Auto-Tune Makes Another Music Career: Meet The Gregory Brothers
WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN: Since Auto-Tune The News #1 hit back in April ’09, the series’ creators — the Brooklyn-based Gregory Brothers — went from being a young, indie-soul band with a new EP to an overnight Internet sensation. Done in a format they call “news opera,” Auto-Tune The News (ATTN) is web-video-musical series created using Auto-Tune (and other less ubiquitous tools) to process vocal clips from the news into full-on musical performances, à la T-Pain.
“The Gregory Brothers” (l-r) Andrew, Evan, Michael and Sarah Gregory
The latest installment, ATTN #8, actually features T-Pain himself, who — in effect — duets with Michael Gregory and Katie Couric.
“Turns out T-Pain actually has a really nerdy sense of humor just like us,” says Michael, the youngest Gregory Brother, whose musical exploration of the presidential debates via YouTube laid the groundwork for ATTN.
“T-Pain saw the videos and wanted to collaborate with us. Here we thought he might even have beef with what we were doing, but I guess he sees it as imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.”
While The Gregory Brothers’ brand of blue-eyed soul music showcases their impressive R&B chops and affinity for Stax and Motown records, ATTN shows an entirely other side of this family band, one that’s hopped up on beats, hooky-electro melodies and vocoded rap-singing silliness. Via audio/video trickery, the Gregory Brothers and stand-out singer Sarah Gregory (wife and sis-in-law) appear in these news mash-ups alongside an unknowing cast of characters, including Katie Couric, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Rachel Maddow.
WORKING WITH THE BEST UNINTENTIONAL SINGERS
The Gregory Brothers are constantly writing music and making beats to fuel ATTN tracks. The video work, editing news footage and their own video antics in Final Cut Pro, is ongoing as well. “We keep an eye out for crazy news pieces,” says Michael. “But non-crazy stories also have a place in our songs, and can even be more humorous if the unintentional singers are talented because the mundane becomes epic (i.e. Ron Paul’s “Ya Gotta Believe In It” chorus of Episode #3.)”
“Unintentional Singers” are the newsmen, pundits and politicians whose sound-bites become the featured vocals in these songs. It’s not just anyone that can be Auto-Tuned so musically. Evan Gregory describes, “The better a speaker you are, the better an unintentional singer. Like Joe Biden — he’s so emotionally invested and energetic; his words are protracted and drawn out. We’re able to work it to music really well.”
With powerful speakers and inspirational speeches, Auto-Tune can work wonders, notes Andrew Gregory. “Probably the greatest performance of an unintentional singer is Martin Luther King Jr. Michael did a treatment of his ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. It works really well because the words are so lyrical and it’s written almost in a song structure, with refrains that build.”
In comparison, Katie Couric is, perhaps, an unlikely ATTN star. “Katie Couric is great,” says Michael. “She speaks with a lot of clarity. There’s a natural cadence, a rhythm to her voice, as opposed to, say, Bill O’Reilly. I thought I could make it work with him, but he just sounded awful.”
See Joe Biden and a Katie Couric-Evan Gregory duet featured in Auto-Tune The News #5:
To produce these tracks, Evan and Michael lay the musical foundations in Logic and then swap ideas regarding enhanced bass lines, auxiliary percussion and integrating more interesting production elements. “It eventually blooms into something beautiful, although there’s a lot of McDonald’s mixing going on to pump out episodes quickly,” Michael notes.
“Up to now, we haven’t really taken vocals into account too much before making beats,” he continues. “We shape the vocals to what we’ve chosen to do musically. Not to say that subject matter has never affected our choices — for #7, I thought it fitting to have an eerie rendition of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” behind Pat Buchanan’s frightening analysis of American history.”
PLAYING TO MILLIONS
Millions have viewed ATTN on YouTube, and in the last few months, the Gregory Brothers have appeared on CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, The Rachel Maddow Show and MTV’s It’s On with Alexa Chung. “It’s been gratifying to get phone calls from folks in the TV and music businesses,” says Evan. “The video series has been driving a lot of new fans to our original music, and some of those fans are industry types.”
Releasing their Meet The Gregory Brothers EP amidst the early ATTN buzz in June, the band felt the side-project boosting their music careers almost immediately. “We had our record release show like a month after ATTN went viral, and there were definitely a bunch of people there singing along to our songs who wouldn’t have otherwise known about us,” says Michael. “There’s no denying that it’s brought more people to our band website and shows.”
Sales, too, of the EP and ATTN tracks, have ranked high on the online music store Amie Street. And they’ll continue to cross-promote. “We’re planning on using Auto-Tune The News to continue getting exposure for our other projects,” says Evan. “We have a number of shows coming up this Fall. And, Andrew’s just finished recording an album that’s in post-production right now and we’re all super-excited about that.”
Andrew recorded his fourth full-length solo record with Brooklyn-based engineer/producer Zach McNees at Mission Sound in Williamsburg and at The Buddy Project, in Astoria. This latest work differs some from his previous records of quiet, folksy singer/songwriter fare.
“It’s almost a compositional project for me,” Andrew describes. “Because I’ve written these songs for Sarah to sing on; some of them, she’s the lead vocal and some are duets. It also features some of the players from The Welcome Wagon band.”
Fullen also has a band, Sarah & The Stanley’s — featuring her husband, Evan, on keys. They may be headed into the studio next. And in the meantime, there’s really no shortage of material for AutoTune The News. Stay tuned!
Twitter @autotunethenews to keep up with these guys.