Autotune and Blue Notes

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Thought the Poptimists might be interested in a conversation that's brewing over on my Tumblr re: Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie decrying Autotune's desecration of the blue note -- those are notes in a scale that are close to key notes -- the root, the third, and the fifth, but a half-step or so off, creating a distinctive bluesy sound.

Here's what Gibbard said:

"We just want to raise awareness while we’re here and try to bring back the blue note… The note that’s not so perfectly in pitch and just gives the recording some soul and some kind of real character. It’s how people really sing."


I called him (in a reactionary and not 100% honest way, as Matt Fluxblog pointed out) "racist" for implying that he was in any way right to judge the soulfulness or lack thereof of modern pop music. I don't actually mean that he's a racist, of course (in the same way that it's reductive to call Disco Sucks people "racist" for denying the cultural merits of disco), but my point is that he seems to be talking about a specific strand of Autotuning. I find it hard to believe he's decrying the lack of blue notes in, say, Lady Gaga (even though he'd be wrong since there ARE blue notes in just about anything you might care to call "a symptom" of Gibbard's diagnosis here).

Matt's critique: "Really? A racist? Are you actually gonna be that stupid, Dave?

There's two kinds of autotune, really -- the kind that T-Pain and Kayne do, which is a valid artistic style, and then there's the kind you get on the more bloodless pop records, which just feels empty, generic, and soulless. I think Gibbard probably has more of an issue with the latter, and his position comes more from wanting people to own their voices rather than sweeten it for the market.

But look, if you want to be a reactionary, go ahead!"

My response was that Gibbard's not TALKING about the latter style of Autotuning, since that would require Gibbard to believe that "bloodless pop" (not sure what that encompasses, exactly!) is capable of achieving soulfulness and that the only thing stopping it is Autotune. Whereas I could easily see someone making the (bankrupt) argument that "R&B once had soul, but now Autotune has robbed it of its soulfulness."

Anyway, the funny thing is that Ben Gibbard is wrong no matter how you slice it: T-Pain and Lady Gaga BOTH employ blue notes frequently. One thing that makes it difficult to notice the blue-ness is that many of their songs are in a minor key, or the blue notes themselves aren't hammered but merely suggested. When T-Pain sings "take it out your pocket and show it" in "Get Money," he's going between the fifth and the fourth note of a minor scale. The note in between those, which Autotune hits for him when he doesn't actually sing it, is a blue note, a raised fourth. When Lady Gaga sings "I just can't shut my Playboy mouth," she ends on a flat seventh, a blue note, but in a minor scale that note is a normal note in the scale. But the overall effect is of singing a blue note -- it's just not what Gibbard has in mind when he thinks "blue note." (Another reason I think he's more likely referring to T-Pain than Britney Spears.)

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'd like to ask Gibbard why hitting notes perfectly AND soulfully shouldn't be something to aim for? It's Mariah's biggest selling point - no-one questions her ability to hit a note smack bang on even if she wibbles around some of the time, and indeed uses Autotune for the odd T-Pain effect. Hitting notes is instantly impressive and gives a lot of power to the song - so many songs would get spoiled by a 'blue note' in the wrong place - and makes the occasional missed note all the more effective. Missed notes all the time = just bad singing, dudes.

Do Death Cab For Cutie do a lot of touring? I can imagine that someone who spends a small percentage of their musical output time in the studio would be less in favour of studio effects and attaining perfection therewith.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

A better example than Mariah is Amy Winehouse's counter-example - the last couple of times I've seen her perform on telly etc she's clearly been full of 'soul' (emotion is probably a better word) but hasn't hit a single note of the original song (tempo OR pitch). It's just terrible - I can't watch.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Amy is an interesting case to look at here...need to think more about it. (I did a little riff on how "soul" is often referred to as "wet" (http://cureforbedbugs.blogspot.com/2007/02/amy-winehouse-is-all-wet.html) a while back -- underscores the point that usually "soul" is a social rather than aesthetic distinction, not that the two are mutually exclusive by any means. But my "racism" point was that Gibbard is using soul socially while pretending he's using it aesthetically.)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

she's clearly been full of 'soul' (emotion is probably a better word)

And "crack" is probably an even better word!

(Enjoyed reading this, Dave/Kat - operating on 2hrs sleep though so no thoughts to give.)

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Though again, blue notes are specific notes that can be sung perfectly and precisely or not-perfectly and "in between" other notes (roughly, pitch-bending) -- and you can do a pitch-bending extravaganza that papers over the fact that you're not actually nailing a given note (a la a lot of American Idol singing, especially in the early rounds), or you can do a pitch-bending extravaganza that's genuinely impressive. A lot of it has to do with style.

Still, I think it's important to distinguish between a claim that, for instance, "Autotune is augmenting Mariah Carey -- she doesn't NEED to hit the notes properly, even though we assume she does," versus "Autotune is REPLACING human singing." In the first argument, Autotune is rarely demonstrated by the people accusing a given pop artist of using it -- the whole point of Autotune is that you can't notice it, at least until it gets used more like a vocoder.

In the other form of using Autotune, not sounding human is the POINT. But it doesn't preclude a range of singing styles, or notes one can hit; it just alters the general aesthetic.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

AutoComment, on the other hand, is plaguing pop music conversation. But I wouldn't say it lacks soul.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry. I thought you're talking about Blue Notes=the sad book.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Blimey - offensive_mango is a member of poptimists (and I have met her)! The spambots must be lifting keywords off the userinfo.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

(I've marked all the comments as spam now - seems futile but it's the only way to deal with it rly)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

i had this problem earlier; we must be showing up on spam radar today for some reason. :S

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

oh c0ck dave i wrote a response to this & copypasta'd it when i realised you'd deleted the entry about it in your journal but then didn't see this until after i'd copypasta'd something else. goddamn my drunken disorganisation.

anyway; what i said originally was gibbard is many things but not stupid; he is referring, i would strongly assume, to precisely the kind of white female lady gaga illustrates; the idea that she has talent & is present within the indie community draws her further towards the attentions of an emo lead singer than, say, the autotuning activities of rappers who clearly cannot sing at all. the autotune he's referring to is, i believe, that of the american idol/x-factor perfect-pitch perfect-performance, in which all personality is simultaneously sucked from a recital through steady grooming to a smooth perfection which carries no memorability in comparison to the cracked and imperfect tones of, say, kanye desperately trying to sing and ultimately failing even with an autotune.

you're not necessarily wrong and i may be making assumptions but gibbard's essentially a dick but not necessarily a racist dick. and he sort of does have a point, to some extent; even the most manufactured pop product sounds good when it cracks a little and allows a little imperfection to surface, eg: that one good heidi montag song which i forget the name of because i am, regrettably, crunked up.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

"white female lady" jesus christ self.

rite, ignore anything i said there, i'm going to bed.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yes, I defer all racism that may or may not be involved with the word "soulful" to something outside of the control of Ben Gibbard. I'm going to edit the entry, too, so as not to get quoted as saying that with all dead seriousness. Sigh.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I support your use of the word "racist"! Sometimes you need to drop those bombs to get people to realise how dumb they're being, and that you're not just saying "uhhh I object" in a quiet and ignorable voice. I mean I'm pretty sure Carol Thatcher didn't mean to be racist when she used the word "golliwog" and isn't A Racist herself, but it still needs to be called out in those terms. And if DCFC dude was referring to Autotune in R&B and hip-hop then there is definitely a racial element to his remarks, probably unintended but still present.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, now that (I think) I've clarified this as definitely NOT being about "touch-up" Autotune, and instead about what he calls "Autotune abuse," there is definitely a racial undercurrent that, even after we get the obligatory "they were just kidding, it was just a stupid stunt to get people talking" stuff out of the way, is leaving me a little weirded out.

The Idolator headline cuts to some of this: "Death Cab For Cutie Wishes Black People Could Be As Soulful As Indie Rock" -- but the fixation on the "blue note" is strangely specific. I mean, as I think I've argued pretty effectively, they're completely technically wrong in any way you might interpret what a "blue note" is.

But there's a bigger issue at stake here, which is what it means to use the typical "Autotuning is cheating" bullshit arguments (usually based on no demonstrable evidence of it's effects, just a suspicion that certain types of artists use it) to a wave of music that, whether you like it or not, intentionally uses it as a tool. "I don't like it," or "it's really annoying" is one thing, but "it's robbing your music of soulfulness" is a totally different argument, no matter how lightly it's made. In fact, making the argument flippantly with the escape hatch of "heh just kidding" makes it worse in a way, since the underlying assumptions are intact, but you can always just dismiss someone like me fixating on this for not getting the joke, or taking it too seriously, etc.

[koganbot]

There are at least three good Heidi Montag songs (in order of preference: "No More," "Body Language," and "Touch Me") and in these her voice never doesn't sound cracked (possibly augmented by their using Autotone without know how, if indeed they're using Autotune rather than merely double tracks and an insane amount of reverb).

But the question I have is, listening to what's actually on the American pop charts these days, who are all these superprecise pitch-perfect personality-free performers? Top ten this week, if you're interested: Eminem, Kanye, GaGa, Kelly C., Beyoncé, All-American Rejects, Taylor, Fray, T.I., Jason Mraz. I mean, gee, ABSOLUTELY NO PERSONALITY THERE.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yet another piece of evidence in favor of what I'm pretty sure the actual source of this quote is -- a specific strain of Autotune used by Kanye and T-Pain. Which would mean that Kanye is the only one of these artists who actually qualify, even though most if not all of them have probably used a bit of Autotune for touch-up purposes.

[koganbot]

No. I think Gibbard could easily think there are all these soulless, characterless vocalists out there who've been made that way because of Autotune. Just because it's not true isn't evidence that he doesn't believe it. If Matthew manages to believe it, surely Gibbard can too. (I mean, it doesn't make any less sense than his believing that T-Pain, Kanye, and Wayne are soulless and characterless. As I said, I don't think Gibbard knows what he means; he's just speaking clichés without testing them, which is par for the course.)

[koganbot]

To elaborate on my previous post, there is no way to identify a coherent thought in Gibbard's statement or know what he's targeting, and this is because he's not thinking coherently and he doesn't know what his target is, particularly. The Autotune issue is a stand-in issue in just the way "They don't write their own songs" is a stand-in issue. And - as with who writes what - it isn't that there aren't any actual issues to talk about, but that Gibbard's not interested in thinking through to what those issues are, any more than he's interested in thinking through why he's discontented with life and with popular music, which most likely has nothing to do with Autotune. It's not as if before there was Autotune no one had accused popular music of being soulless and lacking character.