Autotune the Universe

I could spin this particular topic off into so many tangents that we could have a 3 day conference on it. I'm sure someone out there already has. One of the tangents is social media. As a brief blip of a comment, I have many opinions on the extent and nature of social media's change on human interaction. The sum of which is this: tell it to the 19th century. Every major advance in technology has changed us and yet changed nothing really. Facebook, Chatroulette, the party line - just the latest stop on the line.

The one social media/internet tool that I'm focusing on for the point of today's discussion is Youtube. I find it amusing the way in which social gatherings frequently devolve into everyone showing the randomness they've found on YouTube (or the internet in general, but it's frequently a viral video of sorts). I remember taking a fall break trip to NYC and sitting in my friend's basement while someone showed us videos of 4 foot long centipedes that would peel off cave ceilings to digest bats. Urgh, that still haunts me. Around Halloween, my roommate and I would watch numerous "ghost" videos. I've shown everyone I know this in order to explain why I couldn't sustain meaningful relationships for 3 years.

Do you see how these tangents are going to come back around to autotune? Yeah, me neither. Let's see how we can bring this all together. Most of this topic is interwoven with my time spent searching Youtube the other day. I was spurred by a video/song sent to me by Jersey that featured a very excellent cover of "Hey Ya".

1. Cover Songs

I spent a good portion of a day on Youtube, looking for cover versions of popular songs. Anyone who knows me knows that I have an affinity for cover songs. I especially love when something completely different is done with it, in particular when rap songs are turned into softly sung acoustics (i.e. Ben Fold's cover of Bitches Ain't Shit (nsfw), Jenny Owen Youngs doing Hot in Herre). It's like the musical equivalent of drag. Wow, yeah. I just wrote that, but I totally agree with it and it makes me understand more about my love of covers. I've read enough about drag in gender theory texts to know the main tenets. In theory, it's a hyped up "performance" of what it is to be a man or woman. It's an homage in exaggeration. Drag makes it clear what is great about the gender but you can also see what's ridiculous about it. I think that there's something more authentic about gender (and cover songs) when performed. Maybe authentic isn't the word I'm looking for - I'm struggling to find the word, but basically everyone knows that these actions are put on, purposeful. Because you're not getting the popular song that was formed and manipulated by a million executives and put out into the mainstream on their terms, and you're not getting gender as performed by the person who was molded and shaped into those behaviors from birth. Ok, I love this analogy, but I really am going to take it back to cover songs and quit attempting to parallel everything. I think cover songs mostly show you just how good a song is. Even when it's performed with a different voice, tempo, accompaniment, the bones of the song are so good that they translate. It's an embarrassing story, but maybe it proves my point: I heard the Johnny Cash version of "Hurt" first. I wasn't a Nine Inch Nails fan. Loving the song, I put the lyrics in my AIM profile and attributed them to Johnny Cash. You know, the little profile box you used to express yourself before Myspace/Facebook/Twitter expanded the franchise to include farm animals? Always looking for a way to make fun of me, one of my friends pointed out that I was quoting Trent Reznor. Oops.

2. The Talent Pool

Naturally, my searches branched out into the stars of Youtube, the people who post hundreds of videos of them singing in their bathrooms or on their ratty looking futons. Maybe they'll get a record deal, or a Superbowl commercial, but for the most part they're producing music with pretty basic technology for no money in an environment that will get them seen by the internet, but maybe not the world at large. There are a lot of talented people on there. And sure, some of them have some decent recording equipment. And maybe they're even working musicians, as small time performers or instructors or whatever. The point is, all of these people are less well known than the person who come in 8th place on American Idol, and yet some of them are much more talented than the people who come in first.

That's the nature of one of my tangents, and it's one that I know tons of people have spoken about before. Since I have had an on/off viewing of American Idol, this is one of the rare years I've tuned in for the full show, and seeing what I have seen, I feel the need to comment. It's a love/hate relationship that I have with reality tv. No one with any passing acquaintance with musically talented people would believe that this show is actually looking for or finding talent the majority of the time. Anyone who hangs out with people actually working as singers would know that there is a very large pool of people who can hold a tune and look good doing it. These same people get rejected from shows like American Idol. Sometimes it's because their story isn't interesting enough. Ding! That would be clue number one that no one is looking for talent. The other reason may be that the show purports to take someone more raw who has no training in music, just a love of it, and give them the chance to pursue it in a way they can't or don't already do in their daily lives. Ok, that one I'll take. And maybe, if you had 24 people with perfect pitch on the show, the show would be less entertaining. I find that hard to believe that people would rather hear awful performances than celebrate an abundance of talent, but maybe that's the reason I'm not a reality tv producer. Like I said, most people know that this is what tv does, but I worry that there's still a lot of people who think that all 24 of those people represent the super-talented cross-section of America, and that's where they get the delusion that they can actually sing and possibly make it on the show. Hence the painful auditions of delusional people. Also, I blame karaoke.

This can also go the other way, though. For one, people are used to hearing studio versions the vast majority of the time - on the radio, their ipods, and even in concerts where lip-sync is heavily utilized. So people forget what it sounds like for real people to really sing. Studio versions are done in multiple takes, layering and piecing together hundreds of sessions, applying tricks (like Autotune) to make it sound cleaner than the real, live person ever could. How this affects American Idol is that sometimes people are not impressed by a performance that is actually pretty good. If you were to put Taylor Swift on that stage with no production tricks and limited rehearsal time...well, just watch her performance on the Grammys really.

I'm not sure where the rest of that tangent was going, so let's just move on to my Autotune dilemma.

3. Autotune

Autotune, if you're not familiar, is applied both in studio and live situations. It corrects the sound of the pitch to the nearest note, making flat and sharp notes right in line with where they should be (see this awesome explanation featuring Weird Al here - see, I've been on Youtube a lot lately). Although I've heard my sister complain that she wished Glee was less Autotuned, I'm not sure that most people can tell the difference between a performance that is or isn't "real". I quote that word because the industry has been applying all sorts of technology to make sound better quality for years, so who is to say what is real or not? I guess I would draw the line between advancements that make the sound you hear on the cd more like the live, true voice of the performer in person, and those that distort it to make it sound better than it actually is.

This is the dilemma I'm facing - I can't tell the difference between something that has been Autotuned and what hasn't, unless they're using more of the obvious effects of the device which make it sound robotic. So if I enjoy a song, does it make a difference? I can appreciate live music, I can enjoy the imperfections of Youtube stars, I love Broadway singers who always sound more perfect than humanly possible, and I like albums that include lies. It's an odd moral dilemma, but not a unique one. Prior to autotune, knowing that Britney Spears couldn't actually sing didn't stop me from singing along to her songs, dancing to them in clubs and college basements, etc. The songs were still good, even if they weren't "real". And yet something about this latest trend offends me, because it's not as obvious of a lie as Britney Spears was. When Britney sang live, you could tell because it sucked. When someone uses Autotune at a live performance and sounds great, you have no way of knowing whether or not they're actually talented. And since you can't tell the difference, it feels like a betrayal.

What I wish would happen is a division between artists we recognize as real, and those that are more performers. It's not possible, but I wish there was a difference. Performers who can't actually sing can get MTV awards, but not Grammys. Something like that. Or just have people make studio albums that are overproduced, and then have drag queens lip-sync those songs during live events. Then everyone knows what is fake and what is real and we all can enjoy the spectacle without questioning our perceptions of talent and reality.

To access my current list of Youtube favorite videos, go here. It includes all manner of videos I've added to my favorites list lately, but you should be able to see my top 6. If you only waste a little bit of time on the internet today, I really recommend you watch those videos.