I laughed the first time I heard Will I Am say that on THE VOICE.
I thought he had made it up! It was a polite way of saying someone was out of tune. I used it in choir and we all laughed. How we laughed..’pitchy’ ha ha ha..And then last week, I had sent this track to someone and the feed back was “If there is any comment I could give you it’s a bit pitchy”…Now the boot is on the other foot and I am laughing and spitting, but also questioning our current need for ‘absolutely tuning’…Now there is a device that everyone uses to ‘tweak’ vocals so almost all commercial vocals are bang on. It means if we listen to that type of music, we are getting so used to it, that the old human voices of yesteryear ( remember Mark Almond?) are not really what our ears want? OR are we wanting to hear vocals with rough edges?…It’s a bit like airbrushing the voice..taking the wrinkles and the lines out…I will say that our first two albums I did not tweak one note …During the ‘singles ‘ once, I had a great take and there was a note that made me squirm and I tuned it…but it is like first aid…not cosmetic surgery…useful for the occasional little zit on an emotional face.
So then I listen to my track just for the tuning and not for the emotion…that is sad and I think well there might be a couple of notes that are not ‘bang on’ but they are gone in a minutiae and they are part of the song….
Its a dilemma…because once you start with the vocal airbrushing, when do you stop? Its maybe vocal botox…ha ha . So I just have to laugh.
So here is the offending track…No-one has asked me who the people are on the cover yet….
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