Anyone who listens to pop, rock, country, R&B, and even some hip hop on the radio nowadays has heard Auto-Tune before, but he or she may not be aware of it. To those of you who don't know, Auto-Tune is the technology that corrects pitch problems and other flaws. So, if you fall flat on your longer notes or the notes in your higher range sound a little forced, Auto-Tune can fix them. It's the reason people like Hilary Duff are allowed to make music albums. According to a podcast from TIME magazine I heard a couple months ago, Auto-Tune was created by an engineer working at Exxon after someone bet him he couldn't invent something to make a tone-deaf singer sound decent.
For most pop tarts, this is the greatest thing since fat paychecks reached the music industry. If you listen hard, I guarantee you will hear traces Auto-Tune anytime you hear a high note that seems a little less than human.
Then, along came Cher.
She and her producers were looking for the next great sound. Apparently, if you turn the dial up on Auto-Tune to a high level, you get a bleating, robotic sound similar to the one you get when you talk into a fan.
Here's a before/after video of the effect.
So, it was pretty cool when Cher did it. Then T-Pain thought he was just sooooooooo original by reviving the effect on his entire album. Then rapper Kanye West thought he'd skip on the whole, you know, rapping thing in favor of an ENTIRE FREAKING ALBUM OF AUTO-TUNE. And if you thought that was overkill, now everyone from Jamie Foxx to the Black-Eyed Peas are dependent on the "Cher effect," as it's sometimes known.
It's not cool, fresh, and original anymore. Please stop thinking cranking up Auto-Tune will make your song anything more than generic. It's getting annoying.
Moreover, artists who use Auto-Tune for its original purpose may make a decent-sounding record, but their live performances are getting increasingly more horrific. Either these people sing tone-deaf or lip-sync, which makes it no fun to go and pay forty bucks to see them. Plus, more and more talentless but conventionally pretty people are getting signed to record labels when those with a raw musical gift -- or at least, decent singing voice -- are cleared to the side like the crumbs on my kitchen table.
I watched the BET Awards-slash-tribute-to-Michael-Jackson, and Jamie Foxx sang his "Alcohol" song with a live Auto-Tune feed turned all the way up. Live Auto-Tune is weird and inherently unnatural. When did music turn into merely finding the right combination of notes to be played into Auto-Tune? Whatever happened to passion, soul, and feeling? Imagine if Aretha Franklin were subjected to such treachery.
Um. As I said before, I always forget that is Cher and not a slightly metrosexual male singing it.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other clip, I thought it was Kanye West for the auto-tune part, because that's the only one I have really listened to the entire song of (against my decision).
I agree on the Aretha thing. But no one can just be an actor anymore, they have to be an actor/singer/songwriter/producer/designer/perfume-maker. Oh, and have Twitter/myspace/4 webpages/blog to tell people what the tabloids exploited yesterday. It's made for even LAZIER 'journalism.'
However, I must approve it because otherwise how am I supposed to get my record deal? I need it to make my song so by the time I get a record deal, I will have my plastic surgery finished to make the music video and show the 'real' side of me.