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Selects: How Auto-Tune Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: M Hey, everybody, it's your old pal Josh. And for
0:03
Speaker 1: this week's S Y s K Selects, I've chosen How
0:06
Speaker 1: Auto Tune Works came out in August of two thousand fifteen,
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Speaker 1: and it's one of my under the radar favorites because
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Speaker 1: it looks at something that's worked its way into every
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Speaker 1: crevice of popular culture, but that none of us really
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Speaker 1: has any idea about how it works or where it
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Speaker 1: came from. And this episode is a special listener Male
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Speaker 1: roundtable with us and Holly and Tracy from Stuff You
0:28
Speaker 1: Missed in History Class all about sexism. It's super interesting
0:32
Speaker 1: and really kind of out of left field after the
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Speaker 1: Auto Tune episode, so it's a nice combination and I
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Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
0:44
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
0:53
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
0:56
Speaker 1: W Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry And this is Stuff you
1:01
Speaker 1: Should Know. That was great? Thanks man. Do I sound
1:07
Speaker 1: like Share? Do you sound like T pay T, Josh
1:11
Speaker 1: T Josh or Snoop Dogg? Does he do auto tune?
1:15
Speaker 1: He factors into this big time later on Oh Well,
1:18
Speaker 1: I don't even know about that, so I've got something
1:20
Speaker 1: of my sleeve. This is kind of fun. I don't
1:25
Speaker 1: know how much we're gonna do that because people are
1:27
Speaker 1: probably like, stop it right now. Oh, chuck, I think
1:32
Speaker 1: we should do it a lot. Are you done? Yeah,
1:37
Speaker 1: I'm done? All right? Um, we could have just auto
1:41
Speaker 1: tuned this whole thing. Yeah, you know, maybe we should.
1:45
Speaker 1: Maybe we should maybe from this moment fore, we should
1:47
Speaker 1: just auto tune the rest of the episode starting now.
1:50
Speaker 1: Let's sabotage our careers. Uh, you got an intro for
1:56
Speaker 1: this fancy intro. I think we just did it, buddy.
1:59
Speaker 1: Okay up, let's get in the way back machine then,
2:02
Speaker 1: my friend, Okay, we don't have to go back that
2:03
Speaker 1: far because I know where we're going. It's gonna be
2:05
Speaker 1: a short trip. Let's go back to Oh summer Boom.
2:18
Speaker 1: I'm you and I are in the club. We're hanging out.
2:20
Speaker 1: We're drinking rum and coke. You can find us in
2:22
Speaker 1: the club and uh, we're we're dancing. We're getting down
2:26
Speaker 1: and grooving too. Uh. To share his latest jam, Believe
2:31
Speaker 1: Believe It's a hot jam, A hot, hot, hot jam
2:34
Speaker 1: that's released in the summer it's summertime. As you can tell,
2:37
Speaker 1: it's hot in the club, cheat, and I've got on
2:39
Speaker 1: my my my short pants, I'm dressed like I'm out
2:43
Speaker 1: for a night at the rocks. Beary, that's right, I'm
2:45
Speaker 1: wearing a cross shirt, so I've noticed. Actually, how did
2:50
Speaker 1: you not? Well? Yeah, the third nipple really stands out.
2:55
Speaker 1: So we're in the club, we're jamming and share his
2:58
Speaker 1: song is on, and uh, something happens at about thirty
3:01
Speaker 1: five seconds into the song, and you and I are
3:04
Speaker 1: just like, whoa daddy? Did you just hear that? It
3:07
Speaker 1: changes everything? It changed the whole tone of the club,
3:10
Speaker 1: Like the club was like okay, and now it's banging
3:15
Speaker 1: because of a little something called auto tune. Uh what
3:20
Speaker 1: sounded like a little electronic glitch. Was very purposeful, and
3:25
Speaker 1: it was the first time the auto tune had been
3:28
Speaker 1: used in this way. So what, Josh is auto tune?
3:34
Speaker 1: That was quite a setup. Uh, can we do the
3:37
Speaker 1: rest of the episode in the club? Yeah? Why not? Okay,
3:40
Speaker 1: just keep those rum and coats coming, Okay, that's cool. Um,
3:44
Speaker 1: So Chuck, let me let me stop you for a second. Right,
3:48
Speaker 1: because the way you described it, you made it sound
3:51
Speaker 1: like everybody was like, oh, Shure just used auto tune. No, no,
3:55
Speaker 1: everybody said, what was that? That was awesome, although some
4:00
Speaker 1: people were like, what was that? Don't ever do that again,
4:03
Speaker 1: But most people were like, wow, Share just released her
4:06
Speaker 1: biggest hit of her entire career, and it was a
4:08
Speaker 1: pretty long career. She just came back like that just
4:11
Speaker 1: established her comeback was this track, and it actually became
4:15
Speaker 1: one of the greatest best selling singles of all time. Yeah,
4:18
Speaker 1: and I think, I mean, it would have been a
4:20
Speaker 1: probably a big song anyway, but I think most definitely
4:24
Speaker 1: Auto Tune kicked it into the stratagy gave it just
4:27
Speaker 1: the extra something. It became part of the talking but
4:31
Speaker 1: everyone was talking about it. So everybody went to her
4:33
Speaker 1: producer and said, dude, how did you do that? We
4:37
Speaker 1: want to know how to do that? And he was like, vocoder. Yeah.
4:40
Speaker 1: He lied. He lied, He lied big time. He lied
4:43
Speaker 1: in person to other producers, he lied in interviews, he lied, lied,
4:48
Speaker 1: lied about how he made that track because he wanted
4:52
Speaker 1: to keep it to himself because it was so huge,
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Speaker 1: and it became so huge Chuck that at first Auto
4:58
Speaker 1: Tune was called the Sheriffect. Even the company that produced
5:02
Speaker 1: auto Tune, and Terry's which we'll talk about in a minute,
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Speaker 1: called it in their instructional book, the share Effect. They
5:09
Speaker 1: probably still do, don't. They don't mention it any longer,
5:12
Speaker 1: yea um. But the so it was, it was a
5:16
Speaker 1: huge deal, and this guy lied and kept it under
5:19
Speaker 1: wraps and for many years it was very mysterious. Yeah,
5:22
Speaker 1: let's actually if you live under a rock, well, let's
5:24
Speaker 1: go ahead and play that clip of the very first
5:27
Speaker 1: thirty five seconds into that song where shaf says I
5:30
Speaker 1: can't break through. There's no yeah right there, boom right there.
5:42
Speaker 1: Music changed from that point forward. Okay, so what what
5:46
Speaker 1: this guy, what her producer was saying was vocoder. Vocoder
5:51
Speaker 1: is something that's been around for a very long time.
5:53
Speaker 1: If you've ever listened to any Pete Frampton, Peter Frampton, anythings,
5:58
Speaker 1: do you feel like we do that whole long guitar
6:01
Speaker 1: solo or whatever, he's breathing into a tube connected to
6:05
Speaker 1: his guitar, which is electrifying his voice. Vote coder had
6:09
Speaker 1: been around for a very long time, but there's different
6:13
Speaker 1: ways of doing it that That was definitely the tube
6:16
Speaker 1: effect through the guitar, but you can also just use
6:20
Speaker 1: it to you know, make your voice robotic like Beck
6:23
Speaker 1: to turntables in a microphone or Mr Roboto with sticks,
6:29
Speaker 1: but all different ways to use it. This thing, this
6:31
Speaker 1: sounded different to share effect. It was a little different, sure,
6:35
Speaker 1: And I wonder how this guy talked his way out
6:37
Speaker 1: of like Yeah, I mean like if if if a
6:41
Speaker 1: producer was like, okay, well show me how you did
6:43
Speaker 1: it on vote coder, if he was like over here
6:46
Speaker 1: and then just like ran out of the room. I don't.
6:48
Speaker 1: I don't think he talked out of it. I think
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Speaker 1: he was just another line music producer and he was
6:53
Speaker 1: just like okay, well busted. Okay. So um, Apparently along
6:58
Speaker 1: the way people figure gured out here there what this
7:02
Speaker 1: guy did believe, and they started using it themselves, but
7:07
Speaker 1: very very sparsely. Alright, So, Josh, what is auto tune? Alright,
7:13
Speaker 1: I'll answer your question because I'm gonna keep asking it.
7:16
Speaker 1: All right, So auto tune is a plug in originally
7:21
Speaker 1: released in for the audio editing software pro Tools. Yeah,
7:27
Speaker 1: it's a software piece that allows you and the original
7:31
Speaker 1: um intent and how it's still mostly used is to
7:36
Speaker 1: pitch correct um singer's voice. Right, So when you when
7:40
Speaker 1: you or I go into the studio to record those
7:43
Speaker 1: albums that will never release, but we just record for fun. Um.
7:47
Speaker 1: We hit flat notes here there, Oh, not me a
7:49
Speaker 1: perfect pitch. I hit flat notes here there perfect um,
7:53
Speaker 1: and everybody does. It's a normal thing, sure for most
7:56
Speaker 1: of eternity. UM music producers would say, blue Eyes chairman,
8:03
Speaker 1: I need another take. That was a great take, but
8:05
Speaker 1: you had a couple of flight. Now give me another
8:07
Speaker 1: take just like that one. And Frank would finish his scotch,
8:10
Speaker 1: put out a cigarette and say, you get one more,
8:14
Speaker 1: shine head. What was the Joe? Oh you didn't even
8:19
Speaker 1: see spinal tap, did you? Yeah, you finally saw it, finally, Okay,
8:23
Speaker 1: But I don't remember any Frank Sinatra. Yeah there was
8:26
Speaker 1: when Bruno Kirby is the Limo Drivers. He's talks about
8:29
Speaker 1: Sammy Davis's book, Yes I can, and he says what
8:33
Speaker 1: they should have called it is, yes I can. As
8:35
Speaker 1: long as Frank says, it's okay because Frank called the shots.
8:37
Speaker 1: For all those guys, I do remember that. Um. So
8:41
Speaker 1: Frank would sing one more take, and this could be
8:44
Speaker 1: like take twelve or fifteen or twenty, depending on like
8:48
Speaker 1: how how much how much the person was feeling at
8:52
Speaker 1: the singer was feeling it at the time, and would
8:54
Speaker 1: be happy to hang around the studio whatever was keeping
8:57
Speaker 1: the singer there at the studio. As long as that
9:00
Speaker 1: was around the singer, the singer was happy to give
9:03
Speaker 1: it one more try, one more try, right, like drugs maybe,
9:07
Speaker 1: um or if they had like a really good candy bowl,
9:10
Speaker 1: who knows, I gotta stay for the skittles. Um. So
9:13
Speaker 1: the editor then or the music producer would then take
9:16
Speaker 1: all of these different tracks and would go through and
9:20
Speaker 1: I can't imagine how awful this would be. Take the
9:23
Speaker 1: best part of this track and edited together with the
9:26
Speaker 1: best part of that track, and like we're talking like
9:29
Speaker 1: pre digital air, so like they're spicing together tape sure
9:33
Speaker 1: from what I understand, right, to get the best possible
9:36
Speaker 1: complete take piece together from many different takes. Right. So okay,
9:41
Speaker 1: that's that's what they did. All of a sudden, there's
9:45
Speaker 1: this new software that just runs through a take and says, oh, well,
9:51
Speaker 1: I see what note or what key the singers singing in,
9:54
Speaker 1: But this this particular notes just a little out, so
9:57
Speaker 1: I'm going to nudge it into the key that the
10:00
Speaker 1: singer was going for. And now all of a sudden,
10:03
Speaker 1: One take is all it takes. Yeah. I mean what
10:08
Speaker 1: it did was it cut down on studio time, which
10:10
Speaker 1: is super expensive, which was very appealing because now you
10:13
Speaker 1: could churn out songs that are more rapid rate and
10:17
Speaker 1: a cheaper rate. And uh, it was it was a
10:20
Speaker 1: little sort of a secret tool that they didn't intend
10:23
Speaker 1: to like get out to the public. I don't think
10:25
Speaker 1: they wanted everyone to know this stuff. No, it was
10:28
Speaker 1: meant for professionals. Yeah, And basically it was just it
10:32
Speaker 1: was the musical audio equivalent of cosmetics. Yeah. Doctor. It
10:38
Speaker 1: was invented by Dr Harold Andy Hilda Brand, and he
10:44
Speaker 1: likened it to make up and the New Yorker likened
10:47
Speaker 1: it to um, like getting rid of a red eye
10:49
Speaker 1: and a photograph. It was just you use it just
10:53
Speaker 1: enough so that you can't tell it's there, but it
10:55
Speaker 1: makes for a more pleasant um overall composite. Right. Yeah.
11:01
Speaker 1: What Share had done, or what Shares producers had done,
11:04
Speaker 1: is take this thing and used it to the nth degree. Yes,
11:08
Speaker 1: supposedly it was just a joke and Share was like,
11:10
Speaker 1: I love that, but that's like, I don't know if
11:13
Speaker 1: that's an urban legender, if that's fact. Well, from what
11:15
Speaker 1: I read that her producer, she was she wanted like UM,
11:18
Speaker 1: she had heard like some telephone effect that she was
11:22
Speaker 1: interested in using, like she wanted something and I guess
11:25
Speaker 1: the producer had stumbled upon that and UM played it
11:29
Speaker 1: for but it was like you're not gonna like this,
11:31
Speaker 1: but listen to this weirdness, and she was like that
11:34
Speaker 1: I want that nice That's what I read. Well, I
11:38
Speaker 1: think that it's due to her giving it the green light.
11:40
Speaker 1: Then that was truly like uh, foresight, like a masterful
11:45
Speaker 1: move by Share. You know, well, Share has a lot
11:48
Speaker 1: of ForSight. You know, they say, don't don't doubt share
11:51
Speaker 1: and Share has a lot of foresight. Never bet against share. UM.
11:55
Speaker 1: So when she did make that decision, it changed, Like
11:58
Speaker 1: you said, it changed everything. And well, well I I
12:01
Speaker 1: we can't talk enough about this, but we're going to
12:03
Speaker 1: take a break and then come back and talk more
12:05
Speaker 1: about it right after this. You stop, all right, Josh.
12:25
Speaker 1: What I found most interesting about this while researching what
12:28
Speaker 1: um was what Andy Hildebrand did before he did this.
12:33
Speaker 1: He was a musician. He was played flute professionally since
12:38
Speaker 1: he was a young teenager, even went to University of Illinois,
12:42
Speaker 1: go fighting a line, I on a music scholarship. Yet
12:46
Speaker 1: he chose to work for Exxon Mobile for seventeen years
12:51
Speaker 1: looking for oil. Yeah, he's crazy. The two weren't too
12:56
Speaker 1: terribly far apart well, as we will find out. So
13:00
Speaker 1: he's a professional floutist, classically trained flout. It is a
13:03
Speaker 1: good one from what I understanding. His flute, yes, um,
13:07
Speaker 1: And he went to college to get an electrical engineering degree,
13:11
Speaker 1: I think. And basically when when he went to work
13:14
Speaker 1: for the oil companies, it was an oil exploration and
13:17
Speaker 1: he figured out a programmer he designed to software um
13:23
Speaker 1: that when you set off an explosive charge underground, it
13:29
Speaker 1: measured the pitch of stuff of the sound waves that
13:32
Speaker 1: that were created. Right, So as they traveled through rock,
13:36
Speaker 1: different types of rock adjust the pitch basically, and this
13:40
Speaker 1: software like analyzed the pitch that was coming through and
13:43
Speaker 1: could create a subsurface map of the rock below. And
13:48
Speaker 1: oil companies have long known that this type of rock
13:50
Speaker 1: is associated with oil, and this type of rock is
13:53
Speaker 1: not maybe a'll financial gas and this type of rock.
13:55
Speaker 1: So with this guy creating an audio visual map of
14:00
Speaker 1: the subsurface area, oil companies no longer had to just
14:04
Speaker 1: drill and drill and hope that they found UM oil.
14:08
Speaker 1: He would say, this is a pretty pretty great place
14:10
Speaker 1: to drill because this kind of rock is there. That's right.
14:14
Speaker 1: It's called auto correlation. And it saved Exxon a lot
14:18
Speaker 1: of money, and he somehow made a lot of money.
14:21
Speaker 1: I thought it was gonna be one of those things
14:22
Speaker 1: where like x Son was just like, thanks, you work
14:25
Speaker 1: for us, here's your forty dollars a year. But apparently
14:29
Speaker 1: he UM earned enough money to retire by the age
14:32
Speaker 1: of forty thanks to this innovation and UM in the
14:37
Speaker 1: early he got out of the oil business and found
14:41
Speaker 1: it like it's just a popularity content. Yeah. Uh. He
14:45
Speaker 1: founded UH in Terrorists Audio Technologies and UH kind of
14:48
Speaker 1: near Silicon Valley in Scott's Valley, California, and I think
14:52
Speaker 1: still they only have about ten employees. I think it's
14:54
Speaker 1: a pretty small operation. It's all centered around him and
14:58
Speaker 1: his ideas and in he is the main inventor UM.
15:01
Speaker 1: One of the first things he invented was something called Infinity,
15:04
Speaker 1: which is a program that where you could loop samples
15:08
Speaker 1: UM over and over and over like seamlessly. Apparently that
15:12
Speaker 1: was a necessary thing. I didn't know that. Oh yeah,
15:15
Speaker 1: think about it. We're talking like early nineties. That was
15:18
Speaker 1: like the eight acid house revolution. Yeah, but I just
15:22
Speaker 1: didn't realize. I guess he made it easier, probably is
15:25
Speaker 1: my guess. Yes, I think he enabled it. He enabled
15:28
Speaker 1: technos the impression I have, Oh really yeah, interesting looping
15:34
Speaker 1: samples together seamlessly. Well, but you could already do that.
15:37
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is is he clearly found a way
15:39
Speaker 1: to do it better and more efficiently. He didn't invent looping, No, no,
15:43
Speaker 1: he made it better, Yeah, exactly. Another thing he did
15:48
Speaker 1: was invented the microphone modeler. Modeling is a big thing
15:53
Speaker 1: in music. You can get um guitar amplifiers that model,
15:57
Speaker 1: uh basically means imitate other amps. I have a modeling
16:01
Speaker 1: amp which I don't use anymore because it's uh, not
16:04
Speaker 1: very good, but it models. There's like twelve different classic amps.
16:08
Speaker 1: It models, supposedly. But he invented the modeling microphone, which
16:13
Speaker 1: means you could mimic like classic microphones, or like a
16:15
Speaker 1: harmonica Mike and vintage Mike's, like the Elvis Presley, that
16:19
Speaker 1: cool looking Mike I'm sure that was on there. Oh
16:23
Speaker 1: is that the silver kind of rounded rectangular one. Noel's
16:27
Speaker 1: got one on his desk. I yeah, yeah, that's associated
16:29
Speaker 1: with Elvis Presley. Well, I mean just the music of
16:32
Speaker 1: that time. But I always picture Elvish. Yeah you know
16:35
Speaker 1: what I mean, I can see that. Yeah. Have you
16:37
Speaker 1: ever seen his grandson, by the way, quick sidebar. No,
16:40
Speaker 1: his name is quick sidebar yea quick Sidebar Presley. It's
16:44
Speaker 1: weird name, but you know, Lisa Marie was his mom.
16:47
Speaker 1: So yeah, um, that was very funny. By the way,
16:53
Speaker 1: he uh, just look him up. I think what's his name?
16:57
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name. His last name is the
17:01
Speaker 1: father's name for Lisa Marie's first husband, is who she
17:04
Speaker 1: had him with. Uh yeah, just look at Elvis Presley's grandson.
17:08
Speaker 1: It is creepy. Dude looks exactly like Elvis at that age,
17:13
Speaker 1: like scary, scary, eerily similar. Can he sing that? I
17:17
Speaker 1: don't know. Does he use auto tune? That? I do know?
17:20
Speaker 1: If he sings, he probably use his auto tune, probably
17:23
Speaker 1: because of singers. Apparently his auto tune it seemed even
17:27
Speaker 1: higher than that. Really, how about that? Admit it? M
17:32
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, there's the thing about auto tune where,
17:35
Speaker 1: um you deny that you use it even though you're
17:39
Speaker 1: totally aware that everyone uses it. UM. I read an
17:43
Speaker 1: article where apparently this one producer said that he's worked
17:48
Speaker 1: with two artists that have haven't used it everyone else has,
17:53
Speaker 1: and it was Nico Case and Nellie for Tato. And
17:56
Speaker 1: then apparently later after that, Nellie for Tato released a
17:59
Speaker 1: single that had tongue of auto tune on it solid
18:03
Speaker 1: she may be the only artist in the world who
18:06
Speaker 1: hasn't used auto tune, either subtly or um to the
18:10
Speaker 1: nth degree. Well, that's certainly not true. I think there
18:13
Speaker 1: are plenty of indie artists. But if you're talking, you
18:17
Speaker 1: should read this Verge article. It basically lays it out like, no,
18:20
Speaker 1: everyone uses this even if so. Apparently producers don't even
18:25
Speaker 1: necessarily tell the band that it's being used right then,
18:28
Speaker 1: because there's a live function, so that the monitors or
18:32
Speaker 1: the headphones that UM the band is hearing is being
18:36
Speaker 1: run through auto tune, so what they're hearing is already corrected,
18:41
Speaker 1: so they think they just did a perfect take. Yeah,
18:43
Speaker 1: I'm just wary of anytime someone says, out of twenty
18:47
Speaker 1: million singers, one person doesn't that's just very dubious claim.
18:51
Speaker 1: I don't know. We're talking music industry here, especially when
18:55
Speaker 1: a lot of people are making their own music in
18:57
Speaker 1: their own homes. Well, that's another thing they're not was
19:00
Speaker 1: part of the pop machine. They don't have stats on that,
19:03
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I'm just I'm just saying that's that
19:06
Speaker 1: sounds like a load of garbage to me. I'm sure
19:09
Speaker 1: more than one person doesn't either. It's just one. Um.
19:14
Speaker 1: So auto tune came about, apparently this is the tail
19:17
Speaker 1: because of a dinner that Hilda Brand was at. He
19:22
Speaker 1: was having lunch with a sales rep and the wife
19:24
Speaker 1: said something funny like, hey, Andy, can you once you
19:27
Speaker 1: invent something to make me sing in tune? And he went, no,
19:32
Speaker 1: great idea, that's a great hilder Brand. We should have
19:35
Speaker 1: auto tuned that. Maybe we could maybe maybe it was
19:39
Speaker 1: maybe it just happened. Uh. And so he said, you
19:42
Speaker 1: know what, Uh, if I can tell Jed Clampitt where
19:46
Speaker 1: the oil is, then I can make you sing on
19:48
Speaker 1: in tune. And he did, and he did he created
19:52
Speaker 1: auto tune, and um, we've kind of mentioned how it works. Basically,
19:57
Speaker 1: it takes a it takes that take of a singer's song.
20:03
Speaker 1: It takes the vocals of a song and you select
20:07
Speaker 1: what key you're singing in, and then auto Tune goes
20:10
Speaker 1: through and makes this map of this of the audio
20:14
Speaker 1: of the vocal track, and it goes through and says, oh,
20:17
Speaker 1: this one's a little flat, this one's a little low
20:20
Speaker 1: or whatever, um and it just nudges these things into
20:24
Speaker 1: tune into into the key that it's supposed to be in.
20:27
Speaker 1: So all all of the notes that the singer hits
20:31
Speaker 1: and that take are within the correct key, meaning that
20:34
Speaker 1: they all sound great. It's a perfect take, right. Well, yeah,
20:37
Speaker 1: and the the key there is it's in the original
20:39
Speaker 1: tone and inflection of the artist, right, So you can't
20:43
Speaker 1: tell it's happening. No, And there's actually if you look,
20:45
Speaker 1: if you look at the UMU Auto Tune product demo videos,
20:51
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So there's a there's an um an automatic
20:56
Speaker 1: version where like it just you select the key and
20:59
Speaker 1: like a tune, do its thing, and it does a
21:01
Speaker 1: pretty great job. One of the one of the ways
21:04
Speaker 1: that it does this is um it adds like millisecond
21:08
Speaker 1: pauses in between notes. There's little spaces between notes, which
21:13
Speaker 1: gives it a natural feel. Um If there's other selections
21:18
Speaker 1: that you can make like throat length, you can select
21:21
Speaker 1: how long the singer's throat is uh, and you can
21:24
Speaker 1: do that note by note, um, so you can make
21:28
Speaker 1: the whole thing even more natural. Until basically, what you've
21:30
Speaker 1: done is taught auto tune how to simulate a particular
21:37
Speaker 1: singers singing style and voice so that when it when
21:41
Speaker 1: it adjusts that note, it does it within the same
21:45
Speaker 1: exact range that the singer would have done had they
21:47
Speaker 1: hit it correctly. It's pretty amazing and advanced stuff. What
21:52
Speaker 1: when when normal people think of auto tune, like you
21:54
Speaker 1: and me who are not in the music biz, um,
21:58
Speaker 1: we we think of this, that's called the zero function. Yes,
22:02
Speaker 1: and you know what, let's take a break and we
22:03
Speaker 1: will explain what the zero function is right after this.
22:15
Speaker 1: You know, stop all right, the suspense is kidling me.
22:26
Speaker 1: You're gonna kid that's kid alright. Zero function. That was
22:33
Speaker 1: essentially what the share effect was. Okay, right, yes, go ahead,
22:39
Speaker 1: no no, no go ahead, no, no go ahead. You
22:40
Speaker 1: just sat up in your chair like you were about
22:42
Speaker 1: to arm rest. I've been do you go ahead? Do
22:44
Speaker 1: you talk about it? Well, what auto tune does, in
22:47
Speaker 1: the in terms of the zero function is is it
22:51
Speaker 1: gets rid of all of that space, and when shares
22:56
Speaker 1: voice changes, it's immediate. Yeah, all of those notes go
23:00
Speaker 1: right up against each other, and it creates this robotic
23:04
Speaker 1: sounding voice. Yeah, there's no like rise. It's there's it's
23:07
Speaker 1: not like a what's the word I'm looking for? It's uh.
23:12
Speaker 1: It's not like a normal vibrato that you would get
23:15
Speaker 1: because in a normal vibrato, there's there's pauses, there's space
23:19
Speaker 1: in between the notes. With this, it's not not all
23:23
Speaker 1: pressed up against each other in the compressed way, and
23:25
Speaker 1: that zero function um is what what. It takes any
23:30
Speaker 1: spaces out between the notes and creates that robot sound. Yeah,
23:33
Speaker 1: because I think auto tune has has a range of
23:35
Speaker 1: numbers to make it flow more seamlessly. And when they
23:38
Speaker 1: took it all the way down to zero, which means
23:40
Speaker 1: there's nothing there, it created that weird effect that they're like, nah,
23:43
Speaker 1: share your listen to this. It's weird. Yeah, And she's like,
23:47
Speaker 1: I like weird. It's great, baby, I hear number one
23:51
Speaker 1: hit in my future. No, you got it wrong. It's
23:54
Speaker 1: it's great baby. No. That was uh, that was Jack
24:01
Speaker 1: from Will and Grace. Oh do you remember when he
24:05
Speaker 1: thought he was talking to a share impersonator. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
24:10
Speaker 1: and he's like, no, if I could turn back to
24:13
Speaker 1: turn he was teaching her how to say it, sing
24:18
Speaker 1: it correctly. I thoroughly enjoyed will and grace. Oh it
24:21
Speaker 1: was great. Agreed, All right, where are we? Well? You
24:26
Speaker 1: were talking about the share effect, right, and that's what
24:29
Speaker 1: it was called again. Antari has called this zero function
24:32
Speaker 1: the share effect for many years and um and over time,
24:36
Speaker 1: remember her producer just kept lying and lying and lying.
24:39
Speaker 1: Over time, other producers independently figured out what he had done.
24:43
Speaker 1: That he had used the zero function, which was a
24:45
Speaker 1: really obscure tool on a software suite that not everybody
24:54
Speaker 1: knew about. Right, So it took some some brainpower and
24:57
Speaker 1: some experimentation, but little by little, some produce just figured
25:00
Speaker 1: it out. This one producer um did a remix of
25:03
Speaker 1: a j Lo song and used it, and he I
25:06
Speaker 1: think was the second person to use it, um publicly
25:10
Speaker 1: and uh for a brief time, it became known as
25:13
Speaker 1: the jal effect. Of course, anybody who used this without
25:16
Speaker 1: fessing up to it. At first, in the early two thousands,
25:19
Speaker 1: it was called the whatever effect. And there's this producer
25:23
Speaker 1: Rapper down in Florida named T. Paine, and T Paine
25:27
Speaker 1: heard this jal effect. He went on a mission to
25:31
Speaker 1: figure out what this was, and he finally apparently took
25:35
Speaker 1: him years to figure it out. He finally figured out
25:38
Speaker 1: that it was the zero effect on this pro tools
25:41
Speaker 1: plug in UM and he started using it and just
25:46
Speaker 1: went crazy with it. Like up to this point it
25:49
Speaker 1: was used to like tweak or it would maybe make
25:52
Speaker 1: UM a track of just a little weird over here,
25:55
Speaker 1: something like that. He used it as often as he
25:58
Speaker 1: possibly could. Yeah. He basically the zero function and tea
26:01
Speaker 1: pain are one and the same. Yeah, And it became
26:03
Speaker 1: known as the tea Pain effect really because when people
26:08
Speaker 1: asked him how he did it, guess what he said,
26:11
Speaker 1: folk coder? Did he really? Yes, yes he did, And
26:15
Speaker 1: for years he managed to make a mint because the
26:18
Speaker 1: whole thing was in hip hop or in pop. If
26:21
Speaker 1: you wanted this tea pain effect, te pain needed to
26:24
Speaker 1: console at least if not produce your record. That was
26:27
Speaker 1: like ten years after the Share effect. People not know
26:30
Speaker 1: that I I he managed to pull it off for
26:32
Speaker 1: crazing years and years. Good for tea pain is what
26:35
Speaker 1: I say? Yes you know, yeah, I mean he apparently
26:38
Speaker 1: was like, um, I guess on a plane ride. Usher
26:42
Speaker 1: was on the same plane and asked to speak to him,
26:44
Speaker 1: and she was like, I've got to get something off
26:47
Speaker 1: my chest. You really screwed up music, like big time
26:52
Speaker 1: t Pain was like, I made a bunch of money
26:54
Speaker 1: doing this and people seem to like it, so I'm
26:56
Speaker 1: not gonna stop. Hildebrand has been vilified by many, and
27:00
Speaker 1: he said, you know what, I just make the car.
27:01
Speaker 1: I don't drive it down the wrong side of the road. Yeah,
27:04
Speaker 1: it's a great quote because a lot of people hate
27:08
Speaker 1: auto tune and thinks that's the worst thing that happened
27:10
Speaker 1: to music. A lot of people like it and say,
27:13
Speaker 1: when you use it for what it's supposed to be
27:15
Speaker 1: used for, it can really help out. Because you know,
27:17
Speaker 1: it's not like everyone uses it all the time. I'm
27:20
Speaker 1: sure some people need it way more than others. Well,
27:23
Speaker 1: even if you're using it as a like cosmetic touch,
27:25
Speaker 1: like kill the brand originally designed it for a lot
27:28
Speaker 1: of people say no, we shouldn't even be doing that, because, um,
27:31
Speaker 1: if you go back and listen to things like Bob
27:34
Speaker 1: Dylan or The Beach Boards or um, just a lot
27:38
Speaker 1: of these original artists that didn't use these kind of
27:40
Speaker 1: effects on their voice. Um, when they sang and their
27:43
Speaker 1: recordings made it through the studio, there were still flat
27:47
Speaker 1: notes here there, but it was their music, it was
27:50
Speaker 1: their voice, it was their vocals in these tracks, and
27:54
Speaker 1: everyone came to know and love them. But now, because
27:57
Speaker 1: everything is auto tuned perfectly, even the stuff that you
28:00
Speaker 1: don't you can't hear it's auto tune because they're not
28:03
Speaker 1: using zero function, but just the fact that it's been
28:05
Speaker 1: running through the auto tune, this stuff sounds really rough
28:09
Speaker 1: by comparison. So a lot of people are like, auto
28:11
Speaker 1: tune is ruined music. It ruined music that people love
28:15
Speaker 1: for decades because now by comparison it seems rough. Well.
28:20
Speaker 1: But it also, like a good ear can tell if
28:23
Speaker 1: something's auto tune, it has this weird tin equality that, um,
28:27
Speaker 1: it doesn't sound natural. So I think it they will
28:30
Speaker 1: be blowback and a reversion back to older methods. Okay,
28:35
Speaker 1: I bet you Jack White has an auto tune that's
28:37
Speaker 1: the most purest of pure guys. No, he uses all
28:41
Speaker 1: sorts of weird vocal effects on his stuff. No, but
28:43
Speaker 1: as far as like I bet he has ask him,
28:48
Speaker 1: he wouldn't admit it. Apparently that's part for the course. Um,
28:52
Speaker 1: so te Pain. If we can get back to the
28:56
Speaker 1: history of this by you a drink so t Pain right, hit.
29:00
Speaker 1: He's huge, like he's just everything he drops is just
29:03
Speaker 1: blowing up all over the place. He's getting invited to
29:06
Speaker 1: consult and produce on uh Kanye's album, which ultimately had
29:13
Speaker 1: every track had auto tune on it by the time
29:15
Speaker 1: Tea Pain got done with that, right. Um, have you
29:19
Speaker 1: heard his queen Bohemian raps that he live? No? Is
29:23
Speaker 1: it good? Oh? No, oh no, it's there's a video
29:27
Speaker 1: that someone spliced of him and he and Freddie Mercury.
29:30
Speaker 1: It's one of the worst things I've ever heard on
29:32
Speaker 1: a on the stage. I've got to check it out.
29:34
Speaker 1: It's terrible. Okay, all right, Um, I gotta see that.
29:39
Speaker 1: It's good. So um the tea Pain effect. Yeah, and
29:42
Speaker 1: if you wanted this effect, you had to have tea pain.
29:44
Speaker 1: Well Snoop Dogg says, that's enough of that. Oh finally,
29:48
Speaker 1: and he releases something called Sensual Seduction and it's one
29:53
Speaker 1: of the better rap videos you've ever seen. It's pretty good.
29:57
Speaker 1: There's a star wipe in it, so you know, I
29:59
Speaker 1: love it Um. So Snoop releases this using the T
30:03
Speaker 1: pain effect to great degree, but he didn't consult with
30:06
Speaker 1: T Pain. T Paint had nothing to do with this record.
30:09
Speaker 1: So Snoop kind of opened the floodgates saying, if you
30:12
Speaker 1: guys want to use this, go use it. But what's
30:15
Speaker 1: interesting if you watch that video when Snoop is um
30:19
Speaker 1: doing like the the T pain effector of the auto
30:21
Speaker 1: tune stuff, he's actually got a tube going to a
30:24
Speaker 1: synthesizer to make it look like he's using a vocoder.
30:27
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, is that weird? Like in his video? But anyway,
30:32
Speaker 1: he's sure that wasn't a marijuana smoking divide. It may
30:34
Speaker 1: have been, it may have been thing about it um,
30:38
Speaker 1: but Snoop changed everything in in that he took tea
30:42
Speaker 1: Pain out of the equation and really opened the floodgates
30:44
Speaker 1: for anybody and everybody to use this stuff. Simultaneously, jay
30:49
Speaker 1: z was trying to close those floodgates and push all
30:52
Speaker 1: of it back in. Yeah, I think jay z Um
30:56
Speaker 1: clearly jumped the shark at a certain point. You know
30:58
Speaker 1: when major ad brand are making ads using the latest
31:03
Speaker 1: and greatest that it's years late, first of all, and
31:06
Speaker 1: that means that has definitely jumped the shark. And in
31:09
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, Windy's had a Frosty Posse commercial where
31:14
Speaker 1: a gang of office workers built it out auto tuned
31:17
Speaker 1: rhymes while searching for Frosty's. I don't remember that, I know,
31:21
Speaker 1: but I went and watched it. Of course, how is
31:23
Speaker 1: it pretty great? It's what you think it is pretty great.
31:26
Speaker 1: It's awesome. Okay, now it's terrible. And Jay Z apparently
31:30
Speaker 1: saw this and was enraged, and so he wrote a
31:32
Speaker 1: song called d O a Death of auto Tune. I
31:36
Speaker 1: know we're facing a recession, but the music y'all making
31:39
Speaker 1: gonna make it the great depression. Get back to wrap
31:42
Speaker 1: you t pain into much. That's calling that's calling someone
31:45
Speaker 1: out hard. Yeah, but other auto tune, um, auto tune.
31:52
Speaker 1: The news was a big YouTube pit. Oh yeah man,
31:54
Speaker 1: that um the bed intruders song. Yeah, let's um, let's
31:59
Speaker 1: play a clip from that. For two thousand ten, it
32:01
Speaker 1: was a local news footage from Huntsville, Alabama, of Antoine
32:05
Speaker 1: Dodson delivering more awesome human being. Yeah about a neighborhood
32:09
Speaker 1: intruder and someone auto tune that the Gregory Brothers did.
32:12
Speaker 1: That's right, let's hear that real quick. We got your
32:15
Speaker 1: bigger pution. No, you are so good, you are really good.
32:20
Speaker 1: The man got away, leaving behind evidence. I was okay
32:24
Speaker 1: by some PI and the pie. So don't so don't soul,
32:28
Speaker 1: don't song. He climbing your windows, you're snatching your people
32:32
Speaker 1: are trying to write from magic. Have you listened that recently? No,
32:40
Speaker 1: it's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah, but again that was in
32:44
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, and I think that even kind of
32:46
Speaker 1: had a pretty short shelf life. Unless they're still doing it.
32:49
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. What you say, The
32:51
Speaker 1: Gregory Brothers, the Brooklyn Soul band. Yeah, they started out
32:54
Speaker 1: doing auto tune the news. Yeah, and they would take
32:56
Speaker 1: the news and just auto tune it and turn it
32:58
Speaker 1: and like just produce it over use it um. And
33:01
Speaker 1: they did that with the Bed and Trooder song, and
33:03
Speaker 1: that actually became the number one video on YouTube of
33:06
Speaker 1: all of two thousand ten. I look the original the
33:09
Speaker 1: original video has a dwight million views right now. Yeah. Yeah,
33:15
Speaker 1: it's pretty impressive stuff. At at the same point, like
33:19
Speaker 1: now auto tune has become a parody of itself. Yes,
33:23
Speaker 1: it's it's being used in ads. Here's the progression. Something
33:26
Speaker 1: starts out, someone uses it artistically, someone comes along and
33:31
Speaker 1: overuses it, then everybody starts to overuse it. Then Wendy's
33:35
Speaker 1: makes a commercial using it. Newsweek finally gets around to
33:39
Speaker 1: writing an article about it, and then years after we
33:43
Speaker 1: record a podcast on it, and then the thing finally dies. Yeah,
33:46
Speaker 1: and then fifteen or twenty years after that it becomes
33:49
Speaker 1: hip again. Yes, you know, that's the progression. So the
33:53
Speaker 1: point that we're at though, now, Chuck, it's not so
33:55
Speaker 1: cut and dry, man. It's not as cut and dry
33:57
Speaker 1: as jay Z would like to have you think. Because
34:00
Speaker 1: he came out with this death of auto tune track
34:02
Speaker 1: in like two thousand nine. Auto tune is still around
34:06
Speaker 1: very much. And now it's getting the point where if
34:10
Speaker 1: like um the Verge and uh, I can't remember the
34:13
Speaker 1: other article I read, they're both on this podcast page.
34:16
Speaker 1: If they're to be believed, they're credible sources, and they
34:19
Speaker 1: certainly seemed like it from these articles. There's a there's
34:22
Speaker 1: this growing question of um, is auto tune here to stay?
34:30
Speaker 1: People are starting to compare it to the initial reaction
34:33
Speaker 1: that people had to the electric guitar. It was a
34:36
Speaker 1: lot different from the original guitar and people it took
34:38
Speaker 1: a lot of getting used to, or like when Bob
34:40
Speaker 1: Dylan went electric, a lot of people didn't like that,
34:44
Speaker 1: But then look at what happened now with the electric guitar.
34:46
Speaker 1: A lot of people tried different stuff with it and
34:49
Speaker 1: it became a standard. Some people are wondering if auto
34:53
Speaker 1: tune is going to fulfill the same destiny. I think
34:55
Speaker 1: most people are hoping that it does not. Yeah, well,
34:58
Speaker 1: I mean, sweetening vote coals is nothing new, Like reverb
35:01
Speaker 1: is a tried and true thing for years and embraced.
35:05
Speaker 1: H does that sweetened vocals? I thought that was always
35:07
Speaker 1: used to like make it weird. Now it's it's sort
35:09
Speaker 1: of like it gives it an echo, a like you're
35:11
Speaker 1: singing in a big empty church hall or something. But
35:14
Speaker 1: it makes it sweetens it. It doesn't like correct anything,
35:18
Speaker 1: but when I say sweetens it, it just makes it
35:20
Speaker 1: sound a little better. Reverbs a great tool, right. The
35:24
Speaker 1: point is it's artificial. Yeah, it's not natural. Yeah, they
35:29
Speaker 1: it's they tried to replicate like singing in a big
35:31
Speaker 1: empty echo e hallway, uh, with an effect and it worked, right.
35:36
Speaker 1: And another argument in favor of auto tune that I've
35:39
Speaker 1: seen is simply taking a human voice and recording it
35:43
Speaker 1: automatically makes it artificial, like if they're not there in
35:47
Speaker 1: the room with you singing to you at that moment.
35:50
Speaker 1: Anything else is artificial, So what's the problem. So just
35:55
Speaker 1: to let people know, I put out two text during
35:57
Speaker 1: the episode to musician friends Jack why no. I texted
36:02
Speaker 1: Lucy Wayne Wright our buddy Jerry from our TV. She
36:07
Speaker 1: has not answered, which means she's used auto tune kidding
36:12
Speaker 1: and our buddy Joey c Are from the Henry Clay
36:14
Speaker 1: People formerly of Henry Clay People, now with fakers, and
36:18
Speaker 1: he said, I think there were a few harmonized US
36:21
Speaker 1: and OZ on one of our old records where we
36:24
Speaker 1: did some pitch correcting, but that's it, I think maybe,
36:28
Speaker 1: so definitely he's probably gonna be mad that I said that.
36:33
Speaker 1: Thank you for being fourth, right, Joey? Yeah, good guy.
36:36
Speaker 1: Are you got anything else about audit? Yeah? Just a
36:39
Speaker 1: really quick um. This is from a great website. Uh
36:42
Speaker 1: tin artists that are essentially computer programs. They just have
36:46
Speaker 1: the most auto tuned people. They have Tea Pain Kesha,
36:50
Speaker 1: Chris Brown, Maroon Five, Black Eyed Peas, Deaf Punk, Paris Hilton,
36:55
Speaker 1: who I forgot actually had a song the cast of
36:58
Speaker 1: Glee Katy Perry, and number one was owl City, who
37:01
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that is. There's a huge
37:03
Speaker 1: outcry apparently among Glee fans for Glee to stop using
37:07
Speaker 1: so much auto tune. I think the deal is. They're like, well,
37:09
Speaker 1: these are actors, Like yeah, And there's another there's a
37:14
Speaker 1: big scandal with u K's got talent or something weird
37:17
Speaker 1: like that, um where they were using a lot of
37:21
Speaker 1: auto tune for the auditions. It's like, come on, well anyway, man,
37:29
Speaker 1: that's not a very surprising list. So this has been
37:32
Speaker 1: grumpy old men. I don't feel like we've been grumpy.
37:35
Speaker 1: We haven't like condemned it out right. No. Nico Case's
37:41
Speaker 1: my lady, she condemns it out right. Yeah, Emily, I
37:43
Speaker 1: have an agreement about Nico Case, but we could both
37:46
Speaker 1: marry her if she was ever available to us. She's
37:51
Speaker 1: right behind you. Oh my god. Uh so we have
37:56
Speaker 1: a very well known finish up here a deal. Sorry,
37:58
Speaker 1: I just jumped the gun. Okay, thank you. Uh you
38:01
Speaker 1: don't have anything else about No, I was just teasing.
38:05
Speaker 1: We have a special listener mail with guests well, hold on,
38:08
Speaker 1: let me finish first. Okay, okay, Well, since Chuck doesn't
38:11
Speaker 1: have anything, it's the end. And if you want to
38:14
Speaker 1: know more about auto tune, you can type those words
38:16
Speaker 1: into the search par at how stuff works dot com.
38:19
Speaker 1: And this article, I have to say, by the way,
38:21
Speaker 1: was the most definitive article about auto tune on the internet.
38:25
Speaker 1: How about that. It's a good one. Uh so you
38:28
Speaker 1: can go look that up. And since I said definitive,
38:31
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail, and it's a special one,
38:34
Speaker 1: like Chuck says, that's right, h Today, we um got
38:37
Speaker 1: a joint listener mail to ourselves into Holly and Tracy
38:42
Speaker 1: from stuff you missed in History class. Yep, So we're
38:44
Speaker 1: gonna bring them in right. Yeah, we're gonna read the
38:46
Speaker 1: email and we're gonna talk about its implications. But let's
38:49
Speaker 1: start now. So, without further ado, we actually have Holly
38:56
Speaker 1: and Tracy of stuff you miss in history class with
39:01
Speaker 1: Hi and Tracy. We have actually not with us, she's
39:05
Speaker 1: with us in spirit and voice from Boston. I know
39:08
Speaker 1: it's pretty it's pretty interesting when it comes in through
39:11
Speaker 1: your headphones, but the other person somewhere else, it's kind
39:14
Speaker 1: of awesome. And this is how you guys do the
39:16
Speaker 1: show now right. Yes, we also have like an online
39:22
Speaker 1: you know, we have a Google hangout where we both
39:24
Speaker 1: are so we can see each other as well's we
39:28
Speaker 1: should have done that Tracy in here with her video
39:31
Speaker 1: image or like um hologram of or they'd be pretty
39:34
Speaker 1: cool too. That's true, all right. So I think the
39:37
Speaker 1: first thing I should do we could have a picture
39:38
Speaker 1: of me like our old boss. Oh well, I do
39:41
Speaker 1: have a picture of you. I have the wallet side
39:43
Speaker 1: that you gave out. So um, I think the first
39:46
Speaker 1: thing we should do is just read. I'll read the
39:48
Speaker 1: email here and then we will discuss like adults. How
39:50
Speaker 1: about that? What? So, like I said, already set it
39:54
Speaker 1: up that we both got an email from a listener
39:56
Speaker 1: and she says the following, and this is from Amanda
39:59
Speaker 1: Lae ends Hey guys and gals. She didn't say that,
40:03
Speaker 1: of course, I just did. Well, you should read it, okay, Josh, Chuckers,
40:09
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy, and of course a hello to Jerry
40:11
Speaker 1: and Nol. Yeah. I'm a social worker from Portland, Oregon
40:14
Speaker 1: with a passion for human equity and respect. One of
40:17
Speaker 1: the original members of the s Y s K Army
40:20
Speaker 1: and a more recent listener to missed in History. I
40:24
Speaker 1: binged for about five months before I got all caught up.
40:27
Speaker 1: So how about that. I'm concerned about something I've heard
40:30
Speaker 1: a few times on the History podcast, and I was
40:32
Speaker 1: wondering if you guys would be willing to get together
40:35
Speaker 1: we are and look into something to fulfill my curiosity.
40:39
Speaker 1: When Josh and Chuck received corrections, they thank people for
40:42
Speaker 1: being nice and frequently ask people not to be jerks
40:45
Speaker 1: when correcting them. When Holly and Tracy talk about corrections
40:48
Speaker 1: they receive, they ask people to be nice and have
40:52
Speaker 1: referred to corrections on several occasions as hate mail. My
40:57
Speaker 1: concern is that listeners may be more disrespectful Howly and
41:00
Speaker 1: Tracy because they are women, and even if listeners are
41:02
Speaker 1: rude to Josh and Chuck, they may rein it in
41:04
Speaker 1: when making corrections because there are men. Could be completely
41:07
Speaker 1: off base. But if I'm right, I feel like the
41:09
Speaker 1: discrepancy should be addressed on the podcast to raise awareness
41:13
Speaker 1: about how people treat men and women differently, and even
41:16
Speaker 1: to address people's tendency to feel protected by the anonymity
41:19
Speaker 1: of the Internet and say things online they wouldn't say
41:21
Speaker 1: to someone's face. And uh so, Manda, we did talk
41:25
Speaker 1: about it via email, and now we're going to talk
41:27
Speaker 1: about it like regular human folks. And Tracy really has
41:31
Speaker 1: the wealth of information because of her job and what
41:34
Speaker 1: you know she's been responsible for in the past. Oh yeah,
41:37
Speaker 1: that sounds serious. Yeah. I was part of the management
41:42
Speaker 1: team of a website for several years before I started
41:44
Speaker 1: actually being on a podcast, and for a chunk of
41:47
Speaker 1: that time, most of the podcasters reported to me. So
41:51
Speaker 1: even though I wasn't managing the podcast program, I was
41:54
Speaker 1: sort of keeping tabs on the iTunes reviews for everybody.
41:57
Speaker 1: And there was a definite, definite try and in that
42:00
Speaker 1: the podcast that had women on them got disproportionately more
42:06
Speaker 1: vicious comments about what their voices sounded like versus the
42:11
Speaker 1: podcast with men on them, which got less of that.
42:15
Speaker 1: So this is news to me. Misogyny on the internet.
42:18
Speaker 1: I'm not I wasn't aware that that was the thing.
42:22
Speaker 1: Just had the most beautiful blind spot of all time. No,
42:26
Speaker 1: I can imagine. And I know Tracy, you've like pointed
42:31
Speaker 1: some of these out before. Um, for us, it's it's like, yeah,
42:34
Speaker 1: we'll get hate mail every once in a while, Um,
42:38
Speaker 1: but it's kind of easy to dismiss because even if
42:41
Speaker 1: it is directed at us, it's not necessarily directed at
42:44
Speaker 1: our gender or whatever it's or even if it is personal,
42:48
Speaker 1: it's it's dumb. It's just it's just dumb stuff. It's
42:52
Speaker 1: easy to not take personally, even when it's meant to
42:54
Speaker 1: be personal. But um, that's me speaking as like a
42:58
Speaker 1: white male age eight team to forty nine, you know,
43:02
Speaker 1: so I can imagine that like when someone attacks you
43:05
Speaker 1: just just based on your gender, or even worse, if
43:09
Speaker 1: they're coming after you and they don't even realize that
43:11
Speaker 1: they're being driven by this, um, this disdain for your gender,
43:15
Speaker 1: that has to make it a lot harder to just dismiss. Yeah,
43:20
Speaker 1: well yeah, how you can go. I was gonna say,
43:24
Speaker 1: for me, I mean I am lucky and that I
43:26
Speaker 1: really give very few damns about what most people think,
43:29
Speaker 1: like unless you're sitting in my lap or paying my paycheck,
43:32
Speaker 1: Like it's great if you like me, but if you don't,
43:34
Speaker 1: that's cool too. Like everybody do your thing. But eventually,
43:37
Speaker 1: like the landslide builds up and it's not it's not
43:41
Speaker 1: so much that I'm like heartbroken or traumatized, but it
43:45
Speaker 1: just wears you down after a while, where you're like,
43:47
Speaker 1: why am I doing this just to get more of
43:49
Speaker 1: this crap? Yeah? Well, and we definitely have, like we
43:55
Speaker 1: have been called slurs based on our gender before. We
43:58
Speaker 1: have been called the C word over the po unbelievable.
44:02
Speaker 1: Yeah well, and then the I told you about that
44:05
Speaker 1: when we were discussing the email in our email conversation,
44:08
Speaker 1: I told you about the person who wrote to us
44:10
Speaker 1: and said they didn't understand how I could be in
44:12
Speaker 1: the same room with Holly without strangling her. Like that's
44:15
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that people will write to us
44:16
Speaker 1: and be really awful, But we do get a whole
44:19
Speaker 1: lot of them that I don't think people are consciously
44:21
Speaker 1: being misogynistic, but they're talking to us and about us
44:25
Speaker 1: in a very gendered way. So people tell us that
44:27
Speaker 1: we sound shrill or that we sound bossy, and those
44:30
Speaker 1: aren't words that people would use to describe men most
44:33
Speaker 1: of the time. First, the um and all of the
44:40
Speaker 1: articles that had come out lately about especially vocal fry
44:44
Speaker 1: and other things that people criticize about women's voices that
44:47
Speaker 1: they don't generally criticize about men's voices. Every single time
44:51
Speaker 1: I read it and I'm like, I could have written
44:53
Speaker 1: that about my job and my experience being a woman
44:56
Speaker 1: talking on the internet. So which one, Um, which one
45:00
Speaker 1: hits home the most? Like one that's a just a
45:04
Speaker 1: direct personal attack are the ones that or the person
45:07
Speaker 1: is just being unconsciously misogynistic, which to me would seem
45:11
Speaker 1: more entrenched. Yeah, to me, the second one is worse.
45:16
Speaker 1: And it's especially worse because a lot of the implicitly
45:19
Speaker 1: gendered criticism that we get is also from women. The
45:24
Speaker 1: hardest part, Yeah, that's the hardest part for me to
45:27
Speaker 1: deal with. Yeah, when they're real specific, for example, like
45:31
Speaker 1: the person who wants me to be strangled. Um, at
45:36
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I'm like, he's working through
45:38
Speaker 1: his own stuff. Like I have really have very little
45:40
Speaker 1: to do with this. So I may have been the
45:41
Speaker 1: trigger that you know, caused this little outrage bomb, but
45:45
Speaker 1: really it has very little to do with me that
45:47
Speaker 1: I think almost a percent of the time that is
45:49
Speaker 1: the case. These are people who have their own gripes
45:53
Speaker 1: in life and are probably angry, unhappy people. Yes, But
45:56
Speaker 1: then as Tracy said, when you get those ones that
45:58
Speaker 1: are like they they're not unconscious of how it's playing
46:01
Speaker 1: out you realize how much it is a bigger, sort
46:08
Speaker 1: of systemic social problem because most of those people are
46:12
Speaker 1: not evil, they don't intend to be misogynistic. They're not
46:17
Speaker 1: conscious that they're separating the two genders and judging them
46:20
Speaker 1: differently on different criteria. So yeah, those are, as Tracy said,
46:26
Speaker 1: a little more disturbing because you realize that it's kind
46:28
Speaker 1: of like the silent creep that underlays everything. Well, we
46:32
Speaker 1: do get a lot of emails that are great from
46:33
Speaker 1: people who are great, and the majority of the email
46:36
Speaker 1: that we get is great, so we like, I don't
46:38
Speaker 1: want to make it sound like every person who writes
46:40
Speaker 1: to us is awful. Um, And we talk about corrections
46:43
Speaker 1: on the episode a lot of times from people who
46:44
Speaker 1: write it the end and everything is fine and everything
46:47
Speaker 1: is very respectful. So to me, a correction is you
46:50
Speaker 1: said this person died in nineteen and eighteen, but really
46:52
Speaker 1: it was nineteen seven. That's a correction, and that's fine.
46:56
Speaker 1: But then we'll also get ones that are like, I
46:58
Speaker 1: can't believe you didn't even bother to this up. You
47:00
Speaker 1: completely butchered it. I don't know why you don't even
47:03
Speaker 1: put more thought into what you're doing. Because it's really
47:05
Speaker 1: important that you represent yourselves as well. And that's why
47:07
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's hate mail we get, Yeah, we get those. Yeah,
47:11
Speaker 1: we get a lot of those, but I never feel
47:13
Speaker 1: like those are like, uh, have anything to do with
47:16
Speaker 1: my gender. Yeah, in those cases, absolutely, I mean we
47:19
Speaker 1: get the same exact emails where it's just like you,
47:21
Speaker 1: you guys are total idiots, like how how could you
47:24
Speaker 1: drop the ball this badly? And it's like we basically
47:27
Speaker 1: said exactly what you're saying, we just said it slightly differently.
47:31
Speaker 1: It definitely doesn't warrant this kind of reaction, you know.
47:35
Speaker 1: Um yeah, I I why do you think there is
47:40
Speaker 1: a gender bias or a gender Why is it worse
47:46
Speaker 1: for you guys being women? Do you think not just
47:49
Speaker 1: in comments I find the history of the world, but
47:52
Speaker 1: I know, like how how long do you have this thing?
47:54
Speaker 1: But I mean, like even even beyond comments like why
47:57
Speaker 1: is the internet so geared towards hating women? I mean,
48:01
Speaker 1: what's what's the deal with that? Do you guys? Is
48:03
Speaker 1: there is there a general understanding or idea behind it
48:07
Speaker 1: lonely angry men is my guests? Well, I think it's
48:10
Speaker 1: it's super complex, right, there's no one simple answer. Like
48:14
Speaker 1: some of it is that we have reached an age
48:16
Speaker 1: where the disparity in terms of UH gender equality has
48:24
Speaker 1: shrunk at the same time that a lot of people
48:26
Speaker 1: have this outlet readily available to them. So there's progress
48:30
Speaker 1: being made, but there are also the people who are
48:32
Speaker 1: still kicking and screaming as they get dragged into a
48:35
Speaker 1: future they're not comfortable with. But then there's also just
48:39
Speaker 1: a thing that again I don't think people are even
48:41
Speaker 1: conscious of it where it is new for many people,
48:44
Speaker 1: and even people that are younger and have maybe grown
48:48
Speaker 1: up in a more kind of old school traditional environment
48:51
Speaker 1: be at household or community, where they're not even conscious
48:56
Speaker 1: of why they're more upset at women. There's just something
48:59
Speaker 1: about women, you know, sharing knowledge or being assertive or
49:04
Speaker 1: being confident that just rankles them. And they don't even
49:06
Speaker 1: register that it's because it's a woman. They just know
49:09
Speaker 1: there's something about that person I hate, and it's something
49:11
Speaker 1: they're just not used to and they haven't kind of
49:15
Speaker 1: made the the mental accustomization to Oh. Sometimes people that
49:20
Speaker 1: aren't dudes have stuff to say as well. Do you
49:23
Speaker 1: think the same experiences extrapolatable under race as well as
49:28
Speaker 1: gender and well, I mean I know it is, but
49:31
Speaker 1: I mean, is it almost like a step for step
49:34
Speaker 1: do you think I think it's probably pretty similar models. Yeah, well,
49:41
Speaker 1: speaking like as the as as a white person in
49:43
Speaker 1: a room of white people who are on the phone
49:45
Speaker 1: right now. The worst days I have ever had managing
49:48
Speaker 1: our Facebook page, our days when we talk about something
49:52
Speaker 1: that has to do with systemic racism and we'll we'll
49:56
Speaker 1: get a flood of similarly implic racist comments from people
50:01
Speaker 1: who really don't know that the view that they just
50:04
Speaker 1: put out there is racist. Like that's sort of the
50:08
Speaker 1: same thing. Like a lot of people do things that
50:09
Speaker 1: are misogynists, not really consciously being misogynist. That just comes
50:13
Speaker 1: out and they're not consciously aware of it. And it's
50:15
Speaker 1: we see the same thing on our Facebook posts in
50:19
Speaker 1: subjects that are related to race really pretty often. So
50:23
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, when you guys get
50:25
Speaker 1: a bunch of these say on a just a particularly
50:27
Speaker 1: bad day, what you what? What do you do? I mean,
50:31
Speaker 1: do you battle this? Do you just brush it off
50:33
Speaker 1: and be like these guys are idiots, And whether they
50:35
Speaker 1: like it or not, they are going to be dragged
50:37
Speaker 1: into the future against their will you know what, do
50:41
Speaker 1: you do a combination of both, or do you look
50:43
Speaker 1: at your status as a perennial top twenty podcast and
50:48
Speaker 1: say they clearly who cares what they say? Because we're
50:52
Speaker 1: really good at what we do, because we're very successful.
50:56
Speaker 1: I do a combination of things. I have kind of
50:59
Speaker 1: a library of links about vocal fry and whatever. Anyone
51:02
Speaker 1: writes directly to us to complain about vocal fry, I
51:04
Speaker 1: kind of send them, Hey, why don't you listen to this,
51:08
Speaker 1: uh this American Life segment all about vocal fry in
51:13
Speaker 1: which Ira Glass has vocal fry the entire segment, but
51:16
Speaker 1: nobody complains at him about it. Um. So, I like,
51:20
Speaker 1: I specifically will address that. I will specifically address things
51:24
Speaker 1: that people say on our Facebook page in public, because
51:26
Speaker 1: I feel like our role as a podcast about history
51:31
Speaker 1: does not include allowing people free rain to be racist
51:34
Speaker 1: in public and and have that not be challenged. Um
51:38
Speaker 1: But when it comes to the like the email that
51:40
Speaker 1: Holly and I got that was that was so bad
51:43
Speaker 1: pretty recently, that was the person who was basically advocating
51:47
Speaker 1: me murdering Holly. Um, I was actually traveling. I went
51:53
Speaker 1: down to the hotel bar and how to drink, read
51:56
Speaker 1: a book and tried to chill. Yeah, I tried chill
51:59
Speaker 1: out about it. There's the answer. Booze tail fixes everything. Well, Um,
52:06
Speaker 1: thank you both for addressing this. Yeah, I'm sorry we
52:09
Speaker 1: didn't solve this problem here in this this listener mail segment.
52:13
Speaker 1: Thank you for having us on the show. Of course. Um,
52:15
Speaker 1: if anyone out there and stuff, you should know Land
52:17
Speaker 1: has not checked out stuff he missed in history class,
52:19
Speaker 1: you definitely should because it is super awesome and as
52:23
Speaker 1: are both of you. And I don't want to strangle you,
52:25
Speaker 1: but I want to hug your necks. Nope, you've better
52:33
Speaker 1: have it. And now she don't move no more. Nope.
52:38
Speaker 1: But thanks for coming in. And uh, we should do
52:41
Speaker 1: this more often, you know, we should. We should have
52:43
Speaker 1: a whole show where we just get together and do
52:45
Speaker 1: roundtable stuff. We can have yappy pow wow party time.
52:48
Speaker 1: That would be Yeah. Well, if you have something to
52:52
Speaker 1: say about all this, I'm we're sure you will. We
52:54
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. You can tweet to us
52:57
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. You can tweet this
53:00
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53:08
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