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What's with recording engineers who can't hear vocal-tuning when it's clearly there?


blue2blue

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I keep reading posts on the web from people who identify themselves as recording engineers, many of whom appear to work in or own professional facilities, who claim to hear no vocal tuning on tracks where it clearly exists...

Now, without question, vocal tuning has gotten better -- and when applied by a sensitive editor in a fashion that doesn't cause too much pitch-snapping or peculiar, squirelly, formant distortions -- it can be pretty transparent.

But, so often, it isn't.

Of course, I'm not talking about tuning-everything-as-effect, the Glee-effect, if you will (after the TV-show that adopted tuning of virtually all the performances on the hey-kids-let's-put-on-a-show show -- even 'informal practice' sessions are heavily tuned for that whiny, medium-tuned-sound so popular with label execs).


I'm talking about vocals that are clearly supposed to sound like the person is actually singing.

For instance, I tried listening to a Reba McIntire album from a year or two ago. She is, I believe, one of the finest singers working in contemporary country. So, why the hell did her album get out the gate with so many howlers on it -- the kind of obvious, chirpy-formant tuning glitches that have deeply marred so much Nashville product over the last decade and change?

And, when such a topic comes up, as it did recently regarding a 2010 Taylor Swift album in a recording forum on another BB system, how can so many recording professionals profess to hear no tuning when it's clearly there, sticking out like so many sore thumbs scattered through the recording?

Are these people really so painfully ignorant as to what the human voice actually sounds like?

How could that be? These are people who profess to be professionals, who work at or own professional facilities.

Thoughts?

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Quote Originally Posted by blue2blue View Post
I tried listening to a Reba McIntire album from a year or two ago. She is, I believe, one of the finest singers working in contemporary country. So, why the hell did her album get out the gate with so many howlwers on it -- the kind of obvious, chirpy-formant tuning glitches that have deeply marred so much Nashville product over the last decade and change?
She's been around for a long time, and great singers don't last forever. Isn't she mostly a TV actress these days? Have you heard her sing live, preferably without a sound system (where they might run her mic through pitch corrections)? Maybe her voice needs more help that you wish and that was the best they could do. Or maybe it was just done carelessly.

But then, I'm one of those who listens to the song, not the voice. If the song and performance were good, if the vocal was a little "pitchy," I probably wouldn't notice unless someone asked me to listen for pitch. Same with a processing artifact. Until you know what went into the mic, you really can't criticize the engineering.

As far as engineers not "hearing" pitch correction, I don't know who you were talking to, but if I really cared (which I don't) I probably wouldn't go out and buy the CD, I'd download an MP3 and listen to it at my desktop computer, not through the studio playback system, unless I was being paid. So, yeah, I'd probably not notice the surface quality of the recording either.

And, honestly, I've never actually used pitch correction on anything myself, so I truly don't know what abuse or misuse sounds like.
Are these people really so painfully ignorant as to what the human voice actually sounds like?
It's really none of their business. You might just as well criticize the reverb sound, or the level of the bass, or the zing in the strings. If you could get hold of the unprocessed master and compare it to what was on the finished product, you might think that it was the best choice they could make. Or maybe it wasn't.

I hear lots and lots of acoustic guitars on records today that don't sound a bit like guitars that I know and play, and which probably don't sound like the guitars in the studio. I don't wonder "How could they make a record with such bad EQ on the guitar?" I don't think it's fair to criticize the producers or engineers, or other engineers listening to the final product, if they haven't had the opportunity to hear what went into it.

Don't get me wrong. You have every right to express your dislike for a sound on a commercial recording, and to make what's probably a good guess as to why it sounds like that rather than like a pure vocal. But I doubt that whatever it sounds like isn't eating into sales.
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Quote Originally Posted by MikeRivers View Post
Don't get me wrong. You have every right to express your dislike for a sound on a commercial recording, and to make what's probably a good guess as to why it sounds like that rather than like a pure vocal. But I doubt that whatever it sounds like isn't eating into sales.
I'll bet it's not helping either. If something sounds {censored}ty, why am I going to buy it?

I don't think it's fair to criticize the producers or engineers, or other engineers listening to the final product, if they haven't had the opportunity to hear what went into it.
Sure it is. We know what a good recording sounds like, so if we hear something that sounds substandard, we absolutely can criticize.

And, honestly, I've never actually used pitch correction on anything myself, so I truly don't know what abuse or misuse sounds like.
Now you do:



biggrin.gifbiggrin.gif
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Remember the CBS Copycode thing that put a deep notch in a recording's upper mids so you couldn't make copies with a cassette that had copycode implemented? "Top engineers" in the industry (I won't name names) applauded the system because they claimed they couldn't hear an impact on the music. But when some government organization (maybe the National Bureau of Standards?) tested the system on a random group of average consumers, something like half of them heard a clear difference in blind tests.

Draw your own conclusions...

I really think no one could identify where I've used pitch correction on my vocals, primarily because a) I use it very sparingly, and b) my voice already sounds like it's generating artifacts smile.gif

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Quote Originally Posted by UstadKhanAli View Post
I'll bet it's not helping either. If something sounds {censored}ty, why am I going to buy it?



Sure it is. We know what a good recording sounds like, so if we hear something that sounds substandard, we absolutely can criticize.



Now you do:



biggrin.gifbiggrin.gif
That is so many different kinds of awesome. icon_lol.gif
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Quote Originally Posted by blue2blue View Post
What's with recording engineers who can't hear vocal-tuning when it's clearly there?
Acclimation

IMO loss of reference or more accurately a shift in reference. Perhaps some people who work in the field are getting so overexposed to tuning that they can't hear it as an effect anymore. A more subtle use of it is perceived as an absence of the effect when in fact the effect is clearly there to others. That's one possibility. Once again I'll whip out my analogy of the grotesque steroidal body builder. He/she didn't start out planning to look so not human, but somewhere along the way, as their primary social groups changed, he/she also changed their perception of, "Normal." Same story with a lot of people not hearing artifacts in digital recordings. They're acclimated. The new point of reference is distorted, so anything compared to it can only be as true as the distortion.
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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton View Post
Remember the CBS Copycode thing that put a deep notch in a recording's upper mids so you couldn't make copies with a cassette that had copycode implemeneted? "Top engineers" in the industry (I won't name names) applauded the system because they claimed they couldn't hear an impact on the music. But when some government organization (maybe the National Bureau of Standards?) tested the system on a random group of average consumers, something like half of them heard a clear difference in blind tests.
I participated in that test. My group wasn't exactly average consumers, we were all members of the local AES chapter. This was in 1987, so a few were studio engineers, several were NPR broadcast and production engineers, and there were a few serious music listeners. I think we had about 15 in our group, some listening on headphones, some listening on speakers in a nicely treated room. There was some training prior to the test runs.

I have the report here. From the summary: "The system's encoder alters the original electrical signal. For some listeners, for some selections, this results in a discernible difference between prerecorded notched and un-notched material. Results weren't a slam dunk, but definitely indicated a better-than-chance score recognizing the encoded material. My own score was 68% correct identification. I think the top score in our group was about 85% correct.

I recall that when listening to an oboe solo with orchestra, the notch took out enough of one particular note that it was almost like that note was missing. I expect this particular piece was chosen for the test because of that one note that was so obvious. Other things weren't so easy to tell, and I did my share of guessing. ("not sure" wasn't an option)

Today, nearly all of my music listening is from radio stations streaming over the Internet, that I hear on the Minimum 7 speakers connected to my computer. It probably sounds quite different from what they heard in the control room when making the recording, but it doesn't spoil the listening experience for me. It's the music that's important to me.
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Quote Originally Posted by vintagevibes View Post
I think everybody "hears" tuning but I suspect half of it isn't really there.
That's funny, I'm positive I hear LESS than there is actually is, and as, someone suggested above, acclimatization (acclimation to Brit-speakers) is also a factor. If I were to consciously listen to the Raising Sand album carefully, I'm sure I'd start hearing the handful of subtle but still noticeable tuning artifacts marring that otherwise very enjoyable album.

I mean, during the production process, I've definitely observed or performed pitch corrections which, in the finished product, were unnoticeable. I sat in on a jazz instrumentalist singer's vocal tuning session and most of the edits were unnoticeable. (I'll admit, I pushed him to fix up a couple that struck me wrong just a little better, even though I was just supposedly doing the fly-on-the-wall thing at someone else's session. When he was done, I think there were only a couple places where I would have noticed the tuning.)
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Quote Originally Posted by MikeRivers View Post
She's been around for a long time, and great singers don't last forever. Isn't she mostly a TV actress these days? Have you heard her sing live, preferably without a sound system (where they might run her mic through pitch corrections)? Maybe her voice needs more help that you wish and that was the best they could do. Or maybe it was just done carelessly.
I hear what you are saying. I'm not so much talking about whether or not she can get through a song straight through flawlessly. But it was clear from listening to that album (and from live stuff I've seen from the last few years) that she has good control and knows how to use it. If there were flaws in performance, I have little doubt that a little more time and a few more punches could have produced takes that were 'uniformly' solid all the way through.

But then, I'm one of those who listens to the song, not the voice. If the song and performance were good, if the vocal was a little "pitchy," I probably wouldn't notice unless someone asked me to listen for pitch. Same with a processing artifact. Until you know what went into the mic, you really can't criticize the engineering.
I come at a song from perspective of the whole experience. When I first hear a song, I basically reduce myself to the primal listener I was before I learned about hi fi/audio and later about how to actually play music. I listen emotionally, from the gut. So to speak. Only later, if I'm curious about some aspect of what causes a given song to affect me in a certain way, will I start tearing it apart.

That said, when I hear -- as is far too often the case when dipping my ear into the muddy stream of contemporary/popular mainstream pop/rock/'country' -- the obvious formant-twisting of clumsily applied vocal pitch correction, my gut reaction is immediate and disturbing to me in a way that other sonic modifications simply are not. I think vocoder sounds pretty lame in 2012, but it doesn't make me want to rip my ears off the sides of my head. Vocal pitch correction wrenchmarks do.

With regard to 'mistaking' real live vocal mannerisms for pitch correction, I've been listening to Celtic folk singing (some styles of which can sound to some like they've been tuned, as vocal resonances are shifted in mid phrase, and such) and jazz (where some singers like Chet Baker or Kurt Elling have specialized in a sort of stylistic 'pitch-lock' that can sound at times a bit like tuning) for a long, long time. I've noticed a few somewhat obvious spot digital corrections before the Auto-Tune era (and done a few, as well), in the late 80s and 90s, but, guess what, when I go back and listen to the recordings of the past, I don't hear any tuning or anything that sounds to me like tuning. Zip. Nada. Bupkis.

On the contrary, I believe it's highly likely that I miss a lot of auto-tuning and other correction -- or even get used to it over time. For instance, when I first got hold of the Raising Sand album, I noticed a few places with that obvious Melodyne sound. But I've played the ones and zeros off that album since and, unless I were to make a point of going through listening for them, I haven't noticed the tuned spots in a long, long time.

So, while I certainly am 'sensitive' in the sense that my reactions to wrenchmarks (and especially tuning-as-effect, of course) are visceral and highly negative, I'm not sure I'm all that much of a 'golden ear' when it comes to perceiving them. (And, it must be said that, after 6 decades and change of abuse, my top end gives out not much over 10 kHz.)

As far as engineers not "hearing" pitch correction, I don't know who you were talking to, but if I really cared (which I don't) I probably wouldn't go out and buy the CD, I'd download an MP3 and listen to it at my desktop computer, not through the studio playback system, unless I was being paid. So, yeah, I'd probably not notice the surface quality of the recording either.
I haven't noticed that the fidelity or lack thereof of the PB system cuts into my perception of tuning problems all that much. I mean, I hear this stuff coming out of people's car stereos. (Paticularly some of that Nashville pop stuff from the mid 2000s, outfits like Rascal Flatts, if the tuning didn't cut in and out, and the wrenchmarks didn't stick out like so many swollen sore thumbs -- not to mix workshop metaphors.)

And, honestly, I've never actually used pitch correction on anything myself, so I truly don't know what abuse or misuse sounds like.

Are these people really so painfully ignorant as to what the human voice actually sounds like?
It's really none of their business. You might just as well criticize the reverb sound, or the level of the bass, or the zing in the strings. If you could get hold of the unprocessed master and compare it to what was on the finished product, you might think that it was the best choice they could make. Or maybe it wasn't.

I hear lots and lots of acoustic guitars on records today that don't sound a bit like guitars that I know and play, and which probably don't sound like the guitars in the studio. I don't wonder "How could they make a record with such bad EQ on the guitar?" I don't think it's fair to criticize the producers or engineers, or other engineers listening to the final product, if they haven't had the opportunity to hear what went into it.
Hmm... call me nuts, I think professional recording engineers who take money to engineer projects should have a more than passing familiarity with what the human voice -- and other instruments common to the field they work within -- sound like.

Sure, I've heard of that deaf recording engineer guy, and I take my hat off to him. But, really, as a practical rule, I think recording engineers ought to at least make the most of the hearing they have -- and that means, to my way of thinking, a solid familiarity with what the natural human voice and other common instruments sound like. Call me a dreamer.

Don't get me wrong. You have every right to express your dislike for a sound on a commercial recording, and to make what's probably a good guess as to why it sounds like that rather than like a pure vocal. But I doubt that whatever it sounds like isn't eating into sales.
I stopped worrying about sales -- other people's or my own -- a long time ago.

There are those who see everything through the narrow slit of sales, but since the 1960s, success in the pop music marketplace has always seemed to me like a shallow and rather hollow goal.

Call me a hippie.
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I have a theory!

There was a song by the band Train. I'm sure some of you know it. It is a ukulele/Jason Mraz sort of bandwagon tune. Very poppy and very tuned. Now, I knew it was tuned, but it really didn't bother me much. But one day... in the office next to mine, an IT lady was playing her cheap little blaster, and the sound was coming out of her door, down the hall one office and into mine.

And I couldn't believe the amount of tuning going on here, on that Train tune. Why did I never hear it before?

It seems, after some testing, that if you listen in a more bandpass fashion. Say the highs are gone above 6k and there's no bass, just like the scenario I described, you can hear that {censored} like crazy. In my office I have a pair of the world's worst PC speakers that I use for this QC process of my music work that includes any tuning. And lo and behold...

...I was working late last night in Sony 7506's, very sheeny, glossy sounding phones with a fat low end. As I was wrapping up phase 1 of a demo I slapped some Melodyne on the vocal just as a temp before my comp. Sounded great.

This morning I listened on my QC death speakers and holy crap. Tuning anyone? You'll notice this effect when hearing current pop music while you're on-hold. 300-3k telefidelity! Tuning pops right out at you.

I suspect to a degree, those that are more sensitive to its effects, may have some high end hearing loss, that ironically exasperates the effects of this process.

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Quote Originally Posted by Lee Knight View Post
I have a theory!

There was a song by the band Train. I'm sure some of you know it. It is a ukulele/Jason Mraz sort of bandwagon tune. Very poppy and very tuned. Now, I knew it was tuned, but it really didn't bother me much. But one day... in the office next to mine, an IT lady was playing her cheap little blaster, and the sound was coming out of her door, down the hall one office and into mine.

And I couldn't believe the amount of tuning going on here, on that Train tune. Why did I never hear it before?

It seems, after some testing, that if you listen in a more bandpass fashion. Say the highs are gone above 6k and there's no bass, just like the scenario I described, you can hear that {censored} like crazy. In my office I have a pair of the world's worst PC speakers that I use for this QC process of my music work that includes any tuning. And lo and behold...

...I was working late last night in Sony 7506's, very sheeny, glossy sounding phones with a fat low end. As I was wrapping up phase 1 of a demo I slapped some Melodyne on the vocal just as a temp before my comp. Sounded great.

This morning I listened on my QC death speakers and holy crap. Tuning anyone? You'll notice this effect when hearing current pop music while you're on-hold. 300-3k telefidelity! Tuning pops right out at you.

I suspect to a degree, those that are more sensitive to its effects, may have some high end hearing loss, that ironically exasperates the effects of this process.
I've noticed that (hard) tuning is super easy to hear from far away (like coming out an open car window half a block a way)... sometimes I can't hear much besides the tuning-effect...

And, as I may have noted above, I think, my hearing drops off fast over 10 kHz. So it may well be that Lee's on to something there.

Maybe it's not having golden ears that helps hear tuning issues -- maybe it's having leaden ears. heh


(Wait, what am I laughing at? facepalm.gif )
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I can hear up to 18kHz, and I can hear the effect quite strongly. Including when it's used with Mr. Rodgers. biggrin.gif

Having spoken to a number of Top 40 producers, it seems that it's the exception when AutoTuning is *not* used on pop songs. Listening to these songs certainly seems to bear this out.

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I'm sick of it. Remember Phoebe Snow, who didn't need it? I miss that!

However, the other day while my wife was watching Dancing With The Stars, I saw Taylor Swift sing a number, and I was delighted to hear that she wasn't auto-tuned. Her intonation was a little off in a few places, but it was a good performance nevertheless. I'm not a fan, but I enjoyed it. (Frankly, my hat's off to the MD for that show, since he does the perfect job of playing covers well enough to suit the purpose but without distracting attention from the focus, and for a range of pop genres. Also, without distracting me from my reading. The dancers' costumes, though ... oh never mind.)

In general, auto-tune can suck the life right out of what might have been a great performance -- but we'll never know.

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Quote Originally Posted by learjeff View Post
I'm sick of it. Remember Phoebe Snow, who didn't need it? I miss that!

However, the other day while my wife was watching Dancing With The Stars, I saw Taylor Swift sing a number, and I was delighted to hear that she wasn't auto-tuned. Her intonation was a little off in a few places, but it was a good performance nevertheless. I'm not a fan, but I enjoyed it. (Frankly, my hat's off to the MD for that show, since he does the perfect job of playing covers well enough to suit the purpose but without distracting attention from the focus, and for a range of pop genres. Also, without distracting me from my reading. The dancers' costumes, though ... oh never mind.)

In general, auto-tune can suck the life right out of what might have been a great performance -- but we'll never know.
On the title song from Swift's 2010 "Speak Now" album (that sparked the thread at GS that provoked me to start this thread so that I wouldn't be perceived as attacking or insulting the others in that thread, rules against which are tightly enforced against some folks at GS), she starts off singing without any apparent tuning, it's intimate, it's imperfect, and not at all without charm.

But then the 'real' production kicks in -- in that fashion all the pop producers appear to think is clever and novel -- and before long there is some woefully obvious tuning, as with some melismatic oh-oh-oh stuff -- it sounds like Glee, but I don't think it's supposed to. I mean, tuning-for-effect, it seems to me, should sound fairly smooth and constant through the whole piece (or section), not with some parts seeming unaffected and other parts -- the tricky-to-sing parts -- showing the gross wrenchmarks of pitch manipulation.

It appears that young Ms Swift -- Grammy-winning Country Vocalist of the Year a couple years ago, eh? -- is finally, slowly, starting to learn to sing a little.

Now if her production staff would learn how to tune without leaving behind the obvious, tell-tale artifacts that woefully undercut the illusion that she already can.

Or would that take a Nashville miracle?
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i have heard weird pitch correction like artifacts come straight out of vocalists mouths - originating through my mics and out my speakers while i am running sound and i know for a fact there is no correction anywhere in the system.

Good point -- I do remember once hearing what sounded to me just like a pitch correction artifact, on my own vocals, without FX. Fortunately, my intonation was bad enough that it was obvious that there was no auto-tuning! But there are a number of different artifacts to autotuning, and that was only one of them (the formant thing, where it seems to put a soft consonant in the middle of a syllable, sort of like an "L" sound -- yeah, that's bad description but the closest I can come.)

 

I admit I might sometimes think I'm hearing auto-tuning when it isn't happening. I'm also sure that sometimes it's there but I don't hear the artifacts. Regardless, I'm confident that I'm mostly correct in my guesses, that when I think I hear an artifact, it usually is. And I wonder, with Blue, why they let that happen in a recording. (Live, sure, I understand it. Like it? no. But understand it.)

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I can hear up to 18kHz, and I can hear the effect quite strongly. Including when it's used with Mr. Rodgers.
:D

Having spoken to a number of Top 40 producers, it seems that it's the exception when AutoTuning is *not* used on pop songs. Listening to these songs certainly seems to bear this out.

 

Yeah... while I'm glad to offer a straw for non-tuning-hearing engineers to grasp at (the golden ears/leaden ears thing), frankly, it doesn't really make that much sense to me. When my ears were younger and the cilia more flexible, I could hear timbre -- and problems induced by poor gear or recording practice -- better, not worse.

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Good point -- I do remember once hearing what sounded to me just like a pitch correction artifact, on my own vocals, without FX. Fortunately, my intonation was bad enough that it was obvious that there was no auto-tuning! But there are a number of different artifacts to autotuning, and that was only one of them (the formant thing, where it seems to put a soft consonant in the middle of a syllable, sort of like an "L" sound -- yeah, that's bad description but the closest I can come.)


I admit I might sometimes think I'm hearing auto-tuning when it isn't happening. I'm also sure that sometimes it's there but I don't hear the artifacts. Regardless, I'm confident that I'm mostly correct in my guesses, that when I think I hear an artifact, it usually is. And I wonder, with Blue, why they let that happen in a recording. (Live, sure, I understand it. Like it? no. But understand it.)

Well, there are (probably) some phrases that can't be transparently 'corrected' with any tools I know about. Except, of course, going back and punching in a proper phrase (or at least one that can be corrected without obvious aritfacts).

 

As is often said, if you can fix a part by moving a whole phrase up or down (by no more than a few semi-tones), the typical artifacts are avoided. But when the pitch must be changed in the middle of a melismatic slide (as is so often the case when lesser vocalists slide up -- or [shudder] down -- to what they perceive is correct pitch), it can be difficult to avoid artifacts.

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Well if you filter out the social media noise from self credentialed experts, then further filter out the real experts that are now deaf...further filter out the guys that are mixing/mastering in the long long ago without plug ins where they don't have reverb feedback, depth, tone vs just spring, plate, hall....the 'debate' might be left with guys that mix jazz, folk, orchestras that can't hear pitch correction because they don't use it if used in a subtle way...

 

Personally I have never used autotune...so while I could pick out the obvious use as an effect....I ponder if I could pick out where some clever engineer punched into a very specific spot on a live performance by Pavarotti to get him 5 cents back in...especially in a musical genre where I am not sure what note he was trying to hit.

 

Morally speaking...I tend to favour the artists that don't need to be 'carried'.....and tend to tire of 'whatever it takes to make a buck' ...where 'image over substance' rules....

 

That said, a guy I knew that toured Europe talked about big acts being cancelled over there when it hit social media that there would be serious lip sync and auto tune involved....

 

So it seems SOMEONE out there seems to still want some talent to bring it during a performance...

 

I'll just add that if you were in a room with the guys that were 'up to speed' so to speak...don't discount the play back medium...I just moved from 44/16 to 48/24.....I couldn't believe what I was hearing that I never picked up before....my mistakes and boo boos were so transparent now it's going to require my playing and gear to step up a notch...it's that stark.

 

I guess others would consider that bad, bury themselves back down in the mix, but I see it as a way to expose my flaws and bring my music to a higher level....

 

Which maybe what the conversation is really about....a certain moral approach to music, and life for that matter.

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