Autotune on bass guitar

[HiRoller]

I'm in a total state of shock right now. I downloaded a free 10 day demo of Antares Auto Tune 3 for my Digi 001 the other day just for the hell of it.

Today I recorded a scratch bass track for a new song demo. There are a couple of sections in the song that are kind of free style jam-ish and I went for it totally off the cuff to get some ideas for the real bass track. The notes were played pretty much in time but a lot were off key and just plain wrong notes.

Then I get the crazy idea of running the bass track through AT- again, just for the hell of it.

It went from zero to hero with one mouse click and completely freaked me out. The pitch on every note is perfect, all the wrong notes were corrected and no one could ever tell.

There is no moral to this story, except technology is pretty scary these days.

[JBFLA]

And I thought I felt bad when Top 40 gigs went from Live Bands to DJ's!!!

 

{pssst - Can I get that REAL TIME!!???}

 

JBFLA

[pumpcat]

I used AutoTune once on a fretless track. The bassist didn't have a lot of experience playing fretless (he borrowed one from a friend), so the track had a lot of pitch problems. The tone really worked for the song, and the AT nudged everything into tune.

 

I used a pretty slow speed setting, but a faster setting would probably be better for a fretted instrument.

[HiRoller]

Correction: I A/B'd the original and AT'd tracks and it didn't change any notes, just corrected the pitch within the nearest half step.

[jeremy c]

There should a note on the credits for a cd:

 

"This cd used pitch correction software on the following vocalists and instrumentalists."

 

It's pretty depressing. I was in the studio once and was asked to use a fretless. I played one take sightreading the music.

 

After I finished, I said "can I do it once more so that I can nail the intonation?" And the engineer said, "don't worry, I'll fix it with Protools."

 

The client had no idea of what was going on. He thought he was saving money because there were so few takes.

 

He was quite shocked when he got the bill for the editing/mixing session.

 

And it would have taken me three minutes to do another take. Or maybe even less than than that to punch in the two notes where the intonation was less than perfect.

[wraub]

The studio where I work has Big, Beautiful 2'' machines that just sit there, for the most part, and the ProTools HD gets all the attention. There is, IMO, still a difference from the HD to tape, but the gap is growing smaller. This, of course, means it will become even more commonplace.

The ability to "fix" everything, as Jeremy pointed out, can lead to cost overruns, and often sucks the life and verve out of a track. (Not always, but a lot of the time.)

Auto Tune is in alarmingly common use these days, and since it can make anyone sound like a singer, it's sure to be everywhere soon.

And, as for the question about using it "real-time"? It goes on all the time, many travelling live FOH guys, and quite a few live venues, have one in the rack "just in case" it's needed.

Your favorite rock or pop singer may be using one right now...

 

Peace,

 

wraub