Re: Why pitch-corrected vocals sound so mechanical

On Apr 11, 2025 at 3:38:33 AM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
wrote:

On 2025-04-11 4:13 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDJF4lR3_eg

 
Just as pitch-correction alters the pitch of notes to make them
"perfect", quantization alters the placement of notes to make them
rhythmically "perfect".

Rhythmically perfect is not desirable. It makes the music sound computerized,
like Commander Data is playing it.

Humans are not perfect so music that is perfect sounds inhuman. That's why my
music software has a feature called "Human Playback", which purposely
introduces minor inaccuracies in both rhythm and pitch, making it sound a lot
less digital and cold.

 For instance, if the drummer's high hat hits are
a little bit off the beat, quantization can shift them to be exactly on
the beat. This too makes the playing sound mechanical. I've heard
several musicians bemoan the (over)use of quantization just as "Fil"
bemoans the use of pitch-correction in this video.
 
This video is a brief explanation of quantization without much of the
philosophizing about whether it is good or bad. I'm sure there are other
videos that examine the issue more thoroughly.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68LtY2aATl0 [7 minutes]
 
Note: He makes several uses of the term "DAW" (spelled out as individual
letters) without explaining it. DAW stands for Digital Audio
Workstation, essentially the software you use to do the recording,
pitch-correction, quantization etc.
 
For what it's worth, I've often heard analysts note that bands like The
Beatles, the Doors, and Led Zeppelin definitely speed up and slow down
perceptably in some of their well-known recordings, even though they had
fine drummers. If quantization had existed and been used when those
recordings were made, we might well have found those songs somehow less
impressive....
 
This short by Rick Beato gives an example of a quantized Led Zeppelin
groove versus the original:
 
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/a7dTRgc0Mn4
 
The short is an excerpt from this longer video:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT4fFolyZYU [10 minutes]
 
When Beato says that the original tempo is 170 BPM, he means 170 beats
per minute.