The Null Device

Laura Macfarlane vs. the AutoTune Plugin

A rather unusual object fell into my hands today: an unreleased album of electronica remixes of the last Ninetynine album. They vary from plausible dance mixes to some quite interesting experimental IDM (think somewhere between Björk and the FourPlay remix album from a few years back). A full review will be posted shortly has been posted here.

There are 6 comments on "Laura Macfarlane vs. the AutoTune Plugin":

Posted by: Graham http://grudnuk.com/ Tue Aug 12 13:01:50 2003

Sounds interesting. And I like the article title.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Tue Aug 12 13:24:45 2003

Oh, it is. Now if only someone responsible can be persuaded to release it. Though, given what I've heard about no-one in Australia wanting to release the new EP, I'd say if it comes out officially it may well be on import only.

(Mind you, that's one fewer disincentive to moving to the UK, but I digress.)

Posted by: Graham http://grudnuk.com/ Tue Aug 12 14:45:13 2003

I read yr review over at Rocknerd; sicking Autotune onto Laura and company is kind of mean, though in the context it's alright. There's good out-of-tune and bad out-of-tune, I've decided.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Tue Aug 12 15:11:26 2003

True. Tools are only as good as you use them.

Interestingly, the remixer gave up on trying to pitch-correct Cameron's vocals altogether. (Though they only appear in the dub track with lots of delay.)

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Tue Aug 12 15:15:37 2003

Also, I believe a lot of the really extreme "vocoder" effects (think Daft Punk and such) are Autotune on a very severe setting. Which shows that it's good for something other than putting the shine onto manufactured pop puppets.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Thu Aug 14 06:57:26 2003

Btw, apparently there was no AutoTune involved in the remixing; all the retuning was done with Celemony Melodyne (which looks like a pretty nifty piece of software).