That is AutoTune. If that is a digital effect, is weird and I don't like it.
That is what makes FM & MJ sound different in There Must Be More To Life Than This. That is what makes Freddie sound perfect in Forever and Rainbow.
But here, he sounds too weird all the time, to me. Don't judge me, I don't work with AutoTune, but I can hear it.
Are you with me? I'm wrong? What do you think about it?
Let Me In Your Heart Again link link
Love Kills: link
There Must Be More To Life Than This: link link
PS: If you want to download this songs in FLAC, search in RuTracker.
I hear it in TMBMTLTT. It is bloody annoying and totally unnecessary. Freddie was an amazing singer and Michael wasn't bad as well. Why do they have to suck out all the human purity from the vocals? Plus it has also some other effect I think which makes the vocals sound mushy not to mention that they are way too low. The whole thing for me is a muddy crap without any clarity and character. They should at least correct the volume of Freddie's vocal for the CD.
Let Me In sounds fine to me so I have to guess it's all thanks to William Orbit.
No autotune in Let Me In?
Erm...
Wrong.
Autotune is used in virtually ALL songs that are designed for airplay these days.
It can be used blatantly... Kanye West... or subtly.
There is a quick or slow response function used. There are various ways of masking its usage. It can be smooth as silk and barely noticeable or evidently there straight away.
It has been used to death on TMBMTLTT and more subtly on the other two tracks.
For anyone who spends time using a home studio it will be fairly evident.
Personally I forego it. You can either sing or you can't.
Freddie could of course which is why it is so frustrating to hear.
William Orbit really screwed up.
There's not enough compression on Fred's voice (squashing the signal and making it louder) to compensate for how ramped up everything else in the mix is, and way too much echo and reverb, which will soften the voice... like a soft focus lens on a camera.
Now, I can understand using these tools with the Rainbow release (if the original vocals were as flat as I've been led to believe) because no one wants to sit through a bad vocal performance for 90 minutes, but the original Freddie vocals on Love Kills and TMBMTLTT were terrific. Maybe not 'technically' perfect in the digital age sense of the word... but real, human and tuneful.
I really can't stress enough how bad a production job has been done by William Orbit on TMBMTLTT. Woefully subpar.
Great post fofum, agree with every word you said. I think it's very evident in TMBMTLTT, but I don't really care about that. What makes me sad is that Brian mixed and probably produced Let Me In Your Heart Again - which means that he might actually have put the auto tune on there himself.
I love the song though, it's growing on me. The mix and production is spot on otherwise.
Yeah there's definitely some autotune in "There Must be More to Life than this"
But personally I think it's needed. Not for Freddie Mercury, but for MJ. I remember hearing a part of the song on youtube that someone uploaded and it sounded horrible. But then I bought the Forever album today and when I heard it it didn't sound half bad. A bit odd because of the autotune but hey it sounds better than it did before (which is why they never released it).