your LEAST favourite sound in music

Pretty much all big budget music is autotuned at least a little now, right? Because I feel like the perfection of pitch in the average singer can't have risen as much as it seems to have in the last couple decades. And yes there is something just a little bit grating and tiring to my ear about it.

Yea autotune has become fairly commonplace on any album, not just pop. It's mostly a "well we have it, would be a crime not to use it". Like you all, I just dislike it (as a singer myself) just because it creates a robotic smoothing that makes singing sound plastic. The "authenticity" argument though can go fuck itself,studio trickery to improve vocal mediocrity has existed since almost the advent of recorded music.

Autotune of the T-Pain variety i generally am ok with though.

Yeah it's less of an "authenticity" thing for me and more of a sameyness thing, where it feels like studio engineering has actually gotten its formula down so perfectly, has gotten so good at what it does, that there aren't as many surprises because no one wants to deviate from that formula where you let the low notes waver just a little bit (yet stay perfectly in tune) and have the high notes bell-clear. Autotune usage has definitely become more sophisticated and subtle in recent years, it used to produce much more of a noticeable robo-voice effect (I don't even mean T-Pain I just mean regular badly masked autotune) and now it just produces a kind of uber-human effect. But there's still something unplaceably bad about it in most cases.

I don't mean subtle uses to correct pitch, I'm talking about the Kanye West, T-Pain effect.

I've probably talked about this in cringe threads, but I really hate the close-up sounds of like soda commercials where its like DRIBBLY POURING GUK GUK GUK GUK AHHHH and now every "lean" influenced rap album is like a fucking soda ad with all these terrible sloshing noises

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Thursday, August 25, 2016 2:46 PM (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

1:12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk-WWT6IwPA

That squidgy synth in Donald Fagen's 'IGY'. Like it seriously makes me feel vaguely ill.

how did Michael Chion get a recording of me reading ILX

studies music theory for decades --> makes musical diarrhea

I think it may be a generational thing but I cannot stand the aound of autotuned vocals. It's like nails on a chalkboard.

luckily my ears are shot so I have a hard time spotting autotune if it's relatively subtle but obviously-autotuned stuff is the worst of all sounds for sure

i really, really hate the part two thirds of the way through every single action movie trailer when the music reaches a frenzied shepard-tone climax, then everything cuts out to dead silence for half a second, then the SUBSONIC boom that is so completely fucking predictable, followed by the frenzied music quickly fading back in and resuming pace.

and that's why I don't go to the movies anymore.

KM otm

I think the first sound in every trailer for a film that's not a comedy is the same muffled boom, it sounds like a distant depth charge. Or it's a single sinister mid-high note.

i really, really hate the part two thirds of the way through every single action movie trailer when the music reaches a frenzied shepard-tone climax, then everything cuts out to dead silence for half a second, then the SUBSONIC boom that is so completely fucking predictable, followed by the frenzied music quickly fading back in and resuming pace.

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, January 3, 2018 11:48 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah.

Usually: dead silence -> line of dialogue -> a clip of any character reacting/getting punched (often not actually part of the scene in question) -> SUBSONIC boom (low bass drop?) -> follow up dialogue/punchline -> normal music resumes

I realized during the WKCR bach festival that I really, really hate the english horn and similar instruments, they have this awful, guttural, goose-like sound that also reminds me a little bit of milk being whipped with a utencil.

I don't mind the oboe as much although it's the same family.

Especially bad when played stacatto

are you talking about crumhorns?
i like the sound of crumhorns/honking instruments
to each their own!

English horn = cor anglais.

It's just a low oboe, really, a loboe in fact.

there's one busdriver song where he raps fast against a flute doing a similar melody to his cadence, and that makes me physically ill...not sure that's a "sound" as much as doubling down on annoying fast-paced rap with an even more annoying flute

florence welch

like a sheep trapped in a fence

The guy from Dashboard Conventional's voice

*Confessional

Crumhorns, English horns and oboes are among my favorite sounds in the universe. I love quacking reed instruments that are hard to keep in tune.

I'm way way way over sped up and slowed down vocals.

ctrl+f steel drums: 3 results

It should be 300

^ I was struggling to think of any sound I dislike more than like, but steel drums is the one

pan flutes

bjork

― a dystopian society awaits if we continue on this path. (contenderizer), Thursday, September 2, 2010 3:16 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i came here to post this

The sound of the cd drive skipping as you try to import Into iTunes

Should be zero!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDKP31eylTA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1yhaBsD8Vw

what kind of heathens dont like steel drums.

re whiney, how do you feel about the intro to gin & juice?

That big reverby half marimba half pizzicato string sound that's been on countless hits in the last five years.

<3 marimbas

Heavy Flute

i don't <3 hoary great hard rock voices where the guy sounds like he's going for somewhere between a baritone and a punk/metal shout. The singers from Bad Religion and Neurosis are the example culprits here

here's a weird one. classically trained singers. something about that way of singing makes them all sound like arrogant pricks.

The E-Street Band

any artificial-sounding synthesized horn, esp the 80s versions of them

bass wobble in EDM/dubstep is so corny

that same goddamn "hey!" in the background of 75% of pop songs

^ otm

ukelele

i hate that hawaiian man that ruined somewhere over the rainbow

listen to aunto molly urso's version of "over the rainbow", it'll unruin it for you

note: according to the internet in 2018, there is no such thing as aunto molly urso, all i have is a rip from a 2011 youtube upload

but it is the best

i'd love to hear it, put it back on youtube for the world

All sounds and noises are potentially awesome depending on the context but autotune puts that belief to the test for me. Given how poptimistic ILM tends to be, I'm surprised by the relative consensus on this matter. For what it's worth, I do acknowledge that it's become more sophisticated (read: bearable) over the years.