I am a big fan of the English language. When I was little and the teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the first thing I said was “A DINOSAUR!” (Mom always said I could be anything I want to be…). After that, my childhood ambition was to be an etymologist. I discovered rather quickly that that isn’t much of a growth industry, so I pulled the plug on that dream. But people who know me know that I like to speak colorfully but precisely and so certain words really get my goat.
The latest word that really irks me is “massive.” I can’t watch the news or listen to NPR or read a newspaper without this word appearing several times. I understand that everyone intends for this word to mean “really big” but as a student of language and physics, I just can’t accept certain uses. In quantum physics, massive means anything that has mass. An elephant is massive, a feather is massive, Cowboy stadium is massive, a molecule of oxygen is massive. At rest, a photon has no mass. It is a zero-rest mass particle and is therefore non-massive.
Granted, this is a bit of an esoteric definition and not everybody is well-versed in quantum physics, but I still think massive should only apply to real things that have real weight. Like what exactly is a “massive earthquake” or a “massive heart attack”? What part of those things are massive? An Earthquake can have lots of destructive power, but in the end there is no mass to the earthquake, it is a seismic consequence of earthly phenomena, but not a tangible thing. A heart attack can be serious, but there is no substance to it, it is a biological event. I know that the dictionary says these are acceptable uses, but it’s a bit like calling something a “basic acid.” Yes, that is technically correct, but there is a certain level where that phrase is laughable.
These are the things that keep me up at night, waking suddenly in a cold sweat.
Yes, I have a girlfriend…
Well in the music business we have another term that is way overused and now saturates common parlance due to the disturbing popularity of American Idol. “Pitchy” is often the epitome of inexact speech in the music business and it usually serves little purpose other than being a polite way of saying “Hey, you sang that wrong.” But just what the heck are they intending to say? I mean, anybody who sings should be pitchy in that they have pitches. You certainly wouldn’t want to sing without pitch.
There are three real uses for the term pitchy.
I’m a producer and I know that you sang that out of tune, unfortunately I don’t know whether your were flat or sharp so I’m going to use a vague term that could mean either. I don’t have time for proper ear training or simply didn’t pay attention to know what exactly you did, so I’m going to send you on a wild goose chase for the next few takes and let you figure it out on your own. Thank God you paid me all up front!
This is typical producer-speak that you’ll hear in the studio numerous times through any vocal session. Many producers don’t like to admit at any time that they don’t know what’s going on. They’ll take shelter in vague terms like this so that they can appear to be in control while getting the artist to do the leg work for them. Clever indeed.
You’ll often hear this application of the term from non-singing producers and those who gained their musical credibility by playing set-pitch (like a bass a la Randy Jackson) or non-pitched instruments (like drummers).
This usage is sometimes permissible because musicians are very delicate people, especially singers. Many, especially those who focus on live performance, prefer to just get behind the mic and wail, not really caring for a critique on their performance. In the studio, they’d just prefer the producer to say, “Nah, do it again one more time with feeling!” Eventually they’ll get it. As a producer/engineer it is our job to decide when it is proper to be delicately oblique and when it is necessary to be unapologetically exact.
I’m a singer who is having to do a little bit more vocal acrobatics than I am used to. So I’m a little under on those high high notes and a little over on those low low notes.
Despite all the explanations of the term “pitchy” that try to make it sound overly technical, this is probably the best use of the term. This is when the singer kind of varies between being flat and sharp.
For instance, I am an awful singer and my comfortable range is probably about a perfect 4th. But hey, people don’t pay me to sing on their records. If I were to try and go beyond that range my pitch center would naturally pull anything beyond that range back toward the center. Therefore, all the notes higher than a 4th might be flat and all the notes lower than a 4th might be sharp. The opposite might be true for someone who in their mind is trying to overcompensate by overestimating the distances on highs and lows.
In these instances, it isn’t really prudent to go out and say “Ok, you were sharp here, here, and here and you were flat there, there, and there.” So instead someone might say that you are pitchy, but I think that statement needs to come with a footnote saying that you are undershooting the highs and overshooting the lows.
You’d probably encounter this kind of pitchiness with singer/songwriters, indie musicians, and people who aren’t overly confident in their voice. Present company included…
I’m a singer singing in genre and I like to bend notes! It’s ethnomusicological!
This is common in blues and jazz and is the ivory tower version of pitchiness. For example, on the last word of the song, the band lands on the tonic and the singer starts just under the pitch and bends so that they are in tune, ultimately winding up on the desired pitch.
Of course in this instance, the flatness and sharpness aren’t necessarily undesired and there would be no reason for a producer to call it pitchy. They’d just say “Wow, what soul!” It might be necessary for someone to ask if you could do the scoop a little quicker or slower so that it doesn’t sound like a mistake, but ultimately it’s just character.
I suppose I should talk about the ethnomusicological underpinnings of this kind of inflection. Jazz and blues are rooted in an African (American) tradition that is historically grounded in untrained singing. Bending may have originated simply from common singers initially missing the note, but improvising a way to get to the right note and sound artful in the process.
Ultimately, I think that Randy Jackson is utilizing the first kind of pitchiness in his commentaries in order to stylishly obfuscate and not embarrass himself on national TV. But in his own explanation found here, he seems to side with definition two.
Some producers aren’t great at hearing vocal pitch, but in the context of a full take where the latter two uses of the term are in play–that is, when a singer is both sharp and flat at different times, or when a singer is not accurately beginning or leaving notes–’pitchy’ is the word to use.
Of course, Randy Jackson may very well have no idea what’s going on pitch wise, and I agree that whoever came up with the term didn’t have their thinking cap on. You could always say “the pitch was off on that take” or something more graceful, but perhaps shorter criticisms are better. If it makes you feel any better, I never say ‘pitchy’. That would be a massive misnomer…
I wouldn’t say it is ever the word to use unless singers are sensitive to real constructive criticism.
Sometimes it is necessary to be vague to protect ego so if I were recording my girlfriend or my mom and didn’t want to get all clinical on them then I might say “Aw that was a little pitchy, let’s do it again. But you’ve got it!”
But in a professional environment, I have generally found that speaking precisely with specific advice is the best way to go.
“Pitchy” is a word that’s been bothering me for quite some time as well, thanks for the rant.
(Also, there was a season of Idol a couple of years ago where they tried to say “sharp” instead of “pitchy” for a while. Never mind that the singers were flat most of the times they said it.)
Out of everything said on “American Idol” the one thing that offends you is “pitchy”?
I realize that this is a separate discussion, but would you say that AI is the zenith or the nadir of North American popular music?
@Liz, glad to see I’m not the only one!
@John, to be perfectly honest I have never even watched a full episode of American Idol. I avoid it like the plague, but it is ubiquitous and the word is (ab)used so much on the show that it has seeped into the studio.
You bring up an interesting question and I was actually going to address this in a few weeks, but since you brought it up, I think I will go ahead and answer it in tomorrow’s post on Re-Thinking Record Labels.
The short answer, in my opinion, is that it is pretty much the lowest of the low and it has much more insidious ramifications than just representing the worst parts or our (minor) celebrity-driven culture. More on this tomorrow so stay tuned!
Very interesting, but I disagree.
–on “massive”:
Words undergo changes – in meaning or form – not through logical derivations but through getting used in certain ways by the “mainstream”
“google” became a legit verb because people used the word that way.
So, it works this way, in my opinion: people start using “massive” in a certain way -> dictionaries decide its time to add the word. This is in keeping with the “ordinary language philosophy”, which is a view on language that is still accepted to this extent at least.
That’s exactly what happened with “massive”
It is ironic that you should bring up physics, considering it has names for quarks (which itself is a misspelling of quacks) like “charm”, “up”, “top” , names utterly unrelated to any properties they may have.
- on “pitchy”:
The same reasons as above apply for my disagreement, but also, I do not think american idol is the right platform for getting into technical details. Its very hard for me to believe randy is simply being vague to hide his incompetence.
@Ali-I have a feeling that the first two parts of the response will only be interesting to us, and maybe then only interesting to me, but…
I totally understand that argument about “massive”, but from an etymological standpoint it depends on how defensible you find idiomatic usages. I certainly understand the use of the word and will even tolerate it when there is some degree of figurative language. You could say a “massive building” or a “massive crowd” (using an alternate meaning like in “the masses”), but I find it abhorrent to use it in contexts devoid of any relation to the meaning (like “massive void” or “massive hear attack”).
Secondly, in the realm of quantum physics, being a relatively new field, creating neologisms for whatever might need a name is perfectly acceptable. So I don’t expressly see the irony, but I take your point.
And finally in regard to Randy Jackson, in the post I did give his explanation and say that he seemed to side with the second usage, which is describing pitch as being inconsistent. He is a talented musician and I don’t deny that Journey’s former bass player might have a great ear (although you can’t always trust the pitch assessment of someone with a fixed-pitch instrument). However, I would argue that a singing competition is the perfect platform to get into “technical” details of singing. And I would also dispute the level of technicality required for a person with a good ear to tell somebody if they were flat or sharp with exactitude.
If not hiding of incompetence, perhaps he is hiding a lack of effort.
Comments always welcome, thanks!
If you want to get annoyed with word-usage, come the Pacific Northwest where the popular synonym for “expensive” is “spendy.”
Along with “pitchy” (which Ellen soon jumped on as her cool “cred” term for her alleged contributions), Randy is the first i’ve heard use the term “runs” which means “melisma.” Melismatic singing in Pop music (multiple pitches for each syllable) was innovated by Stevie Wonder and also a bit by Aretha Franklin, and I sure wish it would have stayed there!
Whitney Houston then came along and just took it over the top, adding much much more “improvement” to a melody.
Then came the younger newer singers (Mariah, Christina) with the mentality “oh, i get it! more is better!” and they took melisma to a whole new level of nausea.
Check out Diana Ross’ voice on Endless Love, followed by what Mariah did; adding a thousand notes to a couple dozen syllables as a way of making it “even better” in her little musical mind, albeit a gorgeous voice.
Check out the National Anthem sung by most anyone in the last decade.
I guess the risk of being pitchy is reduced when long held melody notes are a thing of the past. There’s just too many other available little notes to throw in there, pitchy or not.