There’s a new trend in music today. Someone goes into the
studio, they sing crap, and polished, shiny vocals some how end up on the
track. The culprit: Auto-tune. I myself, as a singer, use auto-tune and Melodyne
and I will openly admit that I do. But I use it to clean and make sure
everything is just how I want it. It’s not a fall back for me and certainly do
just let bad takes get recorded because, “Whatever, it’ll get fixed later.”
For
all the good Auto-tune has done, it has done some serious bad as well. I don’t
think I’ll ever be able to forgive it for making Lil’ Wayne and T-Pain’s
careers possible.
But what I am really upset about it that for these years,
Auto-tune has been tricking me. Making me think everyone who uses it must be a
god-awful singer. Now I love to judge, and I certainly love to judge singers,
but now I can’t. I listen to radio and everyone sounds perfect, all the time.
There’s no dynamics and no emotion. Skills cannot be properly assessed. How
would I know if any of these cookie cutter pop singers were good?
Auto-tune has
become so popular that the tone and overuse is a DESIRABLE sound. I cannot even
get over how crazy this is. People in studios are actually saying, “I want this singer to sound like they can’t sing at all.” I’m sure not why I get so heated
about this because the music it affects isn’t music I even listen to. Maybe it’s
that all this overproduced crap is threatening my integrity as a singer. Or maybe
it’s just that I hate Katy Perry and anything she endorses just turns into a
steaming pile in my eyes (goodbye Pepsi).
Like my favorite super hero says, “With
great power comes great responsibility.” While this seems a bit heavy to be
about Auto-tune, I think it fits. Auto-tune is a powerful tool that used subtly
and correctly can make a great singer sound incredible. This does not mean it
should be used to make horrid rappers talking, sound like they have any musical
skills at all.
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