A friend posted this salty meme on Facebook a while back.
I find posts like this amusing, not because I agree with them but because they are not really accurate. Here’s the thing, in one sense, the rise of digital technologies has lowered the talent bar BUT people “cheating” to sound more talented has happened in the music industry for many decades.
I thought it’d be fun to pull back the covers on some very famous artists and bands who have “cheated” to sound more talented.
Hey, You’re Not Playing Mr Tambourine Man
The Byrds were considered one of the pioneers of the folk rock scene in the mid-60s. Their cover of Bob Dylan’s “Hey Mr Tamborine Man” was their debut single and helped to launch the folk rock boom of the mid-60s.
The interesting thing is that Roger McGuinn was the only member of the band to play on the song. The rest of the musical backing was provided by a group of uber talented session musicians called “The Wrecking Crew”.
Essentially the song that broke them wasn’t theirs and, except for one member, they didn’t even record their instruments for it. Given that their previous band Jet Set had a line up that seems to have been driven by model good looks and having the right hairstyle, it’s not surprising.
There are many popular acts from the 70s and 80s but seem to have lacked something in the talent department when it came to playing their instruments on their songs. This gave The Wrecking Crew plenty of work as session musicians. It wasn’t publicised for many years that many of the hits from the 60s – 70s were recorded by The Wrecking Crew.
In complete transparency, it wasn’t purely a case of people not being talented enough on their instruments, it was also a commercial factor. Time was money in the studio and there wasn’t the luxury or budgets to faff around with bands who had average players.
Oh Freddie, Say It Ain’t So
One other cheat that a lot of vocalists used in the days of recording to tape was the varispeed pitch shift. Essentially the tape that was being recorded on was slowed down so that the backing might be a semitone to a tone lower than the original key. The vocalist would record their vocal at the lower pitch and then the tape would be sped up to the original speed which would return everything to the original pitch but bump up the pitch of the vocal too.
Essentially if a part was in an uncomfortable area of a singers range it could help make singing the part easier so the singer could focus more on the performance rather than trying to hit those notes.
Some well known artists who used this technique were:
- The Beatles “Penny Lane”
- Queen “We Are The Champions”, “Somebody To Love”
- Prince “If I Was Your Girlfriend”
- Led Zepplin “The Song Remains the Same”, “Celebration Day”
- Madonna “Borderline”
There are more in this thread on using varispeed in music production.
We know that the vocalists above were talented so it’s not the same as autotuning a very average performance BUT the technology was used at the time as an aid to vocalists.
It’s also important to note that the technique of speeding up tape wasn’t just for helping a vocalist perform more confidently. It was also used to adjust the overall tone of a finished recording. This is a technique still used today in pop music. Here it’s being used purely for the quality it adds to the track and not necessarily as an aid to the singer – we’ve got autotune now.
Pitch Correction in The 80s
With the advent of digital samplers like the Fairlight CMI (1979) and E-mu Emulator (1981) as well as MIDI it became even easier to help vocalists sound intune.
A section of the vocal was recorded onto the sampler. An engineer or specialist vocal tuner would then play back the sample in time with the track and make slight adjustments in pitch using the pitch wheel of the keyboard to get it back in tune.
Because these slight adjustments could be recorded as MIDI commands they were able to fine tune these adjustments in a MIDi workstation until the correction was undetectable.
Here’s a video which demonstrates the technique:
It’s hard to point out specific examples of where this technique was used as it was a trade secret and keeping the illusion of the artist who sings in perfect pitch was imperative. However, it’s no secret that there were “vocal tuners” who were employed specifically to tune vocals for producers. Apparently Carl Marsh the Grammy nominated arranger/composer had a particular knack for this and was quite busy in the 80s being flown around the world to tidy up star vocalist’s performances.
This thread has more about the use of samplers and effect processors to tune vocals.
The Talent Myth
I’ve written a lot about the talent myth. The reality is that in the music industry, the most talented vocalists and instrumentalists aren’t the most popular or recognisable. The history of the music industry is riddled with stories of amazing writers and performers who didn’t “make it” in the industry because the industry wasn’t for them, didn’t get the opportunities they needed or some other unrelated reasons. Some saw behind the curtain and preferred to stay in obscurity than compromise their principles.
There are also very talented people in the music industry who have learned to find a balance and survive.
Then there are the average artists who are popular and rely on help in the studio to sound more talented but who are happy to play the industry game. They need the help. But they are also a great product that makes stakeholders money. THAT is the music industry and it’s not for everyone.
The Takeaway
Technology has always been leveraged by the music industry to make music sound larger than life. The reason we have a music industry is because of developments in technology. Autotune has definitely helped more average vocalists sound better in the last 20+ years but it’s also clearly a creative tool too.
AI generated music is another ball of wax and it’s yet to be seen how that story will play out. It may even peter out before it starts if the old guard of the music industry have anything to do about it.
So are there less talented people making the popular music of today. I would say no, not really. Is the popular music of today more synthetic? Yes but that’s the effect of technology and musical fashions, it’s more of a creative decision than a crutch for less talent.
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