Re: Antares (was:Britany Spears on Looping)

[Ronan Chris Murphy <rcm@venetowest.com>]

> That there Antares Vocal Helper Cher-Box Pitch
> Corrector thingy.... When I recognize it on a vocal,
> yes, it makes me retch. However, I can't help but
> wonder what'd sound like when used to process
> something like an oud, a  fretless bass, or (can we
> talk about this here?) to post-process a loop. Yeah, I
> know that when it's active in the circuit, you'd most
> likely lose the microtonal nuances that make fretless
> instruments so cool, but would that 'jumping to pitch'
> thing make any sounds that might be interesting in
> their own right?

The vocal helper thingy you are talking about is called Auto-tune. You can certainly get some interesting effects from using Auto-tune "inappropriately" The most interesting thing is that for fretless performances with slow glissando, AT will get confused about what pitch it is supposed to be tuning to and bounce back and forth between notes. If you set AT so that is takes a while before it starts correcting a pitch you can actually "fix" a note with out much of the audible artifacts, but you will of course kill the natural vibrato which is such a lovely part of fretless instruments.