Synthetic Sounds in Music

Listening to Pete Drake this week after listening on a podcast about his hand in the Nashville A-Team. He has this ethereal song called "Forever." I learned his lap steel was already sought after in many popular albums and tunes including "All Things Must Pass" by George Harrison. He was not the first to use the talk box (my buddy reminded me of bandleader Alvino Rey's comical use of it) but I found it was the first that really spoke to me with it's emotion. He sang with his "singing steel" effected through the talk box. I had grown to love the instrument as a teenager through Roger Troutman's use of it on 2 Pac and Dr. Dre's "California Love" and then with much hip hop I would backtrace the samples and the homage and respect hip hop would give to soul and funk superstars. Then came the amazing effected harmonica of "Doo Wah Ditty." That had been a song I'd first heard through Paperboy's cover/sample. The harmonies on the bridge in that song are heavenly, I have to get everyone to shut up on the bridge. But the harmonica!!! I'd never heard it like that!

As I discovered how much Stevie had been covered by all my favorite 90s R&B from Jodeci to Blackstreet I soon discovered that Mr. Stevland Hardaway Judkins was the best love songwriter of all time. His golden era starting with Music of My Mind was loaded with the new TONTO synthesizer, the biggest of all time. Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff were the best collaborators in creating Stevie's definitive sound. Stevie had listened to their Tonto's Expanding Head Band. Stevie was about to "expand everyone's heads" with this new sound. He started to use ARP and Moog on everthing. Now when we hear everything from "Superwoman" and "Evil" to my favorites "You and I" and "Maybe Your Baby" and ALL the funky clavinet on Talking Book to "Living for the City" and "Golden Lady" to "Boogie on Reggae Woman" "They Won't Go When I Go" to the Magnum Opus in hit after hit after hit after hit on Songs in the Key of Life, as many ballads as jams, "Contusion" being the best, he used to open shows with the Stones with that one.
In his ballads he would use synth like a violin and you could really feel his love! I will always cry at the sound overlaying the gorgeous piano progression swelling in "You and I" as Stevie's love songs were known to do. The synthesized sounds around the clavinet bouncing around on "Superstition" and "Maybe Your Baby" amp up the feeling of any party. The feeling is so powerful.
When one thinks of autotune you might think of Cher or T-Pain but it was often used to correct out of tune singing, something I'm not a huge fan of. In choir I learned that It takes a lot of work to stay on pitch as a singer especially when you're belting high volumes. It's a thing of beauty to see and hear a voice produce a sound that can carry like that. The diaphragm, lungs and voice and headspace working "in concert" -pardon the pun - to express pitch and tone as a pipe would. With the autotune of the 2000s like the turntable being repurposed in the 70s with Theodore and Flash, the idea to use autotune and vocoder to create something new rather than "correct" a sound, was creativity!! While Cher was doing "Believe" Air was breaking ground with "Sexy Boy" and Daft Punk was making their way "Around the World" with affected voice. So many great electronic groups had been experimenting in this way. Kanye West who had used Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" which in turn had used 70s funk artist Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby." As Kanye's sound developed and he looked to house and techno and a much more electronic sound for musical expression Autotune had mainstreamed. Then he made 808s and Heartbreaks. He had just lost his mother as well as his long term girlfriend and like synthesizers had been used in soul in the 70s, he used autotune to convey that emotion. I'll be honest, I didn't take to the album at first, but like many great leaps in album concepts (Sgt. Peppers, Dark Side of the Moon, Fear of Music, 3 Feet High in Rising, Odelay, Kid A) the impression is felt long after the masterpiece is completed. As mainstream music using autotune moved around it, 808s stuck out. Some radio singles, sure, but so much emotion through electronic sound. So much vitality, so many ways to feel and be felt.