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Even if you’ve never heard of auto-tune, you’ve heard it — it’s that slightly robot-like vocal processing effect that’s used in every other pop song these days. Developed more than a decade ago as a studio tool to allow engineers to fine-tune the pitch of a singer’s performance, it’s become standard equipment. Time recently quoted an unnamed Grammy-winning recording engineer as saying, “Let’s just say I’ve had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything from Britney Spears to Bollywood albums. And every singer now presumes that you’ll just run their voice through the box.” The same article expressed “hope that pop’s fetish for uniform perfect pitch will fade,” speculating that pop-music songs have become harder to differentiate from one another, as “track after track has perfect pitch.”
A number of singers refuse to use auto-tune for reasons of artistic integrity. Death Cab for Cutie were recently seen wearing blue ribbons to protest its overuse in pop music, and singer Neko Case recently went on a mini-rant about it in Pitchfork:
When I hear auto tune on somebody’s voice, I don’t take them seriously. Or you hear somebody like Alicia Keys, who I know is pretty good, and you’ll hear a little bit of auto tune and you’re like, “You’re too good for that. Why would you let them do that to you? Don’t you know what that means?” It’s not an effect like people try to say, it’s for people like Shania Twain who can’t sing. Yet there they are, all over the radio, spraying saccharine all over you. It’s a horrible sound and it’s like, “Shania, spend an extra hour in the studio and you’ll hit the note and it’ll sound fine. Just work on it, it’s not like making a burger!”
You might not notice subtle adjustments in a performer’s voice like a singer like Case does. But I’m certain you’ve noticed auto-tune used in the much less subtle way that’s become super popular of late — as an over-the-top voice effect which broke onto the scene with Cher’s 1998 hit “I Believe” and has now become indelibly associated with T-Pain (here’s a classic example). Thankfully, hopefully, auto-tune is starting to become passe — the first sign of which are elaborate YouTube parodies of the technique. Here are a few of my favorite, by YouTuber schmoyoho.
Check out what auto-tune can do even to people who aren’t singing — like Newt Gingrich and Katie Couric — and it becomes obvious how powerful a tool it is when used on the voices of people who are. (And doesn’t it sound silly?)
Or, if you’d rather get historical up in this, here’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech — auto-tuned.
Comments (8)
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Auto Tune as it was designed to be used will never be passe, because the music industry will always be flooded with no-talent puppets who need technology to make them sound acceptable to the masses.
Hopefully the Auto Tune “effect,” (which is really a mistake, taking the settings too far) will go out of style soon. I’m tired of hearing it.
posted by bre on 4-28-2009 at 1:46 pm
Is it wrong that I think the MLK thing is kind of super-awesome? It definitely points out how ridiculous it is as a substitute for singing talent, but it’s kind of fun to over-emphasize the inflections of speech and see what can happen :)
posted by Fruppi on 4-28-2009 at 2:07 pm
i don’t know, i kinda dig the auto-tune when it’s used on the news channels…haha. those are great videos…
posted by michele on 4-28-2009 at 2:18 pm
I believe Ben Folds predicted this whole thing.
I’m rockin’ the suburbs
Just like Quiet Riot did
I’m rockin’ the suburbs
Except that they were talented
I’m rockin’ the suburbs
I take the checks and face the facts
That some producer with computers
fixes all my shitty tracks
posted by christine on 4-28-2009 at 2:45 pm
wow i actually had never heard the whole MLK speech before and it’s really good. it made me tear up a little bit, and its also cool as a song
posted by ariela castro on 4-28-2009 at 7:39 pm
I never realized that was what that effect was, but man do I friggin hate it. I agree that if you can’t hit the right notes you probably shouldn’t be singing. I play instruments but realize I can’t carry a tune so I don’t sing in front of people.
“I couldn’t dance so I played guitar. I couldn’t sing so I played jazz guitar.” -Unknown.
posted by Nick on 4-29-2009 at 11:18 am
Auto-Tune should be reserved for making songs out of talking and for when T-Pain is on a boat.
posted by BlackMage on 4-30-2009 at 5:09 pm
Geeze. Is this really what the music world has been drained too? Is there no hip-hop artist with REAL talent these days? Cuz i’ve heard all the new shit by Drake, The New Boys, and others of that sort and that shit sucks like a vacuum. If artists like Tupac & Biggie were still around they’d be the first to diss on artists strung up on the overuse of auto-tune. Im glad a great lyricist like Jay-Z dissed the use of auto tune in “D.O.A.” and that the legendary Bone Thugs-n-Harmony dissed it as well in “D.O.A. Remix”. I myself have used autotune once but now regret it. http://www.myspace.com/maniaclocz
posted by Sparatic//Maniac on 10-5-2009 at 3:19 pm