Marc Urselli Sounds OFF: Who Killed the Electric Singer?

May 15th, 2011 by Marc Urselli

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Who remembers being electrified by great singers and their great performances? We all do. They were all around us at least until 1997 when Antares’ Auto-Tune showed up: the license to sing out of tune and still find the courage to release a record!

Something is making Marc Urselli mad!

Advances in digital music technologies have been amazing and exciting but undoubtedly they have also lazy-fied musicians worldwide (the “we’ll fix it in the mix attitude”) and contributed to the dropping levels of musicianship. One used to have to put in hours of practice to deliver a great performance, and a mistake or two might even have contributed to the character of the song.

Now we live under the tyranny of perfection, everything needs to be fixed… I’m not immune myself, been there, done that. It’s what the client wants — because supposedly it’s what the listener expects.

The problem with Auto-Tune is that people rely too much on it. They don’t want to rehearse longer to avoid using it, and they’d rather go into the studio knowing they just will fix their mistakes.

Do You Guys Have Auto-Tune?

I’ve gotten calls to my studio (EastSide Sound) where one of the questions was: “Do you guys have Auto-Tune?” What’s wrong with that picture? They used to ask about drums, mics, board… now they ask if we have Auto-Tune!!! What the hell? You lazy bastards, get up an hour earlier in the morning and sing your butt off… and if after a year (that’s 365 hours of singing practice, by the way) you still can’t sing, then maybe it’s time you get the hell out of the way and make room for somebody with far greater skills than yours!

Then came Cher (and whoever in her team twisted all the Auto-Tune knobs) who in 1998 released the hit single “Believe”. To their credit, that was probably the only artistic and creative way AutoTune was ever used, but they also created a monster we now all have to run from. Every other R&B singer abuses that so-called “Cher effect” (trying to be cool or trying to make up for lack of singing abilities) and it makes me sick! Enough of that, it’s been 13 years, get over it. MOVE ON.

Thanks Cher!

But it goes beyond that. What drives me crazy is that nowadays you can hear Auto-Tune everywhere… Besides the annoying “Cher-effect”, the use of the plug-in on vocal performances is ubiquitous. The untrained might not hear that, but those of us who spend some time with music and computers can. And it’s awful.

Later came Melodyne (by the German company Celemony), a pitch correction software that takes tuning vocals to a whole new level (closer to the graphical mode in Auto-Tune, as opposed to the ubiquitous Automatic mode) and so the floodgates of untalented’s crap have opened even wider! Although Melodyne allows for greater control, you can still hear the pitch correction at work on soooo many records, it’s just sad.

Be Like Mike…PLEASE

A few weeks ago I did a session with one of the greatest singers of our time — Mike Patton — for an upcoming Christmas record by John Zorn. We recorded a version of “The Christmas Song” and Mike’s first take was just gold! I thought about how refreshing it was not to have to even think about opening the Auto-Tune plugin.

Patton sings with the confidence, pitch, skill and attitude of those who came before the Auto-Tune generation and learned the craft of singing by… (can you guess?) Singing! I even told Mike after his first take: “Thank you for not making me use Auto-Tune”! He smiled.

Learn Something Here

For those who are reading my first SonicScoop column and would rather read about the nitty gritty than hearing me rant, I’ll let you in on how I do things to minimize the damage — assuming I am not being rushed by the client.

The mixers…united…will never be defeated…The…mixers….united…

I listen down to the vocals and manually pitch shift (without Auto-Tune) the really offending notes. Only when all the notes of the performance are in the ballpark I might open Auto-Tune. This way the adjustments Auto-Tune needs to do are a lot smaller and you’ll hear those artifacts a lot less, or not at all. The goal for me is to hear a vocal that’s in tune and not to hear Auto-Tune.

Auto-Tune has unfortunately become a necessary evil. When people hire me as a producer or engineer they want me to make them sound perfect, and I’m good at that. It’s what I do.

But guess what? Even if I get paid more for sessions where I have to spend hours Auto-Tuning or Melodyning vocals, the sessions I love and remember the most are the ones where the use of talent surpasses the use of technology!

Marc Urselli is a three time GRAMMY Award winning engineer and producer. He is chief house sound engineer at New York’s EastSide Sound studios and he does live sound for major artists as well.