For the second episode in our three-part miniseries about the future of music, Charlie Harding, a music journalist and co-host of the Switched on Pop podcast, joins the show to tell the story of Auto-Tune. He walks us through how a simple plugin became such a recognizable sound in music, why both artists and fans gravitated to the Auto-Tune sound, and why Auto-Tune has continued to grow even through backlash in the music business. Then we look ahead to AI, and try to figure out what — if any — lessons we might be able to learn about the sound and culture of the AI era to come.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of the difference between reverb and deverb.
00:00:08I'm your friend David Pierce, and I have decided that I am going to relearn how to play the
00:00:12guitar.
00:00:13So I have this guitar that sits behind me on all of my meetings and all of my podcast
00:00:17recordings.
00:00:18And so people are often like, oh, that's cool.
00:00:19Do you play guitar?
00:00:20What's your favorite song?
00:00:21Do you know Time of Your Life by Green Day?
00:00:22Like all this stuff.
00:00:23And the answer is, I don't really play.
00:00:25I used to.
00:00:26I played a lot when I was a kid for a long time.
00:00:28I was actually pretty good at it.
00:00:30But then I got to that point that you get to with a lot of things where my guitar teacher
00:00:33was like, you either need to try harder and care about this more or just quit.
00:00:38And so I just quit.
00:00:39Bad choice in retrospect.
00:00:40But like I was 12.
00:00:41What are you going to do?
00:00:43But now I have this guitar and I've decided I'm going to remember how to play it.
00:00:47So I got this app Musician that people really recommend and I really like so far.
00:00:51It just sits here on the iPad and it tells me what to play and it actually uses the microphone
00:00:56to see if I'm playing it correctly and gives you this sort of dynamic feedback as you go.
00:01:00It's not as good as having like a person to teach me, but I can do it in my basement.
00:01:04So I'm calling it a victory.
00:01:06So far I have learned basically that this is a C chord and not much else.
00:01:13But you know, it's progress.
00:01:15We're doing it one day at a time.
00:01:17Anyway, that is not what we're here to talk about.
00:01:18This is the second episode in our miniseries all about the future of music.
00:01:23Last week we talked to Jack Coyne about TrackStar and basically music content and how we as
00:01:28fans discover new music and how musicians discover new fans and be in the world.
00:01:35This week we're talking about a technology that I think you could argue is the single
00:01:39most important thing that has happened to music in the last two decades.
00:01:43And that thing is autotune.
00:01:44We're talking to Charlie Harding, who is a longtime VergeCast contributor and a friend
00:01:48of the show and also the co-host of the excellent podcast Switched on Pop.
00:01:53I'll link it in the show notes.
00:01:54If you don't listen to it, you should.
00:01:55It's excellent.
00:01:57He's going to tell us all about the history of autotune, how it changed music, and maybe
00:02:02try to figure out with us if there's a way to take what happened to autotune over the
00:02:06last two decades and think ahead.
00:02:08As we get to AI and TikTok and all the other changes that are happening to the music industry,
00:02:14what can we learn from what has happened with autotune that might give us a hint about where
00:02:19we're going the next 25 years?
00:02:21All that is coming up in just a sec.
00:02:23We have a lot of very fun songs to play.
00:02:25They are going to stick in your brain for months, and I'm very, very sorry about that.
00:02:29But it's going to be worth it.
00:02:30It's going to be awesome.
00:02:31All that is coming up.
00:02:32But I just remembered how to play a D chord.
00:02:34And so I'm going to go do that a bunch of times and feel very good about myself.
00:02:37I know two chords now.
00:02:38I'm basically a guitar player.
00:02:39This is the VergeCast.
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00:03:21Always monitor traffic and weather conditions.
00:03:25Welcome back.
00:03:26All right.
00:03:27Let's just get into it.
00:03:28So Charlie Harding, like I said, is a music journalist.
00:03:30He's a professor of music.
00:03:32He's also the co-host of Switched on Pop, one of my absolute favorite, deep, wonky music
00:03:37podcasts.
00:03:38I really cannot recommend it enough.
00:03:40He's been on this show with us before talking mostly about AI music.
00:03:44We did a great episode with him last fall where we tried to make a song with AI and
00:03:48it got weird and very fun.
00:03:51He was around for the whole laser bong craziness.
00:03:54We talked a lot about AI Drake with him.
00:03:56We've talked a lot about AI with Charlie.
00:03:59Today we're going to talk about something different, and that is autotune.
00:04:01But one of the reasons I wanted to have Charlie here to do this is that I think there might
00:04:05be some similarities between the story of autotune and the story of AI.
00:04:10So in order to do that, Charlie is going to show up here and he's going to tell us
00:04:14the story of autotune, how it changed music, how it changed the world.
00:04:18And then we're going to try to figure out if there's anything we can learn about what
00:04:22comes next.
00:04:23So here we go.
00:04:24Let's just get into it.
00:04:25Here's my conversation with Charlie Harding.
00:04:26Charlie Harding, welcome back to the show.
00:04:28Pleasure to be here.
00:04:30It's been a minute.
00:04:31This is very fun.
00:04:32I always like having a reason to talk to you.
00:04:33And this time it's not about like weird AI videos on YouTube.
00:04:36This is very exciting for us.
00:04:38I imagine we will get to AI because that is the topic.
00:04:41We will get to AI videos on YouTube.
00:04:43I just realized that is where we're headed here at some point, but we're going to take
00:04:47a minute to get there.
00:04:49So I want to start like this.
00:04:50This is sort of a like needlessly pedantic way to start this conversation.
00:04:54But I've realized in prepping for this that when we talk about autotune, we're kind of
00:05:00talking about a bunch of things, but also one very specific thing.
00:05:04So before we get into the whole story of autotune, like what is autotune?
00:05:09What do people mean when they refer to autotune today in 2024?
00:05:12I think there's two different definitions of autotune.
00:05:15The sort of formal definition is that there's a company called Antares that made a audio
00:05:20software tool called autotune that is used to help people adjust the pitch of their vocal
00:05:27after they have recorded it.
00:05:29Or actually you can even record it live into autotune today.
00:05:31That is also an effect people use.
00:05:33It's an audio processing effect and it is also second definition basically becomes synonymous
00:05:39with any kind of pitch correction.
00:05:42There are many companies that help us do pitch correction.
00:05:45And so when you say autotune, you could either mean this audio plugin or you could mean any
00:05:49form of pitch manipulation and correction.
00:05:52Okay.
00:05:53So autotune is like the Kleenex of the space.
00:05:55It is both a thing, but it's also the name everybody uses to refer to everything kind
00:05:59of like it.
00:06:00Yes, exactly.
00:06:01Okay.
00:06:02Got it.
00:06:03Let's go back to the beginning here.
00:06:04You mentioned autotune, the product, where did it come from?
00:06:09There are so many things in audio that have come from the military industrial complex
00:06:12aerospace and in this case the oil industry because autotune was invented by a guy named
00:06:20Andy Hildebrand who was a geologist who worked in oil and gas and he used techniques like
00:06:27the Foyer transform analysis, which is used both in geophysics and in audio processing.
00:06:36And he helped find oil deposits using wave seismology tools.
00:06:43I don't quite know the science of this stuff.
00:06:45I'm a music journalist and he had this idea that he wanted to pursue his passion in music.
00:06:52He was a flautist and that is one who plays the flute, just to be clear.
00:06:58He launched this software company in the 90s and built a tool that used some of the math
00:07:03and science that he had used in oil and gas to create a pitch correction tool.
00:07:08Somehow the wave technology he used to identify oil fields also applied to how we can better
00:07:15tune our vocals.
00:07:16So thank you oil and gas for pitch correction.
00:07:18If there's any reason you didn't like autotune, I just gave you another one.
00:07:22Yeah, right.
00:07:23It's for better or for worse.
00:07:24I have to say no single part of that answer was remotely close to what I expected.
00:07:28I love it.
00:07:29This is great.
00:07:30So how does it go from like guy makes science project to actually being used?
00:07:38I think brief spoiler alert, we're going to get to Cher here very quickly.
00:07:42Yeah, of course.
00:07:43Is Cher the very, very beginning of that story or was autotune kind of around in the industry
00:07:48before Cher happened?
00:07:50It's very close to Cher.
00:07:52The tool autotune launches in 1997, Cher's Believe, which is really the song where people
00:08:08start to recognize the effect, isn't until the fall of 1998.
00:08:13The idea of autotune was that it would be a sort of subtle effect to help slightly enhance
00:08:19a out of tune vocal, not completely out of tune, like you still had to sing pretty well
00:08:23in tune, but it could help sort of nudge the bad moments back into tune.
00:08:27And so there certainly were some producers that were using it before Cher.
00:08:32What Cher did is that she and her team took this tool and kind of abused it.
00:08:38They set the settings so that it pitch corrected as fast as it possibly could in such a way
00:08:43that it created this very strange vocal effect that they started calling the Cher effect.
00:08:50I do have to note, though, there is an important recording that came out before Cher's Believe
00:08:56that also had this over-the-top autotune effect.
00:09:00And it's very unfortunate that it is Kid Rock's Only God Knows Why, released a few months
00:09:06before Cher's Believe.
00:09:07They say that every man bleeds just like me.
00:09:08Yeah, that's tough.
00:09:09We'll give this to Cher.
00:09:10I think it's right that Cher gets the credit for that one.
00:09:20And the thing is, that song was released as an album cut, not as a single.
00:09:24But after Cher's Believe, they were like, oh, that's a cool sound.
00:09:27We already did it.
00:09:28So they later released Only God Knows Why as a single.
00:09:31And so it's often heard as having occurred after Cher's Believe.
00:09:34It was technically released beforehand.
00:09:37We've got Oil & Gas, we've got Kid Rock, we're hitting all the marks right now.
00:09:42Some tough bedfellows on the broadcast today.
00:09:46So it's super interesting to me that at the very beginning, like months after this thing
00:09:51was launched for this ostensibly pretty straightforward purpose, it's already being used in these
00:09:58wild, out-there, surprising ways.
00:10:02Did it happen like that from the very beginning?
00:10:05It seems like it got crazy before it got quiet in such a really interesting way with
00:10:09Autotune.
00:10:10Well, the Cher effect was almost a one-off.
00:10:13Some people started to do similar-ish things.
00:10:17You can think of Madonna's music in 2000 has a sort of pitch-correction-y sound.
00:10:24Daft Punk's One More Time in 2001 actually uses a different pitch-correction tool.
00:10:30But people start to mimic this effect for sure.
00:10:33It's much more common that people are using Autotune, the proper tool, this effect, as
00:10:39like really gentle pitch-correction.
00:10:44And so the Cher effect was kind of like, I think at first, kind of a one-off novelty.
00:10:50People were using Autotune, though.
00:10:52You can hear it very audibly on a song like Maroon 5's She Will Be Loved from 2002.
00:11:03Where it was supposed to be subtly used, but there's something just like a little
00:11:14bit wrong with the recording.
00:11:16And people picked up on the fact that like, I don't know, there's something about that
00:11:20vocal, which is slightly inhuman.
00:11:22I can't identify it because it's not that like hard-tuning Cher effect.
00:11:27It's the Autotune tool, but kind of overused.
00:11:31People started to complain, oh, this is the sign of the end of music.
00:11:35People aren't really singing.
00:11:36They're doing something after the fact to make it glossy and sheeny.
00:11:40Fascinating.
00:11:41Was that the reaction to Cher, even because she was not trying to hide what was going
00:11:47on there?
00:11:48No, no.
00:11:49Well, when you listen to the song Believe, it uses both a mix of tuning and no tuning.
00:11:56In the verse, she begins with Autotune on and she's sort of singing about, you know,
00:12:02trying to find love after a broken heart.
00:12:05And there's this sort of feeling of like this, you know, this robotic, just going through
00:12:11the motions kind of person.
00:12:13And the vocal tuning almost matches the presentation of the lyric.
00:12:22And then as she goes into the chorus, she sings, I believe in life after love.
00:12:28She actually drops the Autotune.
00:12:29So it's actually this creative effect in which she's saying like, I can feel robotic and
00:12:43like soulless and then I can sort of break through and Cher is of course an amazing vocalist.
00:12:48And so she turns that effect on and off to match the lyric of the song.
00:12:53When it came out though, everyone's like, whoa, what is she doing?
00:12:56Not like, oh, she's not singing.
00:12:59But that is a very strange and cool effect.
00:13:01I want to do that too.
00:13:03And Cher and her producers actually misled people and didn't tell them what they did
00:13:06because they wanted to have this kind of cool proprietary sound that nobody else could mimic.
00:13:11That's so interesting.
00:13:12And at that point, Autotune, I guess was new enough that we hadn't already sort of explored
00:13:18the edges of it in that same way.
00:13:19Oh yeah, absolutely not.
00:13:21This was totally novel to people.
00:13:23They'd never heard a thing quite like it, but there is a whole history of other vocal
00:13:26processing techniques, tools like the vocoder or the talk box.
00:13:31And people probably assumed, and actually the producers misled interviewers and said,
00:13:35oh yeah, it's just like a vocoding tool, which is a tool that actually goes back to World
00:13:40War II.
00:13:41It was invented as a way of encoding and decoding messages to be sent undersea so they wouldn't
00:13:47be caught by German U-boats.
00:13:48I'm telling you, audio is like all military industrial stuff.
00:13:52We wouldn't have recorded music if it weren't for early sort of military audio tools.
00:13:57But in any case, they said that it was this tool that had been around for decades and
00:14:01decades and decades so that they could have their secret sauce.
00:14:04That's so interesting.
00:14:05So real quick, just give me the technical explanation of how Autotune actually works.
00:14:11You mentioned its job ostensibly is to take a pitch that you sing incorrectly and make
00:14:18it the correct pitch.
00:14:21I understand that much.
00:14:23What else is useful to understand about how Autotune actually works in order to understand
00:14:28how people use it?
00:14:29Basically, it's a tool that is trying to identify what pitch are you attempting to
00:14:33sing, and then it does what you would call pitch quantization, basically pushing the
00:14:38pitch that you are singing to the pitch that you're trying to sing.
00:14:42And you can do this at different speeds.
00:14:45So if I'm singing here, but I'm trying to sing here, it would go, it would sort of glide
00:14:53you to your pitch.
00:14:54And when we think of the share effect or the Autotune effect, that is turning that pitch
00:14:59speed all the way down to zero, meaning it automatically immediately jumps your voice
00:15:04from one pitch to another.
00:15:06And when it does that, it creates this sort of digital artifacting that is unnatural,
00:15:11it is strange, and it is now very desirable.
00:15:15People like this sound and intentionally bake it into how they sing because it is a fun
00:15:21creative effect.
00:15:22Got it.
00:15:23Okay.
00:15:24But in theory, it really is just that simple of like, you have a pitch and you have a pitch
00:15:28that you want, and Autotune makes those the same thing.
00:15:32Yes.
00:15:33And you can say, how fast does it do it?
00:15:34You can maybe add some vibrato.
00:15:35There's all these little, you know, fine tune parameters, but basically, fix my pitch.
00:15:39Okay.
00:15:40And you do this by sort of saying, I'm trying to sing in this scale.
00:15:43And you set your scale.
00:15:45And then it just knows that, hey, you're singing way off your scale.
00:15:47Let me fix that for you.
00:15:49Okay.
00:15:50So in sort of that basic definition of it, I can actually understand why Autotune, if
00:15:56it worked at the beginning, and it sounds like it did, would be an immediate gigantic
00:16:01hit, right?
00:16:02And like, from the way you describe it, it sounds like it was.
00:16:04Like you talk about Madonna, you talk about Maroon 5, you talk about, you're like, these
00:16:07are A plus list artists who are using Autotune basically immediately.
00:16:13Did this thing just like come out and take over the music industry?
00:16:16I mean, it definitely today is used on the majority of recordings.
00:16:20And when I say majority, I mean like over 90% of recordings, the only recordings that
00:16:24won't use Autotune are probably going to be, and I should say, use some kind of pitch correction.
00:16:29The only recordings that don't use pitch correction would be like a very naturalistic rock song
00:16:35maybe an indie song.
00:16:36You know, certainly certain rappers who are not singing use it, but the majority of any
00:16:38sung vocal is using Autotune.
00:16:41When it came out the gate, sure.
00:16:42I mean, anytime that somebody needed to post-process fix something that was out of tune, Autotune
00:16:46was the tool to use.
00:16:47There have been tools for quantizing rhythm that had existed before Autotune so that you
00:16:53could say, hey, you meant to hit the snare here, but you actually hit it a little bit
00:16:56late.
00:16:57Let's nudge it back over.
00:16:58So producers have always wanted to find ways to fix pitch problems, and they actually had
00:17:05really challenging, slow ways of fixing pitch all the way back into the 70s, where you would
00:17:10go into a piece of tape.
00:17:12There were digital processors you would send it to, and you could like nudge one little
00:17:15note a little bit north or south of where it's supposed to land.
00:17:18It was very slow and laborious.
00:17:20So people have been always trying to perfect recordings that are slightly imperfect to
00:17:25make them more exactly in key.
00:17:28So I keep coming back to the share thing because I'm so fascinated by the idea of a lot of
00:17:34what you just described are sort of tools in a producer's toolkit, right?
00:17:39Things that in theory aren't sort of front and center in the recording.
00:17:43They're just designed to solve a set of problems that you have.
00:17:47And I think there was clearly a lot of that in how Autotune is used and still is.
00:17:53I think, to your point, not every song sounds like Believe, but if every song has Autotune,
00:17:58it's being used in the way it's supposed to.
00:18:01But also, it became an instrument in a very real way, in a way that most of these technological
00:18:07things don't.
00:18:08Right.
00:18:09And that's thanks to T-Pain, right?
00:18:10So it goes from being the Cher effect to becoming the T-Pain effect.
00:18:14T-Pain, who, like Cher, great singer.
00:18:18Which no one knew forever, by the way.
00:18:19My favorite thing about T-Pain.
00:18:21Everybody knew Cher could sing before she did Believe.
00:18:23But we spent like a decade being like, oh, T-Pain can't sing.
00:18:26And it's all because of Autotune.
00:18:28Right, right.
00:18:29So Cher puts up Believe in 1998, fast forward to 2005, T-Pain's I'm Sprung is one of the
00:18:34first times that people hear this effect in the world of R&B.
00:18:39And it goes from being the Cher effect to being the T-Pain effect.
00:18:49And pretty quickly, it becomes the sort of way that people sing.
00:18:55In particular, it gives rappers the capacity to sing.
00:18:58And there are a number of early recordings, but the one that really sort of lands it for
00:19:02folks is Kanye's 808s and Heartbreak, the song Heartless in 2008.
00:19:15All of a sudden, Kanye, who is not a particularly strong singer, has the capacity to hit a pitch
00:19:21and sing melodies.
00:19:23Once that track is out the gate, every rapper realizes that they have the opportunity to
00:19:29start embedding hooks into their music.
00:19:32And oftentimes, it is the chorus hook that people sing.
00:19:35And so I would say from Cher to T-Pain to Kanye, and then everybody, it's really in
00:19:45the sort of late aughts that the autotune effect becomes ubiquitous.
00:19:51It takes more than a decade from Cher's Believe before people start using it in the same way
00:19:57they might use distortion or reverb.
00:20:00It just becomes another tool in the toolbox that people are using as this overblown effect,
00:20:05not the gentle version of it.
00:20:07Right.
00:20:08But I guess one key difference is that, at least to my knowledge, and you're much more
00:20:14in this than I am, but I don't remember there being a huge cultural backlash against reverb.
00:20:20And yet, there have been at least a couple that I can remember of sort of big, loud,
00:20:27angry moments where the music industry or someone big in the music industry said, you
00:20:33know, we have to get rid of autotune.
00:20:34It's ruining everything.
00:20:35It is destroying this thing we believe in.
00:20:38Before we get into all that, make the case against autotune.
00:20:41Like if you were to put yourself in the position, you, Charlie Harding, hate autotune and think
00:20:45it should be excised from the earth, tell me why.
00:20:50I guess you could say that autotune homogenizes the voice.
00:20:57I'm having trouble saying this because I actually don't believe it.
00:21:01We're just going to clip that part and just play it.
00:21:04Okay, perfect.
00:21:06Someone's unique vocal identity is the way that they hit a pitch.
00:21:12Nobody sings perfectly in pitch.
00:21:13We all scoop into our notes.
00:21:14We use vibrato differently, and autotune sort of, you know, carves out all of those imperfections,
00:21:21part of what makes us sound like ourselves, makes us sound human.
00:21:26And so you could say that, yeah, it's a homogenizing tool.
00:21:29You could also say that, you know, Prince stars who don't have proper vocal training
00:21:37and technique.
00:21:38But you know, that's like the history of rock and roll are people who were not trained
00:21:43singers who sing properly with all their air and, you know, but like rather have personality
00:21:49to their voice and maybe intentionally don't sing.
00:21:51Like Henry Rollins is a great example, like the entire word of like punk music is not
00:21:55about singing properly.
00:21:57So I think both of these arguments of it homogenizes the voice and it allows people who don't sing
00:22:02well to be stars are probably the primary criticisms.
00:22:07In the aughts, after Kanye's record, as more and more people start to copy the sound, there
00:22:12were plenty of critics who are just like, everyone's starting to sound the same.
00:22:15That's the age old criticism of all popular music.
00:22:18Everyone sounds the same.
00:22:19There are still plenty of, you know, boomer YouTubers who like to talk about how autotune
00:22:23is still ruining music.
00:22:25And the reality is that autotune only becomes more popular after that era, listeners want
00:22:30more of it.
00:22:31It's not some cabal of music executives being like, ah, we are going to give autotune to
00:22:36the people.
00:22:37But rather it's like clearly people are listening to this music and they want more of it.
00:22:42The counter argument to autotune homogenizing voices is that like if you listen to Drake's
00:22:49Passion Fruit, it does not sound like Charli XCX's 360.
00:23:07It does not sound like Travis Scott's Sicko Mode.
00:23:17You can still identify who people are.
00:23:20And I love that about autotune is that actually it's what you do with it that makes it your
00:23:25own way of recording.
00:23:26I think about it kind of like, you know, when you when you pick up an old style phone, there's
00:23:32all kinds of ways that the voice is being processed.
00:23:35All the low end information and the high end information is being cut off.
00:23:38And all of the dynamic volume changes are also being squashed and compressed.
00:23:44And they're doing that to save data on their own networks.
00:23:48I mean, if you call me on the phone, I would immediately know it's your voice and not Neely's
00:23:53voice.
00:23:54Right.
00:23:55Right.
00:23:56Like the ear is so meldable to whatever effects that we use to change it.
00:24:01I think that's awesome.
00:24:02So I think where autotune goes from here is that people learn to use this effect to enhance
00:24:09their own creativity, their own artistry.
00:24:13It's like Drake start embedding really great hooks in his raps because he can now sing
00:24:22in ways that he couldn't otherwise.
00:24:23He's not a great vocalist.
00:24:26He's a great rapper and he's a great melodist.
00:24:29But like, again, he's not trained to be a great vocalist singer.
00:24:32You know, we don't get Travis Scott without autotuning.
00:24:36You don't get Charlie XCX without autotune.
00:24:38People end up using this tune, this sound very creatively and it explodes.
00:24:42Okay.
00:24:43And do you think of it in your own world and work as sort of spiritually different from
00:24:50any other tool in a toolkit that a producer or an artist has?
00:24:56Does it belong on the same level as reverb and distortion or is it something else entirely?
00:25:01I think about it as a producer and as an educator in music as just another tool into a box for
00:25:06sure.
00:25:07I think that a lot of the backlash has to do with this question of like, what is human
00:25:12and what is inhuman?
00:25:13The synthesizer had the same kind of backlash in its development that, oh, it's not a real
00:25:18person playing a real instrument.
00:25:20This is mechanical.
00:25:21It doesn't sound as expressive.
00:25:22I mean, clearly those critics also lost the plot because the synthesizer is one of the
00:25:26predominant sounds of popular music.
00:25:28I think about it as just a normal effect that anybody can use and one that should be used
00:25:34creatively to enhance the feeling of a song.
00:25:38Okay.
00:25:39How has autotune changed?
00:25:40It's like, what, 27 years old now?
00:25:42Is it functionally still the same piece of software it was in the 90s or has it?
00:25:46Sure.
00:25:47Sure.
00:25:48There are many.
00:25:50Autotune is a software developer, thus they need to constantly develop new things.
00:25:54They got to show quarterly growth, man.
00:25:56Yeah.
00:25:57You got to keep buying the next version.
00:25:58So I think, I don't know, we're well past autotune X.
00:26:01I can't remember what version we're on right now.
00:26:02Their engagement metrics are off the charts.
00:26:04There's like a social network in there somewhere.
00:26:06Oh, they have a subscription service.
00:26:08They've got everything.
00:26:10The reality is that actually a lot of people still like the autotune effect of yesteryear.
00:26:15And so if you use autotune today and you buy the latest version of it, you can turn on
00:26:20classic mode.
00:26:21So you can actually go back to how it used to sound.
00:26:24Autotune today is much more naturalistic.
00:26:26It does a better job of tuning your vocal in ways that are less obvious.
00:26:31But the effect, the autotune effect that people love, whether it's with T-Pain or Cher or
00:26:34Kanye, whoever, what you like is that hard tuning, the thing which is inhuman, and you
00:26:40like to play with it.
00:26:41And so most people actually will just go back to the classic mode.
00:26:44All right.
00:26:45I want to talk about more about where we are right now with autotune.
00:26:49But first, we got to take a quick break.
00:26:55Support for the Verge cast is brought to you by Nissan Kicks.
00:26:58Hey, the Nissan Kicks has undergone a complete transformation, emerging as the city-sized
00:27:03crossover redefined for urban adventures.
00:27:06With a striking new exterior and a fully revamped interior boasting premium features, the Kicks
00:27:11experience has been totally enhanced to help you better navigate city life.
00:27:15And the reimagined Nissan Kicks is outfitted with Intelligent All-Wheel Drive so you can
00:27:20keep going, rain or shine.
00:27:22Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025-Kicks.
00:27:29Intelligent All-Wheel Drive cannot prevent collisions or provide enhanced traction in
00:27:33all conditions.
00:27:34Always monitor traffic and weather conditions.
00:27:36All right.
00:27:37We're back.
00:27:38Charlie Harding's still here.
00:27:39Hi, Charlie.
00:27:40Hello.
00:27:41So I want to talk about autotune kind of right now, because I think you've mentioned this
00:27:47a little bit a couple of times, but I think the idea that the existence of autotune has
00:27:53a changed the kinds of music that people are like able to make who didn't have certain
00:27:59kinds of skills or whatever before, but also the kinds of people who might be coming into
00:28:03the music industry has changed.
00:28:06So I'm curious if you look at sort of the the sweep of like who is making music and
00:28:10the music that they're making.
00:28:12Can you look at it as like autotune changed all of this?
00:28:15The fact that autotune is everywhere and can make anyone singing sound pretty good.
00:28:19Has that changed the entire music universe?
00:28:23I kind of think about it more like the development of the electric guitar.
00:28:26It was like a new instrument that people could pick up and it created this new sound.
00:28:30And so I think produce young producers today want to sound like autotune just as in the
00:28:3760s.
00:28:38They wanted to sound like Hendrix, right?
00:28:40Like it's the sound that is attractive.
00:28:42And so, yeah, it does let anybody sing, but only lets people sing if they can't sing with
00:28:48the autotune effect.
00:28:50That's probably the thing that they're going for anyway.
00:28:51It's slightly surprising, by the way, that that that sound has been popular for this
00:28:56long, right?
00:28:57Like we're a long way into this world.
00:29:02And again, you go all the way back to T-Pain in the early aughts and Cher even before that.
00:29:07And like the idea that people like the sound of autotune has lasted a really long time.
00:29:11That's why it's more like a guitar or a distortion effect.
00:29:15It's a feeling that it gives people.
00:29:17It's not about vocal tuning like this is this is what gets people angry.
00:29:21It's like that makes you inhuman.
00:29:22But no, no, no, no, no.
00:29:23It's like the electric guitar is also unreal, right?
00:29:25Like it's generating electrical signals that has to be amplified by an amplifier.
00:29:29It doesn't have all the acoustic properties of a beautiful acoustic guitar, but it also
00:29:33sings and speaks in its own unique way.
00:29:35And so that's how I think about it.
00:29:36I think that young people wanting to produce music want to sound like autotune.
00:29:40I mean, truly, when you record with autotune today, it's not a post processing technique.
00:29:45I mentioned it earlier.
00:29:47People put autotune on their vocal from the get go, and they're trying to play with the
00:29:53effect to get it to do this weird artifacting thing.
00:29:57They like all the things that it does imprecisely.
00:30:01That's why they use the classic mode.
00:30:03They want it to sound like this thing from 1998.
00:30:05They don't want it to sound like a pristine, pure tool that allows them to sing better.
00:30:10It's not about that.
00:30:11Interesting.
00:30:12So explain that to me a little bit, because I think one thing I've read a bunch is that
00:30:16one big shift was when autotune went from a thing you did in post after you laid down
00:30:22a vocal track, like it was a post processing tool, to now something that you do live in
00:30:29the beginning.
00:30:30And there was a line in the, there's a really good Pitchfork story that you sent me about
00:30:34the history of autotune.
00:30:35Oh, by Simon Reynolds.
00:30:36Yeah.
00:30:37It's spectacular.
00:30:38There's a line in there that's basically like, there are a lot of singers who have never
00:30:41heard their takes without autotune.
00:30:43It is like, just my brain exploded thinking about that.
00:30:46And so, yeah, but you mentioned like thinking differently about the way that they're actually
00:30:51making this stuff in real time because of autotune.
00:30:55What does that look like?
00:30:56Like, what would it be like in the studio to record in a sort of immediately post autotune
00:31:01universe?
00:31:02I mean, people do this not just in studios, but in home bedrooms.
00:31:06I mean, the biggest stars in the world would intentionally travel to Hawaii to record and
00:31:09record in an Airbnb.
00:31:11They bring a microphone.
00:31:12They bring a portable, small recording interface.
00:31:16Oftentimes they'll use one called the Universal Audio Apollo that allows you to run autotune
00:31:21on this little interface live without any sort of latency so that when you're speaking
00:31:26into your microphone, you just hear yourself through autotune.
00:31:29And then they are singing, trying to get it to do things that make weird autotuney sounds.
00:31:35I'm bad at singing with autotune.
00:31:37Here's the thing.
00:31:38You actually have to be good at using the effect to make it sound right.
00:31:42You have to intentionally sing slightly out of tune to get it to sort of bend back into
00:31:46tune.
00:31:47You have to...
00:31:48So if you sing well, it actually doesn't get to do anything.
00:31:50So it doesn't work.
00:31:51Yeah.
00:31:52It's not going to be interesting.
00:31:53Yeah.
00:31:54I don't sing well, by the way.
00:31:55I'm not a vocalist.
00:31:56But like, I am not good at using autotune to make it sound fun and creative.
00:31:59You actually have to be talented at using autotune and practice with it.
00:32:03So yeah, it's something you like bake into the sound before it even goes into your software.
00:32:07Like you can't turn it off after the fact now.
00:32:10Some people still do, but like a lot of people don't want to hear what their voice sounds
00:32:14like without it on.
00:32:15This is what I'm saying where it's like, I think of it more like the electric guitar
00:32:18because to play electric guitar with a lot of distortion is fundamentally different than
00:32:24playing classical guitar.
00:32:25And if you ask a classical guitarist to play a super distorted electric guitar, they might
00:32:29not be able to control all the feedback that it creates.
00:32:32They might not be aware of how to get it to sing properly and vice versa.
00:32:36You know, like a fast lead guitarist electric guitar might sound absolutely terrible on
00:32:40an acoustic guitar.
00:32:41It's a skill that you have to learn to sing into autotune.
00:32:45So you actually think of singing into autotune and singing without autotune as two just utterly
00:32:51different skills.
00:32:53I think that they are related skills, but to make autotune sound good, I think you got
00:32:57to be good at it.
00:32:59Again, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to, I'm not arguing that you have to go to
00:33:02a music school to learn how to do this, but you have to practice at it.
00:33:05Like it takes time.
00:33:06It's a skill that you have to develop as a musician.
00:33:08And when I do it, I don't sound good.
00:33:10It is common that people will use autotune to practice melodies and, you know, use it
00:33:15as a way of dealing with the fact that they aren't good vocalists.
00:33:19But again, I think that if you want to sound like T-Pain, you have to practice singing
00:33:24like T-Pain.
00:33:25Yeah.
00:33:26And again, T-Pain is a great vocalist.
00:33:28They're just not doing the same thing as, you know, Frank Sinatra was decades ago.
00:33:32It's just, yeah.
00:33:33It's just a different way of singing.
00:33:34Yeah.
00:33:35I feel like there are going to be some people who hate that, but I find that kind of fascinating.
00:33:38I love it.
00:33:39I think there are a lot of people that are not going to like what I just said, but I
00:33:41really believe it.
00:33:42We'll put Charlie's email in the show notes.
00:33:43You can tell them yourself.
00:33:45I just, I mean, I just know this through practice of working with musicians in studios and some
00:33:52people are really good at using autotune and other people aren't.
00:33:55Yeah.
00:33:56Yeah.
00:33:57What, how does that pertain to live music?
00:34:00Is it the same?
00:34:01Is it the same sort of thing?
00:34:02Like as, as autotune has gotten more powerful, it's just present live the same way it is
00:34:05in recordings and it's fine.
00:34:07Once again, there are both ways of using autotune live.
00:34:11Some people need to have that effect on when they sing, because like if you're Travis Scott
00:34:15and you're performing live in concert, that is your sound.
00:34:18So they developed, Ontario's developed an autotune live tool that you can run, you know,
00:34:25through your microphone on a live stage.
00:34:27It's not baked into the microphone.
00:34:28It's an effect down the audio chain at some point.
00:34:31Sure.
00:34:32There is also autotune live used for that subtle vocal tuning to help people, you know,
00:34:38when you're running around on stage, it's exhausting.
00:34:39You might be out of breath.
00:34:40You're not hitting your pitches as effectively.
00:34:42There's all kinds of ways that vocals are enhanced to sound more like the original recording.
00:34:47You know, subtle autotuning is one version of that.
00:34:50Also playing backing tracks of like a thousand chorus vocals that are perfectly already in
00:34:55tune is another way that things sound more in tune when you're at a live recording.
00:34:58Yeah.
00:34:59So you, you sing the one, but there's 50 other yous singing it correctly around you.
00:35:03Yeah, exactly.
00:35:04I want that every time I sing.
00:35:05That sounds great.
00:35:06I know.
00:35:07Totally.
00:35:08It's like, I always want my backing tracks.
00:35:09And that's because people expect the recordings that they hear.
00:35:11And when you listen to your favorite artists, they're usually in the chorus singing at least
00:35:15nine versions of the track to add depth, width, chorusing, like the thing that just makes
00:35:22it sound big and awesome.
00:35:24And, you know, bringing eight extra backup singers on tour is expensive.
00:35:27So we might just play the backing track and add a little tuning to your vocal because
00:35:31you're out of breath.
00:35:32So those are all different ways that people use autotune live, either the autotune effect
00:35:36or the sort of more subtle pitch correction version of it.
00:35:40What's the like simplest, most mainstream version of that at this point?
00:35:44I think about the, the maybe video is a good metaphor, right?
00:35:48Where at the very high end, you have super high end video editing software, but we've
00:35:52boiled it all the way down to like, you can edit pretty successfully inside of Tik Tok
00:35:57and it has made it available to tons of people who are doing tons of different things.
00:36:00Do we have that equivalent for autotune?
00:36:02Like, is that just available to regular people in the way that like Instagram filters are?
00:36:07Uh, yeah.
00:36:08I mean, there are iPhone apps that are like the autotune effect that have been developed
00:36:12by the Gregory brothers, uh, who famously made autotune the news years ago.
00:36:16If you buy, um, Apple's logic, which is their like audio recording software, it comes with
00:36:30their own free version of pitch correction.
00:36:32Uh, every software developer that makes audio tools have tried to make their own autotune
00:36:38effect and they are cheaper than the Antares version.
00:36:42So there's all kinds of way of getting into autotune.
00:36:44If you want to try to autotune your vocals, it's very accessible.
00:36:46Okay.
00:36:47And is that, is that a good thing?
00:36:49I feel like you, you would argue that's a good thing.
00:36:51Yeah.
00:36:52Yeah.
00:36:53I don't know.
00:36:54It's like, are you trying to argue that there should be like fewer paint brushes and paints
00:36:55in the world so that we can have more monies?
00:36:57I don't like, I think more creative tools for more people is great.
00:37:01Yeah, I, I support it.
00:37:03So there is one sort of new backlash to this that I, I'm, I've been thinking about a lot
00:37:10and I'm, I'm curious to get your feedback on.
00:37:11So one thing I see on, on tick tock and Instagram and everywhere else these days is like these
00:37:17videos of singers in their kitchen or in like a garage or just wandering down the street
00:37:25singing these, these beautiful soulful melodies.
00:37:28Do you, do you know the ones I'm talking about?
00:37:30There's this one that's like a guy with a salt and pepper beard and he's just pouring
00:37:33coffee and his girlfriend is standing behind him and he just starts singing into an air
00:37:37pod and it sounds incredible.
00:37:38And I'm like, first of all, the, the way I know this isn't real is because air pods don't
00:37:51sound like that and you're lying, but like all that aside, there's been this really fascinating
00:37:56thing where a bunch of singers have come up and gotten a lot of, a lot of fans and a lot
00:38:02of fame and like record deals and some stuff out of these social videos.
00:38:06It's a very like natural, you know, musician creator way to come up, but then in every
00:38:12single one of their videos, there is this giant comment section saying, oh, they're
00:38:18using autotune.
00:38:19I'd love to hear what it sounds like without autotune.
00:38:21It's autotune.
00:38:22And it's like, on the one hand, maybe the argument is who cares.
00:38:26But on the other hand, it's like, we're in this moment where authenticity is everything.
00:38:30And also you're standing in your kitchen singing.
00:38:33So the idea that I'm supposed to process this like a professional recording, there's
00:38:38a disconnect there that I have always struggled to wrap my head around how I'm supposed to
00:38:42feel about this.
00:38:43And I'm curious, like if they were playing an electric guitar, I'd be able to see the
00:38:47electric guitar.
00:38:48Right.
00:38:49So I'm curious how you think about how autotune is supposed to fit in that version of music
00:38:53that we're in right now.
00:38:54Well, I think autotune has become a sort of like catchall for any sound that is post-processing
00:38:59that makes things sound more perfect than they are.
00:39:02So for example, like if I'm singing in my kitchen, there's going to be a bunch of reverb
00:39:05and it's going to sound really bad.
00:39:06But there's all kinds of tools you can use to get rid of reverb after the fact.
00:39:10There are ways that you can use just EQ and compression and other very common tools and
00:39:14post-processing to make your voice sound better.
00:39:17So even if I record with an iPhone, I can get my iPhone to sound pretty close to a professional
00:39:23recording by having good post-processing tools.
00:39:27I think autotune has just been, yeah, as the catchall enemy for anyone who doesn't
00:39:31like music, which is slightly unnaturalistic.
00:39:35I just want to say, if you don't like the sound of autotune, that's fine.
00:39:40Like I think it's totally fine to have your taste.
00:39:43If you prefer how Sinatra sings, that's cool.
00:39:46Like if you prefer how punk rockers sing, that's also fine.
00:39:51There are different aesthetics and autotune is just one of them.
00:39:54It is the one that's really popular at the moment.
00:39:58If you feel that it's like, it sounds unnatural, I don't like unnatural, that's fine.
00:40:02But it just is another way of singing.
00:40:05And I think that this criticism is a bit overblown.
00:40:09Okay.
00:40:10I guess I agree to a large extent, but I do think there is something that I've, I just
00:40:16can't sort out inside of me that there's something about autotune that feels like hiding.
00:40:21Because I actually, I buy the thesis that there are things that sound like autotune,
00:40:28but I do think, and maybe I'm wrong about this, that there is still a real use of autotune
00:40:35that is not designed to be seen, right?
00:40:37Like if you're right, that 90 plus percentage of music is using autotune in some way, like,
00:40:44I don't know.
00:40:45Taylor Swift is not somebody people like, she sounds like autotune, but she's using
00:40:49it.
00:40:50And there are people who are really pissed about that because they're like, oh, it's
00:40:53dishonest in some way that this isn't actually what you sound like.
00:40:57This is, this is you, this is the equivalent of like putting a face filter on yourself
00:41:02before you post a picture, which is now another thing people have sort of visceral reactions
00:41:06to online in this moment of like fake authenticity.
00:41:10And I don't know, like, do we need, is there like, is there like an autotune watermark
00:41:14that should exist on every song that uses it?
00:41:17I don't know.
00:41:18So, so, so you're, you're getting at this question of like authenticity, just with the
00:41:21pop star.
00:41:22Like we want something about us wants our pop star to be sitting right next to us, our
00:41:26best friend telling their personal stories.
00:41:29And yet we know that they're recording it in a professional studio, working with producers
00:41:32and songwriters to make this presentation, which is exciting and, you know, it enhances
00:41:37all of our emotions.
00:41:39So there's always this conflict about what is real and unreal in recorded music.
00:41:43And I think especially in pop music than other forms, we don't expect our actors to be themselves
00:41:48in a film.
00:41:49And yet pop stars are putting on a performance.
00:41:51And yet we have this expectation of they are who they say they are.
00:41:54You brought up Taylor Swift, for example.
00:41:56And Taylor Swift uses all kinds of vocal processing in her music.
00:42:00On the song Delicate, she uses a vocoder.
00:42:03On the song Midnight Rain, she uses a tool called formant shifting, where she sort of
00:42:07shifts the voice to sound more masculine.
00:42:11I don't like the moments in a Taylor Swift vocal where I can hear audible pitch correction
00:42:17done poorly.
00:42:18And I've heard it done one or two times.
00:42:21Sometimes when you're producing a song and you need to get it out fast for whatever reason,
00:42:25getting these pitch tuning tools to sound natural actually is a skill.
00:42:30You can get paid a good amount of money just to do the really slow version of hand-drawn
00:42:35autotune.
00:42:37This is a big part of the craft.
00:42:39And what you're trying to do is make something which was a beautiful emotional performance
00:42:45be a little bit more in tune.
00:42:47And if you do it wrong, you hear this weird artifact that's unpleasant.
00:42:55I don't like when I hear that because it's the attempt of a naturalistic performance
00:42:59clearly being manipulated.
00:43:01You have to hide the tools you're using to clean things up in order for it to sound good.
00:43:06In the same way that a Photoshopped photo that is poorly done and you can see some kind
00:43:11of weird, like the anatomy of the person isn't right, we don't like that even though
00:43:15we completely accept that every single magazine photo is Photoshopped.
00:43:18Interesting.
00:43:19So there's a real, as long as you don't make me think about it, I can rock with it kind
00:43:25of thing.
00:43:26It's like, as soon as you put this cognitive dissonance in front of my face, it's going
00:43:30to feel bad.
00:43:31But otherwise, I can sort of internalize that it's happening.
00:43:34I just don't have to think about it.
00:43:35It's the same thing with CGI, right?
00:43:36So I just watched Alien Romulus recently.
00:43:39And the CGI of the android character is trying to recreate a deceased actor and it doesn't
00:43:47work.
00:43:48It's so obviously inhuman.
00:43:50And even though they're an android, it doesn't look right.
00:43:53But the rest of Alien Romulus is full of CGI.
00:43:57And at no point am I like, that alien just doesn't feel alien enough to me.
00:44:02So it's all about the context in his presentation.
00:44:06which is supposed to be completely authentic, entirely natural, that is processed, we will
00:44:11perceive as that doesn't feel right.
00:44:14Things that are presented as I am a pop star on a stage and everything about me is like,
00:44:19perfectly composed.
00:44:20We accept that there is good, we know except we expect that things are going to have been
00:44:26enhanced.
00:44:27So I just want to give everyone permission to be mad at autotune at certain moments.
00:44:32But when it's intentional, let go of it, whatever, like, if someone's trying to do it, let them
00:44:36do it.
00:44:37If someone's doing it poorly, fine.
00:44:38Criticize them.
00:44:39Yeah.
00:44:40I like it.
00:44:41All right, we got to take one more break.
00:44:42And then we're going to come back and talk about where we go from here.
00:44:44Support for the Verge cast is brought to you by Nissan Kicks.
00:44:51Hey, the Nissan Kicks has undergone a complete transformation, emerging as the city size
00:44:56crossover redefined for urban adventures.
00:44:59With a striking new exterior and a fully revamped interior boasting premium features, the Kicks
00:45:04experience has been totally enhanced to help you better navigate city life.
00:45:09And the reimagined Nissan Kicks is outfitted with intelligent all wheel drive so you can
00:45:13keep going, rain or shine.
00:45:15Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks.
00:45:23Intelligent all wheel drive cannot prevent collisions or provide enhanced traction in
00:45:26all conditions.
00:45:27Always monitor traffic and weather conditions.
00:45:29All right, we're back.
00:45:32Hello, Charlie.
00:45:33We've gone long enough without talking about AI videos on YouTube.
00:45:36We've arrived.
00:45:37Let's talk about AI videos on YouTube.
00:45:39So I actually want to talk about basically two different pieces of where I think things
00:45:44might be headed from here.
00:45:46One is AI and one is back to the kind of authenticity thing.
00:45:51Let's talk about AI first.
00:45:52And I bring this up because I think there is a possible future for AI that looks a lot
00:45:59like the arc of autotune that you just described, where tool becomes available.
00:46:06Some people use it like a tool and it's rendered mostly invisible and it does.
00:46:10It helps in the process and it becomes a tool in the toolkit.
00:46:13Other people will use it incredibly aggressively and showy and it will allow new people to
00:46:18do new kinds of things.
00:46:20Ultimately, some people will be pissed off about it, but eventually it will just be rolled
00:46:24into how the music industry works and may even become like the dominant aesthetic in
00:46:29the way that autotune is.
00:46:32Could be totally wrong, but there's something about that rhymes to me with where AI might
00:46:37be headed.
00:46:38What do you make of that comparison?
00:46:39Well, we'd have to break AI down into all of the various ways that it's being used for
00:46:43music because AI is just sort of like a process that can be used in lots of different ways
00:46:46from writing lyrics to separating stem recordings so you can separate the bass and drums and
00:46:52vocals and instruments from a recording to generating whole songs for you from a prompt.
00:46:57There's so many different ways that AI is being used, some of which are maybe more invisible.
00:47:02For example, like if you use chat GPT to help you find a rhyme, there's no way that I can
00:47:05identify that you did that, except for that sometimes chat GPT makes really bad rhymes.
00:47:10It's getting better and better.
00:47:12It really likes to rhyme like do and to and it's like, great job, chat GPT, thanks for
00:47:15that.
00:47:16Yeah, that's the thing.
00:47:17AI songs and poorly written songs use too many perfect rhymes.
00:47:20They're kind of just overly sweet, really bad, single syllable, perfect rhymes.
00:47:26That's the tell.
00:47:27But I don't think we've seen a tool yet that is marketed as an AI tool that has become
00:47:34a predominant sound in popular music.
00:47:37There's all kinds of AI tools that I use in my music production, but I don't think of
00:47:41them as AI.
00:47:42So like I use a deverb plugin if there's too much reverberation in a recording and like
00:47:46technically it's using a neural net, but it doesn't really have a sonic fingerprint in
00:47:51the way that the autotune does.
00:47:53So I imagine there will be some kind of effect that will use some kind of AI neural net in
00:47:59its thing that will become a sound.
00:48:02But the AI as a methodology is sort of too broad to say that, well, we're going to hear
00:48:08AI in the future.
00:48:09Does that make sense?
00:48:11It does.
00:48:12And I think I hadn't really thought about it like that until you put it like that.
00:48:14But it is maybe the strength and weakness of AI is that it doesn't have a mark in its
00:48:20way.
00:48:21Like you can make an AI song that sounds like anything, but it's never really going to sound
00:48:27like itself in a way that is, I think by design, right?
00:48:31Like all these tools are meant not to sound like themselves.
00:48:35They're all trying to mimic something else and they're all generally doing a bad job
00:48:38of it.
00:48:39And that maybe it would be more interesting if they had like if you went and made a song
00:48:42with Suno that it sounded like something and that maybe there is something to that that
00:48:47is actually missing from these tools.
00:48:49So you know how like if you try to currently make an image of a person in Dolly 3 or Mid
00:48:56Journey, like it kind of has, there's a style, there's a default style and obviously there's
00:49:01all kinds of way you can get around that style, but it's this weird, somewhat cartoony, magazine
00:49:07glossy, very thin, like very white.
00:49:11Well, and there are the things, right?
00:49:12Like you look at the fingers and you look at the lapels and like they have their tells
00:49:16in that.
00:49:17They have their tells.
00:49:18Yeah, exactly.
00:49:19So right now, if you use tools like Suno or Udio, they do have their tells and perhaps,
00:49:24you know, in 20 years in the future, people are like, I want to use classic Suno because
00:49:28I like the things that it does wrong.
00:49:30What are those tells?
00:49:31Like how would you describe those?
00:49:32Okay, so first of all, a lot of it's trained on actually really low sample rate and bit
00:49:36rate MP3s just to like reduce the size of the data.
00:49:42And so there is this like grainy, hissy sound, like it sounds like a bad MP3 from 1997 being
00:49:49played in Winamp or maybe like more relatable for folks would be like, if you turn on AM
00:49:55radio, AM radio has a sound where it's just like not quite high fidelity.
00:49:58There's a low fidelity sound.
00:50:03The sounds of instruments are strange, like, okay, take, for example, a horn section.
00:50:09If you try to make like a funk song with horns, the great thing about a horn section is nobody
00:50:15hits the note at exactly the same time at exactly the right pitch.
00:50:20The excitement is the subtle differences of, you know, eight horns all trying to do their
00:50:25thing at almost the exact same time.
00:50:27And that actually, that inhuman imperfection is what makes it sound really good.
00:50:31AI oftentimes just like makes it all too perfect.
00:50:35Same with vocals.
00:50:36The vocals sound actually pre-tuned.
00:50:39And so you can identify these things in addition to the vocals are, the lyrics are, have way
00:50:44too many perfect rhymes, et cetera, et cetera.
00:50:46I actually assigned my students at NYU.
00:50:49One of their assignments was go to Suno, prompt it to write a song, grade that song based
00:50:54off of everything that you've learned in class.
00:50:57Now write your own song from the same prompt.
00:50:58And all of my freshman students wrote significantly better songs than the audio and Suno song.
00:51:05And most of them threw them out entirely.
00:51:06I asked them to try to incorporate elements of them into their track and they're like,
00:51:09it's too hard.
00:51:10It's too bad.
00:51:11So, um, but maybe this badness could be something that we, we like in the future.
00:51:15Yeah.
00:51:16And that comes back to the other thing I want to talk about with this authenticity thing.
00:51:19I think a theory that I'm starting to hear more and more from people is that the next
00:51:26phase of culture in so many ways is going to be a spin all the way back to, again, whatever
00:51:32you want to think of as like, quote unquote, authentic stuff.
00:51:36It's called punk rock.
00:51:37Yeah, it's right.
00:51:38Like, and, and we're going to, people are going to deliberately start releasing vocals
00:51:44that sound worse because they are more honest somehow.
00:51:47And we're going to go back to, you know, not using the internet in the ways that we've
00:51:52been using it, like this idea of just sort of eschewing all of this stuff because it
00:51:56has made us not ourselves anymore.
00:51:59And going back to like, I don't know, I'm going to, I'm going to just put a bunch of
00:52:02instruments in a room and record like the Beatles 60 years ago.
00:52:06And that that is the next thing.
00:52:08Who famously used the music studio for all of its wild creative tools and use all kinds
00:52:13of post-processing vocal tools like Verispeed and, uh, et cetera.
00:52:17So I'm just saying we've always been doing this, but yes, I hear where you're going.
00:52:20Yeah.
00:52:21Again, the question of like, how far back do you have to go to find something quote
00:52:24unquote authentic is a good one.
00:52:25We're all going to play the mandolin, guitar and banjo and violin and, you know, sing in
00:52:32old timey bands is what you're saying.
00:52:34Yeah.
00:52:34And like if, if, if I sang flat on the take, it's going to be flat on the record.
00:52:38And, uh, I would say, historically speaking, there have been a lot of people who want us
00:52:43to go that way and we have never, ever, ever gone that way.
00:52:46But I do think there's a reasonable argument that AI is like the end of a certain road
00:52:52of inauthenticity that maybe we are due for a pushback the other way.
00:52:56I think that that's a completely acceptable expectation.
00:52:59Like we've seen that trend many times in the history of popular music in the rise of electronic,
00:53:05uh, recording and the electric guitar, louder sounds and rock and roll.
00:53:10You had the folk resurgence after the super highly produced era of the 1980s,
00:53:16you had grunge as a pushback to that.
00:53:19So I think it's completely likely that we're going to see new sounds and styles emerging
00:53:23that do try to harken to our most human sound as a pushback to anything that is, is AI.
00:53:31At the same time, I'm wonder if we've already reached peak authentic, uh, because if you
00:53:38go on Tik Tok today, I feel like every other thing on Tik Tok is the Tik Tok shop is some
00:53:44sort of advertisement and it's all filmed the exact same way.
00:53:47It doesn't matter if it's a creator with 10 likes or if it's progressive insurance,
00:53:51it's all like, Hey, I'm holding my phone.
00:53:54I'm backlit.
00:53:54I'm just like talking naturally, just shooting the breeze, whatever.
00:53:58Oh.
00:53:58And by the way, this is a progressive insurance.
00:54:00And so it's already been that like the authentic human thing in video has already been co-opted
00:54:06by advertisers.
00:54:07So where people go next, I think it might be weird.
00:54:10It might be something like auto-tune, uh, that is, is the effect of the, of the, of
00:54:16the next generation of music.
00:54:18Do you have any theory about what that might be in, in this world?
00:54:22Like what are the, what are the teens doing that is going to seem crazy to the old folks
00:54:26in a couple of years?
00:54:26They're still using a lot of auto-tune there.
00:54:29It's not going anywhere right now.
00:54:31Uh, it seems like we have like a, uh, I, I joked about everybody playing the mandolin
00:54:36and there does seem to be like a lumineer style resurgence.
00:54:39And the, the music of like Noah Kahn is a great example.
00:54:42I was going to say, thank you, stick season.
00:54:51Yeah, exactly.
00:54:53So I don't, I don't think there is the emergent thing yet.
00:54:57People are still having a lot of fun making music on their computers because it's the
00:55:00easiest way to record.
00:55:02So I think we're seeing more, a like branching of many different kinds of expression than
00:55:07a solidification around one sound.
00:55:10Can I tell you my theory?
00:55:11And I'm, I'm very curious what you think of this.
00:55:13My theory is that the, uh, like voice memo demo is going to become an actual honest to
00:55:21God, like genre of music.
00:55:22Oh, interesting.
00:55:23Yeah, I think that you see this all the time, right?
00:55:25Where like the, a song will come out and then like Charlie Puth does this all the time.
00:55:30He'll go on TikTok or whatever at some late night show and play his demo of the song where
00:55:37he's just like sort of inventing the melody in his head and trying to get it down into
00:55:40his phone.
00:55:41And that part of me is starting to wonder, like, maybe we're going to get to the point
00:55:44where the, the polished thing and the unpolished thing actually get to live next to each other.
00:55:50If, if instead of there just being sort of one canonical finished version of the thing,
00:55:56what we actually want is lots of different experiences of this same kind of thing all
00:56:00the way down to just like the artist riffing into their phone for a minute.
00:56:05And that, that, like, we want to experience all of that as fans.
00:56:09The new Halsey record has multiple tracks that are exactly that, that are basically
00:56:13like voice memos and demos and things that are interspersed.
00:56:16And you know, that, that has a long history of like interlude tracks on hip hop tracks
00:56:19that are kind of like, oh, this is a phone call.
00:56:22But I, I, I like that.
00:56:23I mean, I want to just point out one other trend that has popped up as well as like the
00:56:28return to 1920s, 30s jazz or, or like what you might call classical pop with the artists
00:56:35like Loewe who are making things that are a false nostalgia for music, which is a hundred
00:56:41years old and that young people are into.
00:56:43So yeah, there's all kinds of routes.
00:56:46I don't know if I really want to hear a lot of people's voice memos.
00:56:49But as we look at, you know, we're, we're 27 years into autotune, which is a long time
00:56:57in music genre and in pop music.
00:57:01Do you think if you fast forward a while, we will look back at this as kind of an autotune
00:57:08era in the way that we've had sort of distinct eras in music and it'll, it'll linger.
00:57:12But like the idea of autotune being kind of the dominant sound of music will go away and
00:57:17will be replaced by something else.
00:57:18And this will be the autotune moment.
00:57:21Or is this just going to be how music is forever?
00:57:24What's amazing about all listeners, whether they're a trained musician or not, is they
00:57:28can turn on a recording and often tell you, oh, that's like an 80s thing.
00:57:31I don't like the 80s.
00:57:32And the reason why they can do that is because snare drums were produced in a very specific
00:57:36way for the 1980s.
00:57:37There's lots of other production techniques that sound 1980s.
00:57:40And every era has these, these sonic artifacts of their moment and you can, and they place
00:57:46them in time the same way that a point and shoot Kodak photograph from the early 2000s
00:57:51screams early 2000s.
00:57:53You can even have AIs generate things that look like point and shoot Kodak photographs,
00:57:56which are actually having a comeback.
00:57:58I've been at birthday parties recently where people are handing these things around to
00:58:01get that aesthetic.
00:58:02Yeah.
00:58:02People are out here buying like cool pics cameras from 2003 again.
00:58:06Exactly.
00:58:07And so I think that, you know, 20 years in the future, it may be that autotune is no
00:58:12longer the predominant sound.
00:58:13I think that's probably likely.
00:58:14But when someone's like, but I want to sound like, you know, 2008, they're going to use
00:58:19that again as a, you know, an, as an active sort of creative nostalgia.
00:58:23So I think that we have been in the autotune decades.
00:58:26We'll probably move beyond it, but in the same way that like the electric guitar is
00:58:31not the most popular instrument today, but it's still ubiquitous in recording.
00:58:34I think that autotune will be around in some kind of form and it might just sort of fade
00:58:38into the background and pop forward later on.
00:58:40Who knows?
00:58:41Okay.
00:58:41But right now we're still very much in the autotune era.
00:58:44I mean, I think the coolest record of the year was Brat by Charlie XCX.
00:58:49And she admits that she has no longer has the ability to sing without autotune because
00:58:56it's just so part of her sound.
00:58:57She's like, I don't sound good with autotune anymore.
00:58:59And that record is amazing.
00:59:00Yeah.
00:59:01Yeah.
00:59:01If autotune is what it took for us to get Brat, I'll take it.
00:59:04We'll be all right.
00:59:05Amen.
00:59:07All right, Charlie, thank you so much as always.
00:59:09This was really fun.
00:59:10Thanks.
00:59:11All right.
00:59:12That's it for the Vergecast today.
00:59:13Thank you to Charlie again for being here.
00:59:15And thank you as always for listening.
00:59:17There's more on everything we talked about in the show notes.
00:59:20I highly recommend the Pitchfork story on the history of autotune.
00:59:24There's a ton of good stuff in there.
00:59:25I'll also link to Switched on Pop.
00:59:27So many great episodes of that show that you should listen to.
00:59:31Truly cannot recommend it highly enough.
00:59:32As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other autotune songs that belong
00:59:38in the canon of autotune over the years, please tell me.
00:59:41You can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com or call the hotline 866-VERGE-11.
00:59:46We love hearing from you.
00:59:47We have a bunch of fun hotline stuff coming up between now and the end of the year.
00:59:50So get your questions in.
00:59:52This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez.
00:59:55The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
00:59:58We'll be back with your regularly scheduled programming on Tuesday and Friday.
01:00:02Lots of news, lots of stuff going on, lots of fun things to talk about.
01:00:06We'll see you then.
01:00:07Rock and roll.
01:00:11Off the top of your head.
01:00:17Yes.
01:00:18Give me a intro to autotune playlist.
01:00:22What are like for somebody who is like, I want to experience autotune.
01:00:26What are some songs you would just recommend off the top of your head?
01:00:28Okay.
01:00:28Well, I would first go to other vocal processing techniques and you'd have to listen to like
01:00:34Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express using the vocoder.
01:00:37You have to put harder, better, faster, stronger from Daft Punk, not autotune.
01:00:40Technically, you have to listen to some talk box like Show Me the Way by Peter Frampton,
01:00:45Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi, California Love by Tupac and Dre.
01:00:50And then, you know, obviously you need to have lollipop on there because I mean,
01:00:55what is autotune without lollipop?
01:00:59You need what else has to go on there?
01:01:02Certainly Travis Scott, Highest in the Room, the entire album of Brat.
01:01:06But if any one song, I'm more of a 365 than a 360.
01:01:11So I'm going to say 365.
01:01:13Drake's In My Feelings, Cher's Believe, T-Pain's I'm Sprung,
01:01:19and I'm not going to recommend Maroon 5's She Will Be Loved.
01:01:24You also left out Blue by Eiffel 65, which I find personally outrageous.
01:01:27But no, that's because I would have to have like a consumer warning on that playlist if
01:01:34you put Blue on there because it is it is a devilish earworm.
01:01:37But I did say Lil Wayne's lollipop.
01:01:39So, you know.
01:01:41It's true.
01:01:42Proceed with caution.
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