I've been re-discovering 3121 and while listening to Incense & Candles, I noticed that P sounds like he's using autotune, especially during the rap.
This is the 1st time that I've really noticed his use of autotune.

Do ya'll know if he is actually using it in this song and has he used it in other songs? If so, which ones?

Incidentally - I'm not a fan of him using it; although I don't mind others (who don't sing well) using it. Shout out, Kanye!

I've noticed the same thing... He sounds like he's using the Auto-tune indeed... Though it's written nowhere in the credits...
..And of yeah, 80% of "Lotusflow3r/MPLSound" sounds like he's singing through autotune ("boom", "colonized mind" for instance and many other songs..)
... I don't know if he "moitted" to tell us that in the album credits or he's just fooling us
But I'm 100% thats Autotune you hear on "Incense and Candles"...

FrenchGuy said:

Oh no!!! Not Colonized Mind!!
WHY WHY WHY? He has such a great voice...or is he losing it in his old age? Hmmm....

Thanks, FrenchGuy!

CallMeCarrie said:

Wasn't it obvious he used autotune when 3121 came out?

It's not like it's a secret! It's even mentioned in old reviews of that album and the new one. One critic liked how he mixed an autotune track with a normal track of his voice.

ufoclub said:

Hmm...I guessed I missed it! I don't even think I knew what autotune was '06. It takes me a while, ufo! LOL

I don't think Prince was hiding it and even mentioned that he was playing around with some of software/studio tools, right?


It's very obvious in the lotusflow3r package that he was using it, but then again, I think Prince is sufficiently talented enough to not make it obvious if he wanted to.

He's an accomplished enough musician that I think nobody would accuse him of compensating for lack of talent.

Plus everyone is commenting on the "mis-use" of autotune that is now cool. This was a plugin/processor that was meant to make subtle corrrections to vocals/etc...

but producers figured out it sounded cool and robotic when it was jacked up to extreme levels... and now we have parody auto tune videos...

I realy cant stand auto-tune.

but it works at time

It's not an auto-tune. It's a vocoder effect.

Auto-tune literally tunes an out-of-tune note. Go listen to a Britney album. THAT is auto-tune.

What T-Pain and those fuckers do are the same thing Roger and Zapp revolutionized music with in the 70's and 80's - which is a vocoder. Even Bon Jovi, and Kid Rock have used that.

^^^
them fuckers do not do what roger did...

you have to actualy play the vocoder (talk-box)
the only thing these fuckers play with is there dicks.

ernestsewell said:

Actually, it is autotune. You can hear the rapid pitch changes. Vocoders do not do that. They effect timbre only. This effect is achieved by setting the key of the autotuner one half step lower than the key of the song so you get this sudden fluxuation in pitch. Also, if I'm assuming correctly, the Bon Jovi song you may be referring to is Living on a Prayer??? That is actually a talk box which is not a vocoder.
[Edited 4/8/10 12:06pm]

^Totally correct.

Vocoder and Talk Box (which was what ZAPP/Roger used) have nothing in common.

And none of them has anything in common with that fucking Auto-Tune, which is what Prince uses as of late.

How lame that he's using that resource just to sound 'in sync' with the poor r&b of today!

vitriol said:

apparently it works. the 25 year old I work with and drive home every day has become something of a Prince fan since I picked up on listening to him again. he comes from listening almost exclusively to rap and modern radio's version of r&b one of the songs that did it for him? Incense & Candles.

^Oh, no!

Please, don't post things like that. Prince (or someone in his camp) might read it and therefore keep on using it!!

i might get reamed for saying this but... prince's flow on incence and candles was real good.

I absolutely LOATHE that song.

i love this song!

FrenchGuy said:

Autotune isn't an instrument: it's an effect. Therefore there's absolutely no reason to specify using it on a record's credits (or you'd have to mention every pedal and effect used on every guitar, linn and keyboard parts as well, which would be ridiculous)^^

yeah, i think Prince uses it much like the camille/bob george vocal effects he uses to alter his voice - it's not used to make his 'out of tune voice' sound ok as many pop stars use would do, it's just meant to add something extra or interesting into the mix - no one would say Prince really lost it on Erotic City with that sped up vocal - he must have been hiding a bad vocal.

it seems it's cool on 3121, pfunk or crimson and clover but not when it's used on an RnB song?

^The voice of Camille has got nothing to do with the horror of the AT.

The Camille tracks rank amongst Prince's finest efforts ever, imho.

nyse said:

I agree with you, nyse. I was pleasantly surprised with it, since I have historically hated with great passion any time he has attempted it in the past!
It sounded a ton more authentic on I & C, when in the past I felt like he was just doing it (poorly) because he thought it was the new hot music trend.

I guess that's what he is doing with the auto-tune - trying to tag along with what he thinks is fresh with pop music today. Ugh
[Edited 4/11/10 6:05am]

lotusflw3r said:

I don't know, lotusflw3r - I think I agree with vitriol on this one. It doesn't seem like he is using it the same way he uses Camille or the obvious distortion with the sped up erotic city. In I&C it is a subtle part of the song, not the in-your-face-my-voice-is-trippy obvious way with Camille.
[Edited 4/11/10 6:06am]

The voice of Camille (or that on Boy George) was made by altering the speed of the tape during recording and playing it back at normal speed.

Auto-Tune, as stated above, is a plug-in at first created to correct the vocals of non-extraordinary singers and later used to degenerate vocals in a 'fashionable' way.

FrenchGuy said:

It's not like he can't just re-record the vocals over and over till he gets it right. If he were warmed up and he just had to get it right once on tape, I'm sure he could sing pretty much anything.

In short, no excuse.

Just wanted to say again what others have said. Roger Troutman , Teddy Riley, Stevie Wonder and Frampton used talk boxes , which are triggered via a keyboard or guitar. Roger actually built his own talk boxes.Totally different from a vocoder which Soul Sonic Force , Kraftwerk , Egyptian Lover and tons of others used. T Pain doesnt deserve to be mentioned amongst the likes of Roger.....

OK, time for the lesson.


1) Antares Auto-Tune


Looks like this:



Auto-mated (although there is a manual option) pitch-correction software. Set the "Retune Speed" to Fast and "Tracking" to choosy to get the "T-Pain" effect. Popularized in the late 90's from Cher's song "Believe". Picked up by hip-hop and R&B artists a couple of years later, most notably by the aforementioned T-Pain.

Sounds like this (Since everybody in the world knows what the original vocal of this sounds like I figured it would be a good example)



This is what Prince used on "Incense & Candles" although to my ears he used a combination of that and this:

2) Vocoder




My cousin has this exact synth and we use it in our live shows.

There are various kinds of vocoder, both hardware and software, but in layman's terms, what you're doing with a vocoder is blending your voice and words with the sound of the synthesizer.

KORG make the best hardware vocoders. Here's one of their original ones:



German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk really popularized the vocoder in their music and I believe even invented several of their own. If some of you guys aren't familiar with Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambataa sampled their track "Trans Europe Express" for "Planet Rock". Here's Kraftwerk member Florian Schneider's "Electronic Poem" - it's just vocals on a vocoder, no music, so you guys can really get a feel of what a vocoder sounds like:



One of the more popular software vocoders is one called "Orange Vocoder" - I know the sound of this vocoder very well, and to my ears, Prince's vocal on "Incense & Candles" was first autotuned and then processed with this:



I could be wrong with that, but that's what it sounds like to me.

and finally, saving the best for last:

3) Talkbox

One name defines Talkbox more than any other - ROGER TROUTMAN.

Before Roger, Stevie Wonder and Peter Frampton had used the talkbox to a degree. But Roger used it almost exclusively on all 5 albums by his band "Zapp", and his solo albums also, such as "The Many Facets of Roger", and "Unlimited!"

All of you reading this, I'm sure must be familiar with at least one of the following songs:

Zapp's "Computer Love", "More Bounce To The Ounce", "Dance Floor", "Be Alright", "I Can Make You Dance", "Heartbreaker"

Roger's "So Ruff, So Tuff", "I Wanna Be Your Man", "Do It Roger"....

2Pac, Dr. Dre and Roger's "California Love".

Well, that's a talkbox and it looks like this:



That is just one brand. Here's another:



I believe my cousin has both kinds of those. (We're talkbox junkies )

It was designed to be used with a guitar. However, the defining "Roger" sound came from hooking it together with a Moog synthesizer. That's how you get it to sound like this:



Roger generally had custom-built setups with Moog keyboards and talkboxes, one on each side of the stage so he could switch positions at different points.

This is the hardest out of the three to master - because it requires you to play the actual notes of the connected instrument whilst mouthing the words with the tube in your mouth. It also has the best sound of the three, when done properly.

School's out!!!!
[Edited 4/8/10 19:09pm]

^^^
you are officialy the man with a post like that !!!