a while back I did a first time listen and reaction to face it alone a new Queen song
great song by the way but I didn't really address the elephant in the room they auto-tuned Freddie
Mercury yes that's right the most iconic virtuoso rock singer of all time I guess
if you're gonna keep up with the times in modern music production every singer no matter how good
they are has to have auto-tune on it or believe it or not there's a bigger problem here than
the fact that Freddie Mercury's voice has been attacked by pitch correction and interestingly
enough we're gonna use the tool that enabled the crime to expose the problem these red lines
represent the tracked pitch in this section of face it alone notice how dead on they are
particularly the beginnings or the attacks of a lot of these notes like this longer one here
and look at this slide up that you see that is not a natural way the voice moves once you see it
and hear it you can't really unhear it Hey listen you cries can be heard so loud and clean [Music]
do you feel how this note was sort of jerked into place you can really hear it in the
isolated vocals listen again you cries kid it's too accurate right like it like I can't do that
with my voice neither can Freddy although his pitch historically is very good and also how
little pitch variants there is along particularly the first part of these notes it is so dead on you
might be saying well he's just that good he can sing really on Pitch he is Freddie Mercury after
all well let's take a look at a much earlier recording and you will see the truth this is
an isolated vocal excerpt from love of my life the red markings are what Freddy actually sang
in relationship to these lines which are the dead on Pitch there's a note there's the very center of
the pitch the blue lines are what Auto-Tune the artificial intelligence inside autotune has done
to Freddie's voice now this is just the the auto this isn't I haven't gone in and drawn any lines
this is what the auto-tune software decided to do when I told it to Auto pitch correct
likely the tuning done on face it alone was much more surgically executed I'm going to first play
this sample without the tuning don't take it away from me because you don't know what it means to me
notice you hear and see in the red the scoops
and especially on that last me you hear the vibrato and his pitch just kind of going up
and down and around it's very imprecise but it's desperate it's it's full of emotion it's full of
vulnerability and this pitch sounds fine now here it is with the auto pitch correction fully on
listen to the quality of these notes the approach the attack this beautiful musical scoop that that
Freddy did here is is gone uh the the pitches get centered on 100 accurate much more quickly
and listen what happens to the end of vibrato on me it sounds a lot more like what we heard on
the vibrato from face it alone don't take it away from me because you don't know what it means to me
ah it turns you sideways a little bit the pitch is too on on that vulnerable ending of
that vibrato and that's part of what we hear in the vibrato on face alone can be heard also the
way Freddy moves between the notes with that unnatural slide on face it alone is similar
and the way he tax notes is similar to what we heard and saw on what what it means to me it's
really really obvious here it is without the pitch correction what it means to me foreign [Music]
very nice natural musical scoop up and here it is with the pitch correction fully on what
it means to me the relationship of the pitch variation caused by vibrato and his natural
formant or tone feels off subtly off with the pitch corrected version in much of the same way
face it alone feels sort of riddled with when we listen even in isolation or even the full mix lots
of us have been listening to Freddie Mercury for decades so when tuning shows up you kind of go
oh something's not right but Auto tuning not because it exists but because of the way it has
been used and abused has been sneakily taking over genuine vocal expression now for the past
25 years and it's getting worse as evidenced by the fact that someone felt the need to autotune
Freddie Mercury and he's not the only one someone jacked up Michael Jackson's voice with auto-tune
a little while back as well not only does this do a huge disservice to the original art in and
of itself but it really messes with our minds we don't know how much we don't know when it
comes to when tuning is used and so when we hear modern vocalists with modern vocal production we
are misled in two ways number one [Music] oh whoa that was an amazing vocal performance never mind
that it was edited meticulously and the pitch some of the pitches were faked or manipulated so much
that it's not a representation of what that artist can really do would you sing something for them
without Auto-Tune so we know what pain sounds like and then here's the problem it's not so much that
it's not a representation of what they can do and that's the problem in and of itself it's that we
look at that as artists and singers and go man I could never be that good and the standard is just
messed up in a really unhealthy way or the other massive problem tuning is used in a really obvious
way like Cher or T-Pain on vocalists that really can sing but we as a as a public as an audience as
fans of music over time desensitized and become less appreciative of genuine emotion National
connection and expression and then when it comes to producing our own art we rely to an unhealthy
degree on these technology crutches and Band-Aids and turd polishers we never fully realize and
fully explore our own voice our own artistic Expressions because ah the technology can make it
good enough so what can we do about it well first of all make sure that you're listening to a wide
range of musical genres and time periods anything before about 1998 isn't going to have tuning on it
the way that we have it today don't be looking for Perfection and with your own voice and musically
artistic Pursuits sing it or play it till you get it right use digital recording regularly as a way
to improve your craft not as a way to fix it and most importantly as a singer do not pursue pitch
do not say any more oh I have a pitch problem I I can't hit the pitch [ __ ] I want to I can't
hit the notes my pitch just isn't that good don't say it don't think it don't act on it
instead think about your voice as a mechanism for genuine expression a way to communicate
emotion and genuine vulnerability choose a simple well-known maybe even folksy type Melody sing it
completely acapella and don't worry about hitting the bright pitches instead get fully engaged in
the Dynamics of your performance intimate you can be how loud and explosive and angry you can
be make this make them regularly get in touch with the expressiveness of your voice not the accuracy
of it we will lead the charge in the battle for True human expression through the voice if you
want more help being a better singer finding out what it means to use your voice correctly
so that you can express yourself in a genuine way click the link below and join my free voice
course and if you want to see how autotune jacked up Michael Jackson's voice check out this video
and you hear this all the time in modern music