Overly Produced Voice

 

Rick Beato made a point that the use autotune and overly produced voice perfect will enable AI to produce songs that general public will not bother to care. The result of overly produced voice is that the singing becomes robotic and lost all of the nuances. Computer in the long term will be able to create that voice.

The great question from AI produced songs will be the author of the songs. I can already imagine this will be belong to the record company. Oh, wow, 100% pure industrialized songs.

Rick point this overly produced voice are the works of autotune. The use of autotune from Cher's '98 Believe song and now 2023 commonly used on all songs. People nowadays search for perfection on production.

There are two things that made me think why the use of autotune a common way to produce music. The first thing I can think of is the death of CD and the rise of digital stream. The second is music nowadays is used for background.

Let me talk about the first. CD is the last digital media that contains high quality voice. The bitrate of CD is 1,411 kbps. High quality streaming media mostly use 200 ~ 320 variable bitrates (means it can have lower bitrate depending on parts of the song). As you can see, the quality differs.

But, yes, people don't care anymore. People don't come to a concert to listen to see Bach and his crew playing classics for two hours. People nowadays use their Bluetooth in-ear audio pretending to do work out. They just do music for accompanying their activities.

Only people from the past who have tasted the sonic nuance know what's the different.

I'm not trying to be elitist here. Newer generations never have the chance to listen to good audio. They are getting used to over-compressed songs. That's why they will not get what's the different between yesterday and today's music.

What's the different?

You won't find Alanis Morissette today. You can say goodbye to Cyndi Lauper. Everything is robotic nowadays.

You can still find good music from Indies, still. A little bit more effort, but they are diminishing. I say this because some Indie musicians also tuned their voices nowadays. It's just a style of current music.

How about me?

I'm trained listening world music. My ears are used to the imperfection in many ethnic songs. I love microtonal. I love playing with weird progression and singing.

That's why I don't listen to music intensely anymore. They are designed to have expiration so that new music can be sold. However, listening to the same beat really dull my heart and passion in music.

Well, actually I'm listening to NPR Tiny Desk now. I also like Stromae and Steam Powered Giraffe. For Indonesian, I love to listen to Basboi - Bismillah. 

Yes, Steam Powered Giraffe has a trans. Basboi is a Moslem. However, I don't judge the songs based on my faith. Good song is good song. I can accept as long as they are not trying to push their agenda.

I believe in Christ, but this world is not. My job is to show what Christ would do. Heart depends on the work of Holy Spirit.

Anyway,

Steam Powered Giraffe reminding me of I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME band. The vibe, I mean. SPG has its own solid voice, I know.

I used to like Japanese music. Their math rock progression is awesome in my opinion. However, they repeatedly use the same progression and sound making me bored. Also, their song is getting louder and tight. It seems my hearing could not cope with that type anymore.

Before COVID, I usually asked for my friend that goes to Japan to buy a Perfume CD. Their music is still acceptable to my ears. I also like Mitchie M and kz-livetune music for Vocaloid producers. I'm having a hard time listening to Giga and newer Vocaloid producer.

My last find for Japanese music is Frederic's Oddloop. Oh, wow, they have a new song. Gonna listen to them now.

For VTuber, I really like the Kobo's rendition of Happy. The song is having real instruments and enough space to make the ears enjoying the experience. I also like the songs arranged by Farhan Sarasin and Redshift. 

Especially with Redshift, I really love how the music is having enough space so that my ears will not bleed. I can put Reine and Towa's rendition of Cynical Night Plan on repeat play. Look at the drums, they are not that loud but perfect for my ear. I can accept stylized voices just as long as my ears not bleeding from the whole song, and it perfectly blend into the song. I can see human voice as instrument.

Yeah, the obscures really fill my need for good songs. Just wait for the music cycle to get into the right sonic. Until then, into the obscures....