June 30th, 2009
Auto-Tune Inventor Spotlighted On WHYY Tonight
If you tune in (har har) to NOVA ScienceNOW tonight at 9 p.m. on Channel 12 WHYY-TV, you’ll see a segment on Dr. Andy Hildebrand, who in 1996 invented Auto-Tune — the pitch-correcting software that helped resurrect Cher’s career, made T-Pain a(n annoying-as-hell) superstar, ably assisted Kanye in his hitmaking, and has become a crutch for countless vocalists across all genres, as this recent Time magazine article made clear:
“It usually ends up just like plastic surgery,” says a Grammy-winning recording engineer. “You haul out Auto-Tune to make one thing better, but then it’s very hard to resist the temptation to spruce up the whole vocal, give everything a little nip-tuck.” Like plastic surgery, he adds, more people have had it than you think. “Let’s just say I’ve had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything from Britney Spears to Bollywood cast albums. And every singer now presumes that you’ll just run their voice through the box.”
Of course, a lot of people believe Auto-Tune is the devil-scourge of the music industry. Even Jay-Z just issued a sonic fatwa called “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)”:
So what does Dr. Hildebrand think of this whole brouhaha? There’s a fascinating interview with him just published over at the Seattle Times. An excerpt:
I write about pop music, and there’s some noise about this Jay-Z song, “D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune).” Do you really think there’s a significant backlash against that outward use of Auto-Tune in pop music?
Well, whenever something happens, part of the population likes it and part of the population doesn’t like it. That’s just the way the world works. Sometimes people are vocal about it. Someone asked me at one point in time if I thought that Auto-Tune was evil. I said, “Well, my wife wears make-up. Is that evil?” And yeah, in some circles that is evil. But in most circles, it’s not.
Yesterday, I posted on my Facebook profile “I’m interviewing the inventor of Auto-Tune tomorrow” and the only comments on my update were people saying, “Can you ask him why he ruined music?” I forget what the other ones were, but they were similar.
I just give people a tool. I don’t tell them how to use it.
I think some people did some stuff that some people are getting tired of hearing.
That’s not me. I didn’t do it. I’m innocent!
I guess people are just really attached to what they consider natural talent.
It’s as if I’d invented the automobile and was blamed for people causing car crashes. It just doesn’t fit.
