On Auto-Tune

Nearly every time I listen to the radio, a song containing Auto-Tune will be played. Sometimes the song has minor Auto-Tuning, other times I am left wondering how a band of robots has been able to achieve constant hits.

From what I know Auto-Tune was created by Andy Hildebrand, although its original use was for his work in seismic data exploration in the oil industry. The first major song to use the technology when it was applied to music was Cher's "Believe" in 1998. For the 1998-2005 period, I have only heard a handful of songs from then that contain Auto-Tune, but when T-Pain became popular in mid-to-late 2005 with his heavily Auto-Tuned tracks, he definitely brought it mainstream. I seem to remember it being used on more electronic and dance songs at first after T-Pain, but it soon crossed into all sorts of music. Auto-Tune is mainly used to correct off-key singing (and instead makes it sound unnatural), but all the other times it is used it is to give a song the heavily distorted voice sound, or rather the "Cher" and/or "T-Pain effect(s).

I am in two minds about Auto-Tune. On one hand, I think there are artists who do make good use of it: the aforementioned T-Pain is one such person, and I hold no ill-will towards him whatsoever for Auto-Tune becoming widespread; Adam Young's use of Auto-Tune for Owl City is creative; what I have heard from Kanye West's 808 & Heartbreak sounds fine; and I do like listening to Kesha and her Auto-Tuning. At the same time, I think it is overused in popular music today, and some songs themselves have so much Auto-Tune in them it ruins them (Jason Derulo's "Whatcha Say" is badly done, in my opinion). I would like to see fewer new musicians who use Auto-Tune right off the bat, and fewer established musicians who decide they want to start distorting their voices for no good reason. Worst of all, I have heard that some artists even use Auto-Tune at live concerts (and most often for songs that do not even use the technology to begin with): if I go to a live concert, I would prefer to hear an occasional off-key note or a flub in the lyrics than any sort of unnatural performance.

On a lesser (but far more personal) note, my other problem with Auto-Tune is when I am complained to about it: there are a few people that I know who go on a rant about Auto-Tune to me whenever a song using the technology comes on...and it is as though they think I am responsible for Auto-Tune in music. Perhaps I should take it as a compliment.

Ultimately, I think that Auto-Tune should be used in moderation: if someone decides they want to use it on a song or an entire album, they should do so because they think the effect will add something to the music...not because of any bad singing or because "most other people use it, too". This being said, if someone, such as a new artist, sees an opportunity where Auto-Tune could be a huge help to them for whatever reason, I certainly would not discourage or fault them in any way, but I still stand by my desire to see less Auto-Tuning in music.

As I said before, I do not have any grudge against T-Pain for popularising the technology (somebody else probably would have done if it had not been him), nor do I blame Andy Hildebrand for developing Auto-Tune to begin with: he realised his invention could be used to detect, correct, and change the pitch in music, and I hope he has been able to profit significantly from his idea.