Did You Know That You Can Change A Bed With Someone In It?

Did you know that you can change a bed with someone in it? Did you know that you can change a bed with a six-foot, two-inch, two-hundred pound man in it? Did you know you can change a bed with your hero in it? Did you know that you can change a bed with all of the strength that allowed you to develop all of your own signature softness in it? Well, you can. First, wash your hands and put on gloves, for your protection and for that rare opportunity to offer protection to the one who took it out on the first few bullies who tried to leverage your oddness so that it rarely happened again. Then, you’d ordinarily explain to the one who taught you how to ski what you were about to do, if he hadn’t slipped into an intermittent unconsciousness, a next loss that followed continence, speech, mobility, memory and a genius that twin tumors ravaged inside of his spectacular mind. If he’s not awake, and you can’t tell your boyhood’s whole world how you remember how he pushed those guys out of the way in the tunnel collapse at Seabrook nuclear station, and you can’t tell him you didn’t think it was fair for him not to be saved, especially in light of that, well, then you roll him onto his side, and beginning at the opposite side of the bed, remove the tucked-in sheet and roll it in the direction of Mike, or whoever is shredding your heart on this terrible day. Next, roll a clean sheet out toward the boy who beat you in chess your first dozen times playing him and then when you finally won, reached across and shook your hand with a look that told you to have confidence in your mind, a look of assurance that told you there would be a lot of things coming your way that you would be good at, whatever the struggles, and whatever it might be that the rest of the world wouldn’t understand. Then, you roll all of that strength without glower and brilliance without condescension over onto his back first, and then onto his other side and onto the clean sheet. If your brother was as beloved as mine, you have a helper, and as you are rolling out the clean sheet, she is pulling back on the old sheet—and the helpers are always “she” in this kind of delicacy, in this kind of intimacy, aren’t they? Yes. They are. Pull the fresh sheet taut, to his standards in living, so there are no bumps not smoothed, no errancies not reckoned with, no problems not solved, no truths not faced, and secure them as he did his children, his wife, and his mother, sister and brothers, only with what they call hospital corners instead of the lifetime of deep knowledge combined with Yankee work ethic that provided an earthly tethering to serve as crucible for his unending love. Never forget to change the pillowcase where he shall rest his head. Cover him. Remove your gloves and wash your hands. Then cry. It's that easy.

My brother and me.

A brief history of Autotune

          By now, most people are familiar with the audio software application Autotune. Autotune is a pitch correction device used in vocal processing that was developed by Andy Hildebrand of Exxon, originally intended to manipulate sound waves for locating offshore oil reserves as well as for detecting earthquakes before they fully manifest. It was subsequently used by recording studios to correct vocal pitches on jingles, movies and other studio projects, and was a godsend for producers in session with artists whose material, persona and timbre of voice were enough to sell records, while their strict technical ability as vocalists was in some degree lacking. Techniques for achieving this same result previously existed in tape studios, but they were cumbersome and rarely used.

           The initial mission for Autotune was to keep the pitch adjustments as transparent as possible. Even when adjusting pitches in increments far less than a half-step, there are variations in formants and harmonic overtones that without compensation are noticeable to even an untrained ear and glaring to a professional or aficionado. Unsophisticated coding within software of this type can lend elevated pitches an “Alvin and the Chipmunks” kind of effect, and lowered pitches a mouthful-of-marbles kind of articulation. The true grace of Autotune’s coding was its sensitivity to the harmonic structure of pitches and the natural changes in formants that present themselves with pitch correction.

                The reasons for its immediate commercial success are obvious. Imagine an advertising executive booking a jingle singer and a producer for a TV commercial and neither of them are 100% that evening. The singer has already gone home with his check but a later playback reveals a pitch problem on one of the words. What used to be a disaster suddenly became easily manageable.

                Then came the inevitable experimentation and creative mangling of the initial purpose of the software by creative artists, as is the way with all new tools in music. Dance records in the late nineties used it on lead vocal tracks and it became a well-known club sound in England and the US. The first mass popularization of the unabashed use of Autotune on a lead vocal was Cher’s number one Billboard hit, Believe, in 1998.

                Listener or professional music-maker, everyone interested in sound all of a sudden asked themselves two questions: “What the hell was that?” and “Why am I listening to a Cher record?” Believe became Cher’s biggest hit ever, leaving Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, Half-Breed and other racially tone-deaf anthems in its unwavering pitch and sales wake. Whatever its artistic merit, Believe featured a lead vocal sound millions of Americans had never heard before and they loved it. After the Cher phenomena, Autotune use, with its signature audible click as it releases one pitch and jumps to another, was soon ubiquitous on the radio. Artists emerged whose every vocal take was processed using Autotune, notably T Pain, who scored the ultimate pitch-correcting triumph in his use of Autotune often being referred to as “The T Pain Effect.”

                Autotune is by no means the only pitch correction game in town. Melodyne aims itself pointedly toward the market that serviced the initial use of Autotune, to correct pitches with utter transparency rather than to use it to obvious effect on a lead vocal. Melodyne introduced a radical component to its software suite a few years ago called Direct Note Access or DNA, which lets you isolate individual pitches within a polyphonic performance and manipulate its attributes without affecting other notes in the chord. That is to say, if you are recording a barbershop quartet on a single microphone and you get a fantastic performance, save for Uncle Floyd’s one flat note in the last verse, DNA can isolate old Floyd’s baritone clam and bring it into pitch. It’s on the other three to pull him aside and tell him he’s keeping a secret from no one. Synthesizer giant Roland has developed an effective pitch correction software plug-in called V-Vocal that ships with its Cakewalk Sonar audio suite. It is easy to use and operates seamlessly within the parent software. Another big player is Waves, whose Tune correction software is in use in many major studios.

                After all of the hit songs with pitch-corrected vocals came the inevitable parodies and comedy applications, most notably the "Autotune the News" team who scored a major hit Autotuning Antoine Dodson’s notorious rant on Huntsville, Alabama television following an assault attempt on his sister. It’s amazing what passes for comedy, but that’s for another essay. Somehow though, Katie Couric reading national news in a pop/R&B vocal melody on top of what sounds like a Mariah Carey rhythm bed is pretty irresistible.

                Pitch correction as a blatant vocal effect is still popular in commercial music production but seems on the wane. Pitch correction as an editing tool, however, has cemented itself forever as an essential arrow in the music producer’s quiver. It opens worlds for artists, which is precisely what music technology tools are supposed to do.

A first visit to the Western Wall

Last week, my wife and I were in Jerusalem, me for my first time, and though somewhere between non-believer and scoffer, I sense and celebrate the power of places, history, and the meaning of human striving. In those categories and in the category that continues to elude me (for surely the loser in this lack of connection is not God), Jerusalem’s Western Wall is among the world’s most sacred places.

I remember images of the wall on television as a child growing up in a small Vermont town. For us, ethnicity was Irish or everything else and creed was either Catholic or not, and I remember thinking it odd, this dress, this sobbing, this utter sense of transportation they were experiencing (perfectly unperturbed as I recall with the cardinals' sea of little red hats). Mine was the kind of narrow outlook travel is unparalleled at befuddling.

Though not part of my religious education and family traditions, I intended to participate fully in my first visit to this venerated place, so I parted from my wife (the male and female areas of the Western Wall are separated) and entered the courtyard. Debra told me I needed to cover my head to approach the wall, and I assumed I would be spotted and provided a yarmulke. Invoking the absent-minded-professor component of my personality, I walked directly past a repository of gratis yarmulkes and waited.

Debra observed all of this and corralled a stranger to bring one of the yarmulkes down to where I was standing. Once fitted, I drew a deep breath and began my approach. There was an open space at the extreme right side of the wall, and I angled my direction toward it. Orthodox Jews in black Borsalinos and knee-length greatcoats, and Chassidics in shtreimels lined the wall, all whispering prayers and schuckling back and forth, flames seeking to loose the grip of the wick. 

With each step closer, the gravitas of where I was, the meaning and history of the place began to envelop me. The lash of the pharaoh, the wheels of Rome’s chariots, the swords of The Crusades, the pogroms of 19^th century Russia, Eichmann, Hitler, all of it, ALL OF IT, was right here, in the living rock. I noticed for the first time as I got closer thousands of pieces of paper, notes of prayer and devotion to a God that had only this past century begun once again to fulfill his promise and coalesce the global diaspora. This two-thousand year old explosion of imagination, talent, comedy, tragedy and humanity across the world and at the same time away from itself has made Moses’ forty-year wanderings a blink by comparison. And there they were, the dreams and griefs of that past year or that whole lifetime, summarized in scribbled sentences and stuffed into the wall. I lay my hands on the smooth limestone, and feeling a sudden deep, low vibration, I fell into a meditation over a tragic loss my family had undergone in the past year, over the scarring my father’s early death had caused since my boyhood, and of a personal woe I learned of just a few days before.

This juddering pulse arced into my hands and through my body, and found its ground through the bottoms of my feet and onto the stone plaza, dolomite and limestone slabs mined from ancient Israel’s begrudging bosom, foundation to this last remaining vestige against Rome’s conquest. I retreated as a pilgrim to the wall ought to, humbled, reverent and changed. So was God trying to make a deal after all? I still don’t think so. But it is a place that can be represented by no image, described by no words, and for me adds to a long list of reasons for wonder.