IS GENERIC MUSIC TAKING OVER?

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I say yes.... yes it is taking over!

Auto-Tune is a proprietary audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies. Auto-Tune uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise off-key inaccuracies and mistakes, and has allowed singers to perform perfectly tuned vocal tracks without the need of singing in tune.


In popular music

According to the Boston Herald, "Country stars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw have both confessed to using Auto-Tune in performance, claiming it is a safety net that guarantees a good performance.[6] Sara Evans, John Michael Montgomery and Gary LeVox of the group Rascal Flatts also rely on Auto-Tune to compensate for pitch problems. However, other country music singers, such as Loretta Lynn, Allison Moorer, Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks, Martina McBride, and Patty Loveless, have refused to use Auto-Tune.[7][clarification needed]

Auto-Tune was used to produce the prominent altered vocal effect on Cher's Believe, recorded in 1998, the first major hit song to employ the software for this purpose. When first interviewed about this, the sound engineers claimed that they had used a vocoder, in what Sound on Sound perceived as an attempt to preserve a trade secret.[8] After the massive success of Believe, many artists imitated the technique, which became known as the "Cher Effect". It was evident in songs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some notable examples are Gigi D'Agostino's La Passion and Janet Jackson's US #1 hit All For You, among many others. After years of relative dormancy, the effect was revived in the mid-2000s by R&B singer T-Pain, who elaborated on the effect in contemporary popular music by making active use of Auto-Tune in his songs. This technique has since gone on to be very widely imitated by numerous other modern R&B and pop artists.[9] T-Pain has become so well associated with Auto-Tune, that he has an iPhone App named after him that simulates the effect called "I Am T-Pain".[10]

YouTube musical group The Gregory Brothers have garnered millions of YouTube views with their videos that couple their original music tracks with Auto-Tuned versions of mundane evening news video clips, lampooning everyone from President Barack Obama to Antoine Dodson. The popularity of their YouTube channel led the Gregory Brothers to release many of their songs on iTunes.


Artist backlash

As early as 2003, the CD Miss Fortune by singer-songwriter Allison Moorer was released with a sticker stating that "Absolutely no vocal tuning or pitch correction was used in the making of this record".[11] At the 51st Grammy Awards in early 2009, the band Death Cab for Cutie made an appearance wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of Auto-Tune in the music industry.[12] Later that spring, Jay-Z titled the lead single of his album The Blueprint 3 as D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune). Jay-Z elaborated that he wrote the song under the personal belief that far too many people had jumped on the Auto-Tune bandwagon and that the trend had become a gimmick.[13][14] Christina Aguilera appeared in public in Los Angeles on August 10, 2009 wearing a T-shirt that read, "Auto Tune is for Pussies",[15] but when interviewed by Sirius/XM, she stated that Auto-Tune wasn't bad if used "..in a creative way", noting that her album Bionic uses the technology and highlighted Elastic Love being a product of it.[16]

Opponents of the plug-in argue Auto-Tune has a pervasive negative effect on society's perception and consumption of music. A Chicago Tribune report from 2003 states that "many successful mainstream artists in most genres of music—perhaps a majority of artists—are using pitch correction".[11]

In 2004, The Daily Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick called Auto-Tune a "particularly sinister invention that has been putting extra shine on pop vocals since the 1990s" by taking "a poorly sung note and transpos[ing] it, placing it dead center of where it was meant to be".[17]

In 2009, Time magazine quoted an unnamed Grammy-winning recording engineer as saying, "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." The same article expressed "hope that pop's fetish for uniform perfect pitch will fade", speculating that pop-music songs have become harder to differentiate from one another, as "track after track has perfect pitch."[18][19] Timothy Powell, a producer/engineer stated in 2003 that he is "even starting to see vocal tuning devices show up in concert settings"; he states that "That's more of an ethical dilemma—people pay a premium dollar to see artists and artists want people to see them at their best."[11]

The American television series Glee has become noted for regular use of the system in its songs. E! Online's Joal Ryan criticized the show for its "overproduced soundtrack", in particular, complaining that many songs rely too heavily on the software.[20]

In 2010, there was controversy when British television reality TV show, The X Factor had been accused of using Auto-Tune to improve the voices of contestants, especially Gamu Nhengu.[21] [22] Simon Cowell has ordered a ban on Auto-Tune for future episodes