Auto-Tune: Pop music’s latest scourge
December 1st, 2008 by Eric Snider in Trends
Pretty much any time a music critic of my, um, seasoning takes a stand against something trendy, he (she) runs the risk of being labeled an old fart. But I don’t think I’m succumbing to old-fartism when I say that the rampant use of Auto-Tune in today’s pop music is a scourge that I hope ends up in the dustbin of bad fads after a few more mouse clicks.
Auto-Tune? You may know it by its previous incarnations as a Vocoder or Talkbox. It’s an audio processor developed by Antares Technologies that corrects vocal pitch, but its trademark effect is the robotic sound it can add to singing.
The main perpetrator of the scourge is T-Pain, a hack who sings, near as I can tell, everything through Auto-Tune. He’s been highly rewarded for this gimmickry with several hit albums and a bevy of guest vocal appearances on hip-hop singles. In fact, Diddy reportedly paid T-Pain a royalty to work Auto-Tune “magic” on his new recording.
If Auto-Tune was relegated to a well-compensated clown like T-Pain and a few hooks on hip-hop songs, no problem. But it’s spreading like Ebola. Kanye West uses the effect throughout his new disc 808s & Heartbreak, which means that he’s doing a fair amount of singing, which is not good. Britney Spears, Madonna, Justin Timberlake and other pop artists have used it, which suggests it’s getting more and more entrenched as mainstream practice.
I have to admit that computer-sounding vocals can be pleasing as a novelty, when done in small doses. Roger Troutman and his band Zapp used it extensively in the 1980s, and I still have love for “I Want to Be Your Man,” his No. 3 single from 1987. (By the way, Roger had to generate the sound via synthesizer with a tube-like thing in his mouth, just like Peter Frampton did on Comes Alive!.)
Check out Roger doing his pre-Pain thing here:
So … why does the proliferation of Auto-Tune make my ears beg to be stuffed with cotton? Well, it represents a bunch of things that gnaw at old farts like me: A follow-the-leader ethic in pop music that seems to be getting worse all the time, regardless of artistic consequences; a lack of imagination and musical savvy in favor of a computer program; non-singers (Kanye) or marginal singers (Britney) being rewarded for using a device that masks their lack of vocal talent. (When T-Pain performed “One More Drink” with Ludacris on Saturday Night Live, he sang without Auto-Tune. No surprise: His pitch was way off.)
I don’t think these concerns are reserved for hidebound veterans such as myself. You can be the streetest 20-year-old cat on the block and still find Auto-Tune artificial and offensive.
Here’s where I take solace. Although I wish I had the power to halt Auto-Tune use by mandatory decree, I’m damn sure it won’t be long before the folks who soak it in as part of their daily soundtrack will get entirely sick of it.
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December 1st, 2008 at 6:09 pm
amen, brother eric, AMEN! the vocoder and talkbox are fine when used for good, not evil. even auto-tune has a place. lets say your band just finished the tracking your new disk. when you start mixing, you find that one little second where the singer is off a hair and it clashes with that last guitar overdub you did. hit that one second with the auto-tune or something similar and knock that one second of vox track into place. or just have your singer redo that verse. or just record everything live at once and say “fuck it. you either like or you don’t. this is exactly what we sound like”. ok, off track a bit, sorry.
music should be honest. an dumb-ass with a drum machine, a used nord and a computer can put out an album that sounds exactly like t-pain, britney or almost anything on mainstream radio. there is little to no artistry behind it. it is not honest. technically, it’s music; but it only meets the bare minimum requirements to be considered as such.
there is only one way to stop this plague. money; or more specifically the lack of money. when people stop buying crap from folks who depend on tricks like auto-tune to fake their way through albums and “live” shows, record companies will stop putting it out. but unfortunately, the corporate overloads of the major labels will have already moved on to their next gimmick. maybe one day that gimmick will be bands who really write, play and sing their own music without some suit looking over their shoulder, whispering about the bottom line and points for the producer in the band’s ear.
December 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 am
Auto-tune… in “today’s” pop music? Wade Tatangelo just discovered the Beach Boys influence in indie rock. You guys at Creative Loafing know it’s 2008, not 1998, right?