Autotune has slowly become the bane of my musical experience. The original purpose of the audio processor was to correct pitches in vocal and instrumental works. But, music, and art in general, for me, is finding beauty in the imperfections. The musicians may not be perfectly in tune, but that gave them a human quality, knowing that those were their real voices and the amount of emotion they put into their songs.
Auto-tune Program
I will admit when I first heard auto-tuned, I found it appealing. Actually, I did not even know it was auto-tuned. Remember, Cher’s 1998 song, “Believe?” That song was one of my favorites from the ’90s. The auto-tune craze, however, did not catch on until T-Pain released his first single, I’m Sprung, in 2005.
Immediately when I heard T-pain’s nasally, electronic voice, I thought of the Zapp Band, a soul and funk band from the ’80s who were known for their use of the talk box vocal distortion device. If you are not familiar with who they are, listen to “Computer Love,” “I Want To Be Your Man” or Tupac and Dr. Dre’s “California Love”.
However, what separated singers like Roger Troutman (the Zapp Band), Cher, and even T-pain, from some “singers” of today is that they did not use vocal effects as a crutch. They can sing without it; for example, listen to T-pain without the auto-tune. Auto-tune is only used as a tool, for a vocal effect that sounds interesting.
Several of today’s most popular musicians do not have great voices and use auto-tune often to disguise them, or to hide their voices in order to jump on the bandwagon. Do I need to remind you of the Rebecca Black catastrophe? In addition to that, there are rappers who use it to pretend to be singers when they should obviously stick to rapping. Yes, I am looking at you, Drake!
Seriously, I would prefer someone singing in their natural voice over singing with auto-tune, even if they did not have the most stunning voice. Using technology is not wrong, but if there is no artistry to back it up, what is the point?
You hit the nail on the head! I hate when artists who can actually sing rely on autotune just to conform to this horrible trend. I heard a demo of Jason Derulo’s earlier material and he can really sing, but consistently uses autotune (and the frequent repetition of his name) to get him somewhere.