Off-key on-purpose

John Cale is the king of deliberate off-key, I think, from his organ work with the Velvets right up to the multi layered production of Nico's solo LPs (apparently her harmonium was murder to stay in tune with as it went up and down 1/2 or 1/4 tone all the time). I think slightly flat notes combined with the same notes on-pitch can create quite a strange, hypnotic effect.

- which reminds me that Boards of Canada are obviously also really into this, and sometimes much more subtly than with the varispeed effect on Geogaddi.

MF Doom, 'The Mic' - 'You and me, was overdue, for getting together Bay-beeeeeee...'

Ghostface, 'Ghost Deini' - 'Marvin, Marvin, you were a friend of mine, You stood for something. Tupac, Biggie, ohh how we miss you so, We want y'all both to know, We really love you sooooo...'

Thanks, I was wondering how they got that certain sound (I LOVE the way horns sound in reggae--sleepy and sad, for the most part)

Eric Sermon did this a few times: on So What Ya Saying for example
Kool Keith does this on almost every chorus.

I specifically sing off-key on one of my songs on my IUMA site (http://nickaliscious.iuma.com) called "A Brief Dissertation..." I did it 'cause the song is just too wack and goofy and coffee-inspired NOT to.

Elf Power's Andy Rieger sings just as off-key but it works just fine. Again I don't know if it's deliberate.

I wonder what the difference is. I think Almond's voice sounds substantial and expressive, and his choice of material -- as well as his own songwriting -- gets very ambitious. So his apparent inability to stay on-key seems like a glaring fault to me. Whereas Rieger's paper-thin voice and dubious intonation seem like a natural part of the lo-fi world he operates in. (The surprise is on Nothing's Going to Happen, Elf Power's recent, splendid covers album, where that same voice, despite its obvious limitations, holds up through a pretty eclectic -- although post-punk-heavy -- mix of tunes.)

I dunno -- he seems, if not spot-on to me, then definitely far more in control than in earlier years. But he's also expressed his love for 'imperfect' singers in general, talking about the love of a cracked voice from too much drink and cigarettes in Spanish music, f'r instance. It could be very intentional.

JELLO BIAFRA! HULLO!

If that is the case, then, why did he use Autotune on the "Californication" album?

yi ayi yaaaaaaaaaah.

Paul In Santa Cruz, can you come up with some examples? I don't believe that Marc Almond has been releasing off-key studio recordings for a long time. I do know that he seems to have a pitching problem that sometimes manifests in the first song or two of live concerts but that seems to resolve itself once he's settled into his performance.

Soft Cell, Cruelty without Beauty (2002)
"Darker Times" (Track 1) -- I'm just listening to the 30" sample at amazon.com

I'd say 30% of the vocal pitches here are noticeably off -- by up to 25¢ (an 8th tone) I'd estimate. A lot of the vocal melody in this excerpt operates within scale degrees 7 up to 3 in a natural minor scale. A recurring figure ends on scale degree 1 -- which is focal because it ends this figure, gets stretched out to longer durations, and is the tonic pitch; yet it's noticeably sharp more often than not here.

So: very next track ("Monoculture") -- here the melody works a lot with flat 2 dropping down to 1. Here 2 is often pushed below the tempered half-step (closer to 1, that is) -- where the lyrics go "again and again and again," this de-tuning is prominent on the second syllable of the middle "again". In this case I could very well believe it's deliberate, whereas in the preceding example it doesn't seem to contribute anything expressive or otherwise effective to the performance.

Does it matter?

Also, let's not confuse microtonality (intentional use of in-between notes) with out-of-tune or off-key

Sounds like it does. Does a singer or instrumentalist ever think to him/herself, I will intentionally play this note just a little bit in between those two notes? Is it diferent when a singer does it to an instumentalists. There are so many distinctive singers against whom this charge could be laid. I think, in case you haven't already guessed that it matters not a jot. What matters is: Does the song work.

Where does Girl Talk fit into this? Cause his stuff is filled with vcoals that clash with the rest of the music. It's why I've never been able to fully take his stuff seriously.