Word: vocalizer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...haven't been listening to pop radio in the past few months, you've missed the rise of two seemingly opposing trends. In a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a lot of pop vocals suddenly sound great. Better than great: note- and pitch-perfect, as if there's been an unspoken tightening of standards at record labels or an evolutionary leap in the development of vocal cords. At the other extreme are a few hip-hop singers who also hit their notes but with a precision so exaggerated that on first listen, their...
...force behind both trends is an ingenious plug-in called Auto-Tune, a downloadable studio trick that can take a vocal and instantly nudge it onto the proper note or move it to the correct pitch. It's like Photoshop for the human voice. Auto-Tune doesn't make it possible for just anyone to sing like a pro, but used as its creator intended, it can transform a wavering performance into something technically flawless. "Right now, if you listen to pop, everything is in perfect pitch, perfect time and perfect tune," says producer Rick Rubin. "That's how ubiquitous...
...match up requires the even pitch that Auto-Tune provides. "It usually ends up just like plastic surgery," says a Grammy-winning recording engineer. "You haul out Auto-Tune to make one thing better, but then it's very hard to resist the temptation to spruce up the whole vocal, give everything a little nip-tuck." Like plastic surgery, he adds, more people have had it than you think. "Let's just say I've had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything from Britney Spears to Bollywood cast albums. And every singer now presumes that you'll just run their...
...making that album the least-loved of the New Pornographers’ output. “Thunderbolts” is a particularly disappointing example. The song provides none of the hooks Newman is known for, instead serving up a drone of piano chords and a phoned-in vocal performance. “Prophets” also goes nowhere, occasionally threatening to burst out into a glorious melody but instead settling for a chorus that is neither coherent nor interesting. These tracks and others suffer from the album’s extremely poor production. Almost every song sounds flat, with...
Pelosi has also been vocal in calling on the President to repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans this year, a move Obama has been unwilling to commit to in the current economic climate; some in the Administration have suggested that it's preferable to just let the cuts lapse when they expire next year. And the House Speaker has refused to rule out investigating former Bush Administration officials, even after Obama said he would prefer to keep the party's focus forward-looking...