After Taylor's 2010 Grammy performance, do the Grammys even allow auto-tune? I'd think not. After seeing over 80 shows last year, most of them bland, filtered and too enhanced, I think there should be one live show a year where the performers couldn't use vocal enhancing auto-tune or backing tracks (unless they are doing a Believe cover lol). It's scary to think that a generation of kids are now programmed to hear manufactured perfect pitch. They must think the Beatles sound flat as hell. This line from a recent article struck me about the prevalence of auto-tune in the business:
Everybody uses it
“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.
Bummer.

Quite a few use it but some refuse to. As an example Claude Kelly, who co-writes and helped produce Jessie J's second album, wrote on his tumblr that she refuses to work with auto tune as she doesn't want to get in the habit of relying on it instead of actually hitting the notes. Her mic feeds that have been released backs up that she actually does hit the notes in her songs.

That's cool. I remember seeing Rihanna during the monster tour and her mic is down by her side and her voice is still coming out in backing tracks (and this is how it's been with the majority of shows I saw this year), and then she does a 180 and sings Stay seemingly solo. You could hear the off notes and raw sound and the song was so much better for it. And who knows what was real or not.
There is so much smoke and mirrors out there now. Music probably is more about how you look and the writers/producers you have. There are singers still around. Sia, Adele, Pink, and the like. Just wish we had one nationwide award show that stripped the smoke and mirrors back for a night. When you see these award winning pop singers, at the top of their game, having their mics isolated, and you hear them exposed, it just seems so shallow and processed.

Just think how hilarious it's going to be in years to come, when they have one of those programmes similar to the Blondie one about the making of Parallel Lines.

The bits where the producer sits at the mixing desk, isolating the vocal track with the faders is going to be pure comedy gold

In any case, most of those processed vocals don't really sound in tune, more like they've been triple-tracked slightly out of phase and then relayed through half a mile of wide bore steel sewer pipe.

That would be great if we did. Apparently Rihanna has been working a lot with a vocal coach for the past year or so and I think she is much better for it. She was great at the Concert For Valor.

I saw some really good comments about Autotune on musicians website Gearslutz not so long ago. The website is basically just a place where everybody from hobbyist musicians like myself to big name producers congregate to talk about the latest kit.

Anyway, some of the producer guys had started a thread on Autotune and the general consensus seemed to be they utterly HATE having to use the effect on records. Most of them regard it as a pitifully awful effect. Lets face it, you can tell when its been used cause it makes those horrible Keisha warbling effect sounds.

BUT (this is the revealing bit) the reason they use it is because the computers they record everything to these days give read outs of whether everything is (supposedly) perfectly in tune.

Now these producers know there is a world of difference between someone that can't sing and a highly talented singer intentionally singing a "blue note" (that's pitching something flat for a vocal effect) or putting vibrato on a note. But because their record company bosses can see these read outs too, this is why they use it.

They are all terrified that if they don't use it in a mix, another guy will and will take work off them. So they slap that autotune effect on everything now whether it needs it or not, because they want to keep getting paid.

As well as that, a lot of singers themselves are apparently utterly paranoid and terrified beyond belief that if they don't sound computer "perfect" people will regard them badly.

So really its just this whole lot of paranoia driving its use in music.

That just sucks Dragon Lance. No turning back.
The Grammy award for Pop Solo Performance should possibly be open to the producer instead of the singer in certain cases. Not to single out Taylor for any other reason then Shake it Off is nominated for Pop Solo Performance (which seems like an oxymoron somewhere in there), but after hearing the isolated vocals of her performance at VMAs of Shake It Off, you have to think that the producers should be listed for that award. Or maybe a vocal performance nomination should be vetted more.

That would be hilarious! I think Chris Guest and pals should have a go at it if nothing else.

I wonder if threads like this contribute to that sense of paranoia?

The whole concept of recorded music is built on the use of technology, so I think you might need to broaden the discussion a little. Do you only worry about the use of autotune on the voice?

The music in modern pop songs can be entirely synthesised these days which has at least two consequences. Firsty, it means non-musicians can make beats and then call themselves musicians (cynical view) and, secondly, modern music tends towards the generic. It intrigues me that people think the voice must remain 'natural' in this synthetic world of music.

I'm a little more forgiving if I think someone is actually being creative. I also believe that much of the music I like is based on the creativity of he writer rather than purely technical skills. Technical in this case being their ability to use a computer or to pitch a note.

The demand for perfection from consumers has driven the music market towards auto-tune. Every singer, band performer has had bad performances when they are suffering minor ailments colds etc. especially when on huge scale world tours. Unfortunately due to mobile recording equipment etc performers are all petrified of having a bad performance. They can perform 100 shows 99 of those perfect the one show that sucks is the one performance that globally is posted and has the most hits. It the one performance that recieves the most plays, headlines, media attention and is the clip everyone then refers to as how bad the tour was.
As media is now instant and there is no way of removing it once one copy is uploaded and it goes viral there is a huge fear in the music market as it can immediatly destroy a career. Live performances years ago you were searches cameras or any form of recording equipment was banned. However devices are so small everyone has mobiles etc that it has put such pressure on the music industry to perform perfectly. Realistically no one sounds as good live as a studio recorded song for obvious reasons. Three months or even three days tweaking a song in a studio editing different recording takes. Whilst live you have to deliver from start to end continuesly hence the hero that was auto tune. the consumer has become less forgiving and expectations higher. Especially in the younger music market. Twitter, facebook, YouTube etc can create a star immediatly but it can also destroy a career immeditaly. How many times are fake recordings posted online apparently of a singer performing horrifically because the actual user has tweaked the audio as they dislike or have some sort of grudge against the singer. It's a bit like photo shopping them into pornographic shots. As technology gets easier, faster and more effective the more difficult it is to actually know what is original and what has been tampered with so the industry tries to ensure perfection.

This is the problem - Acts shouldn't sound the same on stage as on record, In a live environment the songs should be aloud to breathe, experimented with and be looser and more fun. Go see The Boss or Pearl Jam live if you want to see acts who understand what playing live in truly about.

Kelly Clarkson doesn't use Auto-Tune. She doesn't need it.

Robot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8wTqubihR8

I'm confused as to why people think that the "Grammy's don't allow" something. Mariah Carey lipped her 2006 performance (well, sections of it)... What makes people think it's not allowed?

This. I love it when singers change things up unexpectedly, add a different ad lib in here and there to the ones on record, or forget lyrics (Kelly Clarkson is known for this, and is incredibly good at making things up on the spot and still keeping the story of the song going)

The question is should they allow it.

I understand that much of music is technology. I don't dispute or criticize that. There's a whole genre of music out there that comes from a computer board. The conversation is narrowed down to vocals, specifically using auto tune to improve their voice to pitch perfect. Almost phoning it in so to speak in one take. And I think what really bothers me is when they use it live. Recorded, everyone kind of thinks it's being helped along in the studio ("that's why they don't sound as good live"). I can't tell you how many people I talk to at shows that go on and on about how good the singer sounds that night. I just roll my eyes. Seriously, take a look at where the mic is and how she doesn't sound out of breath singing during those dance moves. It's dumbed live music down and made it bland and generic. It's not live anymore. How freaking predicable and boring.
Singers don't sound as good live, it's true. Sometimes they sound better. Hozier sounds better to me live, Adele does, Tom Odell. Pink, cos she sounds perfect upside down. Sia cos she changes notes up and adds edge. It's why we go see live music.

People think Autotune performs miracles. It can only correct within a couple of semi-tones that the untrained ear wouldn't even notice, and when used live is utterly terrible.

Also, it's incorrect to say Believe used Autotune - it actually used a vocoder which is completely different.

I don't think it performs miracles. I think it puts a pitchy, off key voice in perfect pitch. Even I could sing now apparently. And if it doesn't make a difference and the untrained ear can't hear it anyway, why use it at all?
Here's TS lip-syncing and backing track her way through the VMAS. This vocal performance is nominated for a Grammy.
http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/tay...ate-1626334694
To be honest, she kind of sucked with the smoke and mirrors as well. Here's what we saw and heard at home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmtWfCjXlgY
There's only so much technology can do after all.

You are still only concerned with the singers, what about the rest of the music? Most of the music with DJs and dance acts is simply computer music. Where is the expression in this? Is performance limited simply to vocals? I don't think so.

Yes, it is dumbed down. I don't like autotune unless it is used creatively. But it's the whole thing not just the vocals. We have DJs elevated to musicians who do little more than press buttons and wave their hands.

Then I go and watch Van the Man, every song is re-interpreted sometimes in the moment, every musician on the stage has to know every one of Van's songs and they'll be out of the band if they don't. And Van has been doing this since the early 60s.

Yep. She actually wrote and released a song called 'Wash, Rinse, Repeat' taking the piss out of the use of auto-tune in music. It was also around the time of the whole Ryan Tedder/Already Gone/Halo fiasco where she slags off producers selling the same beat to two artists ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAkOIyGHz8I

Some really great comments on this thread! Very true points about how the tastes of consumers of music today have perhaps pushed artists towards pursuing the fake and artificial rather than live and raw.

That comment about overrating auto tune is a very good one too. I would have thought it’s an accident waiting to happen used live and lets face it, it’s not a magic wand in the studio. It’s good for a small patch up or to add the Keisha effect to vocals but nothing more. People that can't sing are I am afraid beyond help in that regard.

And as others have said much of the time it’s been deployed to correct "tuning" problems that are inaudible to the human ear because they are only "cents" out anyway. The mechanical sound of the human voice being redrawn in an abnormally perfect sound curve quite often sounds worse than any perceived tuning defect.

Also on the subject of paranoia this time working the other way; perhaps part of the problem is that Joe Public hears about all this kit that gets used in the studio and thinks he's automatically somehow getting cheated, tricked or ripped off. Lot of it goes back to the Milli Vanilli scandal and years & years of various artists miming on pop shows. X-Factor further compounded the problem by treating contestants vocals to make them sound better or worse. Joe Public has never trusted the recording industry since!

I think what people don't get is just because it's called "Vocal Performance" or "Pop Vocal Album" doesn't award you on the quality of your voice, it simply means it's a song or album with vocals.

It's easy to generalise, but I'm sure there's a few million selling singers, whose vocal training was basically "standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a hair brush in their hand singing along to a Britney Spears record."

The voice is a "musical instrument," that has to be used well and that takes years of training unless the person is truly gifted and I think there aren't that many of those.
Some of the problems as they are for musicians who play wind instuments are, pitch and "long tones."

The classic "standards" singer of the fifties and sixties, served their time as vocalists in the big bands of the day before going solo. So often a decade or more of experience.

As has been mentioned, there's so much that can be done electronically these days.

The "backing" by professional musicians can usually be done in one or two takes, mostly one. Take the "Strictly Come Dancing" band. They get not much more than a day's notice of the tunes they are to play, run a dozen of them through Saturday morning and then are note perfect most of the time "live" on Saturday night.

Once the backing for a recording has been made. The singer just has to sing along with it.
As has been said, any mistakes can be rectified. "Just sing bars 9 to 12 again,, love" These can be stitched in. As for being off tune or "broken" notes, these can be digitally corrected. It's so much cheaper than studio time.

These days with many performances, they just mime. "Dolly Parton takes some of her recorded vocals from concert to concert."