So I recently acquired a program called Melodyne. Basically it’s a real time pitch correcter that I can use on singers. The intent with the program isn’t to make people who aren’t singers to magically sound professional (although it probably could), it’s just a time saver. I read somewhere that Frank Sinatra for one of his songs did over 70 full length takes to get the ‘perfect’ version. Most of us don’t really want to wade through 78 takes. I say you get 5 near perfect takes, splice the best parts together, and any part that’s still a bit off can be corrected. It’s just a tool to save time and money.

When I first started sound school, I was quite against the idea of using the computer to “perfect” a vocal line, thinking it was unnatural to do so. My teacher told me that he was against it at first as well, but he changed his mind. His view was, that the music recording and creating process is anything but natural. You record all the instruments one at a time, as opposed to playing them all at once. You don’t search for “the perfect drum kit” or “the perfect guitar”, any instrument will have its faults. Is the kick drum lacking in the 120 Hz range? Beef it up with some EQ. Does the snare sound a little dry? Add some delay and a touch of reverb. Guitar sound too clean? Run it through a distortion unit. Does the amp have a hum? Take out the 60 Hz cycle with EQ. The singer is a bit loud in one part and a bit too quiet in another? Use the volume knob or put some compression on that.

Knowing that we mutilate our music to enhance the good parts and get rid of the bad parts, why should anyone draw an arbitrary line, saying that we shouldn’t do the same to pitch? We shouldn’t. Drums don’t really sound like that when they’re recorded, nor do guitars, nor just about any other instrument, why do we draw this distinction with the voice? We shouldn’t. If we wanted a realistic sounding music, we’d record an entire band at the same time, with two flat response mics, nested inside a device that mimics the human head and ear drums. If anyone wants to record that way, and only records that way (like many classical orchestra recordings), those are the people that have a right to bitch about the use of pitch correction. Anyone else that doesn’t record in that manner and feels that pitch correction is a detriment to the singer is a hypocrite.

I’ve got quite a few things on my mind, and hopefully this post works, as there are features to the Wordpress.org blogging tool that I’ve yet to try. If everything on this site goes wonky, blame wordpress.

UNKLE

I went to UNKLE’s first show in Canada and I thought it was great. They opened with Chemistry, probably my favourite song from them, and it really lends itself well to being an opening song, as the drums are packed with constant snare rolls to hype everyone up, and the general mayhem near the end of the song… also good at amping a crowd. Gavin Clark was a guest vocalist, and I really like his singing on the album, and he sounds nearly identical live, so that was a nice treat.

My only one complaint about the show is that for the album songs that featured guest vocalists other than Gavin, they all used a sample of the vocal track, which they played along to. I don’t mind that some of them did, but I wish either Gavin or their actual singer would have tried singing at least one of the songs, May Day comes to mind. Even though the vocal styling for May Day is very distinct, I think Gavin could have done a really good job with it. Despite that, I thought they were really fun to watch.

Reason 4 and the Thor Synth

Wow wow wow. Reason 4, from a work flow standpoint alone, is a vast upgrade from Reason 3. I won’t get into the improvements much here, they list them on their website, but basically the way that it works now makes me more excited to try different things, rather than thinking “I hate automating things in Reason”.

And when they advertise that “Thor is a very powerful synthesizer”, they’re not just speaking that way for better advertising. There are so many complex routing options are available, it will take me a long time to figure out exactly what it can do. I can run it in it’s most basic form, mimicking what I do with other synths, but the modulation matrix section is a god send. They say on their website that the modulation matrix “gives you complete control over your signal flow, letting you modulate anything within Thor with anything within Thor”. Instead of being stuck in a certain signal flow, where certain things such as an LFO is designed to route to maybe the pitch, volume, mix and other basics, Thor lets you route it to anything else in itself, like maybe the amount of chorus you want, the shaper tool, or a filter knob.

So, in short, I’m having fun.

Sneak Peak ZOMG!

So I was messing around with said synth, and I put a drum loop to what I was doing. Hype came up with the melody, and the rest came up as I was showing him how to automate things, how filters worked, and a bit of the routing options of Thor. So we decided that the tempo was good for one of our songs, called “Feet, Life, and Munchies”. Coming back to my original statement, I’m not sure how I’ll link to the file, so I may have to edit this post a few times.

Okay, so that didn’t work, I’ll link to it the traditional way.