Auto-Tune
Encyclopedia
Auto-Tune is a proprietary
audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies. Auto-Tune uses a phase vocoder
to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise off-key inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed singers to perform apparently perfectly tuned vocal tracks without needing to sing in tune. While its main purpose is to slightly blend sung pitches to the nearest true semitone
(to the exact pitch of the nearest tone in traditional equal temperament
), Auto-Tune can be used as an effect to distort the human voice when pitch is raised or lowered significantly. The overall effect to the discerning ear can be described as hearing, for example, the voice leap from note to note stepwise, like a synthesizer.
Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for professional audio multi-tracking suites used in a studio setting, and as a stand-alone, rack-mounted unit for live performance processing. Auto-Tune has become standard equipment in professional recording studios.
Auto-Tune was initially created by Andy Hildebrand, an engineer working for Exxon
. Hildebrand developed methods for interpreting seismic data, and subsequently realized that the technology could be used to detect, analyze, and modify pitch.
's "Believe
", recorded in 1998, the first major hit song to employ the software for this purpose. When first interviewed about this, the producers claimed that they had used a Digitech Talker FX pedal, in what Sound on Sound
perceived as an attempt to preserve a trade secret
. After the massive success of "Believe", many artists imitated the technique, which became known as the "Cher Effect". It was evident in songs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some notable examples are Gigi D'Agostino
's "La Passion
" and Janet Jackson
's US #1 hit "All For You", among many others.
After years of relative dormancy, the effect was revived in the late-2000s by R&B
singer T-Pain
, who elaborated on the effect in contemporary popular music by making active use of Auto-Tune in his songs. This technique has since gone on to be very widely imitated by numerous other modern R&B and pop
artists. T-Pain has become so well associated with Auto-Tune that he has an iPhone
App named after him that simulates the effect called "I Am T-Pain", developed by Smule
. T-Pain's use of Auto-Tune has been cited as an influence on other urban artists' works, including Snoop Dogg's single "Sexual Eruption
", Lil Wayne's single "Lollipop
", and Kanye West's album 808s & Heartbreak
.
According to the Boston Herald
, country stars Faith Hill
, Shania Twain
, and Tim McGraw
have all confessed to using Auto-Tune in performance, claiming it is a safety net that guarantees a good performance. However, other country music singers, such as Loretta Lynn
, Allison Moorer
, Dolly Parton
, Trisha Yearwood
, Vince Gill
, Garth Brooks
, Martina McBride
, and Reba McEntire
, have refused to use Auto-Tune.
. The Gregory Brothers digitally manipulated recorded voices of politicians, news anchors and political pundits to conform to a melody, making the figures appear to sing. The group achieved mainstream success with their Bed Intruder Song
video which became the most-watched YouTube
video of 2010.
was released with a sticker stating that "Absolutely no vocal tuning or pitch correction was used in the making of this record". At the 51st Grammy Awards
in early 2009, the band Death Cab for Cutie
made an appearance wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of Auto-Tune in the music industry. Later that spring, Jay-Z
titled the lead single of his album The Blueprint 3 as "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)
". Jay-Z elaborated that he wrote the song under the personal belief that far too many people had jumped on the Auto-Tune bandwagon and that the trend had become a gimmick. Christina Aguilera
appeared in public in Los Angeles on August 10, 2009 wearing a T-shirt that read "Auto Tune is for Pussies". When later interviewed by Sirius/XM, however, she said that Auto-Tune wasn't bad if used "in a creative way" and noted her song "Elastic Love" from Bionic uses it.
Opponents of the plug-in argue Auto-Tune has a pervasive negative effect on society's perception and consumption of music. A Chicago Tribune
report from 2003 states that "many successful mainstream artists in most genres of music—perhaps a majority of artists—are using pitch correction".
In 2004, UK's The Daily Telegraph
music critic Neil McCormick called Auto-Tune a "particularly sinister invention that has been putting extra shine on pop vocals since the 1990s" by taking "a poorly sung note and transpos[ing] it, placing it dead centre of where it was meant to be".
In 2009, Time
magazine 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 cast 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." Timothy Powell, a producer/engineer stated in 2003 that he is "even starting to see vocal tuning devices show up in concert settings"; he states that "That's more of an ethical dilemma—people pay a premium dollar to see artists and artists want people to see them at their best."
The American television series Glee
has become noted for regular use of the system in its songs. E! Online's Joal Ryan criticized the show for its "overproduced soundtrack", in particular, complaining that many songs rely too heavily on the software.
In 2010, some people accused the British television
reality TV show The X Factor
of using Auto-Tune to improve the voices of contestants. Simon Cowell
, one of the show's judges, ordered a ban on Auto-Tune for future episodes. Also in 2010, Time magazine included Auto-Tune in their list of "The 50 Worst Inventions."
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies. Auto-Tune uses a phase vocoder
Phase vocoder
A phase vocoder is a type of vocoder which can scale both the frequency and time domains of audio signals by using phase information. The computer algorithm allows frequency-domain modifications to a digital sound file .At the heart of the phase vocoder is the short-time Fourier transform ,...
to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise off-key inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed singers to perform apparently perfectly tuned vocal tracks without needing to sing in tune. While its main purpose is to slightly blend sung pitches to the nearest true semitone
Semitone
A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically....
(to the exact pitch of the nearest tone in traditional equal temperament
Equal temperament
An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...
), Auto-Tune can be used as an effect to distort the human voice when pitch is raised or lowered significantly. The overall effect to the discerning ear can be described as hearing, for example, the voice leap from note to note stepwise, like a synthesizer.
Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for professional audio multi-tracking suites used in a studio setting, and as a stand-alone, rack-mounted unit for live performance processing. Auto-Tune has become standard equipment in professional recording studios.
Auto-Tune was initially created by Andy Hildebrand, an engineer working for Exxon
Exxon
Exxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....
. Hildebrand developed methods for interpreting seismic data, and subsequently realized that the technology could be used to detect, analyze, and modify pitch.
In popular music
Auto-Tune was used to produce the prominent altered vocal effect on CherCher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
's "Believe
Believe (Cher song)
"Believe" is a song by American recording artist Cher. It was released on November 24, 1998 as the lead single from her twenty-third studio album of the same name. It was written by Brian Higgins, Stuart McLennen, Paul Barry, Steven Torch, Matthew Gray, and Timothy Powell and produced by Mark...
", recorded in 1998, the first major hit song to employ the software for this purpose. When first interviewed about this, the producers claimed that they had used a Digitech Talker FX pedal, in what Sound on Sound
Sound on Sound
Sound on Sound is an independently-owned monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, UK. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, and interviews with industry professionals...
perceived as an attempt to preserve a trade secret
Trade secret
A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers...
. After the massive success of "Believe", many artists imitated the technique, which became known as the "Cher Effect". It was evident in songs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some notable examples are Gigi D'Agostino
Gigi D'Agostino
Luigino Celestino Di Agostino , better known by his stage name Gigi D'Agostino, is an Italian DJ, remixer and record producer...
's "La Passion
La Passion
"La Passion" is a song by Gigi D'Agostino, released on his 1999 album L'Amour Toujours. It is a Remix of the song "Rectangle" by the French musician Jacno, which doesn't originally contain any vocals. The song was heavily auto-tuned, as many songs which followed Cher's trend during the early 2000s....
" and Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson
Janet Damita Jo Jackson is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture for over 25 years...
's US #1 hit "All For You", among many others.
After years of relative dormancy, the effect was revived in the late-2000s by R&B
Contemporary R&B
Contemporary R&B is a music genre that combines elements of hip hop, soul, R&B and funk.Although the abbreviation “R&B” originates from traditional rhythm and blues music, today the term R&B is most often used to describe a style of African American music originating after the demise of disco in...
singer T-Pain
T-Pain
Faheem Rasheed Najm , better known by his stage name T-Pain, is an American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer, and actor, currently signed to Young Money Entertainment. His debut album, Rappa Ternt Sanga, was released in 2005. In 2007, T-Pain released his second studio album Epiphany,...
, who elaborated on the effect in contemporary popular music by making active use of Auto-Tune in his songs. This technique has since gone on to be very widely imitated by numerous other modern R&B and pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
artists. T-Pain has become so well associated with Auto-Tune that he has an iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
App named after him that simulates the effect called "I Am T-Pain", developed by Smule
Smule
Smule is an American software and video game developer and publisher headquartered in Palo Alto, California. Smule develops interactive "sonic" applications for the iPhone and other technology platforms...
. T-Pain's use of Auto-Tune has been cited as an influence on other urban artists' works, including Snoop Dogg's single "Sexual Eruption
Sexual Eruption
"Sexual Eruption" , is a single from Snoop Dogg's ninth solo album Ego Trippin. It is produced by Shawty Redd and Snoop Dogg sings most of the song using Auto-Tune . The video's style visually references the style of Roger Troutman, as part of its retro imagery...
", Lil Wayne's single "Lollipop
Lollipop (Lil Wayne song)
"Lollipop" is the first single from Lil Wayne's sixth studio album, Tha Carter III. The track features the late R&B artist Static Major and is produced by Deezle and Jim Jonsin. The song was released digitally on March 13, 2008. The song is Lil Wayne's & Static Major's most successful to date,...
", and Kanye West's album 808s & Heartbreak
808s & Heartbreak
808s & Heartbreak is the fourth studio album by American hip hop artist Kanye West, released November 24, 2008 on Roc-A-Fella Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place at Glenwood Studios in Burbank, California and Avex Recording Studio in Honolulu, Hawaii during...
.
According to the Boston Herald
Boston Herald
The Boston Herald is a daily newspaper that serves Boston, Massachusetts, United States, and its surrounding area. It was started in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States...
, country stars Faith Hill
Faith Hill
Faith Hill is an American country singer. She is known both for her commercial success and her marriage to fellow country star Tim McGraw. Hill has sold more than 40 million records worldwide and accumulated eight number-one singles and three number-one albums on the U.S...
, Shania Twain
Shania Twain
Shania Twain, OC is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. Her album The Woman in Me , brought her fame and her 1997 album Come On Over, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold over 40 million...
, and Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw
Samuel Timothy "Tim" McGraw is an American country singer and actor. Many of McGraw's albums and singles have topped the country music charts with total album sales in excess of 40 million units in the US, making him the eighth best-selling artist, and the third best-selling country singer, in the...
have all confessed to using Auto-Tune in performance, claiming it is a safety net that guarantees a good performance. However, other country music singers, such as Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...
, Allison Moorer
Allison Moorer
Allison Moorer is an American alternative country singer and the younger sister of Shelby Lynne. She signed to MCA Nashville in 1998 and made her debut on the U.S...
, Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. Dolly Parton has appeared in movies like 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias and Straight Talk...
, Trisha Yearwood
Trisha Yearwood
Patricia Lynn Yearwood, professionally known as Trisha Yearwood , is an American country music artist. She is best known for her ballads about vulnerable young women from a female perspective that have been described by some music critics as "strong" and "confident."Trisha Yearwood signed with MCA...
, Vince Gill
Vince Gill
Vincent Grant "Vince" Gill is an American neotraditional country singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He has achieved commercial success and fame both as frontman to the country rock band Pure Prairie League in the 1970s, and as a solo artist beginning in 1983, where his talents as a...
, Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks
Troyal Garth Brooks , best known as Garth Brooks, is an American country music artist who helped make country music a worldwide phenomenon. His eponymous first album was released in 1989 and peaked at number 2 in the US country album chart while climbing to number 13 on the Billboard 200 album chart...
, Martina McBride
Martina McBride
Martina McBride is an American country music singer and songwriter. McBride has been called the "Céline Dion of Country Music" for her big-voiced ballads and soprano range....
, and Reba McEntire
Reba McEntire
Reba Nell McEntire is an American country music artist and actress. She began her career in the music industry as a high school student singing in the Kiowa High School band , on local radio shows with her siblings, and at rodeos. As a solo act, she was invited to perform at a rodeo in Oklahoma...
, have refused to use Auto-Tune.
Auto-Tune the News
In 2005, the use of Auto-Tune to create melodies from the audio in video newscasts was popularized by Brooklyn musician Michael Gregory and later the band The Gregory BrothersThe Gregory Brothers
The Gregory Brothers are an American musical group who characterize their music as "Country & Soul, Folk & Roll". Members include Michael Gregory on drums and vocals, Andrew Rose Gregory on guitar and vocals, Evan Gregory on keys and vocals, and Sarah Fullen Gregory on bass and vocals...
. The Gregory Brothers digitally manipulated recorded voices of politicians, news anchors and political pundits to conform to a melody, making the figures appear to sing. The group achieved mainstream success with their Bed Intruder Song
Bed Intruder Song
"Bed Intruder Song" is a song by The Gregory Brothers and Antoine Dodson , featuring Kelly Dodson. The song by the Auto-Tune the News creators features processed vocals of Antoine Dodson, who was talking to a news reporter about the attempted rape of his sister Kelly...
video which became the most-watched YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
video of 2010.
Criticism
As early as 2002, the CD Miss Fortune by singer-songwriter Allison MoorerAllison Moorer
Allison Moorer is an American alternative country singer and the younger sister of Shelby Lynne. She signed to MCA Nashville in 1998 and made her debut on the U.S...
was released with a sticker stating that "Absolutely no vocal tuning or pitch correction was used in the making of this record". At the 51st Grammy Awards
51st Grammy Awards
The 51st Annual Grammy Awards took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA on February 8, 2009. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were the biggest winners of the night, jointly winning five awards including Album of the Year and Record of the Year...
in early 2009, the band Death Cab for Cutie
Death Cab for Cutie
Death Cab for Cutie is an American alternative rock band formed in Bellingham, Washington in 1997. The band consists of Ben Gibbard , Chris Walla , Nick Harmer and Jason McGerr ....
made an appearance wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of Auto-Tune in the music industry. Later that spring, Jay-Z
Jay-Z
Shawn Corey Carter , better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is one of the most financially successful hip hop artists and entrepreneurs in America, having a net worth of over $450 million as of 2010...
titled the lead single of his album The Blueprint 3 as "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)
D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)
"D.O.A. " is a song written by American rapper Jay-Z. It was produced by No I.D. The song was released as a digital download on June 23, 2009, and as the first single from Jay-Z's 11th studio album, The Blueprint 3. The song made its world premiere on the New York radio station Hot 97 on June 5...
". Jay-Z elaborated that he wrote the song under the personal belief that far too many people had jumped on the Auto-Tune bandwagon and that the trend had become a gimmick. Christina Aguilera
Christina Aguilera
Christina María Aguilera is an American recording artist and actress. Aguilera first appeared on national television in 1990 as a contestant on the Star Search program, and went on to star in Disney Channel's television series The Mickey Mouse Club from 1993–1994...
appeared in public in Los Angeles on August 10, 2009 wearing a T-shirt that read "Auto Tune is for Pussies". When later interviewed by Sirius/XM, however, she said that Auto-Tune wasn't bad if used "in a creative way" and noted her song "Elastic Love" from Bionic uses it.
Opponents of the plug-in argue Auto-Tune has a pervasive negative effect on society's perception and consumption of music. A Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
report from 2003 states that "many successful mainstream artists in most genres of music—perhaps a majority of artists—are using pitch correction".
In 2004, UK's The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
music critic Neil McCormick called Auto-Tune a "particularly sinister invention that has been putting extra shine on pop vocals since the 1990s" by taking "a poorly sung note and transpos[ing] it, placing it dead centre of where it was meant to be".
In 2009, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine 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 cast 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." Timothy Powell, a producer/engineer stated in 2003 that he is "even starting to see vocal tuning devices show up in concert settings"; he states that "That's more of an ethical dilemma—people pay a premium dollar to see artists and artists want people to see them at their best."
The American television series Glee
Glee (TV series)
Glee is an American musical comedy-drama television series that airs on Fox in the United States, and on GlobalTV in Canada. It focuses on the high school glee club New Directions competing on the show choir competition circuit, while its members deal with relationships, sexuality and social issues...
has become noted for regular use of the system in its songs. E! Online's Joal Ryan criticized the show for its "overproduced soundtrack", in particular, complaining that many songs rely too heavily on the software.
In 2010, some people accused the British television
British television
Public television broadcasting started in the United Kingdom in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channelsTaking the base Sky EPG TV Channels. A breakdown is impossible due to a) the number of...
reality TV show The X Factor
The X Factor (UK)
The X Factor is a British television music competition to find new singing talent. Created by Simon Cowell, it began in September 2004 and is contested by aspiring singers drawn from public auditions. It is the originator of the international X Factor franchise. The seven series of the show to date...
of using Auto-Tune to improve the voices of contestants. Simon Cowell
Simon Cowell
Simon Phillip Cowell is an English A&R executive, television producer, entrepreneur, and television personality. He is known in the United Kingdom and United States for his role as a talent judge on TV shows such as Pop Idol, The X Factor, Britain's Got Talent and American Idol...
, one of the show's judges, ordered a ban on Auto-Tune for future episodes. Also in 2010, Time magazine included Auto-Tune in their list of "The 50 Worst Inventions."
External links
- Antares Auto-Tune EVO Pitch Correcting Plug-In – product home page
- Pitchfork: Neko Case Interview – artistic integrity and Auto-Tune
- CBC Radio OneCBC Radio OneCBC Radio One is the English language news and information radio network of the publicly-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It is commercial free and offers both local and national programming...
QQ (radio show)Q is a Canadian radio show, which airs on CBC Radio One. Hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, the program is a national arts magazine show. The program is also now syndicated to public radio stations in the United States through Public Radio International....
: The Podcast for Thursday June 25, 2009 MP3 – NPR's Tom Moon on the takeover of the Autotune. - "Auto-Tune", NOVA scienceNOWNOVA scienceNOWNOVA scienceNOW is a newsmagazine version of the long running and venerable PBS science program Nova. Premiering on January 25, 2005, the series was originally hosted by Robert Krulwich, who described it as an experiment in coverage of "breaking science, science that's right out of the lab, science...
, PBS TVPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
, June 30, 2009