southern accents3 A
southern accents3 B

Singing is no walk in the park for me. First, I’m not crazy about the sound of my voice, and second, I don’t have the control over it to satisfy the precision my ears want in pitch.  (And as I’ve grown older, for some reason it’s harder to tolerate anything off-pitch. Weird.) We won’t even discuss range. In short, if my voice were a guitar, it would be carelessly made import that was never set-up.  Tragically, I’m all I have available, so not soon after I first started home recording I sprung for Autotune. I think it came on a diskette, and though I’ve upgraded fairly recently, I still don’t have the current version.

It was a great time-saver because it might take me hours to get a solid take, especially since I prefer getting one good take top-to-bottom so I don’t have to do a lot of digging around and editing. With Autotune, I could get something usable quickly, and usually with no major artifacts, even though I’m no expert in using it.

But soon, I took it as a personal challenge to try to get takes that didn’t need Autotune, the theory being that such a goal would help me develop some control. It wasn’t easy, and it still isn’t, though it’s easier — or at least possible. Eventually.

Anyway, Autotune seems like a good way to work on your vocals, and I know it’s also a great time-saver.

Oh, and by the way, in my non-vocalist opinion, after doing this cover, I’m pretty sure slow songs with drawn out words make a much bigger briar patch.

UPDATE: A friend writes “I think what you hate about your voice is what I like about it.” Processing….processing…processing….I’ll take it.

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