The sound of pitch correction has become a "musical" style by itself, especially in Hippity Hop. I don't listen to pop music much at all except accidentally as I'm too into what I like (mostly jazz), although once in a while a decent band comes along like the Landreth Brothers or somebody with good musicianship but still...meh...I've been a musician a long time and have known or worked with lots of remarkably great singers and none of them needed pitch correction. Guitar tuning maybe...even ol' Bob Dylan with his "barely there" croaky voice generally stays in tune. Am I worried about it? No. I mix small venue shows and you can get off the couch and hit a little club (if one exists near you) and hear some real singers...try that.
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.