All about pop music is a lie. What is done to singer's voices is not only using autotune, or tune up - which they also do - but a lot more things. As for the rest of the band (bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, etc), even more. Photoshop in cream's adverts will seem a joke compared to what I'm about to show you. What makes an artist who sounds like this in the studio: Sings well.
Human voice. And end up sounding like this in the album: Brutal singing.
Voice of a Goddess. And the question is: What is exactly what is done to them? What does this mean for the future of music? Why did "Argynnis Paphia" butterflies predict this would happen? And what does this all have to do with Instagram? ♫ [MYSTERIOUS, UPBEAT MUSIC] ♫ Future of Pop
Butterflies and Instagram I am with Ter today, and we are going to produce a pop song. - Do you have one?
- No, did I have to bring one? - You would have done half of my job - Do we just write one now or what?
- We are going to have to write a four chord pop sequence, add typical instruments the typical way, and we are going to use all the tricks and effects there are. - Cool! Can't it be trap?
- Pop trap. Urban pop. - Can you also bring me a Gin and Tonic? In cinema, when there is a shot/reverse shot, both actors are not recorded at once, they shoot one actor first, then another, and even in different days. and scenes are cut. And in photography, the photographer uses Lightroom and turns it from this, into this, and no one is surprised. But in music, these tricks are not indiferent, nor, as in cinema, are they shown in making-offs in which they explain why what you see is not real and how they made it look real. Technology is shown off. But in music, this is hidden. Effects used in instruments and voices are open secrets no one wants to hear about. The first trick is the microphone, which allows you to sing without knowing how to control your voice on someone thumping the drums next to you. If you turn off the mic while he sings... That can reach a high level which is mixing. When you have all the instruments separated in the studio and you turn up or down the volume so that they suit. They haven't had to play with each other. You make them come together afterwards. But those are not the only tricks... - We have been playing for a while. We have chosen these chords. We have done a pop riff. And now we are searching for melody and lyrics as pop-y as possible. The song on piano, as it would be sent to the producer in the studio sounds like this: We have done a "Swedish approach"
(sound over meaning). In Tove Lo's words: So the first thing we would need would be a base. - So like, a proper song, you know... - ... not just a wonky ballad! - Jaime is producing it and I'm just watching... I actually help him a lot! Don't I? - (Sarcastically) Yeah, all the time...
- I tell you what's trendy, 'cause I listen to modern music! - That's true. What we've done is creating a clapperboard which will indicate the tempo. And a drum for the hits. And we add some pads for the chords. And some more instruments. This is the result.
It is a shabby base which I'll work on. - We are going to record the melody now.
- We are going to record the melody now. This is just the second take, you had barely warmed up, but I think we can start already. You were late in some notes. Let's see what we can do here! CORRECTED! You were late in this one too. Let's fade this out...
fade this in... CORRECTED! The thing is using the first take, in which you did not know what the melody was, and just making your voice follow the melody. I'm gonna take all these pieces and open them with the infamous Autotune. NOTE:
We say "Autotune" to refer to different
tuning softwares, just like saying "Kleenex"
when we mean tissues in general.
We use the name of the first brand. So these are the piano notes, and these are HER notes, and how far or close they were to match. E.g.: this note is nearly perfect in this D. Well tuned! But then this here is a little too high, as seen with this black gap You are untuned for 12 cents of semitone . And now it's set.
- Wow... amazing... - The programe tries to calculate the right note, which is the blue part but your voice actually travels through this white line. If needed, I could force it into an utterly flat voice. If I made it flat in every case, it would sound...
- Like a robot? Or... - The autotune effect.
- Yeah... - We had decided the melody would be "F, F, E, F" and you've done "F, F, F, F" But we can turn it into an "E"! We created the note you didn't reach.
- I'm shocked! - I really liked your vibrato, let's see if we can boost it a little. For example here, you started in tone, but at the end you go almost a semitone above So, a less strong vibrato, but I can also change this extreme. This is like being an elder goldsmith! - Much better!
- This would be it. And this trick is really used with every single artist. All of them. Even if it's because it's faster. And if she was Beyonce, I would earn less money per hour, because I'm a studio technician. I would rather spend 5 hours improving her take rather than her recording it for 7 days. She will obviously make an effort to record it several times, and pick the best bits, but in the end, you will always go through this: I am trying to make it perfect, and I am placing every single syllable in squares. Well, perhaps you're thinking that even if the voice is well tuned, it does not suit well. - It sounds as if I'm singing a beach-cute-hipster-ballad, and then a weird noise behind... - We add some echo to it and even a more fixed echo. The thing is that the echo has to sound only at the end of the sentence OK, we're going to record support voices so that your voice sounds a lot more enveloping. After having recorded the support voices, I have been cutting them so that they suit with the main voice. It went from this: To this: (You will notice the difference more when using headphones) The purpose of cutting them so neatly is that it does not sound as if there is a chorus but that the main voice itself is inhumane. This process of cutting can be taken to inimaginable limits. Listen to this piece: I played it on a piano, and I can't play the guitar,
so I did it note by note. Each note is recorded separately, and then cut and put together. If that is what someone who can't play the guitar sounds like, imagine how "real" can music be on the radio. I want to make it even harder,
and make the secondary voices with a Vocoder. The Vocorder that I'm using was given to me by YAMAHA, in this piano. So I'm going to activate Vocoder, and it's going to make Ter sing... The tuner is not only capable of taking her voice to the nearest note, but it also changes her melody into the exact same notes that I play. We can transform the melody we've recorded through this piano, while I play the chords that your voice will imitate. You are going to have a perfect secondary voice. - Without any effort...?
- Yes. - Then why the f*ck am I here?
- Exactly! Technology is what takes longer in musical production ♪ This is the Vocoder ♪ ♪ This is a dominant on Vocoder ♪ ♪ Now to the F ♪ ♪ Now to a fifth of the fifth of a fifth ♪ ♪ Ornament and resolution ♪ Ok, by changing things weirdly, we are going to transfer the main voice of the song through this piano, and I'm going to be a secondary voice. The original voice comes from the computer, converts into multiple choruses depending on the note that I play, and go back to the computer. In fact, we can do this with a random WhatsApp voice message. Send me one.
- OK. - [QUOTES "EL QUIJOTE"] - [QUOTES "EL QUIJOTE" HIGH PITCHED] In the 1950s, Nicholas Tinbergen found out he could create artificial objects that provoked stronger reactions on animals than the real versions of them. He created wooden fishes that the sticklebacks would attack more violently than they did to real fish, just by painting them in brighter colours than the ones found in the sea. He could paint plaster eggs in a way that the birds abandoned their own eggs in order too look after the fake ones. Just because they were bigger and with more saturated colours. Fishes had never tried to destroy something as hard as those wooden fishes. Nor had birds ever tried to look after eggs as much as they did with those of plaster. Because the instincts of those animals were prepared for the natural world, not for the objects created by the human technology. Tinbergen called these the
"Supernormal Stimulus" which go further than normal. And in my view, it is best represented in the actions of the male of Argynnis Paphia butterfly. Which sexually stimulate more when seeing a brown and yellow cylinder rotate, than seeing a female of their own species. If you put both things next to each other, he will always go for the cylinder and unsuccessfully try to mate with it. And this is where "pop" takes place, and not only pop... We are surrounded by supernormal stimulus. For example, the teeth of those who used brackets; inhumane teeth which attract us more than those we could find in the nature. Because the symmetry of teeth and having all teeth meant having good genes and good health. What happens is, there is a whole world between the analogical and the digital. And the use of computing, in every single aspect of life, is going to increase the number of supernormal stimulus to which we are exposed. We are in a world in which the line between the virtual and the real is going to vanish. Take a look at the instagram filters: just a curiosity, until they improve. And they improve. And one day, there will be youtubers whose real faces you won't get to see, whose real voices you won't get to hear, but will have the same influence on you as real people do. The intake of "real" things will be reduced into a whim, in the way that hunting for your own food can be a sport, or as a spiritual activity, and just that. The analogical part is everywhere already. Even in classical music: Sanctuary of the Pure. Glenn Gould, one of the most famous Bach's interpreters, openly said that That his records were cuts of different takes And every picture is edited, and the instagram filters, and the red eyes option... Autotune is like makeup on TV, or like scripts on youtube, we all have one... and that's it... It would not make sense to refer to Autotune as "cheating". It isn't more "cheating" than brackets. Recording and editing are concepts we can't run away from. As Tomska said, when he recorded a video saying something personal and sad to his audience, he had to record it several times to force himself into crying. Because his first idea was to talk seriously, but knew that the audience would not understand the seriousness of the matter. And this happens in every video and everything on the internet. Because I don't want to deny that premise, but the major one, that those tears are not honest, just because they are artificial. They spread the message they have to spread, in the only language we have: a language we cannot run away from. And I insist, it is not "pure" or "real" or "good". That would miss the whole point. Saying you're against autotune is like saying you're against agriculture. You're about 10,000 years late. Plus: [CONFUSED] what? And now, we get back to Ter to see the big reveal of how the song ended. - We have finished the song and we're going to play it, but we don't have a music video. - We're just going to use a random background. - You could use the universe or something like that, with galaxies and stuff. - OK. During the video, I criticized you a lot, saying you were out of tone or tempo, but it was just to notice the wrong syllables, so that I could correct them. But you've come here to sing precisely because you sing very well and I really like it. I wanted to make that clear. - Thank you a lot, but I was not offended. I came here for the art of musical production. - OK, and jokes apart, this is Ter, I think I did not introduce her to you before, by the way. She's also a youtuber and you may have seen me on her channel, as well as her in mine, And the truth is we've been together for some time now. You all have asked on twitter and instagram. - And we have just recorded a video for my channel talking about it. A lot of you had guessed it already. - Some of you have really done a work of investigation, even analyzing the wall pattern in my bathroom with the wall pattern of her bathroom, which is the same bathroom. So I will leave a link to the video on her channel. - And now, the song, right?
- We have already played it. - Oh, OK, OK. I don't know what part we're in. - So I hope you enjoyed the video and I gave you a different lens through which to admire pop culture. And I'll see you guys next week. See you soon! - Bye!
Voice crack!
