So this post is about the digital age of recording. Why it's bad, why it's good, and so on. For those that know little to nothing about recording, I'll try to include you.
If you don't know what digital recording is, it's recording onto a hard drive of some type. Before that, all they had was tape. To clear things up, I don't mean digital recording literally as 1's and 0's because that was invented a long time ago. I'm talking about recording to a hard drive rather than tape.
It started around 1995 when digital hard drive recorders became cheap. At first, they sounded pretty awful as analog to digital conversion was not grasped very well. Around the century turn, people started using computers for recording. Here's a very stripped down version of how it works: The microphone picks up to the sound and transmits it to a mixer. The analog signal is then sent out of a mixer into an analog to digital converter. Here, as the name suggests, the signal is changed from analog to digital and then recorded onto the hard drive of the computer. (Before a tape machine took the place of the converter and the sound remained analog). This breakthrough allowed almost anyone to cheaply have a recording studio in their bedroom. All you needed was a computer, a digital audio workstation (DAW for short, the software on your computer that reads and writes the audio files), a converter, and a microphone. The piracy age made it even easier to obtain a DAW for free (not legally). Along with computer recording you have plugins. Plugins are digital effects that you can put into the tracks recorded to your computer. Before you needed outboard gear, which was in between the mixer and the tape machine. Examples of these include reverb, compression, chorus, and of course my favorite...Autotune. More on Autotune later.
So now that you're well on your way to becoming a studio guru, I'll explain my feelings towards the digital age. I wasn't alive for the majority of the analog tape age, and when I started getting into recording, it was mostly digital. I have, however, done my fair share of recording on tape. First things first. Digital wins. In almost every aspect. But almost everything good about it, is also annoying to me. As in almost every profession, you want to be the best. If not, you need to find another career. One of the things that bugs me the most is people that take shortcuts and are considered better. There weren't many shortcuts with tape. You got what you tracked. But with digital, you can take an awful sound and turn it into a hit. I'll try to do this without calling people out in case I need the connections later, but I'll show you some examples of these shortcuts.
If you ever listen to an album in the pop/punk/alternative genre, you will find that a lot of things are very compressed. Compression, in short, brings the low volumes up and the high volumes down. Compression is a great tool. But some people use it as shortcuts, on vocals especially. A quick way to ensure that your vocals stand out in the mix the entire time is to throw a bunch of compression on them. While this works, it is a cheap and lazy shortcut. The outcome is something only a few people notice, but I find it atrocious. What do you get? A very squashed vocal track with no dynamics. Meaning a breath or sibilance (that annoying ess sound) is just as loud as a scream. Since the average consumer cannot tell a difference, they get away with it. But for me, it's kept me from enjoying otherwise great albums. The non-shortcut way is to go in and automate the notes. Automation is drawing out the volumes manually. So if a certain note isn't loud enough, bring up the volume. If something is too loud, bring it down. This keeps a more natural sound and doesn't squash the loud notes.
Another shortcut is Autotune. If you don't know what Autotune is by now, you can turn on any rap or R&B station and hear it on practically every song. Autotune, in short, reads the frequency of the pitch and tunes it to the desired note. It was created to help vocalists, but was first used as an effect by Cher in that Do You Believe In Love song. I hope it's stuck in your head the rest of the day. I don't have a problem with Autotune. I really don't. It's a great software. I do have a problem with it's overuse, just like compression. It is now a shortcut. The shortcut I'm talking about at the moment deals with using Autotune as a pitch correcter, not an effect. There are other ways of tuning vocals without Autotune. Melodyne is one of them. The difference being, in Melodyne, you manually tune the vocals. I've even heard people shortcut Melodyne. There are so many things you can do to each and every note. You can split it, you can tune it, you can change the modulation, you can change the pitch drift, you can change the amplitude, you can change the formant, and you can move notes. But it also includes a correct all button. Which is essentially Autotune. People use this. And they get by. Because the average consumer cannot tell a difference. Well what's the difference, you ask? Every voice is different. Every note is sang differently. Some of them have vibrato, some of them are loud, some of them are soft. If you treat each note the same, you will have some funky vibrato going on, weird pitch changed, and things that just don't sound natural. An example of this is that Airplanes song with Hayley Williams from Paramore. If you listen closely, her vibrato is weird, and you can practically hear the computer changing the notes for her. She is an incredible singer and probably need little to no tuning. But it was slapped on there anyway. Any more and it would have been there clearly as an effect. But I don't think it was intended to be that way.
Now onto Autotune as an effect. Is this old to anyone else yet? You can literally turn on a rap station and hear it on every song that has a melody. My problem with this? It's become a shortcut for people that don't know how to write a good song. They rely on Autotune. It's like the modern day key change. It's almost like the following conversation happens.
Artist: "Hey, this song is boring. What should we do?"
Producer: "Uh...how about Autotune!"
Next scene...number one on the charts.
I guess the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that people still buy into this. It literally takes 0 talent to sing with Autotune. Since you can also pick the notes as well as have the correction, anyone can walk up to a microphone, sing one note the entire time, and turn it into a melody. I'm not lying. It's that good. While I do admit that some of the Autotune stuff is pretty catchy, I think it's taken away from real talent. Why are they Autotuning Usher? People argue that it makes the song catchier, but how far will it go? You can't tell who can sing and who can't anymore. It's whoever has the connections and the money. I will make a bet with anyone will challenge me. Come record with me and do your worst. Sing out of key. Sing monotone. Or just kind of talk. I will make it sound like a hit record.
So why the fuss? To be honest, because I'm jealous. These are only a few examples of shortcuts. And the people that use them are more successful than me. And I've never been one to get angry or dislike people that are successful. If you can cheat the system and make money...do it. You're making money. My problem boils down to this. Rick Hall once said, "A good engineer might notice, but a girl with a $20 dollar bill won't." And that's the truth. People are eating up, in my opinion, talentless, absolute crap. A producer that knows how to hit the record button and use Autotune can get rich. And I'm not saying there aren't producers out there that are great. I'm saying anyone can do it. If people are buying it, why stop?
But that is also the reason why digital recording is great. Without it, I wouldn't be able to do what I do. There is no way I could have afforded a 24 track tape machine, outboard gear, a DAT machine, and buy the tapes I need for every session. I use these plugins. I use compression. I tune vocals. I do all of this. I just don't shortcut it. So in the end, I don't really care. This fad will fade out and people will realize the songs aren't all that great anymore. There's no creativity to it anymore. All I have to do is suck it up until someone that knows a good mix hears my stuff. But knowing what a good mix sounds like kind of sucks when I listen to music. I can't listen to some stuff without hearing these shortcuts. My friends can't stand it. They hear a good song. I hear the crap behind it. I hear the over compressed vocals. The squashed master that leaves the song completely anti-dynamic. The botched tunings. The overuse of reverb. I like to compare it to someone playing Street Fighter. You can get by just mashing random buttons. Some people can be pretty good at it. Then some people know what each button does. Every attack. Every combo. When they get beat by a button masher, they can't help but be mad. They beat you. But in your mind, they cheated. Sounds kind of dumb. But it's true. I'm getting beat by button mashers. If you're interested in hearing what I'm talking about, send me a comment. I don't feel like publicly calling out producers and engineers. But next time you listen to a song...listen closer. And seriously...hurry up and end, Autotune fad. You are annoying.
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