I’m a screenwriter, not a musician, but I thought he was sounding low energy or depressed to suit the message or character of the song. If that is flat, it was appropriate. His demeanor and minimal movement of his face and enunciation is what makes this delivery so fascinating and it suits the song.
I'm in Melbourne Australia. Around 2006, a colleague who was a massive music fan handed me a bootleg CD of a local artist and said, "Have a listen to this guy. He's gonna be huge!" I'd never heard of him. Sure enough, Wally/Gotye became pretty bloody famous. To think, 'I knew him when ... ' 😊
I was over from UK 2011 and heard this song, I managed to find it, and started playing it at gigs in UK, think was about a year till it was in the charts here, But when I was down under before I knew the name of it, I was asking, what's the baa baa black sheep song? Listen to the start of it. 😂
This is a great song where Gotye doesn't use autotune on his voice but purposely uses it on Kimbra's to add artistic drama. Thank you, Fil, for the interesting analysis.
17:31 The song is a discord between the male and female voices... AND they placed a reinforcing discord between the bass and guitar: the bass is "male voice" reinforcing, while the guitar is "female voice" reinforcing. What an interesting way to itterate the strife between the male and female.
I love your detective work on these analyses Fil. I also like hearing about your thought processes as you go about figuring things out. Well done, and thanks for the fix also. Congrats on 317k!
I can't tell you just how much fun I've had with "Somebody". Most of the music I end up loving has been stuff that I've grown into but STIUTK hit me straight between the ears immediately and, unlike most stuff that gets me at the first listen, it has stayed and grown and grown. I'm obviously in good company because the video on YT has now been seen over 2.6 BILLION times! My daughter and I always used to sing in the car when I was driving her home and we loved singing the parts of STIUTK to each other and the memory of that will stay with me forever! STIUTK is from his second album recorded as Gotye, "Making Mirrors" which had been preceded by "Like Drawing Blood" and both are really strong albums. Kimbra was 19 when STIUTK came out and she also had a strong body of work for such a young singer. Your analysis of the artistic use of pitch correction on her part is probably spot on because when you listen to some of music she had made or covered up till then, particularly Nina Simone's "Three Gold Rings", it becomes obvious that pitch isn't a problem for her! STIUTK turned out to have been a Pandoras Box of masses of great music for me and for Gotye and Kimbra it afforded them the security to pursue their own musical directions. Legends!
One other theory on the Kimbre vocals I just thought up is that maybe she was getting paid hourly for the session and didn't have time to get all the vocals to the level they'd like so they pitch corrected a few notes to clean up the takes they had. On the Wiki it says he was struggling to find a female vocalist for the track and apparently had his girl friend record the it as well but he mix engineer thought it'd better to use Kimbre's vocals. Also it's possible the instrumentation wasn't entirely complete when the vocals were tracked so adjustments were required later to improve the intonation.
Thank you Fil, your analysis videos are like attending a class at a music conservatory. Thank you so much for taking the time to do all that you do and especially in this video. God bless you and your family. Stay well stay safe.
Wow, Fil! You have a breadth of music knowledge. So happy that you have chosen to share it! I look forward to your videos and always get a little boost when I see you’ve uploaded another!!! Sincerely appreciate you!
"On the agenda tonight we're going to be taking a look at somebody that I used to know" At first I thought you meant that you, Fil, used to know Gotye, then realized my mistake. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I was not familiar with him. So I looked him up so I could understand your in-depth analysis. I love this wonderful song and found his career fascinating. Thanks, Fil!
Hi Fil ! You did it again. Perfect explanation of a difficult subject. You made it easy to understand why somethings are deliberately auto tuned and why somethings are deliberately flat or sharp. I was trombone player once upon a time and my music teacher was pitch perfect and demanded perfection from us. He was also a very excitable person. (In other words, he would scream at us if mistakes were made. He could've put my Drill Sgt. to shame. I would've stuck with it if I had someone like you as my teacher. Too bad we are about 40 years apart, I could've moved to England and taken lessons from you. You make everything that I once heard but didn't understand, understandable. It's never too late. Thanks Fil.
Another theory for the artistic use of pitch correction on Kimbra’s vocals may be that it is meant to indicate Kimbra is somewhere else, perhaps singing via a telephone line. A conversation that quickly devolves into a quarrel. - This is an awesome analysis, WoP.
You don’t need to “warn” us Fil-I love the fact that you take the time to EXPLAIN the technicalities of the whole business of “fudging-up” music these days. I’m a child of the 60’s and 70’s. I’ve never heard of this person before. I tuned-in to hear your breakdown. Your analysis is always fascinating to me! Thank you for all your work. I hope musicians will take a stand and start refusing to participate in all this “artistic fakery!” ❤👍🏼
This was a great breakdown 😌 Gotye is a supremely talented musician and it kinda saddens me that people will think of him as a one hit wonder sort of deal 😌 listen to Out Here In The Cold, it's made entirely from samples and it's wonderful ❤
He’s only a one-hit-wonder if he can’t produce more. He could choose to work with a popular music producer to work on creating a string of hits. It’s really up to Gotye. The first one is usually easy. Those that follow take effort.
Hi Fil, Well done analysis and explanation on this song. I always liked this song and I think it’s because of it’s somewhat unusual arrangement/sound. Here he is using autotune as an artistic endeavor to compliment the song/lyrics. Cool song and fabulous breakdown of all the technical elements of the song. Awesome job! Debbie ☮️
I studied the piano classically for many years, performed in public and did exams at the Conservatorium. I love this song and have never thought it was auto tuned. But even with what I learnt, my ear is nowhere near as good as yours, and your knowledge overloads my brain. This was fascinating and I’m so glad my ear was actually right, which isn’t always the case 😊 Great video Fil.
Good to see your analysis and that maybe some pitch correction has been used for artistic reason. Gotye and Kimbra were able to come very close to the studio version when singing live.
Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen! I also agree that the judicious use of pitch correction & auto-tune can be cool if it serves the song. Nine Inch Nails without the industrial-ness of the sound? nope.
Thanks for another great and illuminating video. So good that you dig deep, and objectively look at the production, and can be positive about the pitch correction as an artistic choice (and used in moderation!!) while ripping apart the people that desecrate decent music. I love this tune, but can look at it on another level now. Will have to get the CD out again lol Keep going, you're in the right, and hoping that REAL music wins (although AI brings another fake dimension into the mix.....)
Thanks for looking at this closer. Wally is very authentic and choices made for the songs were all very intentional. At least in his first EP "Stoneface" and "Like Drawing Blood" his debut (those were the ones I saw him creating). So thanks for defending his integrity.
Even though its stopping and starting, listening to the isolated vocals is life-giving to me. The discord makes my brain and nose tingle in a good way.
Fascinating, Fil. A friend of mine and I have a lot of discussions about music. She tends to like a lot of autotune, pitch correction, and particularly vocal effects being applied, such as vocoder for example. I tend more like you in that I prefer vocals be left to be in their natural state. For me, it's because I love hearing the expression, emotions, feelings of the singer as it just lends more to the song (if the artist/s are talented singers and musicians and the band are accomplished of course). She insists that she likes all of these effects when they are 'artistically done'. What does that really mean, though? That's another subjective measure. Your analysis of this song is a perfect example of that very thing my friend says she likes. However, she has shown me songs by artists I haven't heard before, and while I listen I like the melody, instrumentals, and then I hear vocals that sound like 50 other artists and am turned off. When I tell her I liked the song up until I heard the vocals, she counters with the fact that I like Cher's song Believe and I love ELO and they used loads of effects. I tell her that with the Cher song, I can still tell it's Cher singing and the effects were a novelty at the time making it interesting. With ELO, I can still tell it's Jeff Lynne singing and his placement of effects is sparing and works for the song (as you mentioned happens here with Gotye and Kimbra). When it's used 'artistically' as she says to the point it's all effects in most songs (with one of her favorites, Darren Hayes) or with the countless other bands whose singers all wind up sounding the same, it's a turn off for me. The other day we hashed these things out, and she asked me about distortion, and I knew the question was coming Hah! I was able to tell her something you discussed in that that is an *effect* whereas the things she likes so much are completely taking away what exists and replacing it with something that didn't before. She said 'Oh, that's where you draw the line'. Well, yes! I wished that everyone would draw that line! Your short discussion of bass made me think about an effect listening to a lot of Power Pop can have (such as Big Star, Badfinger, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, Raspberries, and probably even newer power pop such as Hurry - which I highly recommend btw if you like any PP at all) without a break or with something else in between for a lot of people: listening fatigue of sorts because it's all so treble forward. I adore Power Pop and can listen for long periods without that fatigue, and oddly enough, I also tend to be quite drawn to very bass-prominent songs. That very topic may be one you'd like to educate people on one of these days. I would love to know why it is that people do become listening-fatigued at too much treble forward or heavy music like that! Sorry for such a long response, Fil. I've just got to ask my friend what she thinks of this song!
At the beginning, I had no idea who this was and the song, till 8:44 mins into the song. Then I went to the link sure enough I knew both only not what Gotye looked like. Due to knowing the song and like it very much saying it was auto tune from people confused me. I do not listen to songs much anymore only I have heard this song enough to know it in seconds I thought this song was before all this auto tune, pitch correction had started. Looking up the song finding it was out in 2011 was a huge shock. Thanks, Fil, for another great video and the amount of time you do these for us. I really appreciate the time you take not knowing where you find the time unless you can make time stop in doing so.
I don’t entirely buy your justification. The idea of making the female vocal sound “Robotic” or lacking in humanity is completely at odds with the whole intent of the lyric. She’s the apparent villain of the first two verses, yes, because we are only seeing her from his point of view. She’s not really a person yet. She’s just something bad that happened to him. But the third verse - the one where we hear her voice - flips that on its head. We learn that the situation was not as simple as we’d thought, and that we’d been hearing from a self-serving and unreliable narrator, who as it turns out was no angel himself. It’s very much NOT his conception of her that we’re hearing from at that point, it’s the real person whose voice had hitherto been elided. So it makes no sense whatsoever for the production to consciously “dehumanise” her at that point. There is of course a much simpler explanation: Kimbra hit some bum notes that needed to be fixed, and Gotye didn’t. That shouldn’t be surprising. Firstly, Gotye is a remarkably accurate singer, pitch-wise. But more importantly, the circumstances in which the two vocals were recorded were entirely different, and in a way that advantaged Gotye. The song was recorded in his own home studio, where he was working entirely alone. He was in an environment entirely free of the sort of stress that normally plagues a vocalist standing in a vocal booth, watching the faces of a producer and engineer sitting in the control room, and being keenly aware that they are burning money and wasting everyone’s time when they fail to nail a take - which ironically makes them much more likely to do so. Gotye had the luxury of taking as many months to construct this track as he liked, free of those pressures. He could, if he wanted, record hundreds of takes of his vocal until he got one he liked, or could construct a composite vocal from the best parts of each. To do so wasted nobody’s time but his own. Kimbra, on the other hand, was a guest in somebody else’s studio, with the attendant pressure that inevitably brings. She probably only had that one session to get it down. In addition, Gotye almost certainly would not have felt comfortable nitpicking her performance as much as he would his own, especially with the knowledge that he could, if need be, fix any little pitch discrepancies after.
How do you make her “villain” sounding then? Also a lot of time, to deal with pains, ppl dehumanised the other party, hence robotic voicing/elements are attached. So WoP is right there that it’s a deliberate and artistic choice. Also your interpretation of how she’s not yet formed as a person and goyte isn’t an angel is rather inexperienced. Any sane person that has gone through a breakup would partially blame himself. So this voice of her singing is his other inner thoughts that would pop up whenever he thinks she’s heartless, “but are you an angel that she must stay with you?”. That’s how I would interpret Kimbra’s role here. She’s not there to explain herself to the audiences, rather she’s his inner conflicts. He hates her, but not 100% as he feels it’s partly his faults. If you want to say that Kimbra couldn’t sing that Goyte needs to fix her voice and her voice alone, and when she heard this, she could be very much offended by that. 12 years on, and we didn’t see kimbra says anything bad about this “fixing” of her vocal part means she knows why it’s done this way.
@@appleish5043 Maybe that made some kind of sense in your head. But I’m way too tired to try to decipher that gobbledygook word-salad. If you want to continue to delude yourself that digital pitch-correction is being used here for anything more profound than precisely what it says on the tin, and are capable of the mental gymnastics necessary to convince yourself of it, be my guest. There’s nothing more I can add to convince you otherwise.
This explanation is bang on imo...so has Gotye has professional singing lessons/ voice coaching over the years ? Thanks in advance. Peace from Radelaide 🇦🇺
Hi, Fil! I was totally fascinated by this analysis - and your explanations of how it was probably produced! I've always been fascinated by the song "Lovefool" by The Cardigans - I'd be curious to hear/watch you analyze that one, as I absolutely love the production on that song. There's a perfection in it that I just can't explain - but I bet you could!
@@cindi1313 True. Plus it shows how most breakups are painful/both parties have different perspectives. I think many of us have had these experiences unfortunately 😑
I think that I heard this song every day for like 6 or 8 months when it came out in 2012 whether it was from a passing car or in a store or wherever and it grew on me. I did like the music when I 1st heard it and grew to like the lyrics. 👍👍
Bruh Fil, the internet is trolling you, give it up, you'll never win. I always had this gut feeling when I listened to it that by making the girl's part auto tuned, she has a perfect detached less emotional sound compared to his more emotional side.
Or it is just based on how small local artists often times collaborate... maybe he just sent her the reference track and she sent him back the vocals for final mix and she had already added the pitch correction.
I hope you don't mind my mentioning this, but I never thought I'd heard you say, "an artistic use of auto tune and/or pitch correction" regarding its being applied to Kimbra's voice. I appreciated how you explained its artistic purposes with regards to the storytelling qualities. Thanks for providing an interesting and thorough analysis, Fil.
Oh darn, we had a great debate going under the original version. But anyway, I like that you call us ignorant dogs. It reminds me of SNL when Chevy Chase said to Jane Curtain, "Jane you ignorant sl*t . 😮
A great example of the tuning phenomenon that Phil describes in this video can be heard in Starship Trooper on the original recording of The Yes Album (1971). Great stuff there, too!
Fil - Absolutely LOVE your analysis of songs! Any chance you could do one on Joe Jackson? Maybe "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" I had an instructor (at a music school) talk about how Joe "really can't sing". If that's the case, why is it not only me who has been a fan for decades? Thank you! Cheers!
I can see how the doubling could be confused for autotune. Her vocal sounds like it almost has a fuzzy bass guitar effect on it. Almost an overdrive. I'm not really a pop guy, but this song is pretty brilliant.
For fun, have a look at a cover of this song done by a Canadian group, Walk Off The Earth... I think the video is what first got them noticed. Not only do they do a great job of it, but all the group are playing the same guitar at the same time 😊
Great song, an amazing artist. I really loved Making Mirrors. It's an interesting album. Eyes Wide Open is a great song too, but he is using an echo effect. Another one I love is called Hearts A Mess from the album Like Drawing Blood.
Possibly, it is a similar sense you get when a singers voice is doubled by the guitar frequency and it sounds like though voice is manipulated. Brad Delph's high (G5?) on More Than A Feeling sounds like studio trickery until it is isolated. Although, like you said, Gotye actually voice doubles some of his lyrics. Also, when guys belt a note in the countertenor range in falsetto, it seems like there are natural harmonics for some physical reason, because some very few guys can have mixed voice in countertenor and belt it.
"...artistic use of auto tune." I truly appreciate your analytical/critical thinking skills. I feel like I'm in a college Literature or History class again with the deep thoughts, and love it! Your knowledge/open-mindedness (and ears) is invaluable. And I love your t-shirt. Goonies never say die! 😉
I love this song and after watching this, looked up the history of the song. Did not even know how popular it was on billboard chart (#1) etc. What really made an impact on me was that he was the second Belgian born artist to be number one after The Singing Nun in 1963 (before the Beatles came to the USA!). I remember that song too! These two songs are famous for their extreme individuality! I have not forgotten the Nun’s words or music even though the words were in French! Haha. Thanks so much, I truly appreciate this analysis!
Hey Fil! Eric Clapton recently uploaded a live Orchestral version of Layla and it sounds like it's got AutoTune to clean up some spots, but it's hard to tell. I think it'd make a good video plus selfishly, I'd like to know the answer!
Good analysis! While autotune etc can drive me wild, this shows how it can be used as an effect (as opposed to making someone who can't sing - sing). Your explanations are so clear that I've been able to spot other channels getting it wrong when they claim artists are being pitch corrected or autotuned.
I know nothing about music theory but I think I actually understood what you were saying - amazing! Maybe humans just know what feels good or sounds good, for some reason without having to know exactly why.
Intersting analysis! Speaking about Autotune beeing artistically used I think that's how Autotune was mainly used at the beginning even tho it was meant to be used to "correct out of tune" singers/instruments. I think Cher was one of the first popular singers that used it in an absolutely famous and definitely artistic way to creat an effect on her voice. But I don't know when musicians and/or producers finally started to use it in it's "intended" way excessively?
Isn't it possible that pitch correction was used for just a couple of notes? I know some mix engineers take a less is more approach to pitch correction. They're only going to correct stuff that's bothering them. For example, there was that D3 that was directly on the note. You said it sounded processed. Maybe that one note was a little too flat for the mix engineer's tastes? This is a pretty common approach, in my experience.
To be clear, pitch correcting a note here or there is fine, imo. This is how pitch correction SHOULD be used. To take an otherwise good performance and fix a couple minor problems.
I always remember what Matty Healy of The 1975 said about this song. He said he's thankful he'll never write a song as great as this one. There's nowhere to go once you write such a masterpiece.
Gotye’s entire catalog is pretty great and this isn’t even his best song. He’s far from a one-hit wonder, more a musician who doesn’t want to play the commercial game. He creates music with The Basics in AUS.
@@merkinidgit"Far from a one-hit wonder"? To be clear.. Gotye has had 2 songs on Billboard worldwide top 100. His other song reached #96.. ..you're sooo right! I stand corrected!🙄
Fil... brilliant analysis. This Gotye/Kimbra song is far removed from my taste(13th Floor Elevators-Wimple Winch-Yardbirds-Steppenwolf-Deep Purple- The Cult)...but...I sure am drawn to it! Great Song, very infectious! Thank you for all that you do!
Love your work. Another video on Kimbra songs would be great. I love her voice, corrected or not, but, I would like to have a better understanding of her use of tech. Does she publish uncorrected songs?
It is interesting to me that at 8:12 (and also 16:25?) in your video the flat c4 can actually be interpreted as the 7th partial (harmonic) of the fundamental d3, and especially that the 7th partial is 31 cents flat in comparison to the equal-temperament minor seventh which is close to half between notes as you say. It makes it a natural diversion of standard equal temperament. Also at 8:50 and 10:04 the note is the major third of the chord which is the 5th partial which is also 14 cents flat in comparison with an equal-tempered major third. Isn’t is interesting that the two notes regularly appearing flat are the two notes which are really flat in in the harmonics? I am loving this song now even more that before. So great :-) thanks for your analysis and your other videos, very much appreciated.
I was just chuckling to myself about how I was going to tell you in Limey slang that you're bang on, mate. Then you started saying his notes were bang on, and I just cracked up laughing! 🤣
I've seen a couple live performances of this song and It sounds like during the second chorus when the woman is doing the backup vocals that it's not really her singing by herself, it's too perfect, too processed, especially for notes that are being held for several seconds, it sounds unnatural, it's still a good performance, she's still singing but I find it hard to believe there's not more going on with her vocals in the last chorus.
Hello Phil, great analysis I as a musician of 50+ years love your analysis and enjoy your content and found an interesting video of The Eagles 1974 Don Kirshner concert of them doing a bluegrass song called Midnight Flyer, showcasing Randy Misner's awesome vocal talent could you check it out and possibly give it a critique? He was awesome on Take it to the Limit but this also shows his awesome vocal range and I think your fans and followers would enjoy it Keep up the awesome work!
So fascinating. I’ve always thought this song is incredible. I remember when I heard it for the first time I thought this is the most interesting thing I’ve heard in years. His vocal is incredible
Discovered you recently. You are a genius. You understand music better than a computer geek who can read binary code like we read the alphabet 🙃. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and passion.
Or you could say she is in tune and he is flat, figuratively as well as literally, which is fairly common for one party to be oblivious to the other person’s experience. Great illustration of why! I thought it was on purpose that they sung differently for dramatic effect but you can actually hear it and show us what you hear - so cool!. Thanks for not making me look up the technical info. 😂
If autotune or pitch correction is in use on Goyte's vocals, it's an extremely light touch, making it imperceptible... that, or something else is at play. It doesn't mean AT wasn't used here. There's definitely an audio EQ filter in use on his voice to give it a "brightness". This filter might, in fact, be used to help mask any light amount of autotune or pitch correction. When light pitch correction is used, it can be set up to not move the note all the way up to the next whole or half-note. Instead, it will leave the note slightly flat or slightly sharp to intentionally make it sound like a dry vocal. What's heard on this track is most assuredly not a dry vocal. Autotune is now advancing to allow for application of pitch correction on longer held notes only, but is almost disabled when singing staccato words and notes. AT can be further enhanced by having a trained sound engineer enable and disable AT and PC on key vocal portions (using DAW automation tracks). When using skilled DAW automation to turn these effects on and off, increase or decrease amounts and modify other key settings, it's entirely possible to craft a vocal track that, in fact, sounds like there's no AT/PC in use.
Finally, a comment actually bringing up the reality of pitch correction in a studio setting. You are exactly right here. The stems are available for the song, and they include both a "dry" and a "wet" vocal, both having very light pitch correction. Obviously it is far more obvious in the dry vocal.
Rather than being pitched down, is it possibly the track is just a little slower? What are the BPMs? This would work if the guitar track was created after.
I don't think Kimbra was autotuned to make her sound robotic as an artistic choice. The lyrics she sings are very much NOT from the guy's perspective. They are very much a refutation of his perspective. So why would the *sound* of her voice be from his perspective. She must have turned in a bad performance.
I agree- it’s such an interesting take he made but I think it’s as spectacular a stretch made as well😅 much more likely the singing wasn’t up to par in the intonation department
Really interesting analysis. Thanks. In the days of analogue recording a difference in recording speed versus playback speed would result simultaneously in a change of pitch and tempo. This could be intentional or unintentional. Famously in "Strawberry Fields Forever". Could the Gotye original here have been tuned to 440Hz but slowed down for the playback?
It's unlikely, but thinking about it the reason is most likely the guitar sample Gotye uses. The sample is slightly flat (the two chord change that is then looped) as it was from an old analogue recording, so he's tuned himself to the sample.
What software do you use for vocal isolation, auto tune, pitch correction, and graphical display of frequency detection (seems like a graphical display of the peak of a spectrum analyzer). Please put that in the info section above, or a link to another site (preferably a specific link). I am a patron so a link to a patreon site is OK with me. I realize you appeal to a broad audience, but the more tech info and gear specifics the better, rock on bro, love you 🤩
He has a video on here about the Moises app that does the vocal isolation, and he uses the Vocal Pitch Monitor app for the graphical display of pitch, he talks about that in a few videos, but in detail in the "Are You Tone Deaf" video. You can just search for those videos in the search bar on the right of the home page for the channel.
Are you backed up with requests? I would LOVE to know what your thoughts on Lana Del Rey's Album 'Ocean Blvd' are, or at least one of the songs on that album. It's some of her best work, and she definitely does not use auto-tune in most of those songs. A & W is a really good one to check out. Candy Necklace. Paris, Texas. Ocean Blvd. The whole album is a gold mine for me. Lana uses so many different tones, tunes, instruments, and samples. I love it when she uses an orchestra. She sings well with strings. The reason I bring up Ocean Blvd is because it's her most raw album to date. You can hear her a couple songs taking puffs off her cigarettes. She is a genius.
I'd love it if you'd look at and explain what Gotye is doing to his vocals in State Of The Art, and show what it looks like through your software. He's mentioned using some kind of pitch correction and apparently singing the whole song in monotone, but I have no idea what it actually means and what it would look like. It can't be the same as autotune, since the end result isn't even near monotone? All I know is it sounds super weird and alien, just as it's supposed to.
That is how autotune works. It moves the notes onto a "line". In that case, he is singing in a monotone and then using Autotune (or a similar program) to move the notes to a different line. Autotune give you the ability to completely change the melody of a song.
Thanks, Fil. I’ve got the original stems, if you’re interested. They sound pure and real to me, and I too am sensitive to the fakeness of autotune. Let me know if you want me to send them to you.
They are publicly available, and make it pretty obvious that pitch correction WAS used, albeit lightly on Gotye's vocal parts. Listen to the line "You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness". And Kimbra's entire verse is heavily autotuned.
