Are you as sick of this sound as I am!!!??? PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!!!


What Is A Vocoder?
A vocoder is a sound effect that can make a human voice sound synthetic. It is often used to speak like a robot, with a metallic and monotonous voice.

THIS HAS TO BE THE WORSE EVER??

http://www.youtube.com/wa...Yc875zkDxg


[Edited 4/8/09 7:41am]

Thank you for using the CORRECT name for it. It's not autotune, it's a VOCODER

bboy87 said:

Maybe I should have called this thread, T-Pain in my ass!
Please make it stop!

bboy87 said:

http://www.youtube.com/wa...5bKBvPCX18

Start at 1:35

Auto-Tune

Developed by : Antares Audio Technologies
Initial release : 1994
Latest release : 5
Operating system : Microsoft Windows / Mac OS X
Type : Autotuner
License : Proprietary
Website : www.antarestech.com


Auto-Tune is a proprietary audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies that uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed many artists to produce more precisely tuned recordings.
In addition to being used to subtly change pitch, with some settings it can be used as an effect to deliberately distort the human voice.
Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for professional audio multi-tracking suites used in a studio setting, and as a stand-alone, rack-mounted unit for live performance processing. Auto-Tune has become standard equipment in professional recording studios.
Auto-Tune was initially created by Andy Hildebrand. Hildebrand realized the work that he did on seismic data exploration was applicable to detecting pitch.

Auto-Tune was used to produce the prominent effect on Cher's "Believe", recorded in 1998. When first interviewed about this, the sound engineers claimed that they had used a vocoder, in what Sound on Sound perceives as an attempt to preserve a trade secret.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune









Vocoder

IPA: [ˈvoʊkoʊdər] (a portmanteau of the words voice and encoder), is an analysis / synthesis system, mostly used for speech in which the input is passed through a multiband filter, each filter is passed through an envelope follower, the control signals from the envelope followers are communicated, and the decoder applies these (amplitude) control signals to corresponding filters in the (re)synthesizer.
It was originally developed as a speech coder for telecommunications applications in the 1930s, the idea being to code speech for transmission. Its primary use in this fashion is for secure radio communication, where voice has to be encrypted and then transmitted. The advantage of this method of "encryption" is that no 'signal' is sent, but rather envelopes of the bandpass filters. The receiving unit needs to be set up in the same channel configuration to resynthesize a version of the original signal spectrum. The vocoder as both hardware and software has also been used extensively as an electronic musical instrument.
The vocoder is related to, but essentially different from, the computer algorithm known as the "phase vocoder".
Whereas the vocoder analyzes speech, transforms it into electronically transmitted information, and recreates it, the voder (from Voice Operating Demonstrator) generates synthesized speech by means of a console with fifteen touch-sensitive keys and a foot pedal, basically consisting of the "second half" of the vocoder, but with manual filter controls, needing a highly trained operator.

Vocoder theory

The human voice consists of sounds generated by the opening and closing of the glottis by the vocal cords, which produces a periodic waveform with many harmonics. This basic sound is then filtered by the nose and throat (a complicated resonant piping system) to produce differences in harmonic content (formants) in a controlled way, creating the wide variety of sounds used in speech. There is another set of sounds, known as the unvoiced and plosive sounds, which are not modified by the mouth in the same fashion.
The vocoder examines speech by finding this basic carrier wave, which is at the fundamental frequency, and measuring how its spectral characteristics are changed over time. This results in a series of numbers representing these modified frequencies at any particular time as the user speaks. In doing so, the vocoder dramatically reduces the amount of information needed to store speech, from a complete recording to a series of numbers. To recreate speech, the vocoder simply reverses the process, creating the fundamental frequency in an oscillator, then passing it through a stage that filters the frequency content based on the originally recorded series of numbers.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocoder









Talk Box

A talk box is an effects device that allows a musician to modify the sound of a musical instrument. The musician controls the modification by lip syncing, or by changing the shape of their mouth.


Wes Boxx Pro TalkBox

The effect can be used to shape the frequency content of the sound and to apply speech sounds (in the same way as singing) onto a musical instrument, typically a guitar (its non-guitar use is often confused with the vocoder) and keyboards.
A talk box is usually an effects pedal that sits on the floor and contains a speaker attached with an air tight connection to a plastic tube, although it can come in other forms, such as the 'Ghetto Talkbox' (a homemade version which is usually crude) or higher quality custom made versions. The speaker is generally in the form of a horn driver, the sound generating part of a horn speaker with the horn replaced by the tube connection.
The box has connectors for the connection to the speaker output of an amplifier and a connection to a normal instrument speaker. A foot-operated switch on the box directs the sound either to the talkbox speaker or to the normal speaker. The switch is usually a push-on/push-off type. The other end of the tube is taped to the side of a microphone, extending enough to direct the reproduced sound in or near the performer's mouth.
When activated, the sound from the amplifier is reproduced by the speaker in the talkbox and directed through the tube into the performer's mouth. The shape of the mouth filters the sound, with the modified sound being picked up by the microphone. The shape of the mouth changes the harmonic content of the sound in the same way it affects the harmonic content generated by the vocal folds when speaking.
The performer can vary the shape of the mouth and position of the tongue, changing the sound of the instrument being reproduced by the talkbox speaker. The performer can mouth words, with the resulting effect sounding as though the instrument is speaking. This "shaped" sound exits the performer's mouth, and when it enters a microphone, an instrument/voice hybrid is heard.
The sound can be that of any musical instrument, but the effect is most commonly associated with the guitar. The rich harmonics of an electric guitar are shaped by the mouth producing a sound very similar to voice, effectively allowing the guitar to appear to "speak".





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_box


[Edited 4/9/09 8:46am]

Yes it is autotune in most all cases, used 4 effect.

If it WERE a Vocoder or a Talk Box, I'd be all 4 it.

I gotta say though, that Prince has made it bearable and interesting in his use.

They should stop talentless people from using autotune, vocoder and talkbox and leave it to the professionals (Herbie, Prince, Stevie, Peter, Teddy, the guys who did it from Midnight Starr and One Way). RIP Roger.
[Edited 4/9/09 9:31am]

this has been the most educational vocoder/autotune thread I've seen in a while!

Timmy84 said:

Yeah, but i think the overall use these days is autotune, like Giovanni777 explained. For a Vocoder and Talk Box you'll mostly have
to be able playing keyboards as well. With autotune you sing in the microphone and transform it afterwards with a software program.

And although in that T-Pain interview above, the interviewer stated that T-Pain made autotune populair around 2003, it was Cher's "Believe" from 1998 which was one of the first releases using it.

Shango said:

Yeah, that's basically what autotune is. You have to play an instrument to use the vocoder or the talkbox.

thekidsgirl said:

Shango said:

LOL!

Giovanni777 said:

NO

HE

HASN'T




He sounds like a generic knockoff using this stupid crap. I hate this effect and damn Cher for unleashing it on the music world

thekidsgirl said:

Has there been others???!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

well any thread about T-pain places a passive-agressive attack on autotune

Shango said:

Shango said:

Thanks for doing this again.
I did a similar detailed breakdown a few months ago.

Taking a deeper look at this subject, here's an article from the "INSESSION" column (Nathaniel Kunkel) in the April '09 edition of Electronic Musician...

Auto-Tune and Melodyne: if you ask a well-respected singer, they are four-letter words. If you ask a not-so-good singer, and they answer you honestly, they will probably tell you that it is the only reason they have a chance of being on the radio at all. More important, if you ask the record-listening public, they have no idea what you mean. Well, that is changing.

I recently got an email from Antares (the makers of Auto-Tune) telling me about all the exposure that Auto-Tune has been getting in the press. I know why they are happy about it. I just don’t know if it’s a good thing. One of the keys to Auto-Tune’s original success was that no one knew about it—in some cases, not even the singer it was used on.

This public airing of the music business’s dirty little secret started with a New Yorker article by Sasha Frere-Jones. When most people are able to grasp what Auto-Tune does, they get disheartened, if not disgusted. Not one person I have asked thinks that this trend of “Tune everything” is cool. While record executives were thinking that all listeners wanted was a hot young artist singing a hit song, they forgot about one important issue: they were lying to their customers. Most people who buy that hot new twenty-something’s release actually think the person can really sing like that. No offense, but no one sings like that. Remember how much everyone loved Milli Vanilli before it was exposed that they did not sing on their own album? How fast was their fall from grace? Is there a difference between Milli Vanilli and a singer who has every word rephrased and tuned? If a tuned vocal is credited solely to the singer, should the keyboard player who uses Vienna Symphonic Library string samples credit the Vienna Orchestra exclusively?

While many artists can make a record without using Auto-Tune, almost every new release currently on popular radio is tuned, even if only a little bit. (Sometimes more than you could ever imagine.) One observation I have made is that some singers have been getting tuned for so long that they actually think they sound that way. I have worked with singers who issue a “Never tune me” order and then reject every comp until they are tuned and phrased clandestinely. The denial is spectacular.

Well, that’s not the case with the public. If our last election showed us anything, it’s that we as a society are trying to face the truth. Our truth is that singing talent is less necessary than ever to make a hit record. Most of these high school kids actually can sing as well as the “stars” whose albums they buy.

Remember when Ashley Simpson was caught lip-syncing on Saturday Night Live? You think she was the first? She just got caught. How about the recent Kanye West performance on SNL? He didn’t even try to hide the fact that he uses live tuning and backing tracks.

So maybe Antares’s press isn’t as good as they think. People appreciate real talent as much as they disdain dishonesty, and that’s all a tuned vocal passed off as real currently is.

I think we are about to witness a significant shift in most listeners’ expectations. I think music lovers are soon going to demand real performances if they are going to turn over their hard-earned respect. But who ever said that listeners need to respect the people who make the music? Why can’t they just like the music and buy it? The truth is, that is exactly what happens. People seem to care about the man behind the curtain only if they are forced to. Again, Ms. Simpson and the duo Vanilli prove the point.

Well, thanks to Antares’s press intentions and The New Yorker (among many others), we are about to be forced to publicly acknowledge vocal manipulation in a much more all-encompassing way than before. It seems that one of the more relevant things to point out is that we are all used to it. We have all become so accustomed to hearing perfect music that it’s hard to listen to old stuff sometimes. Don’t get me wrong: I love to listen to old records. But now when I turn on an old record after listening to new stuff for a while, it can sound so out of tune. After three or four listens, I am back in the zone where I can listen without being drawn to the tuning issue anymore, but that first playback can really make me aware of how “perfect” music has become.

I was just talking with a friend of mine who is a working engineer, and his experiences were so interesting and revealing that I just had to quote him:

“I think artists like the sound of being tuned. They try to sing the way a tuned vocal sounds. It’s not possible, as we all know. One band I recently worked with didn’t want to hear their vocals until after they were tuned. Before I would play it back, the singer asked if I did ‘it’ yet. After I played the song, he would say, ‘I love the way I sound Melodyned!’

“Akon recently said he wants credit when someone uses Auto-Tune the way he does. First, he wasn’t the first to do it. Second, he is proud of it. Those of us who use Auto-Tune for a living know you get the effect he is talking about by recording a very out-of-tune vocal and then using Auto-Tune set ‘wrong.’ People want to sound fake! You asked about Milli Vanilli; at least someone actually sang their songs! [Well-known singer A] and [well-known singer B] do basically the same thing as Milli Vanilli, but they get away with it by also having a highly timed and tuned part of theirs, not possible for them to sing, mixed in low and blended to make it sound like them. People don’t know that they only hear tuned vocals. They still think that the bands they listen to can sing the songs the way they are on the album. I myself am guilty of being too accustomed to listening to tuned vocals. That’s why I rarely go see bands play live anymore. Most can’t even come close to doing it live. Well, at least not without prerecorded tracks.”

There is another dynamic. Some singers not only know about Auto-Tune and Melodyne, but they also insist that the software be used on their vocals before hearing them. They consider their instrument incomplete without tuning and processing. I don’t think that’s a bad thing—it’s the natural evolution of a generation of people who grew up with the combination of listening to tuning all the time and not being afraid of embracing technology.

Here is an interesting question: before we give a Grammy Award for a vocal performance, shouldn’t the nominee need to be able to prove that they actually sang the performance that was nominated? Should we give the Pro Tools engineer a vocal Grammy, too? It sure would be telling who opposes that idea.

Anyone who has seen a deal that labels are signing these days has noticed that they are 360 deals (that is, they take a part of the entire earning potential of the artist album sales, publishing, performance fees, all of it). Being able to perform live (without a net) might soon be as important as it was in the ’70s and ’80s, because all of your live revenue will be up for grabs, be it ticket or merchandise income. It could soon be that if a singer cannot perform adequately without being tuned, they might not look as attractive to a label anymore.

So what’s it going to be? The perfect stuff we are used to, or the organic stuff human beings can actually make? Because we are going to have to make a choice now that we are being forced to acknowledge tuning as the facet of popular culture it has become. Until now, we have all been blissfully ignorant of the fact that those two choices are mutually exclusive.

Perhaps we will soon think of older projects with untuned vocals and imperfect tracks just like we think of albums made before we could punch in on a multitrack. Cool in a nostalgic kind of way, but not anything we would ever want to do again. Would that be the loss of an art form, or would that be progress? Or both? Because it seems the current reality is that those two choices are not mutually exclusive.

http://emusician.com/inte...und-great/
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

You're welcome, and thank you too for adding that good review.
A buddy of mine who makes radioshows and jingles, showed me last year an online Melodyne-tutorial ... very interesting.

BlaqueKnight said:

He is right. But to tell you the truth I noticed that most of the people who use autotune now can't sing worth a lick.

Timmy84 said:

They can't and are any of us having any issues listening to the old stuff? I'm not

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Me either. I listen to "old music" all day. Fuck today's...stuff.
[Edited 4/9/09 14:59pm]
[Edited 4/9/09 14:59pm]

Timmy84 said:

I feel like my mom cuz I totally live in the past

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

Shit I always felt older than I was. Even when I did like some new stuff, I always went back to the old ones. I hardly play the new Janet CDs anymore but you can bet "Control" or "Rhythm Nation" will be played before the latest one does, lol.

Timmy84 said:

I do too 80% of the time. I took my little nephew to the park yesterday
and he forced me to listen to beyawnce and T.I. I damn near broke out
in hives.

phunkdaddy said:

If I hear the current stuff, I be like "eh..." And I'll be like "man I can't wait to get home..."

Shango said:

My pleasure.

A very high-tech tool that has deep applications way beyond doctoring bad vocals.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

BlaqueKnight said:

I'd agree.
If you don't know any better (no point of reference beyond the present), you'd think it's quite "normal".

tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

You have to consider the writer's perspective as he's a Grammy/Emmy winning producer/engineer that has to listen to these techniques in studios all the time.

In that situation (a highly "critical listening" environment) your ear starts to adjust to that sound as the norm, requiring some recovery time.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

I'm almost 25 and I don't think today's stuff can even be considered "normal". I'm out of sync with my generation that likes that crap.