OK, slightly tongue in cheek but there is a serious question behind it...

Last week Dannii said something along the lines "I look forward to seeing you each week, but I wouldn't like to hear you on the radio". A fair point and I think a lot of people probably feel the same.

So should they happen to win is it technically possible to technically possible to auto-tune someone who sings that far off?

I've never looked into it but there must be practical limits and I'm sure the software is only really designed for expediency in the cases where people just hit the occasional slightly off note..

If you compare Katie Price singing live to Katie Price singing on CD, you will realise that there are NO limits...

Seriously, they will have no problems whatsoever to record something that will sound ok.

Look, if they can do it with Cheryl, there should be no problem

Paris Hilton..... lol

I am the worst singer ever but i could be made to sound decent..

Its amazingg what they do

someone give me a spanner and i'll give it a go!

most of the vocals in the charts are autotuned so jedward would be in good company.lol

Of course you can.

A couple of years ago I went to a Sugarbabes concert and they didn't sing a single note in tune - it was dire. Yet they sound ok on CDs so I assume the twins could be autotuned.

FIRSTLY: You pick or have written a tune within a narrow vocal range and then set it in a key that is suitable for them.

THEN you do enough takes repeating small sections until you get the note that is wanted. (The process in nothing like a live performance and you can spend days on a small section of a song and no one is going to ever hear the out-takes)

THEN and only then you apply Auto-tune to bring the notes into correct pitch perfectly. (Also timing of notes can be advanced or retarded)

But this is no different to what 99.9% of all recording singers do, it's just that some need less work, some need hardly any work and one or two are very gifted.

They will never be singing slow soft highly demanding songs, so a lot can be hidden in an up-tempo pop song with 10 backing singers belting out the chorus along with them.

But this is nothing new: The rest of the Beatles got Ringo to sing "With a little help from my friends" and they wrote it for him not to have a very big vocal range apart from the last note, which he complained about and took him several takes to get.

All that the public hear is the finished song where Ringo sings and hits to final note.

They are going to need major help then. Have you heard their recording of I want it that way, it was purely awful!

Of course they can, they could be made to sound like Pavarotti with today's technology, and as someone says even Cheryl sounds like she can sing on a recording, they can sound good, and when they are performing live they are so energetic and funny who cares about the singing.

The thing is people will often comment along those lines, so I suppose what I'm asking is whether the technology these days really is that good or bad depending on your viewpoint...

Other than comparing it with live performances as a few people have in this thread how easy is it to tell?

Slightly off topic and maybe it's only me, but I really miss the days where what you heard on record was the same as you would hear live warts and all.

Just make them sound like chimpmunks a la half the songs in the top 40.

their singing is actually not that terrible. i've listened to mp3's of them, and apart from "oops..." they're not as bad as some make out. so yeah, it would be totally possible to autotune them

The technology has not yet been invented, that could make the dual leaky bagpipes, sound like more than just stale and musty air.

Having said that, I do believe that there is one piece of technology that would help, not them, but us -- a Muffler.

You don't even have to do that. Do a couple of takes, and then you can cut up the track and manually tune any notes that are more than a semitone out to be within the right range before applying Autotune. Takes about a minute per note at most. Much quicker than spending days waiting for a take that's good enough.

And you're right about this not being anything new. Dusty Springfield notoriously used to record many of her songs one syllable at a time.


The answer is no. You can do all sorts of things to make sure that the vocals are in tune, you can double track them to make them seem fuller, you can EQ them to bring out certain frequencies, you can add harmonics, but you can still tell when someone is a weak singer, and you certainly can't replicate a talent like Pavarotti.

Cheryl Cole's single is a good example. She sounds perfectly passable, and is perfectly in tune throughout. But she doesn't sound like a strong vocalist. You can still tell that she's not great.


Well, you can Autotune live performances, too, so that's not really all that much of an indicator.

But, to answer your question, Autotune has a very distinctive sound, if you know what to listen out for. This video has someone demonstrating Autotune acapella, which shows you the kind of sound you should listen out for. Of course, he's using it with quite severe settings there, and it can be much more subtle and less rigid than that, but that video lets you know what it sounds like. If you listen out for it, you'll notice it in a lot of modern music.

Yeah, it'll easily be possible.

But I'd still like a good singer to win though!

Just to add to this with an example. Listen to this song and see if you can spot the Autotune.

Could be lots if it I suppose, the "I'm with you, yayyeh" around 2:10 sounds a bit suspect.

Their karaoke version of 'I Want It That Way' is here:

http://xfactorkaraoke.puresolo.com/users/4565


Before condemning it, listen to Joe and Lucie doing 'You're The One That I Want':

http://xfactorkaraoke.puresolo.com/users/4567


Undoubtedly, J&E could me made to sound o.k. with a little help from the techies.

BUT the question not being address is that what they are looking for in todays market is a saleable product.

Now there is no doubt that the likes of Steps, S-Club 28b and those horrors from High School Musical 47f can vaguely hold a tune, but those acts are absolutely nothing to do with singing. They are energetic, dance and strut around acts for the teenies. Nothing more and nothing less and they make millions from them. Far more than a reasonable straight singer.

And THAT is the bottom line: Many are reading far too much into this all. A saleable pop act is what is wanted, not hi-brow culture.

Was the "punk" of the early 80s anything at all to do with singing? No! But it sold and made a buck or two.

Would that be similar to an effect called "chorus"?

Thanks for that interesting piece on autotune. Made for a good read

I'd heard a lot about this particular musical application/add-on, but didn't know exactly what effect it would have on the overall vocal but that youtube clip clears it right up. The guy on the clip looks like he's using it in conjunction with a sequencer like Cubase or Fruity Loops.

You're right, it's very noticeable in a lot of modern day music, most notably Americanised RnB pop. It does rather have a distinctive, unique sound to it, and I can see other functional uses for this effect if used correctly, not just primarily for tuning vocals. It does jazz up the vocal a little, giving it that mechanical, robotic sound.

Listening back to 'Cher - Believe', I'm just curious to see whether her vocal was put through this application, because they do sound very similar.

Yes it wouldn't be particularly difficult to do. I'm pretty sure they've been autotuned already on the mimed group songs, check out week two.
EDIT: I've heard that they can also do it live now, in some cases, as well

Similar, although technically chorus is a certain kind of delay that gives the illusion of more than one voice (again, depending on exactly what settings there are). Again, chorus has a distinctive sound if you know what you're listening for.

Doubletracking is when you record the same vocals two or more times, to give it a fuller sound. And, of course, you can always get someone else singing them and add them in to the mix subtly, too.


That's actually different. Cher used a vocoder, which is a device that maps a synthesiser's output signal to the waveform of another signal (usually vocals). This will match the pitch of the vocals to whatever the synth is playing, as well as replacing the natural sound of the voice completely (depending on how much of the original vocal is left in the mix) with the sound generated by the synthesiser.

Autotune does sound a bit vocoder-like, but a vocoder is a different thing, used for different reasons.

I guess we'll find out when we get to hear the charity single hopefully? Unless they sing along with Kandy Rain/Miss Frank as a 'Group' bit. I hope they get a solo bit