August 11, 2015 • 53 mins
What began as a challenge to an oil engineer to make a terrible singer into a pitch-perfect one, Auto-Tune has become a ubiquitous (and, to many, obnoxious) part of the musical soundscape.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark to Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yep, there's Jerry and
this is Stuff you Should Know. That was great, Thanks man.
(00:24):
Do I sound like Share? Have you sound like T
paying T Josh T Josh or Snoop Dogg? Does he
do the auto to? He factors into this big time
later on? Oh well, I don't even know about that,
so I've got some of my lead. This is kind
of fun. I don't know how much we're gonna do
(00:44):
that because people are probably like, stop it right now. Oh, Chuck,
I think we should do it a lot. Are you done? Yeah?
I'm done. Um, we could have just auto tuned this
whole thing. Yeah, you know, maybe we should. Maybe we
should maybe from this moment, Flore, we should just started
(01:05):
tune the rest of the episode starting now. Let's sabotage
our careers. Uh, you've got an intro for this, fancy intro.
I think we just did it, buddy. Okay, well, let's
get in the way back machine then, my friend, Okay,
we don't have to go back that far because I
know where we're going, it's gonna be a short trip.
Let's go back to Oh Summer Boom. I'm you and
(01:36):
Iron the club. We're hanging out, we're drinking the rum
and coke. You can find us in the club and
uh we're we're dancing, We're getting down and grooving too.
Uh to share his latest jam, Believe Believe. It's a
hot jam, a hot, hot, hot jam that's released in
the summer. It's summertime. As you can tell, it's hot
in the club. Cheat, and I've got on my my
(01:58):
my short pants. I'm us like I'm out for a
night at the Rocks. I'm wearing a shirt. So I noticed, Actually,
how did you not? Well? Yeah, the third nipple really
stands out. So we're in the club where jamming and
share song is on, and uh, something happens at about
(02:19):
thirty five seconds into the song, and you and I
are just like, whoa daddy? Did you just hear that?
It changes everything. It changed the whole tone of the club,
Like the club was like okay, and now it's banging
yek Yeah, because of a little something called auto tune. Uh,
what sounded like a little electronic glitch was very purposeful
(02:43):
and it was the first time the auto tune had
been used in this way. So what Josh is auto
tune was quite a set up? Uh, can we do
the rest of the episode in the club? Yeah? Why not? Okay,
just keep those rumbings cokes coming. Okay, that's cool. Um,
So let me let me stop you for a second. Right,
(03:06):
because the way you described it, you made it sound
like everybody was like, oh, Share just used auto tune. No, no,
everybody said what was that? That was awesome? Although some
people were like, what was that? Don't ever do that again,
but most people were like, wow, Shared just released her
biggest hit of her entire career, and it was a
pretty long career. She just came back like that just
(03:29):
established her comeback was this track, and it actually became
one of the greatest best selling singles of all time. Yeah,
and I think, I mean, it would have been a
probably a big song anyway, but I think most definitely
auto tune kicked it into the stratasy, gave it just
the extra something. It became part of the talking but
everyone was talking about it. So everybody went to her
(03:51):
producer and said, dude, how did you do that? We
want to know how to do that, and he was like, vocoder. Yeah,
he lied, He lied, He lied big time. He lied
in person to other producers, he lied in interviews, he lied, lied,
lied about how he made that track because he wanted
to keep it to himself because it was so huge,
(04:13):
and it became so huge, Chuck that at first Auto
Tune was called the Share Effect. Even the company that
produced Auto Tune and Terry's, which we'll talk about in
a minute, called it in their instructional book, the Share Effect.
They probably still do, don't they. They don't mention it
any longer. Yeah, um. But the so it was, it
(04:34):
was a huge deal, and this guy lied and kept
it under wraps, and for many years it was very mysterious. Yeah.
Let's actually, if you live under a rock, let's go
ahead and play that clip of the very first thirty
five seconds into that song where Share says I can't
break through. Yeah, right there, boom right there. Music changed
(05:01):
from that point forward. So what what this guy, what
her producer was saying was vocoder. Vocoder is something that's
been around for a very long time. If you've ever
listened to any Pete Frampton, Peter Frampton and he things,
do you feel like we do that whole long guitar
solo or whatever. He's breathing into a tube connected to
(05:23):
his guitar, which is electrifying his voice. Vocoder had been
around for a very long time, but there's different ways
of doing it. That That was definitely the tube effect
through the guitar, but you can also just use it to,
you know, make your voice robotic like Beck to turn
tables in a microphone or Mr Roboto with sticks, But
(05:47):
all different ways to use it. This thing, this sounded different,
the share effect. It was a little different, sure, And
I wonder how this guy talked his way out of Yeah.
I mean like if if if a producer like, okay,
well show me how you did it on vocoder, if
he was like over here and then just like ran
out of the room, I don't. I don't think he
(06:07):
talked out of it. I think he was just another
line music producer and he was just like okay, well busted, okay.
So um, Apparently along the way people figured out here
there what this guy did believe and they started using
it themselves, but very very sparsely. All right, So, Josh,
(06:28):
what is auto tune? All right? I'll answer your question
because I'm gonna keep asking it, all right. So auto
tune is a plug in originally released for the audio
editing software pro tools. Yeah, it's a software piece that
allows you and the original UM intent and how it's
(06:51):
still mostly used is to pitch correct UM singer's voice.
So when you, when you or I go into the
studio to record those albums that will never release, but
we just record for fun. Um we hit flat notes
here there. Oh not me. I have perfect pitch. I
hit flat notes here there, perfect um, and everybody does.
(07:11):
It's a normal thing. Sure for most of eternity. UM
music producers would say, blue Eyes chairman, I need another take.
That was a great take, but you had a couple
of flat notes. Give me another take just like that one.
And Frank would finish his scotch, put out a cigarette
and say you get one more shine hood. What was
(07:36):
the Joe? Oh you didn't even see spinal tap, did you? Yeah,
you finally saw it, finally, Okay, But I don't remember
any Frank Sinatra t Yeah there was. When Bruno Kirby
is the Limo Drivers, He's talks about Sammy Davis's book,
Yes I can, and he says what they should have
called it is. Yes, I can as long as Frank
says it's okay, because Frank called the shots. For all
those guys, I do remember that. Um So, Frank would
(08:00):
one more take, and this could be like take twelve
or fifteen or twenty, depending on like how how much
how much the person was feeling at The singer was
feeling it at the time and would be happy to
hang around the studio whatever was keeping the singer there
at the studio. As long as that was around the singer,
the singer was happy to give it one more try,
(08:22):
one more try, right, drugs maybe, um or if they
had like a really good candy bowl, who knows, I
gotta stay for the skittles. Um So. The editor then
or the music producer would then take all of these
different tracks and would go through and I can't imagine
how awful this would be. Take the best part of
(08:42):
this track and edit it together with the best part
of that track, and like we're talking like pre digital air,
so like they're spicing together tape from what I understand,
right to get the best possible complete take piece together
from many different takes. Right, So Okay, that's that's what
they did. All of a sudden, there's this new software
(09:04):
that just runs through a take and says, oh, well,
I see what note or what key the singers singing in,
But this this particular notes just a little out, so
I'm going to nudge it into the key that the
singer was going for. And now, all of a sudden,
one take is all it takes. Yeah. I mean what
(09:25):
it did was it cut down on studio time, which
is super expensive, which was very appealing because now you
could churn out songs that are more rapid rate and
a cheaper rate. And uh, it was it was a
little sort of a secret tool that they didn't intend
to like get out to the public. I don't think
they wanted everyone to know this stuff. No, it was
(09:46):
meant for professionals. Yeah, And basically it was just it
was the musical audio equivalent of cosmetics. Yeah. Doctor. It
was invented by Dr Harold Andy Hilda Brand, and he
likened it to make up and the New Yorker likened
it to um, like getting rid of a red eye
(10:07):
and a photograph. It was just you use it just
enough so that you can't tell it's there, but it
makes for a more pleasant um overall composition. Right, what
Share had done, or what shares producers had done, is
take this thing and used it to the nth degree. Yes,
supposedly it was just a joke, and Share was like,
(10:28):
I love that, but that's like I don't know if
that's an urban legend, ear if that's fact. Well, from
what I read that her producer, she was she wanted like, um,
she had heard like some telephone effect that she was
interested in using, like she wanted something and I guess
the producer had stumbled upon that and UM played it
for but it was like you're not gonna like this,
(10:49):
but listen to this weirdness and she was like that
I want that. Nice, that's what I read. Well, I
think that it's due to her giving it the green light.
Then that was truly like uh, foresight, like a masterful
move by Share. You know, well, Share has a lot
of ForSight. You know, they say, don't don't doubt Share
and Share has a lot of foresight. Never bet against Share. Yeah, Um,
(11:13):
so when you did make that decision, it changed, like
you said, it changed everything. And well, well, I I
we can't talk enough about this, but we're going to
take a break and then come back and talk more
about it right after this, all right, josh, Uh. What
(11:42):
I found most interesting about this while researching what UM
was what Andy Hildebrand did before he did this. He
was a musician. He was played flute professionally since he
was a young teenager. Even went to University of Illinois
go Fighting a Line I on a music scholarship. Yet
(12:04):
he chose to work for Exxon Mobile for seventeen years
looking for oil. Yeah, the two weren't too terribly far apart, right, well,
as we will find out. So he's a professional floutist,
classically trained flout is a good one from what I understand,
flouting his flute, yes, um. And he went to college
(12:26):
to get an electrical engineering degree, I think. And basically
when when he went to work for the oil companies,
it was an oil exploration and he figured out a
programmer he designed to software UM that when you set
off an explosive charge underground, it measured the pitch of
(12:48):
stuff of the sound waves that that were created. Right,
So as they traveled through rock, different types of rock,
just the pitch basically, and this software like analyzed the
pitch that was coming through and could create a subsurface
map of the rock below, and oil companies have long
known that this type of rock is associated with oil,
(13:09):
and this type of rock is not maybe a'll financial
guess and this type of rock. So with this guy
creating an audio visual map of the subsurface area, oil
companies no longer had to just drill and drill and
hope that they found um oil. He would say, this
is a pretty pretty great place to drill because this
(13:29):
kind of rock is there. That's right. It's called auto correlation.
And it saved Exxon a lot of money and he
somehow made a lot of money. I thought it was
gonna be one of those things where like XN was
just like thanks, you work for us, you wint here's
yours a year. But apparently he UM earned enough money
to retire by the age of forty thanks to this
(13:52):
innovation and UM in the early he got out of
the oil business and found it like it's just a
popularity content. Yeah. Uh. He founded UH in Terrorists Audio
Technologies and UH kind of near Silicon Valley in Scott's Valley, California.
And I think still they only have about ten employees.
I think it's a pretty small operation. It's all centered
(14:15):
around him and his ideas, and he is the main
inventor um. One of the first things he invented was
something called Infinity, which is a program that where you
could loop samples um over and over and over, like seamlessly.
Apparently that was a necessary thing. I didn't know that.
Oh yeah, think about it. We're talking like early nineties.
(14:35):
That was like the oh eight acid house revolution. Yeah,
but I just didn't realize. I guess he made it easier,
probably is my guess. Yes, I think he enabled it.
He enabled technos the impression I have, Oh yeah, interesting
looping samples together seamlessly. Well, but you could already do that.
What I'm saying is is he clearly found a way
(14:56):
to do it better and more efficiently. He didn't invent looping, No,
he made it better, Yeah, exactly. Another thing he did
was invented the microphone modeler. Modeling is a big thing
in music. You can get um guitar amplifiers that model,
uh basically means imitate other amps. I have a modeling
(15:19):
amp which I don't use anymore because it's uh not
very good, but it models. There's like twelve different classic
amps models supposedly, but he inventled the modeling microphone, which
means you could mimic like classic microphones or like a
harmonica mike and vintage mics like the Elvis Presley that
cool looking mike. Sure that was on there? Oh? Is
(15:41):
that the silver kind of rounded rectangular one. Noel's got
one on his desk. Yeah, yeah, that's associated with Elvis Presley. Well,
I mean just the music of that time. But I
always picture Elvish. Yeah, you know what I mean, I
can see that. Yeah, have you ever seen his grandson,
by the way, quick sidebar? No, his name is quick sidebar,
quick sidebar Pressley. It's weird name, but you know, Lisa
(16:04):
Marie was his mom, So yeah, um, that was very funny.
By the way, he uh, just look him up. I
think what's his name. I can't remember his name. His
last name is the father's name for Lisa Marie's first husband,
is who she had him with. Uh yeah, just look
at Elvis Presley's grandson. It is creepy. Dude looks exactly
(16:29):
like Elvis at that age, like scary, scary, eerily similar
that I don't know, doesne that I do know? If
he sings, he probably use his auto tune probably because
of singers. Apparently his auto tune its hem even higher
than that. Really, how about that? Admit it? You know? Yeah,
(16:50):
there's the thing about auto tune where, um, you deny
that you use it even though you're totally aware that
everyone uses it. Um. I read an article where apparently
this one producer said that he's worked with two artists
that have haven't used it everyone else has, and it
(17:11):
was Nico Case and Nellie for Tato. And then apparently
later after that, Nelly for Tato released a single that
had tons of auto tune on it. She may be
the only artist in the world who hasn't used auto tune,
either subtly or um to the nth degree. Well, that's
certainly not true. I think there are plenty of indie artists.
(17:33):
But if you're talking, you should read this Verge article.
It basically lays it out like, no, everyone uses this
even if so. Apparently producers don't even necessarily tell the
band that it's being used right then, because there's a
live function, so that the monitors or the headphones that um,
the band is hearing is being run through auto tune,
(17:55):
so what they're hearing is already corrected, so they think
they just did a perfect take. Yeah, I'm just wary
of anytime someone says out of twenty million singers, one
person doesn't that's just very dubious claim. I don't know,
we're talking music industry here, especially when a lot of
people are making their own music in their own homes. Well,
(18:16):
that's another thing. They're not a part of the pop machine.
They don't have stats on that, you know. Yeah, I'm
just I'm just saying that's that sounds like a load
of garbage to me. I'm sure more than one person
doesn't just one. Um. So auto tune came about, apparently
this is the tail because of a dinner that Hilda
(18:39):
Brand was at. He was having lunch with a sales
rep and the wife said something funny like, hey, Andy,
can you once you invent something to make me sing
in tune? And he went, no, great idea that we
should have auto tuned, that maybe we could maybe maybe
it was maybe it just happened. Uh. And so he said,
(19:00):
you know what, Uh, if I can tell Jed Clampitt
where the oil is, then I can make you sing
in tune. And he did, and he did. He created
auto tune and um we've kind of mentioned how it works. Basically,
it takes a it takes that take of a singer's song.
(19:20):
It takes the vocals of the song, and you select
what key you're singing in, and then auto tune goes
through and makes this map of this of that audio
of the vocal track, and it goes through and says
that this one's a little flat, this one's a little low,
or whatever, um and it just nudges these things into
(19:42):
tune into into the key that it's supposed to be in.
So all all of the notes that the singer hits
and that take are within the correct key, meaning that
they all sound great. It's a perfect take, right well, yeah,
and the the key there is it's in the original
tone and inflection of the artist, so you can't tell
it's happening. No. And there's actually if you look, if
(20:03):
you look at the um uh Auto Tune product demo videos,
it's amazing. So there's a there's an um an automatic
version where like it just you select the key and
like auto tune do its thing, and it does a
pretty great job. One of the one of the ways
that it does this is um it adds like millisecond
(20:26):
pauses in between notes. There's little spaces between notes, which
gives it a natural feel. Um. There's other selections that
you can make, like throat length. You can select grow
how long the singer's throat is uh, and you can
do that note by note um, so you can make
the whole thing even more natural. Until basically, what you've
(20:48):
done is taught auto tune how to simulate a particular
singers singing style and voice so that when it when
a us that no, it doesn't within the same exact
range that the singer would have done had they hit
it correctly. It's pretty amazing and advanced stuff totally. What
(21:09):
when when normal people think of auto tune, like you
and me who are not in the music biz um,
we we think of this thing that's called the zero function. Yes,
and you know what, let's take a break and we
will explain what the zero function is right after this.
(21:34):
Stop all right, the suspense is kidling me. You're gonna
kid let's kid alright. Zero function. That was essentially what
the share effect was, Okay, right, yes, go ahead no
(21:56):
no, no no go ahead, no, no go ahead. You just
sat up in your chair like you were about to
arm kind I've been Do you go ahead? Do you
talk about it? Well, what auto tune does in the
in terms of the zero function is it gets rid
of all of that space and when shares voice changes,
it's immediate. Yeah, all of those notes go right up
(22:18):
against each other, and it creates this robotic sounding voice. Yeah,
there's no like rise, it's there's it's not like a
what's the word I'm looking for? It's uh. It's not
like a normal vibrato that you would get because in
the normal vibrato there's there's pauses, there's space in between
the notes. With this, it's note note all pressed up
(22:41):
against each other, compressed way, and that zero function, um
is what what It takes any spaces out between the
notes and creates that robot sound. Yeah, because I think
auto tune has has a range of numbers to make
it flow more seamlessly. And when they took it all
the way down to zero, which means there's nothing there,
it created that weird I act that they were like,
share your listen to this, it's weird. Yeah, and she's like,
(23:04):
I like weird. It's great, baby, I hear number one
hit in my future. No, you gotta wrot. It's great, baby, No,
that was that was Jack from Will and Grace. Oh
do you remember when he thought he was talking to
a share impersonator. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And he's like, no,
(23:29):
if I could turn back to turn. He was teaching
her how to say it, sing it correctly. I thoroughly
enjoyed Will and Grace. It was great. Agreed, All right,
where are we? Well? You were talking about the share effect, right,
and that's what it was called again and Tari has
called this zero function the share effect for many years
(23:51):
and um and over time, remember her producer just kept
lying and lying and lying. Over time, other producers independently
figured out why he had done that. He had used
the zero function, which is a really obscure tool on
a software suite that not everybody knew about. Right, So
(24:13):
it took some some brainpower and some experimentation, but little
by little some producers figured it out. This one producer
um did a remix of a j Lo song and
used it, and he I think was the second person
to use it, um publicly and uh for a brief time,
it became known as the Jal effect. Of course, anybody
who used this without fessing up to it. At first
(24:36):
in the early two thousands, it was called the whatever effect.
And there's this producer rapper down in Florida named T Paine,
and T Paine heard this JL effect. He went on
a mission to figure out what this was, and he
finally apparently took him years to figure it out. He
finally figured out that it was the zero effect on
(24:58):
this pro tools plug in UM and he started using
it and just went crazy with it. Like up to
this point it was used to like tweak or it
would maybe make UM a track of just a little
weird over here, something like that. He used it as
often as he possibly could. Yeah. He basically said the
zero function and tee pain are one and the same. Yeah,
(25:20):
And it became known as the tea pain effect. Really
because when people asked him how he did it, guess
what he said folder did he really? Yes, Yes he did.
And for years he managed to make a mint because
the whole thing was in hip hop or in pop.
If you wanted this tea pain effect, te pain needed
(25:41):
to console at least if not produce your record. That
was like ten years after the Share effect. People not
know that I I he managed to pull it off
for years and years and years. Good for tea Pain
is what I say? Yes, you know, yeah, I mean
he apparently was like, um, I guess on a plane ride.
Usher was the same plane and asked to speak to him,
(26:02):
and she was like, I've got to get something off
my chest. You really screwed up music like big time
well S. Pain was like, I've made a bunch of
money doing this and people seem to like it, so
I'm not gonna stop. Hildebrand has been vilified by many,
and he said, you know what, I just make the car.
I don't drive it down the wrong side of the road. Yeah.
It's a great quote because a lot of people hate
(26:26):
auto tune and things. That's the worst thing that happened
to music. A lot of people like it and say,
when you use it for what it's supposed to be
used for, it can really help out. Because you know,
it's not like everyone uses it all the time. I'm
sure some people need it way more than others. Well,
even if you're using it as a like cosmetic touch,
like kill the brand originally designed it for a lot
(26:46):
of people say no, we shouldn't even be doing that,
because if you go back and listen to things like
Bob Dylan or The Beach Boards or um, just a
lot of these original artists that didn't use these kind
of effects on their voice. Um, when they sang and
their recordings made it through the studio, there were still
flat notes here there, but it was their music, it
(27:08):
was their voice, it was their vocals in these tracks,
and everyone came to know and love them. But now,
because everything is auto tuned perfectly, even the stuff that
you don't you can't hear it's auto tune because they're
not using zero function, but just the fact that it's
been running through the auto tune, this stuff sounds really
rough by comparison. So a lot of people are like
(27:29):
auto tune has ruined music. It ruined music that people
love for decades because now by comparison it seems rough. Well.
But it also, like a good ear can tell if
something's auto tune, it has this weird tin equality that, um,
it doesn't sound natural. So I think it they will
be blowback and a and a reversion back to older methods. Okay,
(27:52):
I bet you. Jack White has an auto tune that's
the most purest of pure guys. No, he uses all
sorts of weird vocal effects on his stuff. No, but
as far as like I bet he has ask him,
he wouldn't admit it. Apparently that's part for the course. Um,
so te Pain. If we can get back to the
(28:14):
history of this drink, so te Pain. Right, he's huge,
like he's just everything he drops is just blowing up
all over the place. He's getting invited to consult and
produce on uh Kanye's album, which ultimately had every track
had auto tune on it by the time Tea Pain
got done with that, right. Um, have you heard his
(28:37):
Queen Bohemian raapsody live? No? Is it good? Oh? No,
oh no, it's there's a video that someone spliced of
him and he and Freddie Mercury. It's one of the
worst things I've ever heard on the stage. I've got
to check it out. It's terrible. Okay, Um, I gotta
see that. It's good. So um the tea Pain effect. Yeah,
(29:00):
and if you wanted this effect, you had to have
t pain. Well Snoop Dogg says that's enough of that finally,
and he releases something called Sensual Seduction, and it's one
of the better rap videos you've ever seen. It's pretty good.
There's a star wipe in it, so you know I
love it. Um. So Snoop releases this using the te
(29:21):
Pain effect to great degree, but he didn't consult with
T Pain. T Paint had nothing to do with this record.
So Snoop kind of opened the floodgates saying, if you
guys want to use this, go use it. But what's
interesting if you watch that video when Snoop is doing
like the the t pain effect of the auto tune stuff,
he's actually got a tube going to a synthesizer to
(29:43):
make it look like he's using a vocoder. Interesting that
weird like in his video. But anyway, he sure that
wasn't a marijuana smoking divide. It may have been, it
may have been the other thing about it, um, but
Snoop changed everything in in that he took tea Pain
now to the equation and really open the floodgates for
anybody and everybody to use this stuff. Simultaneously, jay Z
(30:07):
was trying to close those floodgates and push all of
it back in. Yeah, I think jay Z um uh
it clearly jumped the shark. At a certain point. You
know when major ad brands are making ads using the
latest and greatest. That it's years late, first of all,
and that means that has definitely jumped the shark. And
in two thousand nine, uh Windy's had a Frosty Posse
(30:30):
commercial where a gang of office workers built it out
auto tuned rhymes while searching for Frosty's. I don't remember
that add do you? I know? But I went and
watched it. Of course. How is it pretty great? It's
what you think it is pretty great. It's awesome. Okay, no,
it's terrible. And jay Z apparently saw this and was enraged,
and so he wrote a song called d O a
(30:51):
Death of auto Tune. I know we're facing a recession,
but the music y'all making gonna make it the great depression.
Get back to wrap ut painting too much, that's calling
that's calling someone out ye hard. Yeah, but other auto tune,
um auto tune. The news was a big YouTube pit.
Oh yeah, man, that um the bed intruder song. Yeah,
(31:15):
let's um. Let's play a clip from that From two
thousand and ten. It was a local news footage from Huntsville, Alabama,
of Antoine Dodson delivering human being. Yeah, about a neighborhood
intruder and someone auto tune that the Gregory Brothers did.
That's right, let's hear that real quick start. You are
(31:36):
really go for the man got away, leaving behind the evidence.
I was okay by some sold don't sold, don't so
don't song be climbing a windows? He snatching up people
up trying to write? Have you listened recently? Now? It's
(31:58):
pretty great? Yeah? Yeah, but again that was in two
thousand ten, and I think that even kind of had
a pretty short shelf life. Unless they're still doing it,
I don't know, Well, what do you say, The Gregory Brothers,
the Brooklyn Soul band. Yeah, they started out doing auto
tune the news and they would take the news and
just auto tune it and turn it and like just
produce it overproduce it um. And they did that with
(32:19):
the Bed and Shooter song, and that actually became the
number one video on YouTube of all of two thousand ten.
I look the original the original video has a hundred
and twenty eight million views right now. Yeah, yeah, it's
pretty impressive stuff. At at the same point, like now,
auto tune has become a parody of itself. It's it's
(32:41):
being used in ads, here's this progression. Something starts out,
someone uses it artistically, someone comes along and overuses it,
then everybody starts to overuse it. Then Wendy's makes a
commercial using it. Newsweek finally gets around to writing an
article about it, and then years after we record a
podcast on it, and then the thing finally dies. Yeah,
(33:04):
and then fifteen or twenty years after that it becomes
hip again. Yes, you know, that's the progression. So the
point that we're at though, now, Chuck, it's not so
cut and dry, man. It's not as cut and dry
as jay Z would like to have you think. Because
he came out with this death of auto tune track
in like two thousand nine. Auto tune is still around
(33:24):
very much. And now it's getting the point where if
like um the Verge and I can't remember the other
article I read, they're both on this podcast page. If
they're to be believed, they're credible sources, and they certainly
seemed like it from these articles. There's a there's this
growing question of um, is auto tune here to stay?
(33:47):
People are starting to compare it to the initial reaction
that people had to the electric guitar. It was a
lot different from the original guitar, and people it took
a lot of getting used to, or like when Bob
Dylan went electric, a lot of people didn't like that,
but then look at what happened now with the electric guitar.
A lot of people tried different stuff with it and
it became a standard. Some people are wondering if auto
(34:10):
tune is going to fulfill the same destiny. I think
most people are hoping that it does not. Yeah, well,
I mean sweetening vocals is nothing new, Like reverb is
a tried and true thing for years and embraced. H
does that sweetened vocals? I thought that was always used
to like make it weird. Now it's it's sort of
like it gives it an echo, a like you're singing
in a big empty church hall or something. But it
(34:32):
makes it sweetens it. It doesn't like correct anything, but
when I say sweetens it, it just makes it sound
a little better. Reverbs a great tool, right. The point
is as artificial. Yeah, it's not natural. Yeah, they it's
they tried to replicate like singing in a big empty
echo e hallway, uh, with an effect and it worked, right.
(34:53):
And another argument in favor of auto tune that I've
seen is simply taking a human voice and recording it
automatically makes it artificial, like if they're not there in
the room with you singing to you at that moment.
Anything else is artificial, So what's the problem. So just
to let people know, I put out to text during
(35:15):
the episode to musician friends Jack White, No. I texted
Lucy Wayne Wright our buddy Jerry from our TV show.
She's not answered, which means she's used auto tune. Kidding
and our buddy Joey c Are from the Henry Clay People,
formerly of Henry Clay People, now with fakers, And he said,
(35:36):
I think there were a few harmonized us and as
on one of our old records where we did some
pitch correcting, but that's it, I think, maybe so definitely
he's probably be mad that I said that. Thank you
for being forth right, Joey. Yeah, good guy. Are you
got anything else about autit Yeah? Just a really quick um.
(35:58):
This is from a great website. Tin artists that are
essentially computer programs. They just have the most auto tuned people.
They have t Pain, Kesha, Chris Brown, Maroon Five, Black
Eyed Peas, Deaft Punk, Paris Hilton, who I forgot actually
had a song the cast of Glee Katy Perry, and
number one was owl City who. I don't even know
(36:19):
what that is. There's a huge outcry apparently among Glee
fans for Glee to stop using so much auto tune.
I think the deal is. They're like, well, these are actors,
like yeah, And there's another there's a big scandal with
u K's got talent or something weird like that, um
where they were using a lot of auto tune for
(36:40):
the auditions. It was like comeme on. Well anyway, man,
that's not a very surprising list. So this has been
grumpy old men. I don't feel like we've been grumpy yet.
We haven't like, condemned it out right. No, Nico Casey,
she condemns it out right. Yeah, Emily, I have an
(37:01):
agreement about Nico case but we could both marry her, okay,
if she was ever available to us. She's right behind you.
Oh my god. Uh so we have a very well
done finish up your a deal. Sorry, I just jumped
the gonka. Thank you, Ah, you don't have anything else
about No, I was just teasing. We have a special
(37:23):
listener mail with guests. Well, hold on let me finish first. Okay, okay, Well,
since Chuck doesn't have anything, it's the end. And if
you want to know more about auto tune, you can
type those words into the search bar at how stuff
works dot com. And this article, I have to say,
by the way, was the most definitive article about auto
tune on the internet. How about that. It's a good one.
(37:45):
Uh So you can go look that up. And since
I said definitive, it's time for listener mail, and it's
a special one. Like Chuck said, that's right. Today we
um got a joint listener mail to ourselves into Holly
and Tracy from stuff you missed in history class. Yep,
So we're gonna bring them in right, Yeah, we're gonna
read the email and we're going to talk about its implications.
(38:07):
Let's start now. So, without further ado, we actually have
Holly and Tracy of stuff you missed in history class
with us. Hi and Tracy, we have actually not with us,
she's with us in spirit and voice from Boston. I
know it's pretty it's pretty interesting when it comes in
(38:29):
through your headphones, but the other person somewhere else, it's
kind of awesome. And this is how you guys do
the show now, right? Yes, we also have like an
online you know, we have a Google hangout where we
both are so we can see each other as well.
We should have done that Tracy in here with her
little video image or like um hologram of or they'd
(38:52):
be pretty cool too. That's true, all right. So I
think the first thing I should do. You have a
picture of me like our old boss. Oh well, I
do have a picture of you. I have the all
its side that he gave out. So, um, I think
the first thing we should do is just read. I'll
read the email here and then we will discuss like adults.
How about that? Uh So, like I said, already set
it up that we both got an email from a
(39:13):
listener and she says the following, and this is from
Amanda Lions. Hey, guys and gals. She didn't say that,
of course, I just did. Well, you should read it, okay, Josh, Chuckers,
Holly and Tracy, and of course a hello to Jerry
and Nol. Yeah. I'm a social worker from Portland, Oregon
with a passion for human equity and respect. One of
(39:35):
the original members of the s Y s K Army
and a more recent listener to missed in History. I
binged for about five months before I got all caught up.
So how about that. I'm concerned about something I've heard
a few times on the History podcast, and I was
wondering if you guys would be willing to get together
we are and look into something to fulfill my curiosity.
(39:56):
When Josh and Chuck received corrections, they thank people for
being nice and frequently ask people not to be jerks
when correcting them. When Holly and Tracy talk about corrections
they receive, they ask people to be nice and have
referred to corrections on several occasions as hate mail. My
concern is that listeners may be more disrespectful Holly and
(40:17):
Tracy because they are women, and even if listeners are
rude to Josh and Chuck, they may rein it in
when making corrections because there are men. Could be completely
off base. But if I'm right, I feel like the
discrepancy should be addressed on the podcast to raise awareness
about how people treat men and women differently, and even
to address people's tendency to feel protected by the anonymity
of the Internet and say things online they wouldn't say
(40:38):
to someone's face and Uh so, Manda, we did talk
about it via email, and now we're going to talk
about it like regular human folks. And Tracy really has
the wealth of information because of her job and what
you know she's been responsible for in the past. Oh yeah,
that sounds serious. Yeah. I was part of the management
(41:00):
with a website for several years before I started actually
being on a podcast, and for a chunk of that time,
most of the podcasters reported to me. So even though
I wasn't managing the podcast program, I was sort of
keeping tabs on the iTunes reviews for everybody. And there
was a definite, definite trend in that the podcast that
had women on them got disproportionately more vicious comments about
(41:25):
what their voices sounded like versus the podcast with men
on them, which got less of that. So this is
news to me. Misogyny on the internet. I had not
I wasn't aware that that was the thing that was
a beautiful blind spot of all time. No, I can imagine,
(41:46):
And I know Tracy, you've like pointed some of these
out before. Um, for us, it's it's like, yeah, we'll
get hate mail every once in a while. Um, but
it's kind of easy to dismiss because even if it
is to erect it at us, it's not necessarily directed
at our gender or whatever it's or even if it
is personal, it's it's dumb. It's just it's just dumb stuff.
(42:09):
It's easy to not take personally, even when it's meant
to be personal. But um, that's me speaking. Is like
a white male age eighteen to forty nine, you know,
so I can imagine that like when someone attacks you
just just based on your gender, or even worse, if
they're coming after you and they don't even realize that
they're being driven by this, um, this disdain for your gender,
(42:33):
that has to make it a lot harder to just
just dismiss. Yeah, well, yeah, how you can go. I
was gonna say, for me, I mean I am lucky
and that I really give very few damns about what
most people think, like unless you're sitting in my lap
or paying my paycheck, Like it's great if you like me,
but if you don't, that's cool too. Like everybody do
your thing. But eventually, like the landslide builds up and
(42:56):
it's not it's not so much that I'm heartbroken or traumatized,
but it just wears you down after a while where
you're like, why am I doing this just to get
more of this crap? Yeah? Well, and we definitely have,
like we have been called slurs based on our gender before,
We have been called the C word over the pipe une. Yeah. Well,
(43:21):
and then the I told you about that when we
were discussing the email in our email conversation, I told
you about the person who wrote to us and said
they didn't understand how I could be in the same
room with Holly without strangling her. Like, that's the kind
of stuff that people will write to us and be
really awful, But we do get a whole lot of
them that I don't think people are consciously being misogynistic,
but they're talking to us and about us in a
(43:43):
very gendered way. So people tell us that we sound
shrill or that we sound bossy, and those aren't words
that people would use to describe men most of the time.
Most of their um and all of the articles that
had come out lately of out, especially vocal fry and
other things that people criticize about women's voices that they
(44:05):
don't generally criticize about men's voices. Every single time I
read it, and I'm like, I could have written that
about my job and my experience being a woman talking
on the internet. So which one, Um, which one hits
home the most? Like one that's a just a direct
personal attack are the ones that or the person is
just being unconsciously misogynistic, which to me would seem more entrenched. Yeah,
(44:33):
to me, the second one is worse. And it's especially
worse because a lot of the implicitly gendered criticism that
we get is also from women. The hardest part, Yeah,
that's the hardest part for me to deal with. Yeah,
when they're real specific, for example, like the person who
wants me to be strangled. Um, at the end of
(44:54):
the day, I'm like, he's working through his own stuff,
Like I have really have very little to do with this.
So I may have been the trigger the you know,
cause this little outrage bomb, but really it has very
little to do with me that I think almost of
the time that is the case. These are people who
have their own gripes in life and are probably angry,
unhappy people. Yes, But then, as Tracy said, when you
(45:15):
get those ones that are like they they're not even
conscious of how it's playing out, you realize how much
it is a bigger, sort of systemic social problem because
most of those people are not evil, they don't intend
to be misogynistic. They're not conscious that they're separating the
(45:36):
two genders and judging them differently on different criteria. So yeah,
those are, as Tracy said, a little more disturbing because
you realize that it's kind of like the silent creep
that underlays everything. Well, we do get a lot of
emails that are great from people who are great, and
the majority of the email that we get is great,
so we like, I don't want to make it sound
like every person who writes to us is awful. Um,
(45:59):
And we talked about corrections on the episode a lot
of times from people who write it in and everything
is fine and everything is very respectful. So to me,
a correction is you said this person died in nineteen
and eighteen, but really it was nineteen seven. That's a correction,
and that's fine. But then we'll also get ones that
are like, I can't believe you didn't even bother to
look this up. You completely butchered it. I don't know
(46:20):
why you don't even put more thought into what you're doing,
because it's really important that you represent yourselves as well,
And that's when I'm like, that's hate mail. Yeah, we
get those. Yeah, we get a lot of those, but
I never feel like those are like, uh, have anything
to do with my gender? Yeah, in those cases absolutely,
I mean we get the same exact emails where it's
just like you, you guys are total idiots, like how
(46:41):
how could you drop the ball this badly? And it's
like we basically said exactly what you're saying, We just
said it slightly differently. It definitely doesn't warrant this kind
of reaction, you know, Um yeah, I I why do
you think there is a gender or bias or a gender?
(47:03):
Why is it worse for you guys being women? Do
you think not just in common history of the world,
but I know, like how how long do you have?
But I mean, like even even beyond comments like why
is the internet so geared towards hating women? I mean,
what's what's the deal with that? Do you guys? Is
there is there a general understanding or idea behind it
(47:25):
lonely angry men? Is my guess? Well? I think it's
it's super complex, right, There's no one simple answer. Like
some of it is that we have reached an age
where the disparity in terms of UH gender equality has
shrunk at the same time that a lot of people
have this outlet readily available to them. So there's progress
(47:48):
being made, but there are also the people who are
still kicking and screaming as they get dragged into a
future they're not comfortable with. But then there's also just
the thing that again I don't think people are even
conscious of it where it is new for many people,
and even people that are younger and have maybe grown
up in a more kind of old school traditional environment,
(48:09):
be at household or community, where they're not even conscious
of why they're more upset at women. There's just something
about women, you know, sharing knowledge or being assertive or
being confident that just rankles them. And they don't even
register that it's because it's a woman. They just know
there's something about that person I hate and it's something
(48:29):
they're just not used to and they haven't kind of
made the the mental accustomization to. Oh. Sometimes people that
aren't dudes have stuff to say as well. Do you
think the same experiences extrapolatable under race as well as gender,
and well, I mean I know it is, but I
mean is it almost like a step for step do
(48:52):
you think I think it's probably pretty similar models. Yeah, well,
speaking like as the ass a white person in a
room of white people who are on the phone right now.
The worst days I have ever had managing our Facebook page,
our days when we talk about something that has to
do with systemic racism and we'll we'll get a flood
(49:15):
of similarly implicitly racist comments from people who really don't
know that the view that they just put out there
is racist. Like, that's sort of the same thing. Like
a lot of people do things that are misogynists, not
really consciously being misogynist. That just it comes out and
they're not consciously aware of it, and it's we see
the same thing on our Facebook posts in subjects that
(49:37):
are related to race really pretty often. So at the
end of the day, when you guys get a bunch
of these, say, on just a particularly bad day, what
what do you do? I mean, do you battle this?
Do you just brush it off and be like, these
guys are idiots and whether they like it or not,
they are going to be dragged into the future against
their will. Uh, you know, what do you do a
(49:59):
combination of both? Or do you look at your status
is a perennial top twenty podcast and say, clearly, who
cares what they say? Because we're really good at what
we do, because we're very successful. I do a combination
of things. I have kind of a library of links
about vocal fry and whatever. Anyone writes directly to us
(50:20):
to complain about vocal fry, I kind of send them, hey,
why don't you listen to this? Uh this American Life
segment all about vocal fry in which Ira Glass has
vocal fry the entire segment, but nobody complains at him
about it. Um. So I like I specifically will address that.
I will specifically address things that people say on our
(50:42):
Facebook page in public, because I feel like our role
as a podcast about history does not include allowing people
free rein to be racist in public and have that
not be challenge. Um. But when it comes to the
like the email that Holly and I got that was
that was so bad pretty recently, that was the person
who was basically advocating me murdering Holly. Um, I was
(51:09):
actually traveling. I went down to the hotel bar and
how to drink there? You got a book and tried
to chill Yeah, I tried and chill out about it,
booze everything. Well, um, thank you both for addressing this.
I'm sorry we didn't solve this problem here in this this.
(51:30):
Thank you for having us on the show. Of course. Um,
if anyone out there and stuff you should know Land
has not checked out stuff you missed in history class,
you definitely should because it is super awesome and as
are both of you. And I don't want to strangle you,
but I want to hug your necks. Nope, you've got
(51:51):
to have it. And now she don't move no more. Nope.
But thanks for coming in. And uh, we should do
this more often, you know, we should. We should have
a whole show where we just get together and do
roundtable stuff. We can have yappy pow wow party time.
That would be fun. Yeah. Well, if you have something
to say about all this, and we're sure you will,
(52:12):
we want to hear from you. You can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast. You can tweet
the stuff you missed in history class at at missed
in History. You can join us on Facebook dot com
slash stuff you should know. You can join stuff you
missed in History class at missed in History, Facebook dot com,
slash miss in History make it easy? What about email?
(52:32):
How do they get in touch of your history? Podcast
at how stuff works dot com And you can hit
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and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works
(52:54):
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Clark to Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Yep, there's Jerry and
this is Stuff you Should Know. That was great, Thanks man.
(00:24):
Do I sound like Share? Have you sound like T
paying T Josh T Josh or Snoop Dogg? Does he
do the auto to? He factors into this big time
later on? Oh well, I don't even know about that,
so I've got some of my lead. This is kind
of fun. I don't know how much we're gonna do
(00:44):
that because people are probably like, stop it right now. Oh, Chuck,
I think we should do it a lot. Are you done? Yeah?
I'm done. Um, we could have just auto tuned this
whole thing. Yeah, you know, maybe we should. Maybe we
should maybe from this moment, Flore, we should just started
(01:05):
tune the rest of the episode starting now. Let's sabotage
our careers. Uh, you've got an intro for this, fancy intro.
I think we just did it, buddy. Okay, well, let's
get in the way back machine then, my friend, Okay,
we don't have to go back that far because I
know where we're going, it's gonna be a short trip.
Let's go back to Oh Summer Boom. I'm you and
(01:36):
Iron the club. We're hanging out, we're drinking the rum
and coke. You can find us in the club and
uh we're we're dancing, We're getting down and grooving too.
Uh to share his latest jam, Believe Believe. It's a
hot jam, a hot, hot, hot jam that's released in
the summer. It's summertime. As you can tell, it's hot
in the club. Cheat, and I've got on my my
(01:58):
my short pants. I'm us like I'm out for a
night at the Rocks. I'm wearing a shirt. So I noticed, Actually,
how did you not? Well? Yeah, the third nipple really
stands out. So we're in the club where jamming and
share song is on, and uh, something happens at about
(02:19):
thirty five seconds into the song, and you and I
are just like, whoa daddy? Did you just hear that?
It changes everything. It changed the whole tone of the club,
Like the club was like okay, and now it's banging
yek Yeah, because of a little something called auto tune. Uh,
what sounded like a little electronic glitch was very purposeful
(02:43):
and it was the first time the auto tune had
been used in this way. So what Josh is auto
tune was quite a set up? Uh, can we do
the rest of the episode in the club? Yeah? Why not? Okay,
just keep those rumbings cokes coming. Okay, that's cool. Um,
So let me let me stop you for a second. Right,
(03:06):
because the way you described it, you made it sound
like everybody was like, oh, Share just used auto tune. No, no,
everybody said what was that? That was awesome? Although some
people were like, what was that? Don't ever do that again,
but most people were like, wow, Shared just released her
biggest hit of her entire career, and it was a
pretty long career. She just came back like that just
(03:29):
established her comeback was this track, and it actually became
one of the greatest best selling singles of all time. Yeah,
and I think, I mean, it would have been a
probably a big song anyway, but I think most definitely
auto tune kicked it into the stratasy, gave it just
the extra something. It became part of the talking but
everyone was talking about it. So everybody went to her
(03:51):
producer and said, dude, how did you do that? We
want to know how to do that, and he was like, vocoder. Yeah,
he lied, He lied, He lied big time. He lied
in person to other producers, he lied in interviews, he lied, lied,
lied about how he made that track because he wanted
to keep it to himself because it was so huge,
(04:13):
and it became so huge, Chuck that at first Auto
Tune was called the Share Effect. Even the company that
produced Auto Tune and Terry's, which we'll talk about in
a minute, called it in their instructional book, the Share Effect.
They probably still do, don't they. They don't mention it
any longer. Yeah, um. But the so it was, it
(04:34):
was a huge deal, and this guy lied and kept
it under wraps, and for many years it was very mysterious. Yeah.
Let's actually, if you live under a rock, let's go
ahead and play that clip of the very first thirty
five seconds into that song where Share says I can't
break through. Yeah, right there, boom right there. Music changed
(05:01):
from that point forward. So what what this guy, what
her producer was saying was vocoder. Vocoder is something that's
been around for a very long time. If you've ever
listened to any Pete Frampton, Peter Frampton and he things,
do you feel like we do that whole long guitar
solo or whatever. He's breathing into a tube connected to
(05:23):
his guitar, which is electrifying his voice. Vocoder had been
around for a very long time, but there's different ways
of doing it. That That was definitely the tube effect
through the guitar, but you can also just use it to,
you know, make your voice robotic like Beck to turn
tables in a microphone or Mr Roboto with sticks, But
(05:47):
all different ways to use it. This thing, this sounded different,
the share effect. It was a little different, sure, And
I wonder how this guy talked his way out of Yeah.
I mean like if if if a producer like, okay,
well show me how you did it on vocoder, if
he was like over here and then just like ran
out of the room, I don't. I don't think he
(06:07):
talked out of it. I think he was just another
line music producer and he was just like okay, well busted, okay.
So um, Apparently along the way people figured out here
there what this guy did believe and they started using
it themselves, but very very sparsely. All right, So, Josh,
(06:28):
what is auto tune? All right? I'll answer your question
because I'm gonna keep asking it, all right. So auto
tune is a plug in originally released for the audio
editing software pro tools. Yeah, it's a software piece that
allows you and the original UM intent and how it's
(06:51):
still mostly used is to pitch correct UM singer's voice.
So when you, when you or I go into the
studio to record those albums that will never release, but
we just record for fun. Um we hit flat notes
here there. Oh not me. I have perfect pitch. I
hit flat notes here there, perfect um, and everybody does.
(07:11):
It's a normal thing. Sure for most of eternity. UM
music producers would say, blue Eyes chairman, I need another take.
That was a great take, but you had a couple
of flat notes. Give me another take just like that one.
And Frank would finish his scotch, put out a cigarette
and say you get one more shine hood. What was
(07:36):
the Joe? Oh you didn't even see spinal tap, did you? Yeah,
you finally saw it, finally, Okay, But I don't remember
any Frank Sinatra t Yeah there was. When Bruno Kirby
is the Limo Drivers, He's talks about Sammy Davis's book,
Yes I can, and he says what they should have
called it is. Yes, I can as long as Frank
says it's okay, because Frank called the shots. For all
those guys, I do remember that. Um So, Frank would
(08:00):
one more take, and this could be like take twelve
or fifteen or twenty, depending on like how how much
how much the person was feeling at The singer was
feeling it at the time and would be happy to
hang around the studio whatever was keeping the singer there
at the studio. As long as that was around the singer,
the singer was happy to give it one more try,
(08:22):
one more try, right, drugs maybe, um or if they
had like a really good candy bowl, who knows, I
gotta stay for the skittles. Um So. The editor then
or the music producer would then take all of these
different tracks and would go through and I can't imagine
how awful this would be. Take the best part of
(08:42):
this track and edit it together with the best part
of that track, and like we're talking like pre digital air,
so like they're spicing together tape from what I understand,
right to get the best possible complete take piece together
from many different takes. Right, So Okay, that's that's what
they did. All of a sudden, there's this new software
(09:04):
that just runs through a take and says, oh, well,
I see what note or what key the singers singing in,
But this this particular notes just a little out, so
I'm going to nudge it into the key that the
singer was going for. And now, all of a sudden,
one take is all it takes. Yeah. I mean what
(09:25):
it did was it cut down on studio time, which
is super expensive, which was very appealing because now you
could churn out songs that are more rapid rate and
a cheaper rate. And uh, it was it was a
little sort of a secret tool that they didn't intend
to like get out to the public. I don't think
they wanted everyone to know this stuff. No, it was
(09:46):
meant for professionals. Yeah, And basically it was just it
was the musical audio equivalent of cosmetics. Yeah. Doctor. It
was invented by Dr Harold Andy Hilda Brand, and he
likened it to make up and the New Yorker likened
it to um, like getting rid of a red eye
(10:07):
and a photograph. It was just you use it just
enough so that you can't tell it's there, but it
makes for a more pleasant um overall composition. Right, what
Share had done, or what shares producers had done, is
take this thing and used it to the nth degree. Yes,
supposedly it was just a joke, and Share was like,
(10:28):
I love that, but that's like I don't know if
that's an urban legend, ear if that's fact. Well, from
what I read that her producer, she was she wanted like, um,
she had heard like some telephone effect that she was
interested in using, like she wanted something and I guess
the producer had stumbled upon that and UM played it
for but it was like you're not gonna like this,
(10:49):
but listen to this weirdness and she was like that
I want that. Nice, that's what I read. Well, I
think that it's due to her giving it the green light.
Then that was truly like uh, foresight, like a masterful
move by Share. You know, well, Share has a lot
of ForSight. You know, they say, don't don't doubt Share
and Share has a lot of foresight. Never bet against Share. Yeah, Um,
(11:13):
so when you did make that decision, it changed, like
you said, it changed everything. And well, well, I I
we can't talk enough about this, but we're going to
take a break and then come back and talk more
about it right after this, all right, josh, Uh. What
(11:42):
I found most interesting about this while researching what UM
was what Andy Hildebrand did before he did this. He
was a musician. He was played flute professionally since he
was a young teenager. Even went to University of Illinois
go Fighting a Line I on a music scholarship. Yet
(12:04):
he chose to work for Exxon Mobile for seventeen years
looking for oil. Yeah, the two weren't too terribly far apart, right, well,
as we will find out. So he's a professional floutist,
classically trained flout is a good one from what I understand,
flouting his flute, yes, um. And he went to college
(12:26):
to get an electrical engineering degree, I think. And basically
when when he went to work for the oil companies,
it was an oil exploration and he figured out a
programmer he designed to software UM that when you set
off an explosive charge underground, it measured the pitch of
(12:48):
stuff of the sound waves that that were created. Right,
So as they traveled through rock, different types of rock,
just the pitch basically, and this software like analyzed the
pitch that was coming through and could create a subsurface
map of the rock below, and oil companies have long
known that this type of rock is associated with oil,
(13:09):
and this type of rock is not maybe a'll financial
guess and this type of rock. So with this guy
creating an audio visual map of the subsurface area, oil
companies no longer had to just drill and drill and
hope that they found um oil. He would say, this
is a pretty pretty great place to drill because this
(13:29):
kind of rock is there. That's right. It's called auto correlation.
And it saved Exxon a lot of money and he
somehow made a lot of money. I thought it was
gonna be one of those things where like XN was
just like thanks, you work for us, you wint here's
yours a year. But apparently he UM earned enough money
to retire by the age of forty thanks to this
(13:52):
innovation and UM in the early he got out of
the oil business and found it like it's just a
popularity content. Yeah. Uh. He founded UH in Terrorists Audio
Technologies and UH kind of near Silicon Valley in Scott's Valley, California.
And I think still they only have about ten employees.
I think it's a pretty small operation. It's all centered
(14:15):
around him and his ideas, and he is the main
inventor um. One of the first things he invented was
something called Infinity, which is a program that where you
could loop samples um over and over and over, like seamlessly.
Apparently that was a necessary thing. I didn't know that.
Oh yeah, think about it. We're talking like early nineties.
(14:35):
That was like the oh eight acid house revolution. Yeah,
but I just didn't realize. I guess he made it easier,
probably is my guess. Yes, I think he enabled it.
He enabled technos the impression I have, Oh yeah, interesting
looping samples together seamlessly. Well, but you could already do that.
What I'm saying is is he clearly found a way
(14:56):
to do it better and more efficiently. He didn't invent looping, No,
he made it better, Yeah, exactly. Another thing he did
was invented the microphone modeler. Modeling is a big thing
in music. You can get um guitar amplifiers that model,
uh basically means imitate other amps. I have a modeling
(15:19):
amp which I don't use anymore because it's uh not
very good, but it models. There's like twelve different classic
amps models supposedly, but he inventled the modeling microphone, which
means you could mimic like classic microphones or like a
harmonica mike and vintage mics like the Elvis Presley that
cool looking mike. Sure that was on there? Oh? Is
(15:41):
that the silver kind of rounded rectangular one. Noel's got
one on his desk. Yeah, yeah, that's associated with Elvis Presley. Well,
I mean just the music of that time. But I
always picture Elvish. Yeah, you know what I mean, I
can see that. Yeah, have you ever seen his grandson,
by the way, quick sidebar? No, his name is quick sidebar,
quick sidebar Pressley. It's weird name, but you know, Lisa
(16:04):
Marie was his mom, So yeah, um, that was very funny.
By the way, he uh, just look him up. I
think what's his name. I can't remember his name. His
last name is the father's name for Lisa Marie's first husband,
is who she had him with. Uh yeah, just look
at Elvis Presley's grandson. It is creepy. Dude looks exactly
(16:29):
like Elvis at that age, like scary, scary, eerily similar
that I don't know, doesne that I do know? If
he sings, he probably use his auto tune probably because
of singers. Apparently his auto tune its hem even higher
than that. Really, how about that? Admit it? You know? Yeah,
(16:50):
there's the thing about auto tune where, um, you deny
that you use it even though you're totally aware that
everyone uses it. Um. I read an article where apparently
this one producer said that he's worked with two artists
that have haven't used it everyone else has, and it
(17:11):
was Nico Case and Nellie for Tato. And then apparently
later after that, Nelly for Tato released a single that
had tons of auto tune on it. She may be
the only artist in the world who hasn't used auto tune,
either subtly or um to the nth degree. Well, that's
certainly not true. I think there are plenty of indie artists.
(17:33):
But if you're talking, you should read this Verge article.
It basically lays it out like, no, everyone uses this
even if so. Apparently producers don't even necessarily tell the
band that it's being used right then, because there's a
live function, so that the monitors or the headphones that um,
the band is hearing is being run through auto tune,
(17:55):
so what they're hearing is already corrected, so they think
they just did a perfect take. Yeah, I'm just wary
of anytime someone says out of twenty million singers, one
person doesn't that's just very dubious claim. I don't know,
we're talking music industry here, especially when a lot of
people are making their own music in their own homes. Well,
(18:16):
that's another thing. They're not a part of the pop machine.
They don't have stats on that, you know. Yeah, I'm
just I'm just saying that's that sounds like a load
of garbage to me. I'm sure more than one person
doesn't just one. Um. So auto tune came about, apparently
this is the tail because of a dinner that Hilda
(18:39):
Brand was at. He was having lunch with a sales
rep and the wife said something funny like, hey, Andy,
can you once you invent something to make me sing
in tune? And he went, no, great idea that we
should have auto tuned, that maybe we could maybe maybe
it was maybe it just happened. Uh. And so he said,
(19:00):
you know what, Uh, if I can tell Jed Clampitt
where the oil is, then I can make you sing
in tune. And he did, and he did. He created
auto tune and um we've kind of mentioned how it works. Basically,
it takes a it takes that take of a singer's song.
(19:20):
It takes the vocals of the song, and you select
what key you're singing in, and then auto tune goes
through and makes this map of this of that audio
of the vocal track, and it goes through and says
that this one's a little flat, this one's a little low,
or whatever, um and it just nudges these things into
(19:42):
tune into into the key that it's supposed to be in.
So all all of the notes that the singer hits
and that take are within the correct key, meaning that
they all sound great. It's a perfect take, right well, yeah,
and the the key there is it's in the original
tone and inflection of the artist, so you can't tell
it's happening. No. And there's actually if you look, if
(20:03):
you look at the um uh Auto Tune product demo videos,
it's amazing. So there's a there's an um an automatic
version where like it just you select the key and
like auto tune do its thing, and it does a
pretty great job. One of the one of the ways
that it does this is um it adds like millisecond
(20:26):
pauses in between notes. There's little spaces between notes, which
gives it a natural feel. Um. There's other selections that
you can make, like throat length. You can select grow
how long the singer's throat is uh, and you can
do that note by note um, so you can make
the whole thing even more natural. Until basically, what you've
(20:48):
done is taught auto tune how to simulate a particular
singers singing style and voice so that when it when
a us that no, it doesn't within the same exact
range that the singer would have done had they hit
it correctly. It's pretty amazing and advanced stuff totally. What
(21:09):
when when normal people think of auto tune, like you
and me who are not in the music biz um,
we we think of this thing that's called the zero function. Yes,
and you know what, let's take a break and we
will explain what the zero function is right after this.
(21:34):
Stop all right, the suspense is kidling me. You're gonna
kid let's kid alright. Zero function. That was essentially what
the share effect was, Okay, right, yes, go ahead no
(21:56):
no, no no go ahead, no, no go ahead. You just
sat up in your chair like you were about to
arm kind I've been Do you go ahead? Do you
talk about it? Well, what auto tune does in the
in terms of the zero function is it gets rid
of all of that space and when shares voice changes,
it's immediate. Yeah, all of those notes go right up
(22:18):
against each other, and it creates this robotic sounding voice. Yeah,
there's no like rise, it's there's it's not like a
what's the word I'm looking for? It's uh. It's not
like a normal vibrato that you would get because in
the normal vibrato there's there's pauses, there's space in between
the notes. With this, it's note note all pressed up
(22:41):
against each other, compressed way, and that zero function, um
is what what It takes any spaces out between the
notes and creates that robot sound. Yeah, because I think
auto tune has has a range of numbers to make
it flow more seamlessly. And when they took it all
the way down to zero, which means there's nothing there,
it created that weird I act that they were like,
share your listen to this, it's weird. Yeah, and she's like,
(23:04):
I like weird. It's great, baby, I hear number one
hit in my future. No, you gotta wrot. It's great, baby, No,
that was that was Jack from Will and Grace. Oh
do you remember when he thought he was talking to
a share impersonator. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And he's like, no,
(23:29):
if I could turn back to turn. He was teaching
her how to say it, sing it correctly. I thoroughly
enjoyed Will and Grace. It was great. Agreed, All right,
where are we? Well? You were talking about the share effect, right,
and that's what it was called again and Tari has
called this zero function the share effect for many years
(23:51):
and um and over time, remember her producer just kept
lying and lying and lying. Over time, other producers independently
figured out why he had done that. He had used
the zero function, which is a really obscure tool on
a software suite that not everybody knew about. Right, So
(24:13):
it took some some brainpower and some experimentation, but little
by little some producers figured it out. This one producer
um did a remix of a j Lo song and
used it, and he I think was the second person
to use it, um publicly and uh for a brief time,
it became known as the Jal effect. Of course, anybody
who used this without fessing up to it. At first
(24:36):
in the early two thousands, it was called the whatever effect.
And there's this producer rapper down in Florida named T Paine,
and T Paine heard this JL effect. He went on
a mission to figure out what this was, and he
finally apparently took him years to figure it out. He
finally figured out that it was the zero effect on
(24:58):
this pro tools plug in UM and he started using
it and just went crazy with it. Like up to
this point it was used to like tweak or it
would maybe make UM a track of just a little
weird over here, something like that. He used it as
often as he possibly could. Yeah. He basically said the
zero function and tee pain are one and the same. Yeah,
(25:20):
And it became known as the tea pain effect. Really
because when people asked him how he did it, guess
what he said folder did he really? Yes, Yes he did.
And for years he managed to make a mint because
the whole thing was in hip hop or in pop.
If you wanted this tea pain effect, te pain needed
(25:41):
to console at least if not produce your record. That
was like ten years after the Share effect. People not
know that I I he managed to pull it off
for years and years and years. Good for tea Pain
is what I say? Yes, you know, yeah, I mean
he apparently was like, um, I guess on a plane ride.
Usher was the same plane and asked to speak to him,
(26:02):
and she was like, I've got to get something off
my chest. You really screwed up music like big time
well S. Pain was like, I've made a bunch of
money doing this and people seem to like it, so
I'm not gonna stop. Hildebrand has been vilified by many,
and he said, you know what, I just make the car.
I don't drive it down the wrong side of the road. Yeah.
It's a great quote because a lot of people hate
(26:26):
auto tune and things. That's the worst thing that happened
to music. A lot of people like it and say,
when you use it for what it's supposed to be
used for, it can really help out. Because you know,
it's not like everyone uses it all the time. I'm
sure some people need it way more than others. Well,
even if you're using it as a like cosmetic touch,
like kill the brand originally designed it for a lot
(26:46):
of people say no, we shouldn't even be doing that,
because if you go back and listen to things like
Bob Dylan or The Beach Boards or um, just a
lot of these original artists that didn't use these kind
of effects on their voice. Um, when they sang and
their recordings made it through the studio, there were still
flat notes here there, but it was their music, it
(27:08):
was their voice, it was their vocals in these tracks,
and everyone came to know and love them. But now,
because everything is auto tuned perfectly, even the stuff that
you don't you can't hear it's auto tune because they're
not using zero function, but just the fact that it's
been running through the auto tune, this stuff sounds really
rough by comparison. So a lot of people are like
(27:29):
auto tune has ruined music. It ruined music that people
love for decades because now by comparison it seems rough. Well.
But it also, like a good ear can tell if
something's auto tune, it has this weird tin equality that, um,
it doesn't sound natural. So I think it they will
be blowback and a and a reversion back to older methods. Okay,
(27:52):
I bet you. Jack White has an auto tune that's
the most purest of pure guys. No, he uses all
sorts of weird vocal effects on his stuff. No, but
as far as like I bet he has ask him,
he wouldn't admit it. Apparently that's part for the course. Um,
so te Pain. If we can get back to the
(28:14):
history of this drink, so te Pain. Right, he's huge,
like he's just everything he drops is just blowing up
all over the place. He's getting invited to consult and
produce on uh Kanye's album, which ultimately had every track
had auto tune on it by the time Tea Pain
got done with that, right. Um, have you heard his
(28:37):
Queen Bohemian raapsody live? No? Is it good? Oh? No,
oh no, it's there's a video that someone spliced of
him and he and Freddie Mercury. It's one of the
worst things I've ever heard on the stage. I've got
to check it out. It's terrible. Okay, Um, I gotta
see that. It's good. So um the tea Pain effect. Yeah,
(29:00):
and if you wanted this effect, you had to have
t pain. Well Snoop Dogg says that's enough of that finally,
and he releases something called Sensual Seduction, and it's one
of the better rap videos you've ever seen. It's pretty good.
There's a star wipe in it, so you know I
love it. Um. So Snoop releases this using the te
(29:21):
Pain effect to great degree, but he didn't consult with
T Pain. T Paint had nothing to do with this record.
So Snoop kind of opened the floodgates saying, if you
guys want to use this, go use it. But what's
interesting if you watch that video when Snoop is doing
like the the t pain effect of the auto tune stuff,
he's actually got a tube going to a synthesizer to
(29:43):
make it look like he's using a vocoder. Interesting that
weird like in his video. But anyway, he sure that
wasn't a marijuana smoking divide. It may have been, it
may have been the other thing about it, um, but
Snoop changed everything in in that he took tea Pain
now to the equation and really open the floodgates for
anybody and everybody to use this stuff. Simultaneously, jay Z
(30:07):
was trying to close those floodgates and push all of
it back in. Yeah, I think jay Z um uh
it clearly jumped the shark. At a certain point. You
know when major ad brands are making ads using the
latest and greatest. That it's years late, first of all,
and that means that has definitely jumped the shark. And
in two thousand nine, uh Windy's had a Frosty Posse
(30:30):
commercial where a gang of office workers built it out
auto tuned rhymes while searching for Frosty's. I don't remember
that add do you? I know? But I went and
watched it. Of course. How is it pretty great? It's
what you think it is pretty great. It's awesome. Okay, no,
it's terrible. And jay Z apparently saw this and was enraged,
and so he wrote a song called d O a
(30:51):
Death of auto Tune. I know we're facing a recession,
but the music y'all making gonna make it the great depression.
Get back to wrap ut painting too much, that's calling
that's calling someone out ye hard. Yeah, but other auto tune,
um auto tune. The news was a big YouTube pit.
Oh yeah, man, that um the bed intruder song. Yeah,
(31:15):
let's um. Let's play a clip from that From two
thousand and ten. It was a local news footage from Huntsville, Alabama,
of Antoine Dodson delivering human being. Yeah, about a neighborhood
intruder and someone auto tune that the Gregory Brothers did.
That's right, let's hear that real quick start. You are
(31:36):
really go for the man got away, leaving behind the evidence.
I was okay by some sold don't sold, don't so
don't song be climbing a windows? He snatching up people
up trying to write? Have you listened recently? Now? It's
(31:58):
pretty great? Yeah? Yeah, but again that was in two
thousand ten, and I think that even kind of had
a pretty short shelf life. Unless they're still doing it,
I don't know, Well, what do you say, The Gregory Brothers,
the Brooklyn Soul band. Yeah, they started out doing auto
tune the news and they would take the news and
just auto tune it and turn it and like just
produce it overproduce it um. And they did that with
(32:19):
the Bed and Shooter song, and that actually became the
number one video on YouTube of all of two thousand ten.
I look the original the original video has a hundred
and twenty eight million views right now. Yeah, yeah, it's
pretty impressive stuff. At at the same point, like now,
auto tune has become a parody of itself. It's it's
(32:41):
being used in ads, here's this progression. Something starts out,
someone uses it artistically, someone comes along and overuses it,
then everybody starts to overuse it. Then Wendy's makes a
commercial using it. Newsweek finally gets around to writing an
article about it, and then years after we record a
podcast on it, and then the thing finally dies. Yeah,
(33:04):
and then fifteen or twenty years after that it becomes
hip again. Yes, you know, that's the progression. So the
point that we're at though, now, Chuck, it's not so
cut and dry, man. It's not as cut and dry
as jay Z would like to have you think. Because
he came out with this death of auto tune track
in like two thousand nine. Auto tune is still around
(33:24):
very much. And now it's getting the point where if
like um the Verge and I can't remember the other
article I read, they're both on this podcast page. If
they're to be believed, they're credible sources, and they certainly
seemed like it from these articles. There's a there's this
growing question of um, is auto tune here to stay?
(33:47):
People are starting to compare it to the initial reaction
that people had to the electric guitar. It was a
lot different from the original guitar, and people it took
a lot of getting used to, or like when Bob
Dylan went electric, a lot of people didn't like that,
but then look at what happened now with the electric guitar.
A lot of people tried different stuff with it and
it became a standard. Some people are wondering if auto
(34:10):
tune is going to fulfill the same destiny. I think
most people are hoping that it does not. Yeah, well,
I mean sweetening vocals is nothing new, Like reverb is
a tried and true thing for years and embraced. H
does that sweetened vocals? I thought that was always used
to like make it weird. Now it's it's sort of
like it gives it an echo, a like you're singing
in a big empty church hall or something. But it
(34:32):
makes it sweetens it. It doesn't like correct anything, but
when I say sweetens it, it just makes it sound
a little better. Reverbs a great tool, right. The point
is as artificial. Yeah, it's not natural. Yeah, they it's
they tried to replicate like singing in a big empty
echo e hallway, uh, with an effect and it worked, right.
(34:53):
And another argument in favor of auto tune that I've
seen is simply taking a human voice and recording it
automatically makes it artificial, like if they're not there in
the room with you singing to you at that moment.
Anything else is artificial, So what's the problem. So just
to let people know, I put out to text during
(35:15):
the episode to musician friends Jack White, No. I texted
Lucy Wayne Wright our buddy Jerry from our TV show.
She's not answered, which means she's used auto tune. Kidding
and our buddy Joey c Are from the Henry Clay People,
formerly of Henry Clay People, now with fakers, And he said,
(35:36):
I think there were a few harmonized us and as
on one of our old records where we did some
pitch correcting, but that's it, I think, maybe so definitely
he's probably be mad that I said that. Thank you
for being forth right, Joey. Yeah, good guy. Are you
got anything else about autit Yeah? Just a really quick um.
(35:58):
This is from a great website. Tin artists that are
essentially computer programs. They just have the most auto tuned people.
They have t Pain, Kesha, Chris Brown, Maroon Five, Black
Eyed Peas, Deaft Punk, Paris Hilton, who I forgot actually
had a song the cast of Glee Katy Perry, and
number one was owl City who. I don't even know
(36:19):
what that is. There's a huge outcry apparently among Glee
fans for Glee to stop using so much auto tune.
I think the deal is. They're like, well, these are actors,
like yeah, And there's another there's a big scandal with
u K's got talent or something weird like that, um
where they were using a lot of auto tune for
(36:40):
the auditions. It was like comeme on. Well anyway, man,
that's not a very surprising list. So this has been
grumpy old men. I don't feel like we've been grumpy yet.
We haven't like, condemned it out right. No, Nico Casey,
she condemns it out right. Yeah, Emily, I have an
(37:01):
agreement about Nico case but we could both marry her, okay,
if she was ever available to us. She's right behind you.
Oh my god. Uh so we have a very well
done finish up your a deal. Sorry, I just jumped
the gonka. Thank you, Ah, you don't have anything else
about No, I was just teasing. We have a special
(37:23):
listener mail with guests. Well, hold on let me finish first. Okay, okay, Well,
since Chuck doesn't have anything, it's the end. And if
you want to know more about auto tune, you can
type those words into the search bar at how stuff
works dot com. And this article, I have to say,
by the way, was the most definitive article about auto
tune on the internet. How about that. It's a good one.
(37:45):
Uh So you can go look that up. And since
I said definitive, it's time for listener mail, and it's
a special one. Like Chuck said, that's right. Today we
um got a joint listener mail to ourselves into Holly
and Tracy from stuff you missed in history class. Yep,
So we're gonna bring them in right, Yeah, we're gonna
read the email and we're going to talk about its implications.
(38:07):
Let's start now. So, without further ado, we actually have
Holly and Tracy of stuff you missed in history class
with us. Hi and Tracy, we have actually not with us,
she's with us in spirit and voice from Boston. I
know it's pretty it's pretty interesting when it comes in
(38:29):
through your headphones, but the other person somewhere else, it's
kind of awesome. And this is how you guys do
the show now, right? Yes, we also have like an
online you know, we have a Google hangout where we
both are so we can see each other as well.
We should have done that Tracy in here with her
little video image or like um hologram of or they'd
(38:52):
be pretty cool too. That's true, all right. So I
think the first thing I should do. You have a
picture of me like our old boss. Oh well, I
do have a picture of you. I have the all
its side that he gave out. So, um, I think
the first thing we should do is just read. I'll
read the email here and then we will discuss like adults.
How about that? Uh So, like I said, already set
it up that we both got an email from a
(39:13):
listener and she says the following, and this is from
Amanda Lions. Hey, guys and gals. She didn't say that,
of course, I just did. Well, you should read it, okay, Josh, Chuckers,
Holly and Tracy, and of course a hello to Jerry
and Nol. Yeah. I'm a social worker from Portland, Oregon
with a passion for human equity and respect. One of
(39:35):
the original members of the s Y s K Army
and a more recent listener to missed in History. I
binged for about five months before I got all caught up.
So how about that. I'm concerned about something I've heard
a few times on the History podcast, and I was
wondering if you guys would be willing to get together
we are and look into something to fulfill my curiosity.
(39:56):
When Josh and Chuck received corrections, they thank people for
being nice and frequently ask people not to be jerks
when correcting them. When Holly and Tracy talk about corrections
they receive, they ask people to be nice and have
referred to corrections on several occasions as hate mail. My
concern is that listeners may be more disrespectful Holly and
(40:17):
Tracy because they are women, and even if listeners are
rude to Josh and Chuck, they may rein it in
when making corrections because there are men. Could be completely
off base. But if I'm right, I feel like the
discrepancy should be addressed on the podcast to raise awareness
about how people treat men and women differently, and even
to address people's tendency to feel protected by the anonymity
of the Internet and say things online they wouldn't say
(40:38):
to someone's face and Uh so, Manda, we did talk
about it via email, and now we're going to talk
about it like regular human folks. And Tracy really has
the wealth of information because of her job and what
you know she's been responsible for in the past. Oh yeah,
that sounds serious. Yeah. I was part of the management
(41:00):
with a website for several years before I started actually
being on a podcast, and for a chunk of that time,
most of the podcasters reported to me. So even though
I wasn't managing the podcast program, I was sort of
keeping tabs on the iTunes reviews for everybody. And there
was a definite, definite trend in that the podcast that
had women on them got disproportionately more vicious comments about
(41:25):
what their voices sounded like versus the podcast with men
on them, which got less of that. So this is
news to me. Misogyny on the internet. I had not
I wasn't aware that that was the thing that was
a beautiful blind spot of all time. No, I can imagine,
(41:46):
And I know Tracy, you've like pointed some of these
out before. Um, for us, it's it's like, yeah, we'll
get hate mail every once in a while. Um, but
it's kind of easy to dismiss because even if it
is to erect it at us, it's not necessarily directed
at our gender or whatever it's or even if it
is personal, it's it's dumb. It's just it's just dumb stuff.
(42:09):
It's easy to not take personally, even when it's meant
to be personal. But um, that's me speaking. Is like
a white male age eighteen to forty nine, you know,
so I can imagine that like when someone attacks you
just just based on your gender, or even worse, if
they're coming after you and they don't even realize that
they're being driven by this, um, this disdain for your gender,
(42:33):
that has to make it a lot harder to just
just dismiss. Yeah, well, yeah, how you can go. I
was gonna say, for me, I mean I am lucky
and that I really give very few damns about what
most people think, like unless you're sitting in my lap
or paying my paycheck, Like it's great if you like me,
but if you don't, that's cool too. Like everybody do
your thing. But eventually, like the landslide builds up and
(42:56):
it's not it's not so much that I'm heartbroken or traumatized,
but it just wears you down after a while where
you're like, why am I doing this just to get
more of this crap? Yeah? Well, and we definitely have,
like we have been called slurs based on our gender before,
We have been called the C word over the pipe une. Yeah. Well,
(43:21):
and then the I told you about that when we
were discussing the email in our email conversation, I told
you about the person who wrote to us and said
they didn't understand how I could be in the same
room with Holly without strangling her. Like, that's the kind
of stuff that people will write to us and be
really awful, But we do get a whole lot of
them that I don't think people are consciously being misogynistic,
but they're talking to us and about us in a
(43:43):
very gendered way. So people tell us that we sound
shrill or that we sound bossy, and those aren't words
that people would use to describe men most of the time.
Most of their um and all of the articles that
had come out lately of out, especially vocal fry and
other things that people criticize about women's voices that they
(44:05):
don't generally criticize about men's voices. Every single time I
read it, and I'm like, I could have written that
about my job and my experience being a woman talking
on the internet. So which one, Um, which one hits
home the most? Like one that's a just a direct
personal attack are the ones that or the person is
just being unconsciously misogynistic, which to me would seem more entrenched. Yeah,
(44:33):
to me, the second one is worse. And it's especially
worse because a lot of the implicitly gendered criticism that
we get is also from women. The hardest part, Yeah,
that's the hardest part for me to deal with. Yeah,
when they're real specific, for example, like the person who
wants me to be strangled. Um, at the end of
(44:54):
the day, I'm like, he's working through his own stuff,
Like I have really have very little to do with this.
So I may have been the trigger the you know,
cause this little outrage bomb, but really it has very
little to do with me that I think almost of
the time that is the case. These are people who
have their own gripes in life and are probably angry,
unhappy people. Yes, But then, as Tracy said, when you
(45:15):
get those ones that are like they they're not even
conscious of how it's playing out, you realize how much
it is a bigger, sort of systemic social problem because
most of those people are not evil, they don't intend
to be misogynistic. They're not conscious that they're separating the
(45:36):
two genders and judging them differently on different criteria. So yeah,
those are, as Tracy said, a little more disturbing because
you realize that it's kind of like the silent creep
that underlays everything. Well, we do get a lot of
emails that are great from people who are great, and
the majority of the email that we get is great,
so we like, I don't want to make it sound
like every person who writes to us is awful. Um,
(45:59):
And we talked about corrections on the episode a lot
of times from people who write it in and everything
is fine and everything is very respectful. So to me,
a correction is you said this person died in nineteen
and eighteen, but really it was nineteen seven. That's a correction,
and that's fine. But then we'll also get ones that
are like, I can't believe you didn't even bother to
look this up. You completely butchered it. I don't know
(46:20):
why you don't even put more thought into what you're doing,
because it's really important that you represent yourselves as well,
And that's when I'm like, that's hate mail. Yeah, we
get those. Yeah, we get a lot of those, but
I never feel like those are like, uh, have anything
to do with my gender? Yeah, in those cases absolutely,
I mean we get the same exact emails where it's
just like you, you guys are total idiots, like how
(46:41):
how could you drop the ball this badly? And it's
like we basically said exactly what you're saying, We just
said it slightly differently. It definitely doesn't warrant this kind
of reaction, you know, Um yeah, I I why do
you think there is a gender or bias or a gender?
(47:03):
Why is it worse for you guys being women? Do
you think not just in common history of the world,
but I know, like how how long do you have?
But I mean, like even even beyond comments like why
is the internet so geared towards hating women? I mean,
what's what's the deal with that? Do you guys? Is
there is there a general understanding or idea behind it
(47:25):
lonely angry men? Is my guess? Well? I think it's
it's super complex, right, There's no one simple answer. Like
some of it is that we have reached an age
where the disparity in terms of UH gender equality has
shrunk at the same time that a lot of people
have this outlet readily available to them. So there's progress
(47:48):
being made, but there are also the people who are
still kicking and screaming as they get dragged into a
future they're not comfortable with. But then there's also just
the thing that again I don't think people are even
conscious of it where it is new for many people,
and even people that are younger and have maybe grown
up in a more kind of old school traditional environment,
(48:09):
be at household or community, where they're not even conscious
of why they're more upset at women. There's just something
about women, you know, sharing knowledge or being assertive or
being confident that just rankles them. And they don't even
register that it's because it's a woman. They just know
there's something about that person I hate and it's something
(48:29):
they're just not used to and they haven't kind of
made the the mental accustomization to. Oh. Sometimes people that
aren't dudes have stuff to say as well. Do you
think the same experiences extrapolatable under race as well as gender,
and well, I mean I know it is, but I
mean is it almost like a step for step do
(48:52):
you think I think it's probably pretty similar models. Yeah, well,
speaking like as the ass a white person in a
room of white people who are on the phone right now.
The worst days I have ever had managing our Facebook page,
our days when we talk about something that has to
do with systemic racism and we'll we'll get a flood
(49:15):
of similarly implicitly racist comments from people who really don't
know that the view that they just put out there
is racist. Like, that's sort of the same thing. Like
a lot of people do things that are misogynists, not
really consciously being misogynist. That just it comes out and
they're not consciously aware of it, and it's we see
the same thing on our Facebook posts in subjects that
(49:37):
are related to race really pretty often. So at the
end of the day, when you guys get a bunch
of these, say, on just a particularly bad day, what
what do you do? I mean, do you battle this?
Do you just brush it off and be like, these
guys are idiots and whether they like it or not,
they are going to be dragged into the future against
their will. Uh, you know, what do you do a
(49:59):
combination of both? Or do you look at your status
is a perennial top twenty podcast and say, clearly, who
cares what they say? Because we're really good at what
we do, because we're very successful. I do a combination
of things. I have kind of a library of links
about vocal fry and whatever. Anyone writes directly to us
(50:20):
to complain about vocal fry, I kind of send them, hey,
why don't you listen to this? Uh this American Life
segment all about vocal fry in which Ira Glass has
vocal fry the entire segment, but nobody complains at him
about it. Um. So I like I specifically will address that.
I will specifically address things that people say on our
(50:42):
Facebook page in public, because I feel like our role
as a podcast about history does not include allowing people
free rein to be racist in public and have that
not be challenge. Um. But when it comes to the
like the email that Holly and I got that was
that was so bad pretty recently, that was the person
who was basically advocating me murdering Holly. Um, I was
(51:09):
actually traveling. I went down to the hotel bar and
how to drink there? You got a book and tried
to chill Yeah, I tried and chill out about it,
booze everything. Well, um, thank you both for addressing this.
I'm sorry we didn't solve this problem here in this this.
(51:30):
Thank you for having us on the show. Of course. Um,
if anyone out there and stuff you should know Land
has not checked out stuff you missed in history class,
you definitely should because it is super awesome and as
are both of you. And I don't want to strangle you,
but I want to hug your necks. Nope, you've got
(51:51):
to have it. And now she don't move no more. Nope.
But thanks for coming in. And uh, we should do
this more often, you know, we should. We should have
a whole show where we just get together and do
roundtable stuff. We can have yappy pow wow party time.
That would be fun. Yeah. Well, if you have something
to say about all this, and we're sure you will,
(52:12):
we want to hear from you. You can tweet to
us at s Y s K podcast. You can tweet
the stuff you missed in history class at at missed
in History. You can join us on Facebook dot com
slash stuff you should know. You can join stuff you
missed in History class at missed in History, Facebook dot com,
slash miss in History make it easy? What about email?
(52:32):
How do they get in touch of your history? Podcast
at how stuff works dot com And you can hit
us up at stuff podcast at how stuff works dot
com and at all as always joined us at our
home on the Web, Stuff you Should Know dot com
and missed in History dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works
(52:54):
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