Submitted 3 weeks ago by bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
There was (and still somewhat is) a big uproar about auto tune usage in music. But guess what? You haven’t heard a song NOT using it since at least 1998. Unless youre friends with every sound engineer out there and can ask them specifically if an artist did or did not use it (unrealistic).
The same will happen with ai. People wont notice, and it will go on to be the norm, with a very small pocket of purists.
Autotune is not driving up electricity costs for everyone whether they use it or not AI is.
American households have seen their electricity bills rise 30% since 2021. This is contributing heavily to rising cost-of-living concerns across the country. At the center of these price hikes is the AI revolution, and the sector’s projected expansion means the increased costs are unlikely to level off any time soon.
The AI data centers sector, hungry for power, which accounts for much of the increased energy demand, is projected to undergo double-digit annual growth through the end of the decade. This far outpaces what the existing electrical grid and its operators are prepared to manage. Consumers are finding themselves footing the bill for the excess strain on the system. A study published by Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University predicted an increase in household energy costs of 8 percent nationally by 2030, with up to 25 percent increases in select regional markets.
At some point, people will get sick of this AI nonsense and stop allowing the data centers in their communities.
I may “be used to” Autotune, but it’s not in 90%+ of the music I listen to.
Most proponents argue that the grid needs to be updated anyways, and more efficient power generation is being developed, and also the fact that 1 gaming pc uses many many times the energy of a prompt.
Everything you just said could have been used to scare people about electricity. Or the internet.
1 gaming pc uses many many times the energy of a prompt
That’s a pretty stupid comparison. I think some of your arguments make sense, but on data centers, it’s absolutely a bubble. Read about this: apnews.com/…/big-tech-data-centers-electricity-en…
They’re putting the cart before the horse. You can’t have data centers without electricity. You think any of these data center companies are investing in producing more electricity? No, because it’s a bubble.
You haven’t heard a song NOT using it since at least 1998.
You and I might be listening to very different kinds of music.
The general public is a lot bigger than niche lemmy interests though, is what im saying.
People are completely used to autotune in music now
I’m absolutely not.
So youre absolutely sure the artists you listen to arent using any form of pitch correction?
Are they all recording directly to 24 track 2" tape and then cut to vinyl directly as well? Because thats the only way you can be certain (thats negating an outboard vocal tuner, which could be in the signal chain).
The point here is, you have no idea. Just like many will have no idea they are listening to machine generated music and it wont be given a second thought. Its just kind of gross to me.
I guess I can never be 100% sure, but why would my favorite punk band who can’t even tune a guitar (or maybe they’re doing that on purpose) use autotune?
And it’s not just Punk, there are many ways of singing that defeat the purpose of autotune.
And your weird gatekeeping with analog tape and vinyl has nothing to do with anything here.
I already commented yesterday. Now I read your replies. I must say, you really do not have the whole picture here and you should stop arguing this theory right now. Esp. this part:
You haven’t heard a song NOT using it since at least 1998.
Maybe try bandcamp.com to listen to the rest of the world (and realize how big it is).
I love bandcamp, use it daily!
Yeah people arent really understanding how prolific autotune/pitch correction is. They think their niche bands arent using it. Well sorry to say, they are. You just have no idea. I work with producers and engineers and have done it myself, and ive seen how its used.
Was just showing how the same comparison will be used with ai tools in a few years, and people will be having this exact same argument over the fact that “hey, its fine that band actually used ai for all their drums because their drummer is bad!” There truly is nothing new under the sun :)
You have changed your tune from
You haven’t heard a song NOT using it since at least 1998.
to something much weaker.
I stand by my original statement: That’s bullshit.
You still need to actually be a decent singer to not make autotuning sound terrible. Also, big singers will have audio editors to clean up issues too. Partial use of generative AI will require the presence of basic skills to make everything work.
I don’t think the same can happen with fully AI generated music. Unless it is stated immediately that they are doing it, people are eventually gonna find out that the artist is not actually singing and find it a scam. If they don’t show themself in social media, tours, and interviews to hide this element as much as possible they are most likely going to remain niche.
No matter how good your singing is. Autotune makes your music completely trash
Right, thats what im saying. Its already edited to death now, so the change to ai music won’t even be large, because everything is already quantized and pitch matched.
Its just a depressing dystopian future that the majority of humans will be listening to and enjoying music made by billionaires with data centers.
big difference between someone using a tool to polish an already complete piece of music and someone using a tool to make a piece of music for them
I can see that. I still would be a little cautious of any artist using “ai tools” to fix their mixes.
It soon balloons into “we’ll, the ai can do better guitar parts so have it do it all” and no one knows the difference.
No band I listen to uses autotune lmao
Yeah, TIL I am not people.
You are the embodiment of a person in 20 years saying no band they listen to uses ai. But you have no idea, and neither would future person. Unless you’ve been there for every recording and mixing session for these bands ?
No one is seeming to get my point. Autotune/melodyne/pitch correction (semantics) is SO transparent now, you really dont know unless you engineered the track. Ai usage is/will be the same, untraceable.
Yeah I’m 100% certain Whitechapel and Unearth dont use autotune lmao. Wtf are you on? Not everyone listens to just radio pop music all day long.
You haven’t heard a song NOT using it since at least 1998.
I have a very hard time believing that, unless of course sound engineers have been doing “manual-tune” for ages and ages (see below). Regardless, loads of singers who perform in front of others clearly have the ability to sing a song in a variety of ways depending on mood, venue, audience, occasion, etc. In short– good singers REALLY ARE that talented, generally with excellent pitch, and don’t need assistance in something as basic as singing notes close enough to pitch-perfect without the need to be absolutely perfect.
Just look at how improv singers can do so well, or people performing in front of judges, or opera and opera-style singers performing in concert halls, like Charlotte Church.
I would guess the one argument of yours that holds some water is with flawed singers who are otherwise good, but have chronic problems hitting close-enough pitch, or really good singers trying to perform songs slightly outside of their range. Stuff like that…
Even pros use it, read literally any article on mixing/recording.
Because its so commonplace and its expected to be perfect. Im drawing the parallel between that technology and ai, because it WILL be identical.
Imagine scenario. Song comes out. Its a good song. You have no idea at all that everything was ai generated because it sounds exactly like a normal song. Maybe all the instrumentation was ai generated and the voice is real, to throw you off. Still my point stands. You will be consuming ai generated “music” and you wont have a clue, just like you apparently dont know that the large majority of singers (pro and non pro) are using autotune/pitch correction.
Easy example off top of my head. David Draiman was using real time autotune on the live performance of sound of silence. Note i dont care for this group or their cover, but its an easy one.
You’ve made no real case that it’s used in any significant way upon any significant music I know of.
Used on modern pop? Of course it is. All over the place. Which is like saying that fast food and cold cuts contain a bunch of artificial stuff that enhances shelf life, flavor. We all know that, and most people know that fast food and cold cuts are the very bottom tier of food, despite the brief rush.
You can bet your bippy that Simon & Garfunkel never needed no auto-tune gimmicks to perform “The Sound of Silence.” Altho extra orchestration indeed helped.
You’re probably thinking of pitch correction, not auto-tune.
In many ways they are similar. Im not referring to auto tune being used in a creative sense. But auto tune (antares) was used to fix vocals often, now its melodyne etc.
ai music, compared to autotune, is completely soulless.
I cant put my finger on it or articulate why I feel this way, but hearing an ai song feels absolutely disgusting…
I think a lot of people say that because they already know its an ai sound generation (really, its not music). But if they didnt know it and a friend showed a song to them, I doubt most people would notice. Audio is the easiest thing to emulate, takes very little power.
thats true, I should do an ai music blind test
I am not used to autotune
If by “music” you mean the shitty reggaeton, yeah, you’re right.
Can’t speak to other ways AI is used, but I consume most written media using text to speech and have done so my entire life. I’ve seen speech synthesis evolve from the mid 90s to now and I know what came before then. I know when a voice is not natural. Even AI voices that seem perfect at first will have little tells if you listen long enough, like missing or misplaced emphasis, odd pauses, and confusing the pronunciations of identically spelled words.
This may not be true forever but for now at least it’s obvious to me.
When it comes to music, all I care is whether it sounds good or not. Same applies to AI generated content: if it’s better than human made content then I want that.
I can see this from that standpoint but I could never do that myself.
Kind of like if I liked an artist and it was proved they were a serial rapist. It would be very hard for me to listen to them again.
chosensilence@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
i don’t think so. autotune does not make a bad singer good or otherwise generate new content from existing material. every artist uses a variant of autotune, but it is an editing tool, not a replacement for skill.
JettisonJoe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Pitch correction totally is a replacement for the specific skill of singing on key, though. While it’s not the only skill that goes into singing, it’s one that society used to admire in a good singer. Pitch correction also removes many small deviations in pitch that may have been appreciated by listeners as part of the artist’s performance. Just because everyone’s doing it now doesn’t mean something subtle and real hasn’t been lost.
chosensilence@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
you’re not wrong truly it’s about how you look at what is being created. a lot of studio albums are polished because they want to represent the artist’s closest vision. it isn’t necessarily about being raw, that’s for Live. they want to make the song they know is there in the exact way they hear it. pitch correct will not take somebody who is truly bad and make them sound good because the worse they are the more the effect has to be adjusted. it becomes really obvious and you’ll hear sharp corrections.
wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
This is precisely what autotune DOES. You’re confusing the creative usage of autotune to create a specific sound, like what T-Pain (an actually great signer) popularized. But autotune wasn’t created for that, it was specifically created for correcting signers who can’t keep a key.
chosensilence@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
…yes, i know what Melodyne is thanks lol. it still cannot do that. it will be incredibly bad sounding and obvious if the singer isn’t able to sing on key consistently enough and the errors aren’t minimal.
mrdown@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Autotune makes a good singer bad
chosensilence@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
it can lol i honestly think it can also be used effectively. there is an interesting way to go about it.