PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Seduced By Perfect Pitch

Thank you for not calling it a tremolo - Leo Fender got a lot of things right, but got that name wrong.

I use the whammy on my Parker to bend down, and since it floats, I can use it to bed up too, but if I want to bend anything but a chord up, I just bend strings.

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As far as the record companies 'dumbing down' music, I say they are partially to blame.

Record companies want the bulk of their catalog to be the musicians they can exploit the most - and that usually means inexperienced ones. They will have some artists that get big dollars because their records are 'automatics' and don't need a lot of promotion to be a hit. The rest of the recording universe is filled with one-hit-wonders (in the past) and one-CD-wonders (in the present).

When Motown was courting us, we had experienced entertainment management and lawyers. When Motown made their final offer of .02 per record (they got publishing rights and half the songwriter credits for anything we wrote) --- the royalties were to pay for (1) the inflated cost of the recording session (2) inflated promotional costs and (3) inflated tour operating costs. Management did the numbers and figured we'd need to sell almost 2 million copies to break even, and in the late 60s there weren't half as many people on the planet as there are now, and 2 million was very uncommon on a first record.

They hired their second choice band to cut the records.

If we hit 3 million on the first record, we would have had a chance to be an 'automatic' and get a better deal on the next record.

The record company made much its profit from the band paying back those high mark-up services.

So by using mostly inexperienced people, they end up with simple music because the musicians may be talented, but haven't had the time to get more in their brains.

Secondly the record companies decided that songs had too long of a shelf life in the 1960s and 1970s. They could make twice as much money if the song went from hot to passe twice as fast. So the music should not have the staying power of a "Hotel California", "Bohemian Rhapsody", or "Stairway To Heaven" anymore, but last 3 weeks on the charts and then be replaced with something new. Simple music does that.

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The general public likes what it is told to like in the media. Especially the younger ones who want to be 'in' with their peers. If the record companies wanted the public to like jazz, they could do it, but the production costs for jazz are higher, and the artists want more money, so the result is less profit for the corporation.

So the public is trained to listen to the simplest of the simple music.

And that's the problem with corporations.

A small business only needs to make enough profit to pay the salaries of the employees and make some profit for the owners. Anything else is extra.

Most corporations have up to 49% of the business owned by people who do not contribute anything physical to the corporation. All they have is money in stock, and they want that stock to be worth more and more every quarter.

Now in order for the corporation to make more and more and more and more money every quarter, it has to sell more and more and more and more widgets. If they just stayed steady like a small business, the stock wouldn't grow and the stockholders would bail out.

But nothing can grow forever, sooner or later it reaches saturation, the big record companies did what they could to keep making more and more and more profits, but many of the things they did to make more profit resulted in a decline of the quality of the music, and it only stalled the moment of saturation, (nothing can grow forever) and now they are on the decline.

But that's all drifting away from the thread topic, which I said I would agree to disagree on.

So I maintain this position, I feel if a singer cannot sing on pitch, he/she is not a singer. It is like a ball player that can't hit or catch a ball.

Some of you feel that AT is only one more effect and you have the right to disagree with me.

Notes

I recently ran across the article that Josie posted but was not aware of this thread until it was pointed out to me today by a friend. BIAB has opened new vistas for Janice and me re musical genres. For many years we played in a bluegrass band where band members would fuss even about a little reverb.

Know how many bluegrass musicians it takes to change a light bulb? Five....one to change the bulb and four to complain about it being electric.

So this whole auto tune thing is relatively new to me (I never listened to Cher). This morning in a restaurant I heard a pop diva sustain a high note perfectly for a ridiculously long time and started thinking about vocal manipulation in the studio and that lead me to this thread.

I played upright bass for many years and perhaps folks thought I needed auto tune or a similar effect. I've recorded Janice off and on for 25 years and have never thought about it....perhaps folks listen to our stuff and wonder why the hell I don't use it. Dunno. I love Ozone 6 and Nectar 2 and BIAB and Logic Pro X and digital recordings and my mobile devices, i.e., I have nothing against high technology when it comes to things musical. I do find it interesting that folks get so exercised over this issue. Short of being out in public in a eatery or grocery store I NEVER listen to music that I don't like. Taylor Swift seems to be a very bright young lady with a ton of business acumen but I could care less about her music or how it is created. I guess it's because for our 34 years together Janice and I have tended to listen to what is now called Americana -- and it tends to be a tad rough around the edges.

To paraphrase Gregg Allman it doesn't matter what the genre is...if it has soul it's good. And from my perspective soulful singing has a lot of moving notes. Some times I feel that "follow the bouncing ball" singers think that a "bent note" singer is "pitchy." Again, just dunno. Like Jerry Garcia once said to David Grisman...."they are all just notes."

Pardon the acknowledged ramble. Just thinking out loud via the keyboard. :-)

My thoughts on AT;
Use it when it fits
Don't avoid using it, but if you do use, use it intentionally

I've used it for various reasons on tracks, some recorded by singers with very good pitch. One use is for a 'doubled' track. Tune one a bit and not the other ..

On the flip side;
Imagine if Dylan had used it .. or Robert Smith .. it would have wrecked the recording.
It's a tool. You don't need every tool for a given job, but if you do need it feel free to use it.

well... I'm thinking you never thought about using autotune with Janice because... SHE DOESN'T NEED IT!!

You already knew that, but if I hadn't said it, my head would have exploded.

Josie,

I know this response strays a bit from the topic or at least the intent of the topic, but it has 100% to do with perfect pitch.

Not sure if you have heard Image and Family on the online site at which I perform from time to time, but the son, Robert has perfect pitch. Robert is also Autistic, but learned all of his major and minor chords on his keyboard in less than one hour.

But what really blows me away is when his dad kicks off a tune and Robert, after hearing just one note of the intro turns around and says "wrong key".

Bottom-line is that it never ceases to amaze me when I hear someone define a note just by hearing it.

Later,

Maybe it's my ears that are a bit off, but I don't think Johnny Cash worried too much about perfect pitch.

Don S.

Hey, Happy New Year to One and All!

Yea I don't watch Tommy's Youtubes anymore, too depressing . I was never that fast/accurate in my prime.

Even in my own mind I was never THAT good, and you know we all THINK, or at least thought at one point in time, that we are guitar [trumpet, drum, bass, sax,..] Gods in our own minds (to deny that truth is to lie to yourself).


OK, see, now I'm depressed again! I think I'll go to shooting range and turn some gun powder into smoke.

Larry