The use of digital pitch correction software on vocal recordings

I only read english and never spoke it and i  had read only  science or philosophy with their limited abstract vocabulary then i miss half the time any good humor...

Thats explain sometimes my hot reaction... 😊

@mahgister , no need for apology.  I think you missed my attempt at humor (with a bit of sarcasm which was not meant for you).  All is well.  Regards.

I am really sorry if my comment had mute your opinion... It was not my goal... Only to put some humor.... Please feel free to speak anytime... I like reading your posts as much as i liked the OP arguments in his thread... I am not a distinguished musician then i learn reading your comment and the OP is a singer then for me it is interesting...

...

I am pretty sure the OP like also discussing ....And anyway if he is not ok with the answer he will give his arguments...

For sure it is a sensible matter that can engender hot tempers...but only arguments has weights...And we are all gentlemen...

My best to you...

Any processing of music will decrease some spontaneous vibe in the expression...

The fact that we like the singer or not is beside the point...

The central point is the loss of integrity, meaning in the expressive gesture itself...

This is how i read the OP thread... It is not about taste or about a useful tool in some case in my not so humble opinion ...😊

It is about the essence of this emotional micro dynamic in the human voice that can move us ....My experience is that the greatest singers in any genre are not "perfect" or "imperfect" so much as they had learn how to control the fine line between these two zones...

Processing their voice to adjust it will degrade their performance and not just their integrity even if the final product may seems more appealing in the short time...

Maria Callas will never accept any correction to improve his performance nor Marian Anderson nor Billie Holiday...

Am i wrong ?

It is my notion of what true artistry is... Once this said as anybody here i can enjoy a corrected or processed piece of music as everybody here without even knowing it... A product can be appealing even with NO ARTIST, an A.I. composing and singing it for example... 😊

But Art is not a mere electronic craftmanship so perfect it could be...

And dont look for someone pompous, it is not the OP neither our friend frogman , everybody knows here it is me the philosopher of the north american territory... 😁😊😉😊 I plan to keep the title and the adjective associated to it...BEWARE  any contender for pomposity master title ...I will keep it...

It is precisely the vulnerability, fragility and relative imperfection of the human voice, even trained, that give to it his diverse and individualized expressivity potentials and power...

It is the reason why the human voice is the root and grounding musical instrument in speech as in singing which anyway are merging everyday unbeknonwst to us... ...

You can tune a piano externally or/and mechanized it , but the human voice is integral part of your body and  could not be regulated externally save at the price of loosing its specific unique power...It seems to me that saying all that, i am very "down to earth"; as much as tonal rythmic basic speech gesture are down to earth and are imbued with physical and spiritual meanings ...There exist even a specialized field studying it in linguistic .. 😁

Suppressing this individualized always perfectible BUT never perfect gesture by regulating it by external standardized means and tools is killing art and transforming it in marchandise,like perfect Mcdonald fries, and replacing the root and fruit of the expressive tree by artificially genetically modified seeds.... It is the same act...

I think your observation is right OP...

"Imperfection is the peak" René Char...

Pop, opera, all corners of the musical universe…non-perfect pitch is a matter of course with vocal performance, and we all, rightfully, love it.

Personally, I find the vocal performance that was shoehorned into digitally-dictated pitch to be aesthetically ugly and bad-sounding, which makes this practice all the more maddening.

If it actually made vocals sound better, we could have a real argument here.
It doesn’t.

A little electronic tweak can fix an otherwise wonderful performance. So terrible? So artistically objectionable? I don’t think so.

For sure you are right it is not objectionable ...😊 Why will it be ? We are no purist nor snob..

But the main point as you observed and judged it yourself is the gesture integrity and individuality of the artist versus a manufactured results and versus an artist as a manufactured product...

All this discussion could be perceived as one about the number of an angels on a pin point, but we humans are confronted not only with sophisticated tools that increase the distance between the spontaneous natural gesture of an artist and the end result but by his replication soon and hyjacking by A. I.

Is nature exist ?

or is it a matter of consumers choice, nothing else...Corporations think so...

Is a work of art a spiritual and body expression at his root or is it only a manufactured product ? Corporations think the second case is the crux of the matter ...

Corporations will disapear and even A.I. one day...Musicians will stay at the root of civilization integrated in Nature...😊

What does Christ have to do with digital pitch correction? Didn’t realize there was a theological aspect to it.

It is because i condensed deep matters in few lines..

I will help you...😊

Art is an expressive gesture controlled or uncontrolled , it is training related, and linked to the FREE WILL interiorization of the meaning which is at the same time produced and also perceived and expressed by the individualized fine tuning of the rythmical gesture ( for example speaking or singing with the WHOLE body ) ...

Then it is very important for esthetic and ethical reason to know if FREE WILL exist or better said can be created increasing the seed of consciousness on a higher level ...Art and spiritual life are based on free will and born from free will seeds ...

The will free itself and INDIVIDUALIZE itself when the thought content produced by the brain and filtered by it is UNDER CONTROL of the conscious intent in producing it and only it, in a word when an act is learned and repeated revealing an individuated intent ...The simplest example is a geometrical phenomenon perceived by the brain as a universal and at the same time individual content created by it : drawing a circle for example... Or the difference between hate which is an externally DETERMINED REACTION , an unconscious one; versus forgiveness which is a FREE act born from the internal third environment as distinct from the social environment and distinct from the physico-biological environment, this thirs environment is an internal CREATION not something given , it must be learned in a very different way than gesture are learned in the social environment by mere imitation ...Hate is a programmed reaction in a way forgiveness is not... To understand all history in this perspective read the book of the great sociologist Pitirim Sorokin among many others ...

Do you get it ?

😊

The interpretation and perception of an artistic gesture, as singing for example, ask for the more honest, integral , purest , body/brain/soul gesture not artificially boost nor recreated as a manufacture product but as a pure SPONTANEOUS expression of free will by the whole body/individuality...I spoke here about the most basic expressive art : body dynamic in speech/singing which act is at the origin of human evolution ...

Christ or Buddha or a sufi singing or A taoist expressive gesture are some examples of pure expression of truth and beauty ...It is also the same for a singer be it Billie Holiday or a Byzantine prayer...

An act of discourse in language develop itself on many IRREDUCIBLE levels simultaneously, (at least 2 levels which are the musical-poetic level and the prosaic-conventional level and all intermediary one extended in time and space ) to be conscious and free we must then  re-enact and interiorize these complex gestures on many levels ...

It is called education and art... This is very different of the manufacturing process whith a DSP of an artificial voice with the only goal to sell it...

All of what i spoke about here has nothing to do with taste for a manufactured  product ...

I hope i am clearer and you are now being able to guess what is at play in music or in  any art and why free will matter ...

The craftmanship is in the integrity of the work itself, not in his appreciation... This integrity in the case of singing is a trained gesture which is so specific for each voice that his "nuances" define the art itself versus a commercial product designed to be an artificially polished marchandise...

I doubt sufi singers, Indian traditional singers or classical singers or Billie Holiday will use this DSP for voice... They consider their gesture so "imperfect" it could be an ethical and an esthetical gesture not a product to be sell first and last...

Soon the "soul" of a person , his voice will be perfectly imitated and sold as a manufactured product by A. I. As the genes of any living being can already be sold... As seeds can be patented... This is not civilization, this is technocratic hell...

Saying this and criticizing all that it is not judging and condemning each consumer or those who eat the patented seeds, it is stating a very meaningful and powerful fact related to humanity future choices journey.. We must become conscious of what we eat and hear as of what we think...

I listen a philosopher this week who claim that human had no free will and i realized that this thinker i admired had no idea of what is free will ....He was confusing free will with the determinism acting on our choices... He was not conscious that we create our freedom , the question is not knowing if human had free will or not, the question is : which thought content will i put in my mind , in my most intimate home, this thought content is MY OWN FREE WILL CREATION and i will observe it , if i create hate i will stay a slave and if i created forgiveness i will liberate myself of any determinism...

Thinking is freeing ourself...Thinking is a real free or unfree gesture in the world it is a seed which will produce fruits...i can be posessed by my emotions and by another will than mine, or i can liberate my thought process in a complete free way as Christ and Buddha did and many others... Prayers and geometry are the same free will meditations...

We are free when we decide to be free not before...Even tortured and crucified we can be free, Christ did ...

I think my post is gone too far...

Art is a spontaneous and trained at the same time free will act not an artificial product but it can goes in this direction ...I can like some artificial product it does not means that i am wrong... But there is consequences to my free or unfree will choices...As i pick an object i pick my thought as i pick my thought i pick also a real object ...

😊

Consciousness result from the act by which we observe our own thought process and content AFTER we had produced it, then we can say it is me who think this ... Free will is born from this seed and the fruits coming from it ... 

Myself i need helium to fly and a vcoder to land in my living room with a voice...😊

I cannot fault you at all , on the contrary i think you are right...

It is one of the reason i cannot stand most actual pop music : artificiality...

I did not know about this  digital correcting  tool you spoke about before reading your post... And you are a singer.... That explain a lot for me about what i could not realize being not in this industry nor craftmanship ...Thanks to you...

People act like they’re owed everything.
They say, “iT tAkEs ToO LoNg aNd iT’s tOo eXpEnSiVe WiTh sTuDiO TiMe!”
- Well, you can practice a lot before you go to the studio, thereby limiting your studio time doing tons of takes and limiting the monetary cost. That’s called, “being professional.”

They act like they’re entitled to crank out sheer PRODUCT with as much ease as possible.

What really gets me is that it doesn’t sound better, either. It sounds worse.
Digital pitch correction is just bad. Full stop.

Very important observation for me...

I’ve never felt profound emotions with a vocal recording that used digital pitch correction.

Humans aren’t machines.
The human expression that occurs when a human sings is what we want to hear when we want to hear singing.
If we want to hear a synthesizer, we can listen to a synthesizer.
If the artist gives me a Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Daft Punk-type thing, I know what to expect.

If a person’s inability to sing on pitch is so problematic, why are they singing at all?

The moving pulse coming from an interpretation is located in this fine line or border between perfection and imperfection... If you artificially created "perfection" you loose the expressive vulnerability and the power of this internal struggle in the artistic gesture which is a tool in the artist body...If you dont master singing for sure "imperfection" as a constant state cannot be a transient expressive tool anymore used by the artist...

This pulsating borderline between perfection and imperfection is the key to the expression... This cannot be artificially created...

As said the great french poet René Char :

"Imperfection is the peak "