To tune or not to tune? Is it cheating to use studio tricks to improve your music?

TLDR; no

At some point in time (a little less vague than that, probably when this thing I’m about to talk about came into popularity), it became commonplace to say things like “____ sucks, the singer/him/her/they/them use auto tune on every track!” I’d even go as far as saying, it makes you seem cool in certain circles or it’s a requisite to be a part of these legendary Facebook Group guilds. The same people tend to also revere bands like The Beatles, who ironically decided at some point to stop touring for multiple reasons, but one of them being to focus on making records and getting sounds they couldn’t get as a quartet. 

That being said, let’s dive into my first argument: 

The Beatles definitely would’ve used auto-tune.

Seemingly a controversial statement, but listen to just about any song that John Lennon has recorded. So many of them were double tracked; the process of recording vocals twice, and because we’re all human this introduces a chorusing effect that makes the vocals seem bigger/wider and according to many producers: it’s the tool of many singers who don’t like their voice. Dave Grohl double tracks many of his vocals, so did Kurt Cobain. In the book “Here, There, and Everywhere” by Geoff Emerick, Geoff talks about how John once asked him to sound like he was on top of Mount Everest (which he achieved by running John’s vocals through a Leslie cabinet). 

From Sgt. Peppers on, The Beatles were devoted to exploring new techniques in the studio that had never been done before. They definitely innovated the game and used a lot of crazy and modern processing (listen to A Day In The Life and listen to how the vocal panning shifts through the track) and I think for this reason, they would’ve been open to auto tuning. 

Paul McCartney even used auto-tune on his Get Enough, and he only brings it in on certain sections, showing that it’s a stylistic approach.   

“People with REAL talent don’t need auto-tune”

Yeah, but as I just said, Paul uses auto-tune, and got famous without the assistance of auto-tune. But I feel like the people who say this have never actually have had to tune a vocal (shoutout to everyone who’s had to manually tune a vocal track with Melodyne). I’m a terrible singer. I can hit pitches most of the time but I have terrible breath support so I usually have trouble holding out notes or landing precisely in tune (it sometimes takes me a second to adjust). Even with Auto-tune, it still sounds horrible. Now, don’t get me wrong, I can sit there and practice the lines and get them, but it takes a ton of takes. Sometimes it’s just faster to use Melodyne and carve out the notes to where you want them, instead of doing 38 takes of the same thing. And that brings me to my next point:

It just saves time

Let’s be honest, there’s probably more independent artists that are releasing music now more than ever, and that’s partially because of the ease of access of home studios. That’s even how this “company,” Terranaut Recordings is able to exist. And with that, comes a lot more musical freedom. Your choices don’t have to go through a corporate bigwig that’ll shoot down your ideas because it’s not predictable enough, it’s amazing. Even if you’re working with us, you’re the boss!

But because of this, a lot of music making is coming out of the artists pocket, whether it be from another job or from crowdfunding or a successful previous release, recording making is pretty expensive. But we can mitigate that by using tools like Melodyne or using precise Pro Tools edits, and therefore save a lot of time, ultimately saving money. And this is especially important when we have demon lord Daniel Ek saying artists are entitled and lazy for not releasing music fast enough, or YouTube music marketing influencers saying you have to release music every two months or the algorithm gods will forget about you. That being said, one might argue:

But it sounds robotic!

Yeah, so does your phone, but you still use it regularly (at least I assume so, if you’re reading this blog post). One of my pet peeves is when people use subjective measurements as if they’re objective. Things like “that sounds robotic” or “this sounds unmusical” or “that’s a wrong note” (thanks, 7 years of jazz school). Music to me is a reflection of life, and in life, not everything is pretty and consonant. Some people come to music for a variety of reasons: to feel happy, to feel love, to feel warmth, to reminisce on memories, to dance, to dream, to be sad, to find a tribe, to look for someone out there feeling the same things. And I think all of those are valid, and I think a true music lover wouldn’t argue with anyone’s reason for listening to music, they’d just be happy that music is being listened to. 

For me, music is a reflection of life. Wayne Shorter has a quote that I frequently love: “Play and write music for how you wish the world to be like.” For me, the reasons I listen to music are all of the above. In life, we experience so many different things, and yeah some edits will sound robotic, but sounding robotic isn’t inherently a good or bad thing, it just is. Quantizing makes drums sound imperfect and lacking in the human element, but it makes a great beat to dance to. Who doesn’t like dancing robots?

I think if the person making the music, the measure for good or bad is how accurate they were to their vision, and even if they were off the mark, it doesn’t matter so much as long as they’ve created something that they can get behind. 

And my final point:

What we’re trying to do is get the music that’s in our head out into the world

Music making is tough. I’ve been playing music my whole life, and guitar has (for better or worse) sometimes become a reflex for me. That being said, sometimes I have trouble articulating ideas the same way I do in speech. The studio can sometimes be a sterile environment, especially for those who are used to the energy in the room playing live. It also could be a really lengthy process of sitting in a windowless room that may or may not be temperature regulated, and it’s really easy to get fatigued. Yeah, you could just “power through it” but that comes at a price, which usually involves some kind of sacrifice in the music. And I think edits/studio tricks may be a potential solution for that.

I’m not encouraging bad musicianship, I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor to work on your craft in the practice room and get to the point where you’ll nail it in the studio. But if your pride and wanting to play the music right, is it still about the music or are you feeding an ego? This isn’t a question I can answer for you, but I think thinking about these kinds of things helps the music making, as well as accepting the tools you have in front of you. In my time studying and playing music, I’ve learned that being courageous and fearless pays off. Being open to inspiration in all its forms leads to really awesome results. 

So if you’d like permission to edit your music and use auto-tune, and all the “cheating tools,” this is officially me giving you permission. Go make some amazing music!

If you’ve read this far, you might be wondering: “what is a Terranaut Recording?” Well, this was an idea started by my close friend Sean and I, a music production duo frustrated at the music industry and wanting to make a change. We are musicians that like to make music with other musicians, and we work from our home studio getting your demos fully fleshed out. From drum programming/tracking, acoustic/electric guitars, upright/electric bass, synths/keyboards/pianos/ambient sounds, we can help get whatever’s in your head out into the world. Check out some of our past work here.

If you want to ask us about how it all works, what we can do to your song, and any questions you may have for us, feel free to email us at terranautrecordings@gmail.com, fill out a contact form, or even send us a DM on Instagram or TikTok (@terranautrecordings) if you feel the others are too formal for you. And if you mention that you found us through this blog post, we’ll give you a special price for the first song/project. 

If you’ve made it this far, thanks a ton for reading! 

• Nick