[MUSIC] Auto-Tune follies

Critics are often failures at considering — or even being curious about — the artist's original intent. They then spew out various words which are really literary self-gratification rather than a helpful window into the art.

I've read a few (thankfully not many, it was becoming uselessly redundant) sloppy reviews where a musician was lambasted for using the Auto-Tune effect: in other words, audible pitch correction that made them sound robotic. The critique is often a clichéd one, such as "They can't sing, that's why they Auto-Tune".

Not interesting. I'd rather ponder why someone used Auto-Tune instead of assume. With me, you don't have to ponder: I simply wanted to have a lot of fun and show how Auto-Tune works, because so often, you hear the effect on a hit record, but aren't privy to the behind-the-scenes, how it's setup for a singer to wail into the mic and have their pitches tweaked to the 12 hard semitones of the Western scale.

THESE "SECRETS" MUST BE REVEALED. That's when I made these videos, lala!

This first one is an intro to Auto-Tune EFX, the simple (read: cheap) version.

And now I'm getting into a full-fledged song (yes, I sang/rapped this on the fly).

A special stalker song for my wife.

And now demo'ing Auto-Tune EVO, which is far more sophisticated. I can tweak all manner of knobs, and oh, I can play my MIDI keyboard  to control my pitch. It gives sounds similar to a vocoder or talk box at times and there are shared concepts, but it's still different.

Remember: winners remember fun.

Things to ponder:

1. What would Michel Gondry do with Auto-Tune?
2. Has there ever been a track with Auto-Tune effecting a talk box through a vocoder?
3. Where are all the celeb testimonials on Antares' site? they need an Open Labs flava injection. Heck, even 2CAudio is heavy on the praise.