
Did the Manhattan Transfer Use Auto-Tune? - mr-howdy
http://www.cardinalpeak.com/blog/?p=639
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jws
Pitch is complicated…

 _As you can see, the plot shows that Siegel didn’t hit a perfect “A”—that
would have been at 220 Hz. Instead, she’s at 216 Hz, which would be noticeably
flat._

I think that song is in F (175 Hz)[1], the first note is an A, the 3rd of the
scale. The A on an equal tempered piano would indeed be 220Hz, but in a
perfect third is 5/4 times the frequency of the F, 217 Hz. I'd say she nailed
a perfect third.

… insanely complicated.

[1] Sorry, on my way out the door, don't own a copy, can't listen to more than
the first 8 notes.

~~~
utunga
Wow - that's fascinating.. sounds like you are saying that 'sometimes even a
perfectly tuned piano is not hitting the 'right' pitch for a song' is that
right? From a music theory perspective I'd love to know more.. Can you provide
any links for an interested amateur to learn more?

~~~
icarus_drowning
Pianos are tuned to an equal-tempered scale-- essentially (and, of course,
over-simply) you "spread out" the "out-of-tuneness" that results from the fact
that the Western 12-tone chromatic scale doesn't fit inside a perfect system
of frequency ratios. See here for lots of math that I don't understand at all:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament>

As a side (historical) note, one of the earliest champions of Equal
Temperament (or Well-Temperament) was Bach, who wrote _The Well Tempered
Clavier_ as a kind of advertisement for this tuning system. Prior to
systematized equal temperament, it was impossible for an instrument to play in
all 24 keys without being re-tuned. On a Well-Tempered instrument, you can
play straight through all 24-keys without stopping to be retuned.

Singers (and brass players, and any other instrument that allows for fine,
sinlge-cent level tuning) often use a different system called Just Intonation:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_intonation>

Just Intonation is "more in tune" than Equal-temperament, but it is not
noticeable by most people. I teach music for a living and have a degree in
music theory and I have a very difficult time telling the difference.

EDIT: Yes, I did oversimplify by conflating equal temperament and well-
temperament, but in the modern debate, they do tend to get lumped together.

~~~
qwzybug
As I understand it, "well temperament" is something of a blanket term for many
systems that attempted to find a universal tuning. We don't really know how
Bach's clavier was tuned for his notion of well temperament.

------
aston
Cool analysis here. I think it's a bit too superficial to serve as the last
word, though.

If I were the sound engineer on this type of album, I definitely wouldn't
worry about autotuning parts where only one vocalist is singing. With enough
takes, professional singers can be pretty dead on.

More important are sections where you're trying to perfect harmonies, where
tweaking a note that's a few cent sharp can make a big difference to the end
effect. Unfortunately I don't have the skills to separate the vocal parts
during harmony to check for this sort of thing.

edit: To my ears, that intro doesn't sound autotuned, although the reverb
effect does feel artificial. [http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea-Songbook-
Manhattan-Transfe...](http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea-Songbook-Manhattan-
Transfer/dp/B002IVLWG0/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1283465895&sr=1-4)

------
tumult
The author of this article makes some naïve assumptions about modern auto-tune
systems, including but not limited to Antares Auto-Tune. His primary mistaken
assumption is that an auto-tune system will snap a note perfectly into
alignment with an ideal pitch. This is not true. A sophisticated automated
system (like Antares Auto-Tune, in typical usage, not for the Cher effect)
uses heuristics to find a more natural, imperfect pitch to use as an
alignment.

And this is just for "fire and forget" auto-tune. If you work an auto-tune by
hand – and most skilled engineers will do this, when it's called for – you can
use your own judgment as a musician to figure out what to do. Antares Auto-
Tune lets you do this by presenting a sort of X-Y plot of pitch over time
which you can manipulate. Melodyne does something similar, with a little more
sophistication (it actually pioneered this technique.)

Another one of his incorrect assumptions is that auto-tune still behaves like
that patent from 1998. While some of the algorithms involved are the same, the
systems of today [1] use lookahead on the audio source, so that the pitch
correction isn't constantly playing 'catchup' (it takes at least a coupe of
cycles of an oscillating wave to determine its pitch with reasonable
accuracy.) So you would not see something start wrong and then deviate towards
its ideal pitch – in fact, you might see it start _too_ accurately.

The primary destruction auto-tune wreaks on vocal performances isn't just too-
perfect pitch: it destroys the subtly and intonation that good performers can
impart. A real vocalist doesn't hit the ideal pitch at the start of each note,
because it's hard to make the human voice do that. They use the imperfection
to their advantage. There's a lot of subtle complexity that auto-tune can just
wipe out when you use it.

Of course, if the vocalist isn't that good, then there's not any real loss.

As for his article, even assuming the methods he used to analyze the songs
were not based on a misconception, the resolution is too low. Perhaps
surprisingly, the human ear is capable of distinguishing pitch much more
finely than the graphs he plotted.

Edited addendum: here are a couple of screenshots of the actual Antares Auto-
Tune software that will illustrate what I'm talking about.

Here is a picture of the Auto-Tune software set in fire-and-forget 'auto'
mode. <http://www.antarestech.com/images/ATEvo_Auto_mode.jpg>

Notice the prominent 'Retune Speed' adjustment knob. This is how you used it
in the late 90s and early 00s, or today when you want the robot or Cher
effect.

Now here is a picture of Auto-Tune in use in Graphical mode, where you adjust
the pitches directly. This is how most engineers today will use Auto-Tune when
it's not for a deliberate, noticeable effect.
<http://www.antarestech.com/images/ATEvo_Graphic_full.jpg>

Notice there is no retune speed adjustment knob. Instead, you edit the pitches
directly in a graph.

[1] In a non-live-performance setting, anyway. It introduces latency, so if
you used this live, it would add 'lag' to the performer's input. Bad.

~~~
RK
The Paul McCartney live release last year _Good Evening New York City_ was the
first use of auto tune that really made feel like things were getting bad. I
think it got a lot of press because it was Paul McCartney of course. I assume
for live auto-tune to work like that, there must have been someone playing
keyboards or something in unison with his vocal lines. I don't think auto-tune
was post production (though that could have been the case).

It's probably most noticeable when you are so familiar with someone's voice.

~~~
xpaulbettsx
Autotune doesn't have to know the sheet music behind what the singer is
singing, it's just trying to snap the pitch to _any_ in-tune note - it's the
audio equivalent to "Snap to Grid".

~~~
nitrogen
Some older pitch correction devices, like the Lexicon PCM-81, aren't that
great at snapping the pitch on their own (or can't do it at all), and need a
keyboard playing the correct notes.

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mikeryan
Anyone got a clip? I'm kind of doubting auto tune is being used but wouldn't
be surprised if they were using something like a flange or a phase shift
effect.

Both kind of get looped in with the "auto-tune" sound.

~~~
pragmar
try the sample of "500 miles high" here: [http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea-
Songbook-Manhattan-Transfe...](http://www.amazon.com/Chick-Corea-Songbook-
Manhattan-Transfer/dp/B002IVLWG0)

specifically the first two notes of the female lead (some-day) in the audio
clip - some suspicious processing going on there.

~~~
wazoox
I'm pretty sure that the "weird sound" we hear are the reverberation early
reflections. Reverb processor introduces a slightly delayed and damped set of
reflections (10 to 250 ms late), so what we hear is the first note attack,
slightly lower than the sustained note (the singer starts a bit low and
corrects herself along), that gives that effect.

I've been a sound engineer until 1996, and I know that auto-tune definitely
use some formant-aware phase shifting, so that a slight pitch correction (up
to a couple of commas) must be essentially inaudible if properly used. Heck,
back in the 1980s when we only had Eventide H3000 to save a poor performance,
we could make a convincing approximation of the auto-tune effect in post-
production, and when the digitech vocalist MV-5 became available, it made a
really decent job at real-time pitch-correction, and it was back in 1995. Do
you really think that a state-of-the-art fx module used by a competent sound
engineer in 2010 would be audible? No way, sir.

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Confusion
There's a whole bunch of interesting comments on this story, but nobody seems
to address the central issue: is it probable that the use of auto-tune on an
album of 'vocal jazz icons' would be detectable by an acute, skilled,
educated-in-the-subject listener? (assuming it was intended to be used in a
subtle way?)

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bryanh
I know on my amateur jazz band's album, we used Auto Tune. We're not ashamed
of it either. Do we have time to practice the tunes 100 times or try a dozen
takes? No way!

It does feel sloppy if professionals are using Auto Tune, especially in the
genre of jazz, where talent is still very much front and center.

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aaronbrethorst
More grist from a review on Amazon:
[http://www.amazon.com/review/R15OHRG7XHGJK7/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R15OHRG7XHGJK7/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B002IVLWG0&nodeID=5174)

Caveat emptor, YMMV, etc.

