So, listen here to 10 of pop music’s most blatant auto-tune abuses:

If you’re unfamiliar with Auto-tune, and especially if you listen to much pop and rock, you might not hear it initially. When overdone, the effect yields an unnatural yodel or warble in a singer’s voice. But the sound is so commonplace in modern mainstream music that your ears may have tuned out the auto-tune!

The songs in this clip, in order, and the phrases most affected by auto-tuning to help you spot them:

Dixie Chicks – The Long Way Around – Noticeable on “parents” and “but I.”

T-Pain – I’m Sprung – Especially obvious on “homies” and “lady.”

Avril Lavigne – Complicated – Listen to “way,” “when,” “driving,” “you’re.”

Uncle Kracker – Follow Me
The whole vocal sounds strained, but especially the word “goodbye.”

Maroon 5 – She Will Be Loved – Listen for “rain” and “smile.”

Natasha Bedingfield – Love Like This – “Apart” and “life.”

Sean Kingston – Beautiful girls – “OoooOver” doesn’t sound human.

JoJo – Too Little Too Late – Appropriately, “problem” stands out.

Rascal Flatts – Life is a Highway
Every vocal, foreground and background, is treated, but “drive” in particular.

New Found Glory – Hit or Miss – “Thriller”, and every time Jordan sings “I.”

The Cher Effect

When used noticeably, an auto-tuner produces what most call “The Cher Effect“, named for her trademark sound in the song Believe*. (In essence, we named the effect like scientists naming a new disease after its first victim.) Treated this heavily, a vocal track sounds synthetic, and obviously processed.

But not all auto-tuning is so blatant. In the sample above, it’s harder to hear the pitch correction on Uncle Kracker and Avril than on T-Pain and Bedingfield.

Tasteful Uses

As with any tool, a little care can yield great results. Some simple things to keep in mind about pitch correction tools:

• Performance: Most importantly, an auto-tuner isn’t a shortcut to a perfect performance. If you can’t sing the song properly, no amount of post-processing will make it sound like you did. So when your pitch matters, and you don’t want to correct it with an effect, you’ll need to work on your performance until it’s right.
• Less is more: The fewer notes you correct, the less obvious your use of an auto tuner will be. Consider automating the plugin so it acts only when most needed.
• Graphical mode: If your pitch correction software offers a graphical mode (like Antares Auto-Tune and Melodyne,) learn how to work with it. The default “auto” modes are OK for basic corrections, but often produce noticeable yodeling.
• Backing vocals: In general, you can get away with more pitch correction on backing vocals than lead vocals.
• Outdated: Obvious vocoder-style autotuning is dated, and borders on kitschy. The synthetic warbling vocal sound marks songs as having come from a specific era, the same way gated-reverb on drums instantly places a song in the 1980’s. Remember: If you make the auto tuner obvious, people will say your song uses “the Cher effect.” Let this be a guideline.

Be sure it’s needed

Two songs have auto tuners on my mind today: Snoop’s Sensual Seduction (because of Anil Dash’s ruminations on the death of the analog vocoder,) and Natasha Bedingfield’s Love Like This, which I heard on the radio. In the former, the auto tuner is clearly a gimmick. But every time I hear Bedingfield’s song, I’m struck by the same question: Why do that to her voice?

She’s a fantastic singer, and once you’ve heard the song without the cheesy auto tuner effect, it’s hard to take the radio single seriously.

And there’s a lesson in that for home recordists, (even those of us who don’t write pop music,) which echoes the rule of mixing: If an effect significantly changes the sound of a track, especially one so important as the lead vocal, be sure that change improves the song before committing it to the mix.

See Also: The Rule of Mixing

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A local radio station songwriting contest recently caught my attention, mostly because of the sizable cash prizes: $10,000 for the winner, and a total purse of over $26,000. (This is a huge package for a small-market radio station.) So I submitted I Meant To Remember. And my song garnered enough votes in the first round of the contest to land me in the finale, along with 4 other bands from around Ontario, performing live for a panel of judges who determined the grand prize winner.

The finale was Tuesday night, and my band finished in 3rd place, which thrilled me not least because it meant I won some money!

How this relates to Hometracked, however: I completely overlooked the revenue potential of songwriting and performance contests in my previous post on making money as an independent artist. So I thought I’d share some thoughts based on my experience the last few weeks, and in previous contests I’ve entered, on how to increase your chances of winning.

(Note: Some of these points address live performances, but in general the advice applies equally to online contests.)

1. Win money, not fans
People enter contests for the chance to win prizes, and song contests are no different in this regard.

As indie artists, we’re conditioned to think of every performance as an opportunity to reach new fans. But song contests are a horrendous vehicle for promotion. Most people in the audience cheer for their buddy’s band, secretly hoping the other acts screw up so their friend looks better!

Success in songwriting contests, then, requires a different mind set than regular music promotion. Some of what best helps a band connect with new fans has no place in a contest entry – most notably: improvisation, like extended drum solos and guitar solos, and excessive story telling. You don’t need to make a lasting impression when competing for a prize. Rather, you need to sound (and look) great just long enough for the judges to give you their vote.

In short, be forgettably brilliant, rather than memorably unique.

2. Popularity contests depend on votes
Some contests are judged, while others involve audience voting. In the latter, you’ll only win if your fans and listeners actually vote for you. So leverage your network, be it a mailing list, the audience at a weekly gig, or Myspace and Facebook.

Of course, it should go without saying that you need all your friends to vote. Still, one band in the contest I just entered finished the two week online voting period with zero votes. Why bother entering if you don’t at least vote for your own song?!

3. Image matters
Public consumption of music has always depended on presentation as much as the music itself. And every judged song contest in which I’ve particpiated has included a “marketability” criteria for that reason.

Case in point: 3 of the acts on Tuesday clearly put some thought into their physical appearance on stage. And the other two bands finished 4th and 5th.

4. Bring your own fans
The winning act on Tuesday night packed the house with their fans, and there’s no question it factored into the judges’ final decision. Even if audience response wasn’t a judging criteria, I’m sure the venue feared a riot from the mob who turned out to watch their friends win.

5. Err on the short side
Submit and perform your best material, of course. But if you have a choice between a 7 minute opus showcasing your lead guitarist’s love of Stevie Vai, or a 3 minute rock song with choruses and a beat, go with the short number every time.

People in general, and jaded music judges in particular, have short attention spans, so it’s best not to overstay your welcome. (And remember, the main goal is to win money, not fans.) Two of the bands performing on Tuesday night exceeded their allotted 30 minutes, and while they weren’t explicitly penalized for this, the audience’s restlessness can’t have helped their standing with the judges.

6. Highlight your differences
While it’s generally good to focus attention on what makes you different, with a song contest entry it means drawing attention to your differentiators often at the expense of other elements in your music.

For me, this required downplaying the instruments, and working the “pop” elements of my songs: Lyrics, vocals, and a strong back beat. I had Kev and Clif (my lead guitarist and bassist) underplay their parts, and asked Jan (the drummer) to put everything he had into the snare drum.

Your music might demand a different focus, but the same guideline applies. Find a way to highlight whatever makes your songs unique.

7. Work the hometown angle if you’ve got it
When all was said and done on Tuesday night, the local band won. This makes sense: A local radio station held the contest, ostensibly to promote local talent, so it’s fitting that a local band got to hoist the giant novelty winner’s cheque.

But the winners didn’t turn in the best performance of the evening, not by a long shot. And 3 of the bands (mine included) had everything else that matters: Fans, an on-stage image, a short set, and a unique sound. In the end, their hometown won them the prize! So while you don’t have much control over where you’re from, this at least suggests a good reason to focus on entering contests in your area.

And, it probably goes without saying: If you find yourself with the hometown advantage in a contest, work it hard!

See Also: Ways I’ve made money as an indie artist.

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Try lowering the volume: Along with checking a mix through different speakers, it helps to listen for elements that jump out at different volume levels. In particular, spend some time with the mix turned way down. Thanks to equal loudness contours, our ears perceive bass frequencies differently at low volume, so mixing quieter can make it obvious when your bass levels are off. It also forces you to listen a little closer!

Skip the cheap reverb: If you have a choice between a low-quality reverb or no reverb at all, leave the track dry. When it’s not used as an obvious effect, we generally add reverb to restore a sense of natural space to close-miked tracks. However, cheap reverb sounds unnatural, and your listeners’ ears will sense this immediately. (Read more about why you should avoid cheap reverb.)

It’s easier to mix well-recorded tracks: Trite as it sounds, tracks that are recorded properly are easier to mix than tracks with problems. Any mix will only sound as good as the players, instruments, and equipment used to record it. If you’re having difficulty mixing a particular track, consider re-recording it …

Previously: Mixing tips, More Recording and Mixing Tips, The Big Page of Mix Tutorials

But taken together, small changes like these add up, and can really bring a mix to life.

Here are some of the small things you can do before hitting record to see big improvements at mix time:

• Tune everything: Guitars, piano, drums
• Change guitar strings
• Change drum heads
• Turn off fans, lights, and monitors while you record
• Clean and polish cymbals
• Make sure no inputs are clipping
• Put fresh batteries in effects pedals
• Use balanced drum sticks
• Put cat outside.

But when used sparingly, a tight short reverb effect can add body and punch to a dull kick drum. This is especially useful in home recordings where the drums are often dry samples, or tracks recorded in bedrooms and basements with poor live sound.

Here’s an example to illustrate how reverb can beef up a bass drum. As I mentioned in The Morning Rain post from which I took the sample, I used a no-nonsense mic arrangement: Stereo room mics, a single mic on the kit, and an SM58 in the kick drum.

Here are the drums as recorded, with the kick drum track untreated:

In the next sample, I added a short reverb tail to the kick drum only. I used the Kjaerhus Classic Reverb for this example (though there are a few other free reverb effects listed in the great free vocal plugins post, including Mac-based options.) I set a room size of 65 square meters, dampened as many high frequencies as possible, and blended the signal on the dry side.

Here’s how it sounds:

The effect is subtle, but obvious.

Though it’s more obvious in the solo’d kick drum track. The first 3 hits in this next sample are dry, and the last 3 have the reverb applied. Notice how dead the kick drum sounds by itself (I recorded it with an SM58, after all,) and how much more body there is to the tone with reverb applied:

Some notes about this technique:

• It works best on sparse tracks, when the drum hits have space between them. If the track is already dense, adding reverb usually just yields mud.
• It will work on miked or sampled kick drums, but it’s most effective on dry, flat sounds. Basically, if you’re stuck recording your kick drum with an SM57, a little reverb can work wonders to deliver usuable tones.

Previously: Better drum mixes with a drum reference track, Parallel compression for fatter drum tones

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Double-tracking is straightforward: Record a part twice, both takes as similar as possible, and pan one take hard left and the other all the way right. This creates a much wider stereo image than tracking once with a stereo mic, because our ears interpret the separate takes as two different guitars.

All well and good when you decide before recording to use doubled guitars. But what if you realize only after you’ve started mixing that you need the hard-panned sound, and it’s too late to record a doubled track?

You can’t simply duplicate the track, and pan one copy left and the other right. That sends the same signal to both channels, so the result is effectively mono. And while it’s possible to duplicate the track, and apply effects to one hard-panned copy of it (such as delaying the left side by a few milliseconds,) this yields at best a noticeably fake stereo image. While each channel carries a different signal, our ears quickly sense the similarities, especially in the rhythm and timing.

Here’s a trick you can use to get a great stereo effect from mono tracks when the part you’d like to double has repeating sections. With the right source material, this approach yields a result indistinguishable from a properly double-tracked performance.

I’ll demonstrate on this guitar riff:

The track looks like this in Sonar. Note that it’s recorded in mono:

The riff has two repeating sections. I’ve labeled them “part A” and “part B,” and each repeats once.

Remember that the stereo effect arises in hard-panned, double-tracked songs because our ears hear two separate guitars playing. Since this track has repeated sections, I can create the illusion of two guitars playing by pairing different repeats of each section. I did that as follows:

• Duplicate the mono track.
• Split the second track into its repeating parts.
• Shuffle the split sections, so that parts A1 and B1 in the first track are paired with parts A2 and B2 in the second, and vice versa.
• Pan the tracks hard left and right.

Now the two tracks each play the same part (A or B) at the same time, but a different “take” of each part. Here’s how it sounds:

A great stereo spread from a single mono recording!

Note that I left the last section (labeled “part A-3″) the same in both channels so you can clearly hear the difference between the “stereo-ified” version of the track, and the mono that results when both channels play the same thing. And for contrast, I mixed a “fake stereo” version created by duplicating and hard-panning the track, and delaying the left side by 5ms:

While this initially sounds like a stereo recording, your ears should quickly sense the overriding similarity in the left and right channels. The stereo effect collapses, especially after repeated listens. Contrast this with the doubled version above which sounds wide and dynamic no matter how many times you hear it!

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Inspired by Darren’s “top 5 ” project, I thought I’d share a few of the ways I’ve made money with our favorite hobby. [UPDATE: Below, I overlooked the possibility of winning money in song contests.]

In descending order of which has made me the most:

1. I sell CDs, both online and at shows: The industry’s changing, but for the time being at least, this tried and true approach is the most profitable for me. As I’m sure is the norm, I sell more CDs at live gigs than via my web site. Still, the online CD sales of Waking Up In August are more than enough to justify the album’s web site. And if you’re debating whether to use a service like CDBaby: I sell far more CDs via my own web site, but enough folks find my album via CDBaby to justify using both approaches.

2. I’ve written and recorded songs on spec: Most recently, last month a lady I’ve never met hired me to write a song about her and her fiance. (Out of respect for her privacy, I haven’t put the song online. But if you’d like more details, contact me.) It was a challenge: Writing a personal song about experiences I’ve never had was enlightening, to say the least. But I learned a lot through the process, so I can charge more next time.

Check out Tailored Music if the idea of writing songs for others appeals to you.

3. I’ve recorded and mixed tunes for other people: I have a decent basement studio, so my musician friends come to me when they want to record their own songs. One such friend commented after a session that my T3 probably cost more than his entire collection of instruments, and I realized I should be charging for the service.

4. I sell MP3s online: I offer Waking Up In August in multiple formats on the web site, but the album is also available on iTunes, and somewhat to my surprise, people buy it there! Though adding my own experience to the recent body of evidence that albums may be dead: People buy Brand New Car by itself much more often than they buy the complete album. Apparantly, that song is the “single.”

5. I write about music: Hometracked doesn’t make me a fortune. Really just enough to cover my hosting fees. (And while I could bury the site in ads to make a few more dollars, one of the reasons I started Hometracked was my frustration with the sea of affiliate marketing-ridden home recording sites telling me what to buy, rather than how to use what I already have.) But I enjoy writing, and most of the links I post are articles and web forums I’d be reading anyway. So it’s a natural extension of the hobby.

I’m curious: Have you found any novel ways to earn a few dollars with your music, or your home recording skills?

See Also: Tips for successful song contest entry

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There may be slightly more to it, however. Lifehacker recently featured a list of body hacks, and it included this great tip about using our ears:

If you’re stuck chatting up a mumbler at a cocktail party, lean in with your right ear. It’s better than your left at following the rapid rhythms of speech… If, on the other hand, you’re trying to identify that song playing softly in the elevator, turn your left ear toward the sound. The left ear is better at picking up music tones.

Neuroscientists have learned that because of the brain hemisphere to which each of our ears is connected, our left and right ears hear things differently. The right ear responds more to rhythm and speech, while the left ear is more attuned to music.

From a study published in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology:

This finding provides support for claims of a right-hemisphere bias for the processing of melodic contour… In the present study, we sought to determine whether short tone sequences presented monaurally (to one ear at a time) are processed differentially by the two hemispheres. Studies of auditory processing often indicate that linguistic and musical stimuli are processed preferentially by the left and right hemispheres, respectively

This has an obvious implication for mix engineers: If you favour one of your ears, it could affect your mix decisions. Dye’s trick of checking a mix for mono compatibility could yield different results depending on which ear you stick your finger in!

Of course, you can use this to your advantage too. For example, when you need to make a decision about a mix’s rhythm elements, you might find it easier if you listen only with your right ear.

If you can’t play a part, don’t record it.
Practice until you can play it, or change the part so it’s easier to play. If you don’t nail the performance, it will show in the recording.

Stock your recording space with spare parts
Stuff breaks, but with a good emergency kit on hand, it doesn’t have to mean the end of a recording session. This is especially true if you record other people: Don’t trust the guitar player to remember a spare E string, but count on him breaking the one on his guitar.

The essential emergency kit: A multi-tool (like a Leatherman,) guitar strings and picks, drum sticks, band aids (!), instrument and microphone cables. And duct tape. No recording studio should be without several rolls of duct tape. You can keep a busted guitar together with enough duct tape. (Don’t ask.)

See Also: More Recording and Mixing Tips, Cut narrow, boost wide

You can always revisit the song: Have you ever put off finishing a mix because you fear the result won’t sound as perfect as you imagine it? Some folks never manage to finish anything because of this quest for perfection. But sometimes, you just need to call a job done and move on. This is much easier to do when “done” can just as easily mean “to be polished and perfected later.”

Be honest with yourself: And most importantly, be honest about your abilities. Of course, you must stretch your limits to improve, but don’t hold yourself to unreal expectations. Your mix doesn’t sound radio-ready because you haven’t been at it as long as the major label mixers and producers. Skills like theirs, however, will come to you if you put in the time.

Take a break from the mix: There’s nothing like “fresh ears” to bring perspective to a mix. Thanks to habituation, you lose objectivity in your hearing, especially after the hundredth time listening to a song effectively on repeat. Taking breaks is especially important when you mix for a deadline. If time allows, spend a few days away from the track and listen to lots of other music. Reset your ears. But even if you only have a few hours before the deadline, it still helps to step away from the mix. Any change in your listening perspective will help you notice elements of the mix you’ve been unconsciously ignoring.

Previously: More Recording and Mixing Tips, The Big Page of Mix Tutorials