| Auto-Tune | |
|---|---|
 Auto-Tune running onGarageBand | |
| Original author | Andy Hildebrand |
| Developer | Antares Audio Technologies |
| Initial release | September 19, 1997; 28 years ago (1997-09-19)[1][2] |
| Stable release | 11[3] |
| Operating system | Windows andmacOS |
| Type | Pitch correction |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
Auto-Tune isaudio processor software released on September 19, 1997, by the American companyAntares Audio Technologies.[1][4] It uses a proprietary device to measure andcorrect pitch in music.[5] It operates on different principles from thevocoder ortalk box and produces different results.[6] Auto-Tune can be used in both post-production music mixing and in real-time live performances.
Auto-Tune was initially intended to disguise orcorrectoff-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectlytuned.Cher's 1998 song "Believe" popularized the use of Auto-Tune to deliberately distort vocals, a technique that became known as the "Cher effect". It has since been used by many artists in different genres, includingDaft Punk,Radiohead,T-Pain andKanye West. In 2018, the music criticSimon Reynolds felt that Auto-Tune had "revolutionized popular music", calling its use for effects "the fad that just wouldn't fade. Its use is now more entrenched than ever."[7]
Auto-Tune is available as aplug-in fordigital audio workstations used in a studio setting and as a stand-alone,rack-mounted unit for live performance processing.[8] The processor slightly shifts pitches to the nearest true, correctsemitone (to the exact pitch of the nearest note in traditionalequal temperament). Auto-Tune can also be used as an effect todistort the human voice when pitch is raised or lowered significantly,[9] such that the voice is heard to leap from note to note stepwise, like asynthesizer.[10]
Auto-Tune has become standard equipment in professionalrecording studios.[11] Instruments such as thePeavey AT-200 guitar seamlessly use Auto-Tune technology for real-time pitch correction.[12]
Auto-Tune was developed by Andy Hildebrand, a Ph.D. research engineer who specialized instochastic estimation theory anddigital signal processing.[1] He conceived the vocal pitch correction technology on the suggestion of a colleague's wife, who had joked that she would benefit from a device to help her sing in tune.[13][7]
Over several months in early 1996, Hildebrand implemented the algorithm on a customMacintosh computer. Later that year, he presented the result at theNAMM Show, where it became instantly popular.[13] Hildebrand's method fordetecting pitch involvedautocorrelation and proved superior to attempts based onfeature extraction that had problems processing elements such asdiphthongs, leading to soundartifacts.[13] Music engineers had previously considered autocorrelation impractical because of the massive computational effort required. Hildebrand found a mathematical method to overcome this, "a simplification [that] changed a millionmultiply adds into just four".[13]
According to the Auto-Tunepatent, the preferred implementation detail consists, when processing new samples, of reusing the former autocorrelation bin, and adding the product of the new sample with the older sample corresponding to a lag value, while subtracting the autocorrelation product of the sample that correspondingly got out of window.[5]
Originally, Auto-Tune was designed to discreetly correct imprecise intonations to make music more expressive, with the original patent asserting: "When voices or instruments are out of tune, the emotional qualities of the performance are lost."[7] Auto-Tune was launched in September 1997.[1]
TheAphex Twin track "Funny Little Man", from the 1997 EPCome To Daddy, was one of the earliest songs to use Auto-Tune, released less than a month after Auto-Tune.[1][14] Cher's 1998 song "Believe" was the first commercial recording to use Auto-Tune as a stylistic effect, creating a robotic, futuristic sound.[15][16] Cher, who proposed the effect,[17] faced resistance from her label but insisted it remain, saying, "You can change [the song] over my dead body".[17] While Auto-Tune was designed to be used subtly to correct vocal performances, the "Believe" producers used extreme settings to create unnaturally rapid corrections in Cher's vocals, thereby removingportamento, the natural slide between pitches in singing.[18] Though Auto-Tune had been commercially available for about a year, according toPitchfork, "Believe" was the first song "where the effect drew attention to itself ... announcing its technological artifice".[7] In an attempt to protect their method, the producers initially claimed the effect was achieved with avocoder.[18] It was widely imitated and became known as the "Cher effect".[18]
According toPitchfork, 1999 "Too Much of Heaven" by the Italian Europop groupEiffel 65 features "the very first example ofrapping through Auto-Tune".[7] The Eiffel 65 memberGabry Ponte said they were inspired by Cher's "Believe".[19] The English rock bandRadiohead used Auto-Tune on their 2001 albumAmnesiac to create a "nasal, depersonalized sound" and to process speech into melody. According to the Radiohead singer,Thom Yorke, Auto-Tune "desperately tries to search for the music in your speech, and produces notes at random. If you've assigned it a key, you've got music."[20]
Later in the 2000s,T-Pain used Auto-Tune extensively, further popularizing the use of the effect.[21] He cited thenew jack swing producerTeddy Riley andfunk artistRoger Troutman's use of thetalk box as inspirations.[22] T-Pain became so associated with Auto-Tune that he had an iPhone app named after him that simulated the effect, "I Am T-Pain".[23] Eventually dubbed the "T-Pain effect",[7] the use of Auto-Tune became a fixture of late 2000s music, where it was used in other hip hop/R&B artists' works, includingSnoop Dogg'ssingle "Sexual Eruption",[24]Lil Wayne's "Lollipop",[25] andKanye West's album808s & Heartbreak.[26] In 2009 theBlack Eyed Peas' number-one hit "Boom Boom Pow", made heavy use of Auto-Tune on their vocals to create a futuristic sound.[7] The use of Auto-Tune in hip hop gained a resurgence in the mid-2010s, especially intrap music.Future andYoung Thug are widely considered to be the pioneers of modern trap music and have mentored or inspired popular artists such asLil Baby,Gunna,Playboi Carti,Travis Scott, andLil Uzi Vert.[7][27]
The effect has also become popular inraï music and other genres from Northern Africa.[28] According to theBoston Herald, the country singersFaith Hill,Shania Twain, andTim McGraw use Auto-Tune in performance, calling it a safety net that guarantees a good performance.[29] However, other country singers, such asAllison Moorer,[30]Garth Brooks,[31]Big & Rich,Trisha Yearwood,Vince Gill andMartina McBride, have refused to use Auto-Tune.[32]
Some critics have argued that Auto-Tune opens up new possibilities in pop music, especially inhip-hop andR&B. Instead of using it as a correction tool for poor vocals—its original purpose—some musicians intentionally use the technology to mediate and augment their artistic expression. When the electronic duoDaft Punk was questioned about their use of Auto-Tune in their single "One More Time",Thomas Bangalter replied, "A lot of people complain about musicians using Auto-Tune. It reminds me of the late '70s when musicians in France tried to ban the synthesizer... They didn't see that you could use those tools in a new way instead of just for replacing the instruments that came before."[33]
T-Pain, theR&B singer and rapper who reintroduced the use of Auto-Tune as a vocal effect in pop music with his albumRappa Ternt Sanga in 2005, said, "My dad always told me that anyone's voice is just another instrument added to the music. There was a time when people had seven-minute songs, and five minutes were just straight instrumental. ... I got a lot of influence from [the '60s era]. I thought I might as well turn my voice into a saxophone."[34] Following in T-Pain's footsteps,Lil Wayne experimented with Auto-Tune between his albumsTha Carter II andTha Carter III. At the time, he was heavily addicted topromethazine codeine, and some critics see Auto-Tune as a musical expression of Wayne's loneliness and depression.[35]Mark Anthony Neal wrote that Lil Wayne's vocal uniqueness, his "slurs, blurs, bleeps and blushes of his vocals, index some variety of trauma."[36] And Kevin Driscoll asks, "Is Auto-Tune not thewah pedal of today's black pop? Before he transformed himself into T-Wayne on "Lollipop", Wayne's pop presence was limited to guest verses and unauthorized freestyles. In the same way that Miles equippedHendrix to stay pop-relevant, Wayne's flirtation with the VST plugin du jour brought him updial fromJAMN 94.5 toKISS 108."[37]
Kanye West's808s & Heartbreak was generally well received by critics, and it similarly used Auto-Tune to represent a fragmented soul, following his mother's death.[38] The album marks a departure from his previous album,Graduation. Describing the album as a breakup album,Rolling Stone music criticJody Rosen wrote, "Kanye can't really sing in the classic sense, but he's not trying to. T-Pain taught the world that Auto-Tune doesn't just sharpen flat notes: It's a painterly device for enhancing vocal expressiveness and upping the pathos ... Kanye's digitized vocals are the sound of a man so stupefied by grief, he's become less than human."[39]
YouTuberConor Maynard, who received criticism for his use of Auto-Tune, defended it in an interview on theZach Sang Show in 2019, stating: "It doesn't mean you can't sing ... Auto-Tune can't make anyone who can't sing sound like they can sing ... It just tightens it up slightly because we're human and not perfect, whereas [Auto-Tune] is literally digitally perfect."[40][41]
At the51st Grammy Awards in 2009, the bandDeath Cab for Cutie made an appearance wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of Auto-Tune.[42] Later that year,Jay-Z titled the lead single of his albumThe Blueprint 3 as "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)". Jay-Z said he wrote the song because of personal beliefs that the trend had become a gimmick that had become too widely used.[43][44]Christina Aguilera appeared in public in Los Angeles on August 10, 2009, wearing a T-shirt that read "Auto Tune is for Pussies". When interviewed bySirius/XM, she said Auto-Tune could be used "in a creative way" and noted her song "Elastic Love" fromBionic uses it.[45]
Opponents have argued that Auto-Tune has a negative effect on society's perception and consumption of music. In 2004, theDaily Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick called Auto-Tune a "particularly sinister invention that has been putting an 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".[46] In 2006, the singer-songwriterNeko Case said a studio employee once told her that she andNelly Furtado were the only singers who had never used it in his studio. Case said "it's cool that she has some integrity".[47]
In 2009,Time quoted an unnamed Grammy-winning recording engineer as saying, "Let's just say I've had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything fromBritney Spears toBollywood 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".[48] According toTom Lord-Alge, Auto-Tune is used on nearly every record these days.[49]
In 2010, the reality TV showThe X Factor admitted to using Auto-Tune to improve the voices of contestants.[50] Also in 2010,Time included Auto-Tune in their list of "The 50 Worst Inventions".[51]
Heavily used by stars likeSnoop Dogg,Lil Wayne andBritney Spears, Auto-Tune has been criticized as indicative of an inability tosing on key.[52][53][54][55][56]Trey Parker used Auto-Tune on theSouth Park song "Gay Fish", and found that he had to sing off-key in order to sound distorted; he said, "You had to be a bad singer in order for that thing to actually sound the way it does. If you use it and sing into it correctly, it doesn't do anything to your voice."[57] The singerKesha has used Auto-Tune in her songs extensively, putting her vocal talent under scrutiny.[53][58][59][60][61] In 2009, the producerRick Rubin wrote that "Right now, if you listen to pop, everything is in perfect pitch, perfect time and perfect tune. That's how ubiquitous Auto-Tune is."[62] TheTime journalistJosh Tyrangiel called Auto-Tune "Photoshop for the human voice".[62]
Thebig band singerMichael Bublé criticized Auto-Tune as making everyone sound the same – "like robots" – but said he used it when recording pop music.[63]Ellie Goulding andEd Sheeran have called for honesty in live shows by joining the "Live Means Live" campaign. "Live Means Live" was launched by songwriter/composerDavid Mindel. When a band displays the "Live Means Live" logo, the audience knows, "there's no Auto-Tune, nothing that isn't 100 percent live" in the show, and there are nobacking tracks.[64] In 2023, multiple creators on the social media platformTikTok were accused of using Auto-Tune in post-production to correct the pitch of singing videos presented to appear as live, casual performances.[65]
The US TV comedy seriesSaturday Night Live parodied Auto-Tune using the fictional white rapperBlizzard Man, who sang in a sketch: "Robot voice, robot voice! All the kids love the robot voice!"[66][67]
Satirist"Weird Al" Yankovic poked fun at the overuse of Auto-Tune, while commenting that it seemed here to stay, in a YouTube video commented on by various publications such asWired.[68]
Starting in 2009, the use of Auto-Tune to create melodies from the audio in video newscasts was popularized by Brooklyn musician Michael Gregory, and later by the bandthe Gregory Brothers in their seriesSongify the News. The Gregory Brothers digitally manipulated the recorded voices of politicians, news anchors, and political pundits to conform to a melody, making the figures appear to sing.[69][70] The group achieved mainstream success with their "Bed Intruder Song" video, which became the most-watchedYouTube video of 2010.[71]
The Simpsons season 12 episode 14, "New Kids on the Blecch", satirizes the use of Auto-Tune. In 2014, during season 18 of the animated showSouth Park, the characterRandy Marsh uses Auto-Tune software to make the singing voice ofLorde. In episode 3, "The Cissy", Randy shows his son Stan how he does it on his computer.[72]
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