Let’s Kill the Cher “Believe” AutoTune Myth Forever (Or Not)
From the old news department: It’s a near-ubiquitous claim. Any mention of Antares AutoTune, or related vocal pitch correction plug-ins, has to in the same breath include “you know, like in that Cher song.”
Supposedly, the “Believe” effect is the result of AutoTune with over-aggressive pitch correction, hence flipping notes up or down. Indeed, you can get that basic effect with AutoTune, and many songs that attempted to copy the Cher song (somewhat dubious goal as that is) in fact used AutoTune. (Incidentally, for proof that real rock stars are more fashion-adventurous than you or I, see below.)
There’s only one problem with this example: it’s wrong.
Or at least it is if you “believe” a September 1999 story in Sound On Sound with the producers of the track, Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling. (I told you this was old news.) The answer: you’re hearing careful use of a vocoder, filtering, and mixing. Now, admittedly, producers often either lie about tracks or forget what they did. But this is an awfully specific ruse: first, the producers tried a Korg VC10 (pause for drooling), then settled on a (now-discontinued) DigiTech Talker. The vocoder effect isn’t constant; it’s painstakingly mixed with the vocals. (You could do something similar live with really creative effects routing.) I would accept these guys were lying, too, accept that you can plainly hear in the track what they describe.
Which brings me to my point: can we finally stop talking about AutoTune and Cher, since it’s both cliched and wrong? Not to mention, the real lesson here is that it’s not what effect you use, it’s how you use it. It was the producers carefully using pre-delay on the vocoder effect and mixing it with live sound that made the effect work — and made subsequent Cher wanna-be tracks so annoying. It wasn’t just that the copiers were using the wrong effect, it was that they were trying to magically turn a single effect into a result. Result = lameness.
I could get into why I find the overuse of pitch correction annoying, but that’s for another day.
Instead, let’s take a moment to savor the brilliance of the Vocoder:
Obsolete.com’s history of the Vocoder, including an original 1939 sound test
Ah . . . sweet vocoding. And, actually, while I’m not a huge fan of the Cher song, the idea of using carefully controlled, delayed or pre-delayed mixing of the effect with live voice has my head working . . . there’s still time to rescue subtle, creative vocal effects.
Addendum: Of course, I wondered if there might be a reason why the belief that this was an AuoTune trick lived on, and we already have some evidence: like the producers telling someone else a different story. Sigh . . . we’re not resolving this one, are we? (Maybe because the AutoTune effect is already so close to a vocoder anyway? You could easily produce this effect in either one. Back to thinking up new vocal effects so we can leave this discussion safely in the 1990s, where it belongs.) -PK
25 Comments
Leave a CommentGuest
I could have sworn I read a NY Times article that mentioned they were messing around with pitch correction software and stumbled upon the sound, but I could be mixing my memory of the article with stuff I read in newsgroups. Here’s a link to the article, if anyone has access to their archives, please check it out. I don’t feel like paying for it:
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60715F6345B0C728DDDAA0894D1494D81
November 3, 2005 @ 11:23 am
Guest
I read the article when it came out and didn’t trust the explanation. That year was THE year of ‘autotune revealed’ / ‘how the starts sing in tune’ . It was the year the Plug-in version came out (I think), evey low level producer suddenly had a ‘copy’. Those guys were actually pretty budget before this mix surfaced. Check out their gear list (Mackie 8 -buss)
I assumed that this was a cover story to hide their use of the already derided Autotune, and a dubious license.
November 3, 2005 @ 12:02 pm
tom
Obviously this was in a non-technical paper, so they could have got it wrong on the transcription:
“The Cher record obviously opened up all the doors,” says Rawling, swiftly deflecting the credit for the Vocoder effect that turned Believe from a big record into a gigantic one. “The main role Mark played on that, apart from making the record sound brilliant, was finding that magic little ingredient, which was the Autotune. Making the decision to get that kind of effect, and getting the OK from that kind of an artist, was a major step.”The Times (London)October 29, 1999
And another, possibly less conclusive quote:
“In keeping with her ability to update herself, the hit Believe was recorded in the modern way. A 28-year-old whiz-kid in a small South London studio explains how the vocal effects were achieved: a simple matter of mucking around with the Autotune.” The New Zealand Herald, December 11, 2001
November 3, 2005 @ 12:28 pm
Guest
It’s still easier to refer to the cher song in order to describe the effect than to talk about talkboxes and vocoders.
November 3, 2005 @ 12:57 pm
admin
If they did go to the trouble of fabricating the entire story, down to the mixing in the vocoder effect and shifting it just a bit earlier in Cubase, etc. . . . I have to admit . . . it would actually be pretty hilarious.
“A Korg Wavestation? You thought that was a Korg Wavestation? Not at all. It’s a special wind-powered synth I built out of teak and horse hair.”
November 3, 2005 @ 1:06 pm
egan
Producers aren’t supposed to know much about engineering… what they do know, they heard from engineers… but different jobs ( Producer should hear like a regular person, mainstream audience )
I can hear vocoder, and it’s entirely possible that the effect was done as a Vocode, mixed 40% with vocals, and of course only 1 version of the chorus was copy + pasted -which is unnatural…. AND they could have used auto tune just a bit, say 1 or 2 notes…making everyone’s story true, as far as they know….
Either way, it was Over produced, and that novelty, made it a hit, in part.
( does it matter how it was over produced? Plenty of over compression as well…etc. )
November 3, 2005 @ 1:45 pm
egan
sorry, triple posted (?) Safari bug?
November 3, 2005 @ 1:48 pm
admin
Actually, good point — could be a mix of combinations, meaning all these stories are true. I sure hear vocoder . . .
I think the effect itself suggests some interesting ideas (well, using vocoders, which is NOTHING new) . . . but you’re right. The whole thing is wildly overproducer. And we won’t get started on overcompression. I can’t believe even early-90s albums are starting to sound great because of how bad compression got toward the end of the decade (and increasingly so). I’ve heard songs out now that are so squashed, I’ve started checking my equipment to see if something’s wrong with it(!)
November 3, 2005 @ 1:49 pm
egan
Yeah, repetitive stress injuries from recent tunes vs. quiet under squashed pre 90″s is SHOCKING say on an iPod… Maybe I’ll edit them (90’s tunes) in Peak, if I get a chance…
I always blamed the CD for overcompression… before that, there was less fear about 0db – after digital mastering, cassette whatever, WAves Ultramaxizer +L1….yup!
November 3, 2005 @ 2:07 pm
tom
I love ‘guest’s idea that these guys made a huge hit with a cracked version of Autotune on their PC, then panicked and made up the story about Digitech box to cover their tracks, realising that someone at Antares might just be reading Sound on Sound and checking up on their registration. Would have been pretty embarrasing for them if Antares put out a press release…
Still, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THIS STORY AT ALL, but I love the idea.
November 3, 2005 @ 4:13 pm
Guest
i can’t “believe” people are wasting their energy & time on this, but here goes:
1st, it is certainly feasible that BOTH AutoTune & the DigiTech pedal were used. for those who say “they sure hear a vocoder,” duh – the DigiTech pedal is basically a form of vocoder: an electronic model of formant synthesis, which comprises the presets in the Talker pedal.
2nd, for those looking for verification, i remember an article in Keyboard magazine (i have no idea which issue, around the time the song was popular in the radio…) in which the DigiTech pedal was mentioned by the producers as part of the effect source.
sheesh.
:?
November 3, 2005 @ 6:15 pm
atomic_afro
Sooooo, what’s the best 303 emulation :p
ATA (NOOOOOOOOOB!)
November 4, 2005 @ 1:35 am
Guest
Everyone knows that.
sheesh.
Cheers,
Marco
November 4, 2005 @ 12:28 pm
Guest 2
I am very frustrated at the assocation between pitch correction (particularly Antares Auto Tune) and the “Cher effect.” It’s very likely that (at least in the latter parts of the song) that Auto Tune or an almost identical technology was used to create the extreme pitch changes. However, what we’re all overlooking is how pitch correction had become the norm for major label records by ALL artists (most noticeably on country records) by the beginning of 1998, just one year after Antares released the first version of Auto Tune. You don’t hear a “Cher effect” (as society is calling it) on other songs because the pitch transitions aren’t exaggerated. But believe me: every major lable release since 1998 (or at least 99.9%) have mild pitch correction on the vocals. Pitch correction is like any recorded effect: it’s there to enhance. It can’t replace a good performance. Anyone who thinks it can, must also think that throwing a chorus pedal on a bad guitarist makes him sound like Hendrix.
I happen to like the extreme pitch effect occasionally. Daft Punk used it a couple times, in addition to their use of Vocoders. It’s a modern (perhaps futuristic) sounding effect. But it’s most pleasing to those who already tend to embrace technology-influenced music. I like over-compression too, when it’s combined with phat analog processing (tube overdrive, etc.).
Another effect that can be used to acheive the effect is Roland’s Voice Transformer. Combined with Midi keyboard control, I acheived soem interesting results on an album I produced (surprise surprise) in 1999.
I do wish we’d stop calling it the Cher effect, and that people would drop the pre-conceived notion that pitch correction use is equivalent to lack of talent. But people are stupid, as a rule.
October 5, 2006 @ 2:26 am
Guest 2
And by the way, if anyone is interested in using pitch correction in their studio, there are several options (including TC Electronic, Antares, etc.). I have tried them all extensively. The most superior, most intuitive, and most natural sounding is called Melodyne, which I now use exclusively.
October 5, 2006 @ 2:30 am
NM
Its even mentioned in the Autotune 4 manual as the cher effect (page 10 retune)
October 11, 2006 @ 6:58 am
Guest6
Doesn’t Cher perform this song ‘live’? Or is she just lip syncing then?
January 5, 2007 @ 10:14 pm
Marc Doty
Dear Peter Kirn:
Before you get too smug about your assertion, I suggest you return to the very SOS article you reference… here is what it says:
Cher’s ‘Believe’ (Dec 1998) was the first commercial recording to feature the audible side-effects of Antares Auto-tune software used as a deliberate creative effect. The (now) highly recognisable tonal mangling occurs when the pitch correction speed is set too fast for the audio that it is processing and it became one of the most over-used production effects of the following years.
“In February 1999, when this Sound On Sound article was published, the producers of this recording were apparently so keen to maintain their ‘trade secret’ process that they were willing to attribute the effect to the (then) recently-released Digitech Talker vocoder pedal. As most people are now all-too familiar with the ‘Cher effect’, as it became known, we have maintained the article in its original form as an interesting historical footnote.”
We can’t stop talking about it until you get it right.
The AutoTune effect bears no resemblance to a vocoder effect at all, and it’s embarrassing that anyone would suggest so… especially condescendingly.
April 5, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
Marko LeBlanco
LOL. Peter Kim just got powned!
September 3, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
Wiz
This song would be close to – if not – totally impossible to do live for Cher or anyone else. Even with Vocoder midi data controlling the box.
You can bet your studio shes not singing this one Live when it sounds like the original.
If it sounds very different and – Live – sure.
October 29, 2007 @ 11:31 pm
» Peter Frampton, Meet Peter Drake - Dissociated Press
[...] sound just a little like a robot on certain notes. Kid Rock probably used it first, trying to copy the effect on Cher’s “Believe”, and now everyone from Britney Spears to Akon uses it. People who sort of know what they’re [...]
November 19, 2008 @ 7:18 am
proof
Here you go, the mystery is SOLVED forever. An actual show and tell video in the studio with the producer of the song. I always thought it was so stupid how people that cher “couldn’t sing” because they were actually noticing the drastic pitch jumps which were actually done on purpose for an effect. It’s beyond me how most people don’t realize the technology has been out there a long time to make artists who can’t sing in key sound seamless and perfect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5a7z8j3Rao
November 27, 2008 @ 8:53 am
Scuwat
IM T PAINNNN YOU KNOW ME
CONVICT MUSIC LIKE OOOHH WEEEEE
ok i think its safe to say everyone can stop complaining about how its clichèd to call it the Cher effect (when in fact it is the Cher effect) and start complaining about how annoying it is that everyone has begun to use the “T-Pain Effect” (AutoTune – just a different artist connected to it)
December 14, 2008 @ 9:52 pm
Auto Tuners in music: Too Much? « teego Lifestyle
[...] when she came out with her 1998 hit Believe(video). Many other artists have confessed to using auto tuning. As we all know not every artist can produce solid pitch [...]
April 29, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Auto Tune
Oh, would have loved to notice back in the day when the “is it Autotune?” wars raged, this gem of an ‘article’ where someone pretending to know something proves the opposite so effectively :D
Then again, there were masses of clueless people doing the same…
May 22, 2009 @ 10:35 am
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