There are great revelations (so that‘s what “Star Witness” is about!) in Ryan Dombal’s PFork‘s Q&A with New Pornographer & solo artist Neko Case. But this being Stereogum, let’s focus on the folk rock singer/songwriter’s hilarious barbs at Shania, Celine, and Madonna.
PITCHFORK: You seem like somebody who would be especially annoyed by the American Idol-ization of modern pop.
CASE: You mean the horrible singing?
PITCHFORK: Yes.
CASE: When I think about Jackie Wilson or the Platters and then I think about modern, Top 40 music that’s really horrible, it makes me mad. … It’s not to do with the people who are doing it as much as the people who are producing it. There’s technology like auto tune and pitch shifting so you don’t have to know how to sing. That shit sounds like shit! It’s like that taste in diet soda, I can taste it– and it makes me sick.
When I hear auto tune on somebody’s voice, I don’t take them seriously. Or you hear somebody like Alicia Keys, who I know is pretty good, and you’ll hear a little bit of auto tune and you’re like, “You’re too fucking good for that. Why would you let them do that to you? Don’t you know what that means?” It’s not an effect like people try to say, it’s for people like Shania Twain who can’t sing. Yet there they are, all over the radio, jizzing saccharine all over you. It’s a horrible sound and it’s like, “Shania, spend an extra hour in the studio and you’ll hit the note and it’ll sound fine. Just work on it, it’s not like making a burger!”
PITCHFORK: She’s pretty busy making videos and shit though.
CASE: It’s rough, I know. She’s so rich she could get somebody else to do the other stuff while she spends that extra hour in the studio. Or Madonna! Just hit the note! Don’t pretend it’s William Orbit being crafty — we know you’re not hitting the note because you have other shit to do. You can do it, I have faith in you. But don’t leave the studio before you hit that fucking note. And you know what? When you do hit it you’re going to feel so much more valid that it’ll come through in all the other shit you’re supposed to be doing later in the day. Seriously!
And if Celine Dion is supposedly the great singer that she says she is why is there auto tune on every fucking word in her songs? Can’t you just hit it, Celine? Do you have another baby book to shoot? You gotta paint your baby to look like a pot of peas? What are you doing that you can’t be singing in the studio? It’s your fucking job!
PITCHFORK: Hey, that baby book is beautiful.
CASE: You know that’s the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. That was so nasty I almost had to hate some babies for that. But babies came back and said, “I’m not responsible for this, they made me do it.” So I decided that I still love babies.
PITCHFORK: You seem to be following this book closely.
CASE: It’s so easy to follow! I don’t even have a TV or a radio in my house and it’s easy to follow.
PITCHFORK: Anyway, I take it you’re not a fan of auto tune.
CASE: I’m not a perfect note hitter either but I’m not going to cover it up with auto tune. Everybody uses it, too. I once asked a studio guy in Toronto, “How many people don’t use auto tune?” and he said, “You and Nelly Furtado are the only two people who’ve never used it in here.” Even though I’m not into Nelly Furtado, it kind of made me respect her. It’s cool that she has some integrity.
[Pick up Neko's excellent, non-pitch shifted Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. You won't be disappointed: Amazon | iTunes]
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“New Porno gone solo?”
Um… she had three (maybe four?) solo records out before she joined NPs. Plus she was in Maow for a couple years. I’m not really a Neko fan, but even I know that much.
how can one tell if a singer is being auto-tuned?
Well, do you remember Cher’s Believe? That’s an extreme example where auto tune was actually used as an effect. In all auto tune songs, though, there’s some measure of that weird sound. It sounds kind of like a warped record to me.
That is one creepy looking green baby.
there’s no real way to explain it- spend some time recording shit and auto-tune it. you’ll be able to tell a difference between that and the original.
the ‘diet coke’ comparison was pretty accurate.
How to tell if a vocal has been auto-tuned:
1) Is song in rotation on commercial radio?
2) Is song recorded post-1990?
If yes to both, it’s been auto-tuned.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black:
Neko Case owes her entire career to vocal effects!!
Whether or not one uses vocal effects is very different from using auto-tune. Vocal effects have the same role as amp choice or effects pedals for guitar players or. It makes a certain type of sound possible, that can’t necessarily be done using just the human voice. It alters the texture but not the content.
Auto-tune, on the other hand, makes up for a lack of talent on the singer’s part, bringing their voice to the correct pitch. It is something that can be accomplished with the human voice, just not by the person who sang it in the first place.
If you want a comparison, dick around with a guitar for a while while changing the settings on the dials of the amp or guitar. You’ll soon realize that this will create a different texture, but will not cover up a lack of skill.
Auto-tune indeed colors the sound of the voice. It became very common around 1998-2000 (not 1990, it didn’t exist ’til 1997). Daft Punk has used Auto-Tune in ways that add to the music, as a distinct and powerful effect (“Harder Better Faster Stronger” for example. Auto-tune was used most in COUNTRY music however Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” might have been the first crossover of Auto-tune in to the Pop World. It’s everywhere now, somehow more acceptable too. It’s definately on Kelly Clarkson’s “SINCE U BEEN GONE”! Auto-tune is even used by some off your favorite Indie-Yuppy Artists like DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, who’s “Soul Meets Body” certainly has SHIT TONS OF AUTO-TUNE. Coldplay’s “Fix You” has some next-level Auto-tune, perhaps another program called Melodyne; Coldplay’s two previous albums did not use much pitch correction at all. In fact the auto-tune algorithm has been improved to be more transparent. I’m quite sure I hear Auto-tune on new releases by Brendan Benson, The Blow, and Morrissey but it’s hard to tell.
I used it in a low-rent, decidedly not cutting-edge commercial studio in 1997. Figured if this dude had it then, the technology had to be several years old by that time.
I used it in a low-rent, decidedly not cutting-edge commercial studio in 1997. Figured if this dude had it then, the technology had to be several years old by that time.
I guess the question I have is; is there a difference between pitch-correction and ‘auto-tune.” I assume they’re the same, and I’m pretty sure pitch correction has been around since before ’97. (But I’m sure I could be wrong.)
Auto-tune was ’97, but you’d be suprised how long vocal tuning has been going on. People go on about how much more real music was years ago, but sadly even guys like Frank Sinatra used the equivalent (look up varispeed) in the 70′s!
It’s a shame really, because I loved how Chris Martin’s voice wavers, and most clearly in ‘Fix You’, it’s lacking that human expressionism.
Look, pop stars can’t play any other instruments, so why should they have to have singing technique? They’re just models, give them a break.
Madonna and many others wouldn’t have a career without the use of so-called “pitch-control” systems, as anyone who has heard her sing live can attest to.
Many of the lowest common dominator “pseudo punk” bands are using it heavily on recent recordings as well. My Chemical Yellowcard Hawthorne Fallout.
Expectations of talent in music industry are so low now that the general public doesn’t seem to care one way or the other about artificially “enhanced” performances.
Remember several years ago when they were considering requiring live music acts to advise ticket buyers if any parts of a live performance were taped!
Makes me appreciate earlier singers like Janis Joplin, who poured more soul into one song than the entire Madonna catalog contains.
Auto-Tune could really help some performances:
The Note-Ables
http://www.bellybongo.com/
The Cher & Daft Punk thing is a Vocoder, which may or may not be the same thing. If Chris Martin is overusing the technology as well its a shame because homeboy has an amazing voice already, say what you will about Coldplay, but dude can sing.
I’m pretty sure Cher used auto-tune, hence it being referred to as the Cher Effect. As for Daft Punk, they have used both a vocoder, and auto-tune on different records, and sometimes both. Agreed, Chris Martin has a great voice, and it doesn’t sound right to me on ‘Fix You’, even if the effect isn’t quite so heavy.
Pop music was meant to be polished and produced and shined to a sparkling perfect three minutes. So they use technology to help them get there–so what? Does it make the song any less enjoyable? No. It makes it sound more pleasing to the ear, which, I thought, was the whole point of music in the first place.
Just because an artist uses autotune on a recording doesn’t mean they lack talent. It just meant that they used everything in their power to sound as great as possible for a finished product. So Kelly Clarkson used it for “Since U Been Gone”, that doesn’t make her any worst of a singer. Obviously, you can’t make that same argument with any of the starving pop starlets, but I don’t even think they take themselves seriously.
You kids need to stop obsessing over this indie rock authenticity thing. Let pop stars do what they do and if you really can’t stand what they’re doing, keep listening to your obscure local indie bands and enjoy all that lo-fi goodness.
Re: “Just because an artist uses autotune on a recording doesn’t mean they lack talent.”
…Laura, that’s really funny, thanks I needed that. Are you sure you’re not really Dave Navarro?
The thing about Neko Case is that she’s a living, breathing anachronism, born in the wrong decade. She despises making music videos, has little to no interest in the internet, and hates taking part in any kind of glam-ass photo shoot.
And while she talks shite about Auto-Tune, she uses Reverb to very good effect. Pick up the ‘Fox Confessor’ CD and put on repeat.
Yeah, Put fox confessor on repeat, and you’ll hear good music, over and over and over…..
I dare anyone to do the same with a shania or celine cd and not want to well, hate babies.
She should auto die.
The Cher & Daft Punk thing is a Vocoder, which may or may not be the same thing.
Nah they’re not the same thing. Autotune takes a voice signal and sort of corrects it so that notes which are not quiiiite in tune, like maybe only a few cents off are forced onto the scale. The effect makes the singing sound kind of unnatural, too perfect, almost like a synth.
Vocoders on the other hand take a voice and synthesizer and mesh them together to make a robot voice. Think Daft punk’s “harder better faster stronger” or that imogen heap song “hide and seek”. Or Shockwave the transformer!
god i love this woman. great interview, interesting questions, and witty answers. everyone by her records.
I saw Neko live on Sunday night (excellent show) and I remember thinking, “Is she going to use the bathroom effect (my name for it) on every song?” What would Neko sound like without it, just bare? I suspect quite good, but I agree that she doth protest too much.
Meanwhile, I sound delish in my shower, belting out “Hold On Hold On”
or even better…BUY her records.
“The Cher & Daft Punk thing is a Vocoder, which may or may not be the same thing.”
Nope. Cher used an autotune. Daftpunk used a vocorder. Frampton used a talkbox.
While I generally fall more into the popist camp (“It’s another tool. People who whine about it are just trying to come up with more distinctions so they can feel good about not liking things that aren’t ‘indie.’”), one of the things that I don’t like about it? and this extends to the American Idol competitions in general, is that by using it, the variety of the vocal ecosphere (to torture a metaphor) is diminished. When I listen to old soul records, a lot of those girls don’t have perfect voices, but they make it work. By instead encouraging the histrionic melismatics from AI and Mariah Carey, we’re encouraging listeners to seek a certain kind of very segregated voice, one that favors hitting more notes instead of giving notes an individual feel. While both approaches have their advantages, I like more variety and by having things like autotune it eliminates a lot of the natural variety that exists. Think about Aretha versus Fantasia (or however you spell her name), both doing Respect, and how the growl has dropped out by the time AI gets ahold of it. It’s a shame, but it’s what’s encouraged.
“The thing about Neko Case is that she’s a living, breathing anachronism, born in the wrong decade. She despises making music videos, has little to no interest in the internet, and hates taking part in any kind of glam-ass photo shoot.”
Huh. What about the photoshoot where she stripped down to little but a pair of knickers and bent over a pool table?
Yeah, Cher’s “Believe” is auto-tune taken to extreme proportions. Bob Mould used it that way on his most recent solo album.
But in general, auto-tune makes vocals sound slightly metallic and somewhat warbly. Stipe’s vocals had it in spades on Reveal. (Which amused me, given that this is the same guy whose voice cracked during a studio recording – in “Get Up” – and they included it on the record.)
The most glaring example of what auto-tune sounds like is if you listen to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s “singing” on the Buffy musical episode. (Clips on iTunes.) She must not be able to sing at all.
But almost every major label album released in the last five years uses it to some degree. I think it’s kind of a shame.
And, Laura, auto-tune makes vocals sound like shit if you know what it sounds like. If it doesn’t bother you, so be it. But I can hear it, and it bugs the crap out of me. It makes vocals sound fake and mechanical.
Neko always tells it like it is… to whomever said earlier she owes it all to vocal effects –
whatever, go see her live doing her thing.
no bullshit.
Actually, American Idol is improving the singing quality in pop music. Neko is probably one of the few popularish singers around that can hang with Kelly Clarkson.
It sounds like somebody’s scared of technology, Ms. Case.
I don’t know how to do complex math equations by hand, so I use a calculator. Does that make my results less valid? Probably.
Um, k, can you send along a link to that bar table pic?
What is the “bathroom effect” to which xolondon refers?
i heard that the boy least likely to uses auto tune on their glockenspiel. is it true?
Jizzing saccherine, Neko? OK, if I don’t name my next band Tidal Wave of Buzz I’m definitely naming it Jizzing Saccherine.
Anyway, it’s a thought-provoking diatribe from an artist whose last album is drenched in reverb.
Whatevs. Take the reverb out and the girl can still sing. Paris Hilton sure can’t hold a consistent key but I’ll betcha she’ll sound like a million bucks when her album drops, thanks to Autotune’s pitch correcting system.
Daft Punk uses both Auto-tune and Vocoders at the same time to create ultra-robotic voices! Here is a quote from Daft Punk themselves in an interview (http://remixmag.com/mag/remix_robopop/)
“We also use vocoders in ways most people don’t use them. Auto-Tune is great for fixing vocals, but we use Auto-Tune in a way it wasn’t designed to work. A lot of people complain about musicians using Auto-Tune. It reminds me of the late ’70s when musicians in France tried to ban the synthesizer. They said it was taking jobs away from musicians. What they didn’t see was that you could use those tools in a new way instead of just for replacing the instruments that came before. People are often afraid of things that sound new.”
I liked when records had mistakes on them. Also when not every single instrument was compressed so much that you could hear it just as well as any other. I think people respond to the production of a record more than anything else, for better or for worse. If you grew up with 90′s music as your main exposure to pop, then I really pity you. Records used to sound interesting. It seems like even good artists make boring-SOUNDING records now.
Anyway, this argument’s been had a million times over. It’s just a matter of taste, in the long run. Personally, I find it funny that Neko Case is criticizing modern production when I consider the main problem with the NPs is that their records sound overly-perfect and sterile.
Okay, so after saying “No glam-ass photo shoots for Ms. Neko”, I was reminded of those cheesecake pool table pics she did a while back.
But hey, she turned down Playboy!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to un-pause ‘Star Witness’ on my Zen Micro before it shuts off on me.
“Actually, American Idol is improving the singing quality in pop music. Neko is probably one of the few popularish singers around that can hang with Kelly Clarkson.”
Bullshit. American Idol is encouraging a type of singing that is incredibly narrow in its focus, and really limited in its application.
so, where does one find the photoshoot of Neko Case and the pool table?
To me, Autotune is like air-brushing the girls in nudie magazines to make them look like mannequins
Haha that is a pretty accurate comparison.
You’re an idiot if you think reverb and auto-tune are at all comparable. I’m thinking mostly of you, Coolfer – you do know the business, but you know jack shit about music.
Laura: “So Kelly Clarkson used it for “Since U Been Gone”, that doesn’t make her any worst of a singer.”
It means that she can’t sing that song live for shit. She’s consistently, cringingly flat on the opening verse and shouts for the rest of the song. It’s a damn catchy song, mind you, and she’s an endearing performer, but the song is in a key that is too low for her at the start so she can make the high notes later on.
She does have a strong voice and sings several songs very well live, but her stunning commercial success this year owes a large debt to technology that made the recorded version of “Since U Been Gone” actually work.
Neko got nekkid for a now-defunct mag called Kutie maybe four, five years ago? You’d be googling Neko Kutie, but no guarantee it’s out there.
Look, I just Sunday night saw Neko live for the fourth time. Yeah she uses a ton of reverb. Yeah the girl can sing better than me or you. What’s more, she can write, and what’s more, she can talk, and what’s more, the boobs are real and the hair is red, so take your little misdemeanors and your goddang hand-whittled purity and go cry down some other river.
You are in a house of worship, man.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb99/articles/tracks661.htm
from the producers of Believe
“”I played around with the vocals and realised that the vocoder effect could work, but not with the Korg — the results just weren’t clear enough. So instead, I used a Digitech Talker — a reasonably new piece of kit that looks like an old guitar foot pedal, which I suspect is what it was originally designed for [see review in SOS April '98]. You plug your mic straight into it, and it gives you a vocoder-like effect, but with clarity; it almost sounds like you’ve got the original voice coming out the other end. I used a tone from the Nord Rack as a carrier signal and sequenced the notes the Nord was playing from Cubase to follow Cher’s vocal melody. That gave the vocals that ‘stepped’ quality that you can hear prominently throughout the track — but only when I shifted the the Nord’s notes back a bit. For some reason, if you track the vocal melody exactly, with the same notes and timing, you hardly get get any audible vocoded effect. But I was messing about with the Nord melody sequence in Cubase and shifted all the notes back a fraction with respect to the vocal. Then you really started to hear it, although even then it was a bit hit-and-miss — I had to experiment with the timing of each of the notes in the Nord melody sequence to get the best effect. You couldn’t hear an effect on all the vocals by any means — and on others it made the words completely impossible to understand!
“In the end, we only used vocoded sections where they had the most striking effect, but didn’t make the lyrics unintelligible. To do that, I had to keep the vocoded bits very short. So for example, when Cher sang ‘Do you believe in life after love?’, I think I only cut the processed vocals into the phrase on just the syllables ‘belie-’ from ‘believe’ and ‘lo-’ from ‘love’ — but that was enough to make the whole phrase sound really arresting. I made sure throughout that the last word of each vocal phrase was unprocessed, because again, I found it sounded too bubbly and hard to understand when it was vocoded.”
Question for the engineers out there: what is she using for reverb anyway? I just discovered ‘Fox Confessor’ yesterday and I’m IN LOVE with the Bathroom Sound
In the notes there’s a picture of a Klempt Echolette M100 – is that the secret of the sound?
Nice try with the Sound on Sound link, but there’s a disclaimer on the article which confirms that Believe by Cher is auto-tune, not vocoder:
STOP PRESS! Historical Footnote
Cher’s ‘Believe’ (Dec 1998) was the first commercial recording to feature the audible side-effects of Antares Auto-tune software used as a deliberate creative effect. The (now) highly recognisable tonal mangling occurs when the pitch correction speed is set too fast for the audio that it is processing and it became one of the most over-used production effects of the following years.
In February 1999, when this Sound On Sound article was published, the producers of this recording were apparently so keen to maintain their ‘trade secret’ process that they were willing to attribute the effect to the (then) recently-released Digitech Talker vocoder pedal. As most people are now all-too familiar with the ‘Cher effect’, as it became known, we have maintained the article in its original form as an interesting historical footnote.
Could anybody please tell me if its possible to use some sort of pitch correcting device on live performances, some digital shit that adjusts your intonation as you sing? I read such thing exists. Please tell if you know.
Im allergic to “indie” population YET they are always right when it comes to things like this. This is where “progress” took us. Overdubbing, back tracking, programming, autotuning, photoshopping, its just bullshit, and no hypocritical excuse can change that.
If the song is great, I personally don’t care how they created the end product. I’d rather hear spot on vocals with the odd correction artifact than an entire song sprinkled with notes of dubious pitch. Alicia Keys’ song “No One” is a good mainstream example of not only intonation problems, but lazy tracking as well…”Ok Alicia, that second take was great, I think we have enough for the comp. Let’s move on to ‘Like You’ll Never See Me Again’ shall we”?
I’d rather hear someone who can sing actually sing, than someone who can’t sing be pitch-corrected.
I’m funny like that.
how can i fuck ms. case?
The way Neko feels about those who can’t “hit the note” is very similar to the way I feel about her inability to write a decent song. Good voice, shitty songs. Couldn’t she “spend an extra hour in the studio” and write something with real depth and meaning?
not strictly true. we had to sample the original glockenspiel parts for ‘be gentle with me’ and then pitch shift them because we didn’t have the notes needed on the glockenspiel we had at the time. since then we’ve upgraded to one with all the notes.
sorry to interfere, i don’t usually post comments about us on forums, but i was googling episodes of buffy with the jonathan levinson character in and this popped up in the search results.
this is what the original glockenspiel looked like. roughly.
http://www.elc.co.uk/toy/glockenspiel/
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