Let's start with a quote: "Artists that are out should have to pay royalties to Antares. Auto-Tune is the main vocalist on too many tracks." -- azwun25.
What brings this up? If you were watching Saturday Night Live's Digital Short this week, have heard anything by T-Pain, or Cher's 1998 "Believe," you have heard Antares' Auto-Tune at work. Actually, you have heard Auto-Tune overworked!
At its essence Auto-Tune moves off key notes back where they belong. When used gently you won't notice the effect... until you hear the same artist perform without it. When set to attack rapidly and mercilessly Auto-Tune produces the robotic tonal qualities that have T-Pain laughing all the way to the bank and more naturally gifted artists crying.
Time Magazine recently headlined a story, "Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect." Gizmodo was a little less gentle: "The Secret of Auto-Tune: Kanye and T-Pain Are Not Good Singers." Auto-Tune is to bad music what Photoshop is to bad photography!
It's is the brainchild of Dr. Andy Hildebrand, an unlikely guy to turn pop music upside down. His professional background is in the physical world. Before Antares he co-founded the company that produced "the world's first stand-alone seismic data interpretation workstation." Like Auto-Tune, seismic analysis depends on the manipulation of digitally sampled signals.
Though much of Auto-Tune's work is performed as a plug-in for Pro Tools, a $100 home version exists. Time reports an IPhone version is next, from Antares and T-Pain himself.
"It's gonna be real cool," says T-Pain. "Basically, you can add Auto-Tune to your voice and send it to your friends and put it on the Web. You'll be able to sound just like me."
Or Cher.
http://www.appscout.com/2009/02/is_it_real_or_autotune_probabl.php
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