Monday, January 2, 2012

Yes, Fab Morvan has some thoughts on auto-tune

A few days ago, Bruce Bates shared a Milli Vanilli video on Google+. I ended up doing some associated reading, and came across a two-year old interview with Fab Morvan. At the time, twenty years had passed since the revelation that Morvan and partner Rob Pilatus did not sing on the songs attributed to Milli Vanilli. But twenty years is a long time, so PopEater asked Morvan to share his thoughts on auto-tune.

I have to say something and be clear about it. When people say: "Well, you didn't sing on the record"... OK, cool. I didn't. But to be technical, when someone records in a studio and Auto-Tune does your job, it isn't you anymore. It could be anyone, because you're not doing it anymore, the machine is doing it. So, are you doing it? When it comes time to perform it live, you can't replicate it. So when people say 'You should sing on the record, man.' Well, yeah, but now technically a lot of the people who are singing on the record with Auto-Tune aren't doing their job.

I'm not criticizing anyone in particular, I'm just observing what's going on, that's all. I see some comments saying we didn't sing on the record, but I just want to be precise because I've never gotten a chance to say that clearly. It's like, what's the point of singing with Auto-Tune? It's not you! Then you got the video, but that's the way things are now. People don't seem to care. The new generation doesn't seem to care about music now, because a lot of people are stealing it ... but that's whole other thing.

Once your voice has been doctored to a point where we don't even know it's you -- I'm not talking about people who do it as a style or to fit a certain song, because the goal was to make it sound like that and it's a gimmick. I'm talking about singers, pop singers, who without it -- ain't nothing going, baby. I'm trying to have people look at them. I'm just trying to bring up another point for discussion. I'm tired of people always pointing the finger at me and criticizing when in fact, look a little closer at everyone out there and inform yourself more.


Valid point.
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