see one person in the studio just pressing a button with machines all around him playing the music. He also said Who ever controls the Media controls the mind. Boy did he nail it.
The use of digital pitch correction software on vocal recordings
To my mind, this practice is fraught with dishonesty.
The most obvious issue is:
- with digital pitch correction software applied to it, a vocal recording presented to the listener is done so under the pretense that it presents the human voice singing, when in fact any number of moments therein are the result of a program shoehorning the human-produced tones into a “perfect” tone” (whether it may be a Bb, C, F#, Db, or whatever), thereby negating the human expression and negating the validity of the pretense.
Much like a photo portrait of a human body post-airbrushing ceases to be a “true” presentation of that body, the viewer is not being presented with a faithful representation of that human form.
The next issue is:
- rampant apologia within the industry.
I’ve even heard an industry insider say, “pitch manipulation software does nothing we couldn’t do in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It just lets us do it for a lot less money.”
That’s a cute thing to say, but incorrect.
The finished vocal recording that was changed by the implementation of pitch correction software is, by definition, different from the finished vocal recording featuring none.
I am welcoming the thoughts of Audiogon members regarding this practice.