World of Weird Al Yankovic

joseyklein wrote:My two cents about lowering the key.... Al's songs always end up better than the original.. and I mean come on guys, he's lowered the key to just about every female parody he's ever done including Michael Jackson!!!

Heh!

I totally expected him to lower the key of "Party In The USA" but I was just disappointed to see that I had clearly overestimated Al's true vocal range on PTW and TMZ. If it works for Al, I'm totally fine with it.

I don't get what all the fuss about changing the key is...
It's near impossible for any man to hit those kind of notes, and the difference is minuscule. It doesn't make the song any less funny, or fun to listen to.

Honestly, the fact that he can belt that high G and Bb in falsetto every night during WBUL proves that his range is absolutely frigging amazing.

Yeah quit complaining you guys, whatever Al does is just fine and works, and the songs are better than the originals.... key changes or not.... and wait to complain until you've actually heard the full song.

Way_Moby wrote:

Wizzerkat wrote:Much stuff today is riddled with auto-tune and other tricks to make the "artist" seem like they have talent

I have such a mixed-opinion of auto-tune. Sure, it's intended purpose to fix the occasional boo boo is great and I understand the need for that, but taking someone who has zero talent (*cough*cough*Rebecca Black*) and making them sound like someone with talent (Hayley Williams) is such a bad use of it.

I agree that Autotune could make David Tanny sound like Luciano Pavoratti, but it's all a matter of perspective and who uses it, be they musical geniuses or talentless hacks. If it's T-Pain and Eiffel 65, they use it solely for the robotic effect that it produces in the highest of settings. Now, I will admit that before Jace and I started using Autotune for our songs, respectively, I used to think that I'd be lying to both myself and anyone else who listened to my songs if they heard my singing voice rendered through autotune, but after trying it out for the first time, sometime last year, I was blown away by how refined my three-part harmonies sounded. That's when it hit me: Using autotune doesn't mean you're a terrible singer. Using autotune properly, only refines one's vocal track to audio perfection because even the BEST of singers can sing a sour note occasionally because they are just as human as we are.

I will add that when I learned that Al started autotuning his voice when he produced Poodle Hat, I was shocked and blown away because I never dreamed that such a talented genius, with such a wide vocal range would use autotune to refine his already brilliant vocals.

99% of all music today has autotune on it. If you don't notice it, that means it's being used properly. If the engineer knows what he's doing, the average listener shouldn't be able to hear it.

Using it as an effect (T-Pain) is a different thing, and in that case it's not being used because T-Pain is a bad singer, but because they want that robotic effect you get from dialing the attack speed all the way up.

Also, you really can't use autotune to make it sound like someone with no talent can sing well. As you can tell in Rebecca Black's "Friday" she needed the tuning so badly that her voice became robotic and lifeless when it was applied. Anytime an autotuned singer sounds like that, it means they can't sing very well. There's no doubt in my mind that Hayley Williams' voice always has autotune on it-- you just don't notice it because she doesn't make many mistakes and the program doesn't have to work as hard.

I saw something on the news a few weeks back and the anchorwoman who could not sing at all went into a recording booth and they played it with and without the autotune andit had to fix everything so it sounded robotic. Then they showed an example of britney spears who is the queen of auto tune and Christina agulera who can actually sing.

WAYFan wrote:Honestly, the fact that he can belt that high G and Bb in falsetto every night during WBUL proves that his range is absolutely frigging amazing.

Doesn't he sing that in falsetto? That'd be a lot easier than actually belting it out.

Yes.

WAYFan wrote:Honestly, the fact that he can belt that high G and Bb in falsetto every night during WBUL proves that his range is absolutely frigging amazing.

Mad Genius wrote:Now, I will admit that before Jace and I started using Autotune for our songs, respectively, I used to think that I'd be lying to both myself and anyone else who listened to my songs if they heard my singing voice rendered through autotune, but after trying it out for the first time, sometime last year, I was blown away by how refined my three-part harmonies sounded. That's when it hit me: Using autotune doesn't mean you're a terrible singer. Using autotune properly, only refines one's vocal track to audio perfection because even the BEST of singers can sing a sour note occasionally because they are just as human as we are.

Oh, I got what you're saying. I've used it on some of my work to fix out the kinks, but it irks me to no end when someone who can't sing at all uses it to fix ALL of their errors. It's a blessing and a curse.

weirdojace wrote:99% of all music today has autotune on it. If you don't notice it, that means it's being used properly. If the engineer knows what he's doing, the average listener shouldn't be able to hear it.

Using it as an effect (T-Pain) is a different thing, and in that case it's not being used because T-Pain is a bad singer, but because they want that robotic effect you get from dialing the attack speed all the way up.

Even the whole T-Pain effect is getting old. Every pop songs sounds like we're a bunch of robots. Luckily you can honestly tell who needs it and who doesn't. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Adele, Hayley Williams, etc. probably do all use it, but you can tell by their use of vibrato that they probably don't need to use it that much. Auto-tune does some interesting things when it comes to vibrato, and that's how you can usually tell if someone is auto-tuned.