Colin McEnroe Show: Exploring Auto-Tune With Apathy & The Gregory Brothers
Rapper Apathy and the "Auto-Tune The News" Creators talk about pitch correction.
I don't usually recommend that you touch your radio tuner, but, after today's show, flip over to a station playing what used to be called Top 40 radio and notice how many songs use the effect known as auto-tune.
If you don't know what that is, you will by the time we're done with you. It's often flaunted, as if the artist thinks a mechanized chipmunk hum in one's vocals is a point of pride. But there's a good side to the technology. Producers often use auto-tune subtly as a way to fix the pitch of a singer or instrument.
But the Gregory Brothers have taken it all one step further. They've invented a new form of songwriting by taking the spoken words in news clips and using auto-tune to set them to music. I got hooked a long time ago on their "Auto-Tune the News" series in which newsreaders and politicans find themseles singing.
Even more delightful are songs like "Backin Up" in which an average person captured on TV news turns into a pop singer.
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auto tune
Real time auto tune has been used for a decade. If Taylor Swift was a little flat it means you saw a real live performance. No "guide track" (lip synch) no auto tune pitch correction and that is not typical these day.
E-mail from Gary
Young used a vocoder on his 1982 album trans- the effect is exactly the same as autotune- see if you can dig up "sample and hold" from that album as an early and very artistic example of the effect-neil young at his wierdest (best) gary
E-mail from George
Colin - I have a lot of respect for country singer Taylor Swift - as a songwriter and successful young country star. Yet every time I have seen her perform on TV, she sings flat (believe me....she's flat most of the time, especially when you compare her live voice to her recorded voice).
Am I correct in assuming that she is not able to have her voice pitch-corrected when she sings live?
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