Selects: How Auto-Tune Works

Published Jan 2, 2021, 10:00 AM

What began as a challenge to an oil engineer to make a terrible singer into a pitch-perfect one, Auto-Tune has become a ubiquitous (and, to many, obnoxious) part of the musical soundscape. Learn more in this classic episode.

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M Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh. And for this week's S Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Auto Tune Works came out in August of two thousand fifteen, and it's one of my under the radar favorites because it looks at something that's worked its way into every crevice of popular culture, but that none of us really has any idea about how it works or where it came from. And this episode is a special listener Male roundtable with us and Holly and Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class all about sexism. It's super interesting and really kind of out of left field after the Auto Tune episode, so it's a nice combination and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry And this is Stuff you Should Know. That was great? Thanks man. Do I sound like Share? Do you sound like T pay T, Josh T Josh or Snoop Dogg? Does he do auto tune? He factors into this big time later on Oh Well, I don't even know about that, so I've got something of my sleeve. This is kind of fun. I don't know how much we're gonna do that because people are probably like, stop it right now. Oh, chuck, I think we should do it a lot. Are you done? Yeah, I'm done? All right? Um, we could have just auto tuned this whole thing. Yeah, you know, maybe we should. Maybe we should maybe from this moment fore, we should just auto tune the rest of the episode starting now. Let's sabotage our careers. Uh, you got an intro for this fancy intro. I think we just did it, buddy. Okay up, let's get in the way back machine then, my friend, Okay, we don't have to go back that far because I know where we're going. It's gonna be a short trip. Let's go back to Oh summer Boom. I'm you and I are in the club. We're hanging out. We're drinking rum and coke. You can find us in the club and uh, we're we're dancing. We're getting down and grooving too. Uh. To share his latest jam, Believe Believe It's a hot jam, A hot, hot, hot jam that's released in the summer it's summertime. As you can tell, it's hot in the club, cheat, and I've got on my my my short pants, I'm dressed like I'm out for a night at the rocks. Beary, that's right, I'm wearing a cross shirt, so I've noticed. Actually, how did you not? Well? Yeah, the third nipple really stands out. So we're in the club, we're jamming and share his song is on, and uh, something happens at about thirty five seconds into the song, and you and I are just like, whoa daddy? Did you just hear that? It changes everything? It changed the whole tone of the club, Like the club was like okay, and now it's banging because of a little something called auto tune. Uh what sounded like a little electronic glitch. Was very purposeful, and it was the first time the auto tune had been used in this way. So what, Josh is auto tune? That was quite a setup. Uh, can we do the rest of the episode in the club? Yeah? Why not? Okay, just keep those rum and coats coming, Okay, that's cool. Um, So Chuck, let me let me stop you for a second. Right, because the way you described it, you made it sound like everybody was like, oh, Shure just used auto tune. No, no, everybody said, what was that? That was awesome, although some people were like, what was that? Don't ever do that again, But most people were like, wow, Share just released her biggest hit of her entire career, and it was a pretty long career. She just came back like that just established her comeback was this track, and it actually became one of the greatest best selling singles of all time. Yeah, and I think, I mean, it would have been a probably a big song anyway, but I think most definitely Auto Tune kicked it into the stratagy gave it just the extra something. It became part of the talking but everyone was talking about it. So everybody went to her producer and said, dude, how did you do that? We want to know how to do that? And he was like, vocoder. Yeah. He lied. He lied, He lied big time. He lied in person to other producers, he lied in interviews, he lied, lied, lied about how he made that track because he wanted to keep it to himself because it was so huge, and it became so huge Chuck that at first Auto Tune was called the Sheriffect. Even the company that produced auto Tune, and Terry's which we'll talk about in a minute, called it in their instructional book, the share Effect. They probably still do, don't. They don't mention it any longer, yea um. But the so it was, it was a huge deal, and this guy lied and kept it under wraps and for many years it was very mysterious. Yeah, let's actually if you live under a rock, well, let's go ahead and play that clip of the very first thirty five seconds into that song where shaf says I can't break through. There's no yeah right there, boom right there. Music changed from that point forward. Okay, so what what this guy, what her producer was saying was vocoder. Vocoder is something that's been around for a very long time. If you've ever listened to any Pete Frampton, Peter Frampton, anythings, do you feel like we do that whole long guitar solo or whatever, he's breathing into a tube connected to his guitar, which is electrifying his voice. Vote coder had been around for a very long time, but there's different ways of doing it that That was definitely the tube effect through the guitar, but you can also just use it to you know, make your voice robotic like Beck to turntables in a microphone or Mr Roboto with sticks, but all different ways to use it. This thing, this sounded different to share effect. It was a little different, sure, And I wonder how this guy talked his way out of like Yeah, I mean like if if if a producer was like, okay, well show me how you did it on vote coder, if he was like over here and then just like ran out of the room. I don't. I don't think he talked out of it. I think he was just another line music producer and he was just like okay, well busted. Okay. So um, Apparently along the way people figure gured out here there what this guy did believe, and they started using it themselves, but very very sparsely. Alright, So, Josh, what is auto tune? Alright, I'll answer your question because I'm gonna keep asking it. All right, So auto tune is a plug in originally released in for the audio editing software pro Tools. Yeah, it's a software piece that allows you and the original um intent and how it's still mostly used is to pitch correct um singer's voice. Right, So when you when you or I go into the studio to record those albums that will never release, but we just record for fun. Um. We hit flat notes here there, Oh, not me a perfect pitch. I hit flat notes here there perfect um, and everybody does. It's a normal thing, sure for most of eternity. UM music producers would say, blue Eyes chairman, I need another take. That was a great take, but you had a couple of flight. Now give me another take just like that one. And Frank would finish his scotch, put out a cigarette and say, you get one more, shine head. What was the Joe? Oh you didn't even see spinal tap, did you? Yeah, you finally saw it, finally, Okay, But I don't remember any Frank Sinatra. Yeah there was when Bruno Kirby is the Limo Drivers. He's talks about Sammy Davis's book, Yes I can, and he says what they should have called it is, yes I can. As long as Frank says, it's okay because Frank called the shots. For all those guys, I do remember that. Um. So Frank would sing one more take, and this could be like take twelve or fifteen or twenty, depending on like how how much how much the person was feeling at the singer was feeling it at the time, and would be happy to hang around the studio whatever was keeping the singer there at the studio. As long as that was around the singer, the singer was happy to give it one more try, one more try, right, like drugs maybe, um or if they had like a really good candy bowl, who knows, I gotta stay for the skittles. Um. So the editor then or the music producer would then take all of these different tracks and would go through and I can't imagine how awful this would be. Take the best part of this track and edited together with the best part of that track, and like we're talking like pre digital air, so like they're spicing together tape sure from what I understand, right, to get the best possible complete take piece together from many different takes. Right. So okay, that's that's what they did. All of a sudden, there's this new software that just runs through a take and says, oh, well, I see what note or what key the singers singing in, But this this particular notes just a little out, so I'm going to nudge it into the key that the singer was going for. And now all of a sudden, One take is all it takes. Yeah. I mean what it did was it cut down on studio time, which is super expensive, which was very appealing because now you could churn out songs that are more rapid rate and a cheaper rate. And uh, it was it was a little sort of a secret tool that they didn't intend to like get out to the public. I don't think they wanted everyone to know this stuff. No, it was meant for professionals. Yeah, And basically it was just it was the musical audio equivalent of cosmetics. Yeah. Doctor. It was invented by Dr Harold Andy Hilda Brand, and he likened it to make up and the New Yorker likened it to um, like getting rid of a red eye and a photograph. It was just you use it just enough so that you can't tell it's there, but it makes for a more pleasant um overall composite. Right. Yeah. What Share had done, or what Shares producers had done, is take this thing and used it to the nth degree. Yes, supposedly it was just a joke and Share was like, I love that, but that's like, I don't know if that's an urban legender, if that's fact. Well, from what I read that her producer, she was she wanted like UM, she had heard like some telephone effect that she was interested in using, like she wanted something and I guess the producer had stumbled upon that and UM played it for but it was like you're not gonna like this, but listen to this weirdness, and she was like that I want that nice That's what I read. Well, I think that it's due to her giving it the green light. Then that was truly like uh, foresight, like a masterful move by Share. You know, well, Share has a lot of ForSight. You know, they say, don't don't doubt share and Share has a lot of foresight. Never bet against share. UM. So when she did make that decision, it changed, Like you said, it changed everything. And well, well I I we can't talk enough about this, but we're going to take a break and then come back and talk more about it right after this. You stop, all right, Josh. What I found most interesting about this while researching what um was what Andy Hildebrand did before he did this. He was a musician. He was played flute professionally since he was a young teenager, even went to University of Illinois, go fighting a line, I on a music scholarship. Yet he chose to work for Exxon Mobile for seventeen years looking for oil. Yeah, he's crazy. The two weren't too terribly far apart well, as we will find out. So he's a professional floutist, classically trained flout. It is a good one from what I understanding. His flute, yes, um, And he went to college to get an electrical engineering degree, I think. And basically when when he went to work for the oil companies, it was an oil exploration and he figured out a programmer he designed to software um that when you set off an explosive charge underground, it measured the pitch of stuff of the sound waves that that were created. Right, So as they traveled through rock, different types of rock adjust the pitch basically, and this software like analyzed the pitch that was coming through and could create a subsurface map of the rock below. And oil companies have long known that this type of rock is associated with oil, and this type of rock is not maybe a'll financial gas and this type of rock. So with this guy creating an audio visual map of the subsurface area, oil companies no longer had to just drill and drill and hope that they found UM oil. He would say, this is a pretty pretty great place to drill because this kind of rock is there. That's right. It's called auto correlation. And it saved Exxon a lot of money, and he somehow made a lot of money. I thought it was gonna be one of those things where like x Son was just like, thanks, you work for us, here's your forty dollars a year. But apparently he UM earned enough money to retire by the age of forty thanks to this innovation and UM in the early he got out of the oil business and found it like it's just a popularity content. Yeah. Uh. He founded UH in Terrorists Audio Technologies and UH kind of near Silicon Valley in Scott's Valley, California, and I think still they only have about ten employees. I think it's a pretty small operation. It's all centered around him and his ideas and in he is the main inventor UM. One of the first things he invented was something called Infinity, which is a program that where you could loop samples UM over and over and over like seamlessly. Apparently that was a necessary thing. I didn't know that. Oh yeah, think about it. We're talking like early nineties. That was like the eight acid house revolution. Yeah, but I just didn't realize. I guess he made it easier, probably is my guess. Yes, I think he enabled it. He enabled technos the impression I have, Oh really yeah, interesting looping samples together seamlessly. Well, but you could already do that. What I'm saying is is he clearly found a way to do it better and more efficiently. He didn't invent looping, No, no, he made it better, Yeah, exactly. Another thing he did was invented the microphone modeler. Modeling is a big thing in music. You can get um guitar amplifiers that model, uh basically means imitate other amps. I have a modeling amp which I don't use anymore because it's uh, not very good, but it models. There's like twelve different classic amps. It models, supposedly. But he invented the modeling microphone, which means you could mimic like classic microphones, or like a harmonica Mike and vintage Mike's, like the Elvis Presley, that cool looking Mike I'm sure that was on there. Oh is that the silver kind of rounded rectangular one. Noel's got one on his desk. I yeah, yeah, that's associated with Elvis Presley. Well, I mean just the music of that time. But I always picture Elvish. Yeah you know what I mean, I can see that. Yeah. Have you ever seen his grandson, by the way, quick sidebar. No, his name is quick sidebar yea quick Sidebar Presley. It's weird name, but you know, Lisa Marie was his mom. So yeah, um, that was very funny. By the way, he uh, just look him up. I think what's his name? I can't remember his name. His last name is the father's name for Lisa Marie's first husband, is who she had him with. Uh yeah, just look at Elvis Presley's grandson. It is creepy. Dude looks exactly like Elvis at that age, like scary, scary, eerily similar. Can he sing that? I don't know. Does he use auto tune? That? I do know? If he sings, he probably use his auto tune, probably because of singers. Apparently his auto tune it seemed even higher than that. Really, how about that? Admit it? M you know, yeah, there's the thing about auto tune where, um you deny that you use it even though you're totally aware that everyone uses it. UM. I read an article where apparently this one producer said that he's worked with two artists that have haven't used it everyone else has, and it was Nico Case and Nellie for Tato. And then apparently later after that, Nellie for Tato released a single that had tongue of auto tune on it solid she may be the only artist in the world who hasn't used auto tune, either subtly or um to the nth degree. Well, that's certainly not true. I think there are plenty of indie artists. But if you're talking, you should read this Verge article. It basically lays it out like, no, everyone uses this even if so. Apparently producers don't even necessarily tell the band that it's being used right then, because there's a live function, so that the monitors or the headphones that UM the band is hearing is being run through auto tune, so what they're hearing is already corrected, so they think they just did a perfect take. Yeah, I'm just wary of anytime someone says, out of twenty million singers, one person doesn't that's just very dubious claim. I don't know. We're talking music industry here, especially when a lot of people are making their own music in their own homes. Well, that's another thing they're not was part of the pop machine. They don't have stats on that, you know. Yeah, I'm just I'm just saying that's that sounds like a load of garbage to me. I'm sure more than one person doesn't either. It's just one. Um. So auto tune came about, apparently this is the tail because of a dinner that Hilda Brand was at. He was having lunch with a sales rep and the wife said something funny like, hey, Andy, can you once you invent something to make me sing in tune? And he went, no, great idea, that's a great hilder Brand. We should have auto tuned that. Maybe we could maybe maybe it was maybe it just happened. Uh. And so he said, you know what, Uh, if I can tell Jed Clampitt where the oil is, then I can make you sing on in tune. And he did, and he did he created auto tune, and um, we've kind of mentioned how it works. Basically, it takes a it takes that take of a singer's song. It takes the vocals of a song and you select what key you're singing in, and then auto Tune goes through and makes this map of this of the audio of the vocal track, and it goes through and says, oh, this one's a little flat, this one's a little low or whatever, um and it just nudges these things into tune into into the key that it's supposed to be in. So all all of the notes that the singer hits and that take are within the correct key, meaning that they all sound great. It's a perfect take, right. Well, yeah, and the the key there is it's in the original tone and inflection of the artist, right, So you can't tell it's happening. No, And there's actually if you look, if you look at the UMU Auto Tune product demo videos, it's amazing. So there's a there's an um an automatic version where like it just you select the key and like a tune, do its thing, and it does a pretty great job. One of the one of the ways that it does this is um it adds like millisecond pauses in between notes. There's little spaces between notes, which gives it a natural feel. Um If there's other selections that you can make like throat length, you can select how long the singer's throat is uh, and you can do that note by note, um, so you can make the whole thing even more natural. Until basically, what you've done is taught auto tune how to simulate a particular singers singing style and voice so that when it when it adjusts that note, it does it within the same exact range that the singer would have done had they hit it correctly. It's pretty amazing and advanced stuff. What when when normal people think of auto tune, like you and me who are not in the music biz, um, we we think of this, that's called the zero function. Yes, and you know what, let's take a break and we will explain what the zero function is right after this. You know, stop all right, the suspense is kidling me. You're gonna kid that's kid alright. Zero function. That was essentially what the share effect was. Okay, right, yes, go ahead, no no, no go ahead, no, no go ahead. You just sat up in your chair like you were about to arm rest. I've been do you go ahead? Do you talk about it? Well, what auto tune does, in the in terms of the zero function is is it gets rid of all of that space, and when shares voice changes, it's immediate. Yeah, all of those notes go right up against each other, and it creates this robotic sounding voice. Yeah, there's no like rise. It's there's it's not like a what's the word I'm looking for? It's uh. It's not like a normal vibrato that you would get because in a normal vibrato, there's there's pauses, there's space in between the notes. With this, it's not not all pressed up against each other in the compressed way, and that zero function um is what what. It takes any spaces out between the notes and creates that robot sound. Yeah, because I think auto tune has has a range of numbers to make it flow more seamlessly. And when they took it all the way down to zero, which means there's nothing there, it created that weird effect that they're like, nah, share your listen to this. It's weird. Yeah, And she's like, I like weird. It's great, baby, I hear number one hit in my future. No, you got it wrong. It's it's great baby. No. That was uh, that was Jack from Will and Grace. Oh do you remember when he thought he was talking to a share impersonator. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, and he's like, no, if I could turn back to turn he was teaching her how to say it, sing it correctly. I thoroughly enjoyed will and grace. Oh it was great. Agreed, All right, where are we? Well? You were talking about the share effect, right, and that's what it was called again. Antari has called this zero function the share effect for many years and um and over time, remember her producer just kept lying and lying and lying. Over time, other producers independently figured out what he had done. That he had used the zero function, which was a really obscure tool on a software suite that not everybody knew about. Right, So it took some some brainpower and some experimentation, but little by little, some produce just figured it out. This one producer um did a remix of a j Lo song and used it, and he I think was the second person to use it, um publicly and uh for a brief time, it became known as the jal effect. Of course, anybody who used this without fessing up to it. At first, in the early two thousands, it was called the whatever effect. And there's this producer Rapper down in Florida named T. Paine, and T Paine heard this jal effect. He went on a mission to figure out what this was, and he finally apparently took him years to figure it out. He finally figured out that it was the zero effect on this pro tools plug in UM and he started using it and just went crazy with it. Like up to this point it was used to like tweak or it would maybe make UM a track of just a little weird over here, something like that. He used it as often as he possibly could. Yeah. He basically the zero function and tea pain are one and the same. Yeah, And it became known as the tea Pain effect really because when people asked him how he did it, guess what he said, folk coder? Did he really? Yes, yes he did, And for years he managed to make a mint because the whole thing was in hip hop or in pop. If you wanted this tea pain effect, te pain needed to console at least if not produce your record. That was like ten years after the Share effect. People not know that I I he managed to pull it off for crazing years and years. Good for tea pain is what I say? Yes you know, yeah, I mean he apparently was like, um, I guess on a plane ride. Usher was on the same plane and asked to speak to him, and she was like, I've got to get something off my chest. You really screwed up music, like big time t Pain was like, I made a bunch of money doing this and people seem to like it, so I'm not gonna stop. Hildebrand has been vilified by many, and he said, you know what, I just make the car. I don't drive it down the wrong side of the road. Yeah, it's a great quote because a lot of people hate auto tune and thinks that's the worst thing that happened to music. A lot of people like it and say, when you use it for what it's supposed to be used for, it can really help out. Because you know, it's not like everyone uses it all the time. I'm sure some people need it way more than others. Well, even if you're using it as a like cosmetic touch, like kill the brand originally designed it for a lot of people say no, we shouldn't even be doing that, because, um, if you go back and listen to things like Bob Dylan or The Beach Boards or um, just a lot of these original artists that didn't use these kind of effects on their voice. Um, when they sang and their recordings made it through the studio, there were still flat notes here there, but it was their music, it was their voice, it was their vocals in these tracks, and everyone came to know and love them. But now, because everything is auto tuned perfectly, even the stuff that you don't you can't hear it's auto tune because they're not using zero function, but just the fact that it's been running through the auto tune, this stuff sounds really rough by comparison. So a lot of people are like, auto tune is ruined music. It ruined music that people love for decades because now by comparison it seems rough. Well. But it also, like a good ear can tell if something's auto tune, it has this weird tin equality that, um, it doesn't sound natural. So I think it they will be blowback and a reversion back to older methods. Okay, I bet you Jack White has an auto tune that's the most purest of pure guys. No, he uses all sorts of weird vocal effects on his stuff. No, but as far as like I bet he has ask him, he wouldn't admit it. Apparently that's part for the course. Um, so te Pain. If we can get back to the history of this by you a drink so t Pain right, hit. He's huge, like he's just everything he drops is just blowing up all over the place. He's getting invited to consult and produce on uh Kanye's album, which ultimately had every track had auto tune on it by the time Tea Pain got done with that, right. Um, have you heard his queen Bohemian raps that he live? No? Is it good? Oh? No, oh no, it's there's a video that someone spliced of him and he and Freddie Mercury. It's one of the worst things I've ever heard on a on the stage. I've got to check it out. It's terrible. Okay, all right, Um, I gotta see that. It's good. So um the tea Pain effect. Yeah, and if you wanted this effect, you had to have tea pain. Well Snoop Dogg says, that's enough of that. Oh finally, and he releases something called Sensual Seduction and it's one of the better rap videos you've ever seen. It's pretty good. There's a star wipe in it, so you know, I love it Um. So Snoop releases this using the T pain effect to great degree, but he didn't consult with T Pain. T Paint had nothing to do with this record. So Snoop kind of opened the floodgates saying, if you guys want to use this, go use it. But what's interesting if you watch that video when Snoop is um doing like the the T pain effector of the auto tune stuff, he's actually got a tube going to a synthesizer to make it look like he's using a vocoder. Oh interesting, is that weird? Like in his video? But anyway, he's sure that wasn't a marijuana smoking divide. It may have been, it may have been thing about it um, but Snoop changed everything in in that he took tea Pain out of the equation and really opened the floodgates for anybody and everybody to use this stuff. Simultaneously, jay z was trying to close those floodgates and push all of it back in. Yeah, I think jay z Um clearly jumped the shark at a certain point. You know when major ad brand are making ads using the latest and greatest that it's years late, first of all, and that means that has definitely jumped the shark. And in two thousand nine, Windy's had a Frosty Posse commercial where a gang of office workers built it out auto tuned rhymes while searching for Frosty's. I don't remember that, I know, but I went and watched it. Of course, how is it pretty great? It's what you think it is pretty great. It's awesome. Okay, now it's terrible. And Jay Z apparently saw this and was enraged, and so he wrote a song called d O a Death of auto Tune. I know we're facing a recession, but the music y'all making gonna make it the great depression. Get back to wrap you t pain into much. That's calling that's calling someone out hard. Yeah, but other auto tune, um, auto tune. The news was a big YouTube pit. Oh yeah man, that um the bed intruders song. Yeah, let's um, let's play a clip from that. For two thousand ten, it was a local news footage from Huntsville, Alabama, of Antoine Dodson delivering more awesome human being. Yeah about a neighborhood intruder and someone auto tune that the Gregory Brothers did. That's right, let's hear that real quick. We got your bigger pution. No, you are so good, you are really good. The man got away, leaving behind evidence. I was okay by some PI and the pie. So don't so don't soul, don't song. He climbing your windows, you're snatching your people are trying to write from magic. Have you listened that recently? No, it's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah, but again that was in two thousand ten, and I think that even kind of had a pretty short shelf life. Unless they're still doing it. I don't know what it was. What you say, The Gregory Brothers, the Brooklyn Soul band. Yeah, they started out doing auto tune the news. Yeah, and they would take the news and just auto tune it and turn it and like just produce it over use it um. And they did that with the Bed and Trooder song, and that actually became the number one video on YouTube of all of two thousand ten. I look the original the original video has a dwight million views right now. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty impressive stuff. At at the same point, like now auto tune has become a parody of itself. Yes, it's it's being used in ads. Here's the progression. Something starts out, someone uses it artistically, someone comes along and overuses it, then everybody starts to overuse it. Then Wendy's makes a commercial using it. Newsweek finally gets around to writing an article about it, and then years after we record a podcast on it, and then the thing finally dies. Yeah, and then fifteen or twenty years after that it becomes hip again. Yes, you know, that's the progression. So the point that we're at though, now, Chuck, it's not so cut and dry, man. It's not as cut and dry as jay Z would like to have you think. Because he came out with this death of auto tune track in like two thousand nine. Auto tune is still around very much. And now it's getting the point where if like um the Verge and uh, I can't remember the other article I read, they're both on this podcast page. If they're to be believed, they're credible sources, and they certainly seemed like it from these articles. There's a there's this growing question of um, is auto tune here to stay? People are starting to compare it to the initial reaction that people had to the electric guitar. It was a lot different from the original guitar and people it took a lot of getting used to, or like when Bob Dylan went electric, a lot of people didn't like that, But then look at what happened now with the electric guitar. A lot of people tried different stuff with it and it became a standard. Some people are wondering if auto tune is going to fulfill the same destiny. I think most people are hoping that it does not. Yeah, well, I mean, sweetening vote coals is nothing new, Like reverb is a tried and true thing for years and embraced. H does that sweetened vocals? I thought that was always used to like make it weird. Now it's it's sort of like it gives it an echo, a like you're singing in a big empty church hall or something. But it makes it sweetens it. It doesn't like correct anything, but when I say sweetens it, it just makes it sound a little better. Reverbs a great tool, right. The point is it's artificial. Yeah, it's not natural. Yeah, they it's they tried to replicate like singing in a big empty echo e hallway, uh, with an effect and it worked, right. And another argument in favor of auto tune that I've seen is simply taking a human voice and recording it automatically makes it artificial, like if they're not there in the room with you singing to you at that moment. Anything else is artificial, So what's the problem. So just to let people know, I put out two text during the episode to musician friends Jack why no. I texted Lucy Wayne Wright our buddy Jerry from our TV. She has not answered, which means she's used auto tune kidding and our buddy Joey c Are from the Henry Clay People formerly of Henry Clay People, now with fakers, and he said, I think there were a few harmonized US and OZ on one of our old records where we did some pitch correcting, but that's it, I think maybe, so definitely he's probably gonna be mad that I said that. Thank you for being fourth, right, Joey? Yeah, good guy. Are you got anything else about audit? Yeah? Just a really quick um. This is from a great website. Uh tin artists that are essentially computer programs. They just have the most auto tuned people. They have Tea Pain Kesha, Chris Brown, Maroon Five, Black Eyed Peas, Deaf Punk, Paris Hilton, who I forgot actually had a song the cast of Glee Katy Perry, and number one was owl City, who I don't even know what that is. There's a huge outcry apparently among Glee fans for Glee to stop using so much auto tune. I think the deal is. They're like, well, these are actors, Like yeah, And there's another there's a big scandal with u K's got talent or something weird like that, um where they were using a lot of auto tune for the auditions. It's like, come on, well anyway, man, that's not a very surprising list. So this has been grumpy old men. I don't feel like we've been grumpy. We haven't like condemned it out right. No. Nico Case's my lady, she condemns it out right. Yeah, Emily, I have an agreement about Nico Case, but we could both marry her if she was ever available to us. She's right behind you. Oh my god. Uh so we have a very well known finish up here a deal. Sorry, I just jumped the gun. Okay, thank you. Uh you don't have anything else about No, I was just teasing. We have a special listener mail with guests well, hold on, let me finish first. Okay, okay, Well, since Chuck doesn't have anything, it's the end. And if you want to know more about auto tune, you can type those words into the search par at how stuff works dot com. And this article, I have to say, by the way, was the most definitive article about auto tune on the internet. How about that. It's a good one. Uh so you can go look that up. And since I said definitive, it's time for a listener mail, and it's a special one, like Chuck says, that's right, h Today, we um got a joint listener mail to ourselves into Holly and Tracy from stuff you missed in History class. Yep, So we're gonna bring them in right. Yeah, we're gonna read the email and we're gonna talk about its implications. But let's start now. So, without further ado, we actually have Holly and Tracy of stuff you miss in history class with Hi and Tracy. We have actually not with us, she's with us in spirit and voice from Boston. I know it's pretty it's pretty interesting when it comes in through your headphones, but the other person somewhere else, it's kind of awesome. And this is how you guys do the show now right. Yes, we also have like an online you know, we have a Google hangout where we both are so we can see each other as well's we should have done that Tracy in here with her video image or like um hologram of or they'd be pretty cool too. That's true, all right. So I think the first thing I should do we could have a picture of me like our old boss. Oh well, I do have a picture of you. I have the wallet side that you gave out. So um, I think the first thing we should do is just read. I'll read the email here and then we will discuss like adults. How about that? What? So, like I said, already set it up that we both got an email from a listener and she says the following, and this is from Amanda Lae ends Hey guys and gals. She didn't say that, of course, I just did. Well, you should read it, okay, Josh, Chuckers, Holly and Tracy, and of course a hello to Jerry and Nol. Yeah. I'm a social worker from Portland, Oregon with a passion for human equity and respect. One of the original members of the s Y s K Army and a more recent listener to missed in History. I binged for about five months before I got all caught up. So how about that. I'm concerned about something I've heard a few times on the History podcast, and I was wondering if you guys would be willing to get together we are and look into something to fulfill my curiosity. When Josh and Chuck received corrections, they thank people for being nice and frequently ask people not to be jerks when correcting them. When Holly and Tracy talk about corrections they receive, they ask people to be nice and have referred to corrections on several occasions as hate mail. My concern is that listeners may be more disrespectful Howly and Tracy because they are women, and even if listeners are rude to Josh and Chuck, they may rein it in when making corrections because there are men. Could be completely off base. But if I'm right, I feel like the discrepancy should be addressed on the podcast to raise awareness about how people treat men and women differently, and even to address people's tendency to feel protected by the anonymity of the Internet and say things online they wouldn't say to someone's face. And uh so, Manda, we did talk about it via email, and now we're going to talk about it like regular human folks. And Tracy really has the wealth of information because of her job and what you know she's been responsible for in the past. Oh yeah, that sounds serious. Yeah. I was part of the management team of a website for several years before I started actually being on a podcast, and for a chunk of that time, most of the podcasters reported to me. So even though I wasn't managing the podcast program, I was sort of keeping tabs on the iTunes reviews for everybody. And there was a definite, definite try and in that the podcast that had women on them got disproportionately more vicious comments about what their voices sounded like versus the podcast with men on them, which got less of that. So this is news to me. Misogyny on the internet. I'm not I wasn't aware that that was the thing. Just had the most beautiful blind spot of all time. No, I can imagine. And I know Tracy, you've like pointed some of these out before. Um, for us, it's it's like, yeah, we'll get hate mail every once in a while, Um, but it's kind of easy to dismiss because even if it is directed at us, it's not necessarily directed at our gender or whatever it's or even if it is personal, it's it's dumb. It's just it's just dumb stuff. It's easy to not take personally, even when it's meant to be personal. But um, that's me speaking as like a white male age eight team to forty nine, you know, so I can imagine that like when someone attacks you just just based on your gender, or even worse, if they're coming after you and they don't even realize that they're being driven by this, um, this disdain for your gender, that has to make it a lot harder to just dismiss. Yeah, well yeah, how you can go. I was gonna say, for me, I mean I am lucky and that I really give very few damns about what most people think, like unless you're sitting in my lap or paying my paycheck, Like it's great if you like me, but if you don't, that's cool too. Like everybody do your thing. But eventually, like the landslide builds up and it's not it's not so much that I'm like heartbroken or traumatized, but it just wears you down after a while, where you're like, why am I doing this just to get more of this crap? Yeah? Well, and we definitely have, like we have been called slurs based on our gender before. We have been called the C word over the po unbelievable. Yeah well, and then the I told you about that when we were discussing the email in our email conversation, I told you about the person who wrote to us and said they didn't understand how I could be in the same room with Holly without strangling her. Like that's the kind of stuff that people will write to us and be really awful, But we do get a whole lot of them that I don't think people are consciously being misogynistic, but they're talking to us and about us in a very gendered way. So people tell us that we sound shrill or that we sound bossy, and those aren't words that people would use to describe men most of the time. First, the um and all of the articles that had come out lately about especially vocal fry and other things that people criticize about women's voices that they don't generally criticize about men's voices. Every single time I read it and I'm like, I could have written that about my job and my experience being a woman talking on the internet. So which one, Um, which one hits home the most? Like one that's a just a direct personal attack are the ones that or the person is just being unconsciously misogynistic, which to me would seem more entrenched. Yeah, to me, the second one is worse. And it's especially worse because a lot of the implicitly gendered criticism that we get is also from women. The hardest part, Yeah, that's the hardest part for me to deal with. Yeah, when they're real specific, for example, like the person who wants me to be strangled. Um, at the end of the day, I'm like, he's working through his own stuff. Like I have really have very little to do with this. So I may have been the trigger that you know, caused this little outrage bomb, but really it has very little to do with me that I think almost a percent of the time that is the case. These are people who have their own gripes in life and are probably angry, unhappy people. Yes, But then as Tracy said, when you get those ones that are like they they're not unconscious of how it's playing out you realize how much it is a bigger, sort of systemic social problem because most of those people are not evil, they don't intend to be misogynistic. They're not conscious that they're separating the two genders and judging them differently on different criteria. So yeah, those are, as Tracy said, a little more disturbing because you realize that it's kind of like the silent creep that underlays everything. Well, we do get a lot of emails that are great from people who are great, and the majority of the email that we get is great, so we like, I don't want to make it sound like every person who writes to us is awful. Um, And we talk about corrections on the episode a lot of times from people who write it the end and everything is fine and everything is very respectful. So to me, a correction is you said this person died in nineteen and eighteen, but really it was nineteen seven. That's a correction, and that's fine. But then we'll also get ones that are like, I can't believe you didn't even bother to this up. You completely butchered it. I don't know why you don't even put more thought into what you're doing. Because it's really important that you represent yourselves as well. And that's why I'm like, that's hate mail we get, Yeah, we get those. Yeah, we get a lot of those, but I never feel like those are like, uh, have anything to do with my gender. Yeah, in those cases, absolutely, I mean we get the same exact emails where it's just like you, you guys are total idiots, like how how could you drop the ball this badly? And it's like we basically said exactly what you're saying, we just said it slightly differently. It definitely doesn't warrant this kind of reaction, you know. Um yeah, I I why do you think there is a gender bias or a gender Why is it worse for you guys being women? Do you think not just in comments I find the history of the world, but I know, like how how long do you have this thing? But I mean, like even even beyond comments like why is the internet so geared towards hating women? I mean, what's what's the deal with that? Do you guys? Is there is there a general understanding or idea behind it lonely angry men is my guests? Well, I think it's it's super complex, right, there's no one simple answer. Like some of it is that we have reached an age where the disparity in terms of UH gender equality has shrunk at the same time that a lot of people have this outlet readily available to them. So there's progress being made, but there are also the people who are still kicking and screaming as they get dragged into a future they're not comfortable with. But then there's also just a thing that again I don't think people are even conscious of it where it is new for many people, and even people that are younger and have maybe grown up in a more kind of old school traditional environment be at household or community, where they're not even conscious of why they're more upset at women. There's just something about women, you know, sharing knowledge or being assertive or being confident that just rankles them. And they don't even register that it's because it's a woman. They just know there's something about that person I hate, and it's something they're just not used to and they haven't kind of made the the mental accustomization to Oh. Sometimes people that aren't dudes have stuff to say as well. Do you think the same experiences extrapolatable under race as well as gender and well, I mean I know it is, but I mean, is it almost like a step for step do you think I think it's probably pretty similar models. Yeah, well, speaking like as the as as a white person in a room of white people who are on the phone right now. The worst days I have ever had managing our Facebook page, our days when we talk about something that has to do with systemic racism and we'll we'll get a flood of similarly implic racist comments from people who really don't know that the view that they just put out there is racist. Like that's sort of the same thing. Like a lot of people do things that are misogynists, not really consciously being misogynist. That just comes out and they're not consciously aware of it. And it's we see the same thing on our Facebook posts in subjects that are related to race really pretty often. So at the end of the day, when you guys get a bunch of these say on a just a particularly bad day, what you what? What do you do? I mean, do you battle this? Do you just brush it off and be like these guys are idiots, And whether they like it or not, they are going to be dragged into the future against their will you know what, do you do a combination of both, or do you look at your status as a perennial top twenty podcast and say they clearly who cares what they say? Because we're really good at what we do, because we're very successful. I do a combination of things. I have kind of a library of links about vocal fry and whatever. Anyone writes directly to us to complain about vocal fry, I kind of send them, Hey, why don't you listen to this, uh this American Life segment all about vocal fry in which Ira Glass has vocal fry the entire segment, but nobody complains at him about it. Um. So, I like, I specifically will address that. I will specifically address things that people say on our Facebook page in public, because I feel like our role as a podcast about history does not include allowing people free rain to be racist in public and and have that not be challenged. Um But when it comes to the like the email that Holly and I got that was that was so bad pretty recently, that was the person who was basically advocating me murdering Holly. Um, I was actually traveling. I went down to the hotel bar and how to drink, read a book and tried to chill. Yeah, I tried chill out about it. There's the answer. Booze tail fixes everything. Well, Um, thank you both for addressing this. Yeah, I'm sorry we didn't solve this problem here in this this listener mail segment. Thank you for having us on the show. Of course. Um, if anyone out there and stuff, you should know Land has not checked out stuff he missed in history class, you definitely should because it is super awesome and as are both of you. And I don't want to strangle you, but I want to hug your necks. Nope, you've better have it. And now she don't move no more. Nope. But thanks for coming in. And uh, we should do this more often, you know, we should. We should have a whole show where we just get together and do roundtable stuff. We can have yappy pow wow party time. That would be Yeah. Well, if you have something to say about all this, I'm we're sure you will. We want to hear from you. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can tweet this if you missed in history class at at missed in History you can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can join stuff you Missed in History class at missed in History Facebook dot com slash miss in History make it easy? What about email? How do they get in touch with you? History podcast at how stuff works dot com? And you can hit us up at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com and at all has always joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com and missed in History dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff Works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

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