How Auto-Tune DESTROYED Popular Music

Just today I was listening to Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie 1972) The tempo is all over the place, and boy is it magnificent. 51 years old and still amazing. To me nothing replaces this human feel.

As a high school music teacher, it's getting harder and harder to impart the joy of organically creating music to my students. Pre-fab loops, AI drummers, auto-tune, etc. all make up for a lack of formal musical education and result in a flood of mediocrity. Most listeners don't care.

Hey Rick, I'm a high school band director. I talk to my kids all the time about "beautiful mistakes." Mistakes are what make every performance unique and special. Why do gigging musician not get bored playing the same music time and time again? It's never the same....ever. The general listener may want to hear "radio cuts," but live tracks are where it's at. Long Live Mistakes!

As a 3D artist, I am terrified of AI art. It can spit out things that literally steal artists work and morph it into "Their own art" and without ever saying which artist it stole from. And no one will ever know. No artist can compete with this AI making millions of art and flooding the internet. No artist can make art that fast. It takes me days to weeks to make art and an AI can do it in literally a minute... This is a dark path for art and I am so worried about the future of the artist and the sad thing... no one will care.

Oh the joy of walking into a small venue, hearing a local band playing their hearts out, buying the band a drink and enjoying the live show will never go out of style....never!

Rick, your thoughts on autotune, quantization, etc. have changed how I view my own live performances. Not only have I accepted that I will naturally have tempo fluctuations when I play, but I've also embraced it as part of an expressive, human performance. When all you hear is perfection, you start to think something is wrong with you, but it's good to know I'm not alone!

"Are you concerned about the increase in artificial intelligence?" "No, but I'm concerned about the decrease in real intelligence."

I worked for years for the Grammy foundation. After the Grammys, at Pase University, they would have an inner-city music workshop with winners of Grammys with a main room and breakout rooms. In one of the breakout rooms, we were teaching the kids how garage band worked. We had a live trio, and we put it up on a big screen. One of the kids who was way More accomplished using garage band than myself or the music professor that I worked with from Juilliard asked the question why every time the musicians played it was a little longer or a little shorter because every one of his songs were always perfectly in time. My friend, and I looked at each other and realized that this whole class of students were not used to live music that was not pre-programmed not auto tuned or beat corrected. we literally had to sit the kids down and explain to them what live music was. every one of the musicians in the trio got up and said I feel a little more at this part and I lay back a little more at this part and that is why when you look at it it is a little shorter or a little longer in time it is just slightly off because we are human and not a computer. This was a complete revelation to us old timers, who are used to working with real musicians. For all the years that followed, we incorporated this into our teaching of GarageBand and live music.

Rick, you've re-confirmed my sense that my taste in good music has repeatedly brought me back to the 70s and some of the 80's. The sound of clear vocals and actual instruments being played cannot be replaced in my music appreciation.

Rick - please keep harping on about whatever you feel the need to harp on about. Always educating, interesting, and passionate. Keep playing and talking to us - love you.

I am 60 and love to play guitar since I was 11. I learned hundrets of songs, play for kids every day, wrote songs for them and write tunes for myself. All the knowlege of theory and practice have grown over the years and may be it is posdible to put all this into a machine. But spirit, creativity, emotion, personality, joy, soul, the beauty of the very second, the joy of playing, listening yourself and others and singing together, all this and so much more can not be made by machines. Even tuning my guitar with the tuning-fork instead of the tuning device is joy. When I start to tune my guitar, I have to listen and so I start to play. There is no playing without listening. I'm glad to be able to experience this, to share it and to give it to young kids.

This is why Live music must never die. Support your local bands!! The human element. A great example is Mayer.. I don't feel he has ever captured how good he is live on an album yet and thats such a shame.

This is exactly what the music industry wants, no risk & complete control!

One of the weapons against this -- although I don't know how many people are even aware -- is the proliferation of "reaction" videos to old songs. Many of the reactions are kind of banal, but at the same time it's heartening to see young YouTubers expressing their appreciation -- even ASTONISHMENT -- at the artistry of great singers and musicians who had no choice but to hone their craft to a pinnacle of perfection. I hope it can make a dent in this tsunami of fakery that we're seeing with auto-tune and all the rest.

You’re damn right! I’ve never get used to this kind of music, cold, no warmth, and too robotic and no human emotion in this stuff

Art, in my opinion, is the expression of feeling!!! no machine will make art!!!! From Brazil!

Live music is where it is at. That's where real playing and singing is done and appreciated.

My job in manufacturing (since retired) had me going from line to line, machine to machine checking product as part of Q.A. Co-workers had radios, loud ones. Something I noticed over time was that even when a radio was not quite on the station, or if a speaker was blown guys would still listen to it. Drove me nuts. Then one day, I went to a work station where a guy had his radio just on static, white noise. It dawned on me that some people weren't listening to music to listen to music, they were just afraid to be alone with their brain, or something. Much of pop music strikes me as designed for that. It's not really for listening to. AI will fit right in there and take over. Gerry's "Human Music" from "Rick and Morty."

I can feel the sadness and dispair in you and I totally agree with your appraisal of the way things are going. I cannot Imagine listening to an AI generated track which could move me to tears with emotion like some of my favourite vinyl songs. If that happened we will surely have lost our souls.

I feel you! One of the earliest experiences for me was Black Eyed Peas who were so great before autotune and suddenly they became super generic with The E.N.D. album in 2009