This trend started with the increasing dominance of 12-edo hundreds of years ago. Now you get people who should know better saying unironically that the just major third is flat, when in reality it is the 12-edo major third which is sharp
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You are right, but I didn’t want to get into equal temperament (as we called it when I was in school) versus just intonation. Equal temperament was a great development because it allowed for easy modulation. The manic pitch-correctors don’t understand that great singers instinctively deviate to make it sound better, which is because their result takes just intonation into account.
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ET is not inherently a bad compromise to choose to make. Choosing 12-edo to the exclusion of not only Just Intonation, but also other edos such as 19-edo, 31-edo, and 41-edo, is the last thing I would ever term a “great development”. The problem with 12-edo is not that it is a bad tuning itself, but rather that it has pushed everything else to the background
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Well, that was thought-provoking - and a bit worrying - indeed, since I like music a lot. But the more I watched in the video the more I realised that this (watching lines on the screen) is what that person does for “content” and couldn’t really tell whether the Kelly Clarkson cover was tune corrected without him putting it via the machine analysis, else he would have answered that question without the computer’s help. He even admits at 0:57 that he thought that it was “unlikely to be so” and thus he was a bit surprised that he was wrong. 
While watching the video I was thinking “wouldn’t it be awesome if someone tune-corrected Judy Garland’s version so we could hear “the damage” that this person aludes to” and indeed some people in the comments had the same idea and, unfortunately for him, he tried it:
So, he is not a pitch/tone corrector himself, so is it really an issue or is he just looking at lines as well and goes “look at the straightened lines!” for content?
The artists which he says are “obviously pitch corrected” are usually lacking in talent (e.g. some obvious pop artists or rappers), but who cares about those, right?
So, I went to check about the music I care about.
Here is one of my favorite vocal tracks of all time ( after all, it is a song so hard that even the band who wrote it couldn’t replicate it live and they had to cut corners in the few times they attempted it 
), in its original from 1991 when this technology was not really ripe yet (ironically the song is about the negative changes coming, but hey):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjALaiew_9g
And this is the 2016 remastered edition for the 25th anniversary of that album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPYGiPXTg4A
The only changes I can hear are some tampering with the sound levels of each track and rebalancing a bit what is more prominent in each part of the song, but no audible changes have happened on the vocals themselves (maybe some fiddling went on with the instruments, but not the voice) and I realised that this fellow is correct in his assessment that noone in that profession that is in their right minds would process the voice of Judy Garland, to the point of actually altering it.
And that applies for all the other great voices in the trade, regardless of whether people like their music or not. Who would take the aforementioned performance by Cornell and say “yeah, you know what this needs? Me, to fix it!” 
On the other hand the bands with mediocre vocalists that I enjoy, do not even bother correcting their sound and vocals, because that is part of the appeal and because they didn’t have the money to do it, even if they wanted to, and thus it is no problem.
So, it seems to me that the vocals I enjoy are quite safe from this plague. The creations of lesser talents for “the top hits” and mass production might be heavily corrected and autotuned, but I am fine with that because I do not listen to it.
Thank you for posting this @Conrad_Melville I had quite a nice time thinking about all this 
Not true. You do him an injustice, I think. This guy is sincere and really knows his beans on the subject. For example, he did this video earlier, where he gives a great explanation of vocal technicalities without the pitch analysis software.
Originally, I considered posting this one first, but decided it was too much, so I started with the pitch analysis of Patsy Cline’ s “I Fall to Pieces,” which unaccountably got no likes. (Perhaps no one heard it because it was quickly posted over.) I chose that because the pitch analysis is a good, concrete way of documenting what is being said, which might otherwise be considered just opinion.
Not true. It’s pretty clear that he wasn’t familiar with the performance, so he said it was “unlikely to be so” because she had great pitch accuracy. In other words, answering based on general principles. He didn’t say, “No, I don’t hear it.” There is no evidence that he needed the computer’s help. Your use of “admits” is highly slanted and pejorative, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt since you are not a native speaker.
Yes, he was a bit surprised because the situation is even worse than he expected. He was surprised because the idea of pitch correcting someone who doesn’t need it was outlandish even for a critic of the practice like him.
I don’t get this comment at all. He gave a good demonstration of the other, more advanced, vocal-editing software, and concluded with a kind of ‘Look out, you ain’t seen nothing yet!’
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I’m not a fan of the 12 steps scale in itself.
Recently I’m trying to understand a little about middle East microtonality, which slightly deviates from just splitting the semitone in half (I take the baglama frets as my guide) and I really struggle to perceive it distinctly.
But I have examples of musicians which master not just the half semitone but also the nuances of flat and sharp from different areas (oud for guitarists youtube channel has a specific video on that subject).
All above is just to say that a trained ear can definitely detect these nuances, while a not trained ear such as mine could easily be confused.
That said, though, I think that if 12edo was enough for Bach and Mozart, maybe I can feel a little relieved. 
Now I get back practicing the Rast scale and trying to master the differences from the major scale.
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Neither used 12-edo
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I am happy to change that to “mentions”, since that’s what I mostly had in mind by putting the timestamp
Well, since you mentioned it...
Many years ago I was listening to a small skit from a rare local artist (he had live shows where he was a singer, composer, stand-up comedian and satyrical/political commentator at the same time - surprisingly gifted on all four categories) and while mentioning something about classical music, for a skit, he said something along the lines “I went and bought everything from that composer and spent a whole month studying and listening to it, because in order to judge something, you have to have thorough knowledge of it.”
And while it is a very obvious comment, it hit me, because it is among the things that I believe that a lot of us subconsciously think, but it is rarely put in words, thus we tend to forget that idea.
In that regard it struck me as very odd to create said content, but not owning the software that does this process (he acquired it for that specific video) and his attempt at using it was so obviously botched, since Judy Garland sounded very bad in that result he presented. So, he is judging the results by looking at the post-processing lines, but he doesn’t really know what the software can do and how. Whether it is an automated or an artistic process itself (many band re-issue albums like the example I mentioned earlier, since the might have not been happy with the result at the time. An example where such a thing definitely happened was 1988 Candlemass’ Album “Ancient Dreams”) which he criticizes for content, without having tried it himself, thus lacking the deep knowledge needed to do more than comment on the end result.
Something that is missing from all this is the following:
A relative of mine dabbles a bit in singing. He knows almost nothing about music (barely knows the notes), but he had a humoristic band when he was in college, along with a friend of his where they made covers of song (think something like Weird Al Yankovic, but on a totally amateur level). He doesn’t do much anymore but sometimes when he is bored he looks into things and scratches that creative itch, makes something, and sends the result to friends and relatives.
All he did was use demo/shareware/freeware copies of music generating, pitch/tone correcting, soundboard software and a simple computer microphone. To top it off, he is very lazy with such things, so he just put in the most default settings, fiddled with them for a few minutes and BAM his voice was like a pro singer (he has an ok voice, but not THAT good). Last time he sent me vocals was years pre-Covid and he didn’t even use the “top notch” new programs even at the time.
So, a total lazy amateur devoid of music knowledge, with mediocre/outdated software, a decade ago (so, pre-AI corrections) correct his “ok voice” to “pro level” with no cost and minimum effort, but a person that is in the loop, knows music and just used the newest software, managed to make Judy Garland sound like a claxon. That sounds highly unlikely.
Also, what he showed with the flattening of that vibrato, I kind of remember that feature existing in GoldWave Shareware edition, 25+ years ago, on a 486DX computer.
Thus, I don’t really buy this, which is why I said “unfortunately”. He oversold the narrative and it fell flat imho. I could be wrong, of course, but that was my understanding of the situation at the time.
Update/A bit of extra info right now:
On the things that interest me, I like to test things out myself. So, since you piqued my interest I just looked for similar online free tools, found one called “SoundTrap” and went to test it, by singing a part of “Steel Rain” by Cornell ( for my own satisfaction, I had recorded a small cover of that a couple of weeks ago, for the anniversary of his death, so I remembered the lyrics). You have to upgrade to apply the autotune effect, however the preview tool plays the result, so you can listen to the result for free.
I do not know the music notes in A-B-C form, nor have any formal education in scales, so I just left things as they were in terms of scales and stuff, but just clicked on the Subtle, Light, Medium, Heavy buttons to see the differences. Here is what happened:
Subtle: Smoothed out some parts of my voice, but only I could tell the difference.
Light: Things here and there started to sound differently that what I actually sung.
Medium: Maybe the choices of scale where wrong, but it was starting to sound funny and corrected notes on a totally wrong basis
Heavy: Objectively funny.
Thus, having heard and tested the results myself, I could tell that what that fellow did to generate the result of Judy Garland’s voice is take a preset analogous to something between “medium” and “heavy” of the tool I found online (probably on the heavy end - garbling my mediocre voice might be done on medium, but heavier settings were probably used to wreck an amazing voice like Garland’s, but that’s my hunch) , hit “autotune”, deliberately created something shockingly funny and then went on to create his content based on this. Considering that “subtle” and “light” results were “ok-ish” and definitely not good for content since they didn’t create an audibly funny/shocking result, I find the choice and whole endeavor a bit disingenious.
On something different:
It was not a video made about Go, but something that is also notoriously difficult to master (Dark Souls games) and I think that this advice and skit - just like Go - applies to life as a whole. Very well written and acted.
Ok, now I understand that “well tempered” does not mean “equally tempered”. I was confusing them.
But I didn’t think you were talking about that when saying:
I thought you were talking about completely different scales, with not comparable intervals.
Back to my post: if I struggle with half semitones I really can’t fight against differently tempered (12 semitones) scales, where the difference in tuning is even more subtle.
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I was only listing edos there, specifically some of the more popular prime edos
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I have an Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher in my kitchen. It is quite convenient sometimes.
I don’t use it regularly, but it works. It was a gift from good friends, go-players too.
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Tony, from Every Frame A Painting, just posted for the first time in 7 years! All of his videos are absolute gold, and well worth multiple watches 
How to advertise a small place. I find it very telling/interesting that someone that moved here from abroad can actually do this better than we can.
The relevance with Go, imho, is this. Maybe instead of some more “Go content” (which already demands from the viewer to have some intrinsic interest and knowledge of Go) we need some “why Go?” content (which will be more general and humane, thus have better outreach)?
I have been a fan of Dylan Thomas since eighth grade, when we were introduced to him through his most famous poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” Although not as famous, the poem in this video is one of his best, his powerful artistic credo. I especially admire its decided and uncompromising tone.
Once in my younger days I worked for an art museum that had a show featuring comic book artists. I was lucky enough to be given the responsibility of hanging original drawings by Crumb. My favorites by far were his portraits of famous blues artists from his book on the subject. I learned a lot about the origins of the blues. Amazing book for blues lovers.
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