By the way, this tells you why Auto-Tuned vocals on many contemporary records sound so shallow and lifeless. It’s almost as if everything we learned from African American music during the twentieth century was thrown out the window by technologies in the twenty-first century. The goal should not be to sing every note dead center in the middle of the pitch---we escaped from that musical prison a hundred years ago. Why go back? In an odd sort of way, much of contemporary pop music resembles opera, with all the subtle shadings of bent notes and microtonal alterations abandoned in the quest for mathematically pure tones. . Ted Gioia
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The idea that Autotune is to blame for the superficiality of contemporary pop music is an interesting one. Autotune has undoubtedly altered the way that modern singers approach their craft. After all, there are plenty of other things that have changed over the years, including the rise of the synthesizer and the development of digital recording technology. That said, it's true that many modern-day pop songs sound identical to one another because they are largely built around a formulaic chord progression and a set of digital pitch shifts.

Source: How To Listen To Jazz

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