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Web CD Sales Suspended until after Postal Strike - Thursday, June 16, 2011
Please note that any web site CD orders made during the Canada Post Strike will be subject to an indefinite delay in shipment. We hope that this situation will resolve quickly and we appologize for any inconvenience.

Little Ray's Reptile Zoo - Friday, February 18, 2011

If you enjoyed our Halloween show 2 years ago, in which I performed with a Boa Contstrictor around my neck, you'll love this:  www.bluenosereptiles.ca  Lisa Balcom, one of our CD girls, owns the new Nova Scotia franchise for Ottawa based, Little Ray's Reptile Zoo. We are huge lovers of animals and so proud to support an organization such a this that rescues and cares for many who were often mistreated and abandoned.   

Signal Hill Sundays! - Monday, January 31, 2011
Every Sunday Signal Hill can be found at the Lower Deck in Halifax. Don't miss it! The next Lower Deck Show is on Sunday Feb 6, at 9:45pm.

Signal Hill NOT at the Lower Deck - Sunday, January 30, 2011
We regret that we are unable to be at the Lower Deck on Sunday Jan 30 but we're back again next Sunday! Please pass it on!!!

PITCH CORRECTION - Friday, September 24, 2010

It's something you hear almost every day on mainstream radio, your mp3 music player, CDs, DVDs, at major "live" concerts, tv shows and even advertisements but what is it? Remember "Believe" by Cher; that effect on her voice that made her sound like your car's GPS? Cool "effect" maybe, but it has now become a seemingly perennial fixture on the pop cultural landscape. Pick a genre, any genre and you can hear that Cher effect. Why? Because it happens to be a side effect of the technological innovation known as pitch correction software.

All studios have them these days. We experimented with an Antaries first generation hardware version at Idea of East studios during our Sepia Tones sessions. It made sense - studio time is expensive. Traditionally most singers record a vocal track over and over until it's perfect (except for Frank Sinatra who famously refused to do more than one take). Tuning is just one aspect of that task. Emotion, vibrato, breath control, breath sound, intensity, inflection, placement, projection, mood, harmony blend, rhythm and lyrics are just some of the others. Think of the money and time you could save by not having to worry about singing perfectly in tune. Even if you have perfect pitch, no one sings perfectly in tune all of the time. What they don't tell us is that imperfect pitch is part of what makes music sound human and relatable to the average human listener. In fact, Bach taught us this when he wrote the Well Tempered Clavier in all 24 major and minor keys, tuned with equal temperament (with an equal amount of dissonance between all 24 notes). Before this, most popular music was written in modes based on one scale, perfectly tuned with just intonation. This provided for no other concurrent key signatures for they would simply sound too much out of tune. We are now so use to equal temperament that we just accept modern music to be “in tune” when in fact, even with the most powerful pitch correction technology set to equal temperament, it is not.

 

It is important to note that, the more you sing in tune, the less the software makes any changes at all. In fact, if you set the sensitivity low enough, and sing relatively in tune, it won't really do anything but listen. Unfortunately you might agree after a quick scan of your local top40 hits FM station that modern pitch correctors are working beyond overtime these days. And if you think that's shocking, let's not forget technology such as Melodine that allows for the modification of a singer's overtones, which can dramatically alter the timbre of a singer's voice. The combination and balance of overtones is fundamentally what makes our voices sound unique. The size and shape of the resonance chambers in our heads decide a lot of that. With a technological manipulation, that uniqueness can be virtually bottled and sold. It's the reason so many singers today sound so much like the other singers in their genre. I would also argue that it has allowed the notoriously lazy and superficial recording industry to focus more on the look of an artist. Superstars don't really need to have a great voice or ear. Just dress 'em up and churn 'em out!

 

Pitch Correction isn't just limited to the secrecy of the studio by the way, this phenomenon can be found at the live shows too! People have always been outraged by the prospect of their favourite singers, faking or lip synching at their concerts. This even as recent as the Ashlee Simpson debacle on Saturday Night Live, where she ended up leaving the stage via an impromptu jig of sorts while the wrong vocal tracks accidentally crooned over a different song than the one band was playing. Why the anger over that and not this?

 

People tell me to be complimented when I get accused of lip synching at our live shows. I'm sorry but that's not my reaction. When I have someone in the front row, booing me because they believe they’re listening to a recording, it's a distraction to say the least. I just don't know what they think I'm lip synching to? Sadly, it often comes up during "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac. I get it; she's a female, and I'm a male. But do they really think I somehow managed to get the original Stevie Nick's studio vocal track, separate it from the bass, drums, guitars, keyboards, etc., and line it up with a click so that we could all play in time with it, just so I could fake a song we do every 6 months? Why exactly would anyone do this? It's crazy really. And yet, these same people would think nothing of shelling out over $100 for a concert ticket where 100% of all the singing is being processed by a pitch corrector.

 

The truth is, that perfect pitch is boring. Neil Young is king, and I just thought you should know what you're listening to when you're not listening to us.