John T


To claim to be a student of the history of popular music, while at the same time showing you've not kept up on it for about fifteen years is a bit of a stretch.

I never said I don't know anything about it. How could I not, being a musician and it being mostly what is talked about and mostly what's posted on Youtube and whatnot. Not thinking it's a particularly great decade isn't the same thing as knowing nothing about the decade. I read through all of the 'what is good music now' threads that happen reguarly and listen to most of what is posted by people to see what they are hearing. I like stuff by the non-top tennish bands like MGMT, M83, Florence and the Machine, and various other recent bands that have come up in those threads. I don't actively dislike all of the auto-tuned rap slash R&B derived stuff, but I wouldn't generally expend any energy to listen to it myself. It just seems played out beyond belief at this point. I don't dislike Gaga, Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Rhianna and so forth. It has its place. I just wish it wasn't so dominant. I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to Adele, but I think she's talented.
 
I've never been comfortable with artists who put image ahead of music, and that's pretty heavy right now in the mainstream. It's always gone on obviously. And some few artists who did it heavily I do like, like David Bowie, but it's because he always had the talent and inventiveness to match his image making.
 

8 pages and not one guilty  act named. It's just embarrassing now. 

John T


8 pages and not one guilty  act named. It's just embarrassing now. 

It's embarassing that you continue to try to make this into something, as though the sales of these types of products and their inclusion into pretty much all DAWs, and the constant discussion of their use, and the admission of well known folks in the industry that they are widely used (many of whom are uncoomfrotable about it), and the large number of online tutorials about how to use these sorts of techniques, somehow is just all for fun and no one is really using them. That's what's embarassing. Do your own homework if you think I'm making this up.
 
It's clearly not just me who thinks this. Just on the Auto-tune front:
 
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/music/blog/3872-auto-tune
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/3/11/autotune-pitch-pop-sound/
http://www.hometracked.com/2008/02/05/auto-tune-abuse-in-pop-music-10-examples/
http://thelewisflyer.com/2010/04/16/auto-tune-killed-the-music-industry/
http://www.personal.psu.edu/jrt5166/assignment5.html
http://www.recordingmag.com/blogs/post/17.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1877372,00.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97312511
http://mbopdigital.hubpages.com/hub/Pitch-Correction-Vs-The-World
 

just shut up and play your guitar.

8 pages and not one guilty act named. It's just embarrassing now.

From Wikipedia (below.) Can we agree that Tom Lord-Alge knows more about the situation than you do? Can you maybe now stop acting like I'm delusional, and stop with the snarky comments?

In 2009, Time magazine quoted an unnamed Grammy-winning recording engineer as saying, "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 voice through the box." The same article expressed "hope that pop's fetish for uniform perfect pitch will fade", speculating that pop-music songs have become harder to differentiate from one another, as "track after track has perfect pitch."[24] According to Tom Lord-Alge the device is used on, "pretty much every ****ing record out there!"[9] Timothy Powell, a producer/engineer, stated in 2003 that he is "even starting to see vocal tuning devices show up in concert settings"; he states that "That's more of an ethical dilemma—people pay a premium dollar to see artists and artists want people to see them at their best."[17]
In 2010, the British television reality TV show The X Factor admitted to using Auto-Tune to improve the voices of contestants.[25][26] Simon Cowell, one of the show's bosses, ordered a ban on Auto-Tune for future episodes.[27] Also in 2010, Time magazine included Auto-Tune in their list of "The 50 Worst Inventions".[28]

Autotune is of the EVILZZZZ!!! 

Now, look, just because a stupid 'reality show' used Autotune to supposedly 'improve' the contestants voices does not mean it requires the sensationalistic media..who always have to use Drama to sell their papers anymore...to run around squawking about the coming apocalypse either...

And which artists are 'guilty' of this new offense?

The question is which ones aren't, at least in the pop world. Does the above, from some people who clearly would know, not make it pretty clear that what I've been saying is exactly the case? And of course I wasn't saying it because I made it up. It's discussed a lot by people in the industry. It's not a secret. How you guys are somehow acting like I'm making a shocking statement because I'm a 'misanthrope' and hate everything that's new is wierd. If it weren't for the snarking taunting I'd have let it go.

On Alan Parson's DVD series, he inteviews a lot of top mixers and producers and they discuss this issue, and why the people who use it never admit it. As though suddenly in the last decade all pop singers developed perfect pitch or something.

Appeal to Authority

 [
[argumentum ad verecundiam), it is argued that something is true, because someone of authority (like an expert) says it is true. 
[[The structure of the fallacy looks like this:

Smith says X is true

Smith is an expert

So X must be true ex. The queen says the earth is flat, the queen knows all, so the Earth must be flat.



In other words, someone claims they are right, because an expert says so.  And because the expert says so, it must be true.  This is defective induction because no expert is perfect.   An expert is never 100% right, all the time.


There is nothing wrong with arguing that what an expert says is true.  It however becomes fallacious when arguing that the expert is exempt from criticism & incapable of making mistakes. 


Appealing to authority is frequent in common discourse where providing complete evidence is rarely possible, and in many cases is a weak form of evidence rather than a logical fallacy.


Appeal to authority is a logical fallacy of Irrelevant Conclusion (Latin: Ignoratio elenchi), where one argues an irrelevant point to try to prove the point of an issue.  When arguing, it is always best to address an issue as directly as possible, rather than rely on or quote an expert.

This has descended into "I'm right because I'm right" now. It's too stupid to continue with.