Manual tune

Autotune was not used in the production of Jean-Paul De Roover’s latest EP.

“I strictly and specifically never use autotune,” said the Thunder Bay musician. “I’m very proud of the fact that although some of the parts might not be 100 per cent pitch perfect, it’s still 100 per cent the natural voice. There are other kinds of effects, but no pitch correction.”

De Roover will be launching his latest release Pitch Pipes this Friday at Lakehead University’s The Study. The three-song EP is done completely in the a cappella style.

Autotune is used notoriously by some artists like rapper T-Pain and pop star Ke$ha. De Roover said the technique is also often heard in a cappella renditions of songs on the musical drama television show Glee.
 
“I think it’s a sad state that music nowadays is literally – you don’t have to put any effort into it anymore. You can go into a studio, you can mumble something and walk out and you’ve got yourself singing a particular line,” he said.

While some a cappella groups will use finger snaps or claps to create percussion sounds, every sound heard on Pitch Pipes was created by De Roover’s voice or mouth.

A cappella has always been a love of De Roover’s. He’s spent many years in different barbershop quartets and vocal chorus groups.

“It’s exciting because you’re either trying to recreate sounds of instruments with your mouth or you’re trying to reinvent it so it sounds better or completely different than the original recording sounded,” he said. “It’s the challenge of trying to accomplish those different sounds – the sound of a drum kit, the sound of a bass guitar with the sound of a voice.”

Known for recording his music in layers, especially as a one-man band, De Roover said normally his songs have up to 100 different layers. With the vocal tracks, he would max out around 70.

“It’s not as dense but at the same time it is almost denser because you’re dealing with only voices instead of instruments that have completely different frequency responses,” he said. “There’s a lot of different things we had to employ in order to make sure there was good separation and just sound like 70 voices in a room.”

The songs on Pitch Pipes are from De Roover’s 2009 album Windows and Doors, which saw the videos for Fix and You air on MuchMusic. Those two songs plus a medley of other songs from Windows and Doors make-up Pitch Pipes.

The all ages release party for Pitch Pipes is this Friday, Feb. 11 at The Study. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and admission is $8, which includes a copy of the CD.

The show also features The Greenbank Trio, The Greasy Creases and The Noteables, all groups featuring vocal harmonies.