In hip hop, having a signature sound means everything. Sometimes this goes beyond delivery of tone, pitch, and inflection where methods of “digitally repairing” off-key vocal recordings are utilized. Welcome to the birth of autotune.
For some artists, (i.e. Ja Rule) their recorded voice is beyond repair. In pop music, Cher’s hit “Believe” brought attention to the digital audio processor by Antares Audio Technologies known as auto tune.
I’ve always found the Cher song to be irritating and often playing in the background of department stores, proving that “advanced pitch correction” in certain applications doesn’t really work well.
T-Pain on the other hand, has proved this otherwise as being credited with revitalizing this sparingly used music industry technique.
I’ve been a T-Pain fan since the “I’m in love with a stripper” days. This attributed to his smooth “creep-up-from-behind” style and his unique (which some may argue artificial) sound.
Two albums later, a few monster singles, and dozens of collaborations with other artists, one things still remains; his auto-tune sound. This was true until Jay-Z had something to say about it!
The auto tune phenomenon has really got out of hand with numerous hip-hop and pop star such as Kanye West, Lil’ Wayne, Jamie Foxx, Chris Brown, and Rihanna playing games of copy-cat.
Is perfect or corrected pitch really something that we want to hear? What happened to placing value on talent and creativity over production methods?
Auto Tuning from Casey Donahue on Vimeo.
The video above (very funny!) best demonstrates the use of auto tune. Specifically, how it has become part of pop-culture and how it’s been taken too far.
Jack, an employee at a web design company is asked a series of questions about “the homepage”. Jack sings his responses back in perfect pitch into a microphone with an auto tune processor over a classic T-Pain beat.
Do you think that auto-tune is a cover up for artists that can’t sing? Is auto-tune just a fad that will fizzle out?
Tags: antares audio, audio engineering, audio software, auto tune, auto tuning, autotune, birthing, cher, digital signal processing, engineering, hip hop, inflection, ja rule, kanye west, music, pitch, pitch correction, pitches, pop music, signature sound, singers, t pain, the birth
