Auto-Tune

showing spectrograms of an audio clip with portamento (upper panel) and the same clip after applying pitch correction showing frequencies clamped to discrete values (lower panel) AutoTune is available as a plug-in for digital audio workstations used in a studio setting and as a stand-alone, rack-mounted unit for live performance processing. The processor slightly shifts pitches to the nearest true, correct semitone (to the exact pitch of the nearest note in traditional equal temperament). AutoTune can also be used as an effect to distort the human voice when pitch is raised or lowered significantly, such that the voice is heard to leap from note to note stepwise, like a synthesizer. AutoTune has become standard equipment in professional recording studios. Instruments such as the Peavey AT-200 guitar seamlessly use AutoTune technology for real-time pitch correction. ==Development==

AutoTune was developed in 1997 by Andy Hildebrand, a Ph.D. research engineer who specialized in stochastic estimation theory and digital signal processing. Over several months in early 1996, Hildebrand implemented the algorithm on a custom Macintosh computer. Later that year, he presented the result at the NAMM Show, where it became instantly popular. Music engineers had previously considered autocorrelation impractical because of the massive computational effort required. Hildebrand found a mathematical method to overcome this, "a simplification [that] changed a million multiply adds into just four". Cher's 1998 song "Believe" was the first commercial recording to use AutoTune as a stylistic effect, creating a robotic, futuristic sound. Cher, who proposed the effect, faced resistance from her label but insisted it remain, saying, "You can change [the song] over my dead body". Though AutoTune had been commercially available for about a year, according to Pitchfork, "Believe" was the first song "where the effect drew attention to itself ... announcing its technological artifice". The English rock band Radiohead used AutoTune on their 2001 album Amnesiac to create a "nasal, depersonalized sound" and to process speech into melody. According to the Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke, AutoTune "desperately tries to search for the music in your speech, and produces notes at random. If you've assigned it a key, you've got music." Later in the 2000s, T-Pain used AutoTune extensively, further popularizing the use of the effect. He cited the new jack swing producer Teddy Riley and funk artist Roger Troutman's use of the talk box as inspirations. T-Pain became so associated with AutoTune that he had an iPhone app named after him that simulated the effect, "I Am T-Pain". Eventually dubbed the "T-Pain effect", Lil Wayne's "Lollipop", and Kanye West's album 808s & Heartbreak. In 2009 the Black Eyed Peas' number-one hit "Boom Boom Pow", made heavy use of AutoTune on their vocals to create a futuristic sound. The effect has also become popular in raï music and other genres from Northern Africa. According to the Boston Herald, the country singers Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and Tim McGraw use AutoTune in performance, calling it a safety net that guarantees a good performance. However, other country singers, such as Allison Moorer, Garth Brooks, Big & Rich, Trisha Yearwood, Vince Gill and Martina McBride, have refused to use AutoTune. ==Reception==

Positive Some critics have argued that AutoTune opens up new possibilities in pop music, especially in hip-hop and R&B. Instead of using it as a correction tool for poor vocals—its original purpose—some musicians intentionally use the technology to mediate and augment their artistic expression. When the electronic duo Daft Punk was questioned about their use of AutoTune in their single "One More Time", Thomas Bangalter replied, "A lot of people complain about musicians using AutoTune. It reminds me of the late '70s when musicians in France tried to ban the synthesizer... They didn't see that you could use those tools in a new way instead of just for replacing the instruments that came before." T-Pain, the R&B singer and rapper who reintroduced the use of AutoTune as a vocal effect in pop music with his album Rappa Ternt Sanga in 2005, said, "My dad always told me that anyone's voice is just another instrument added to the music. There was a time when people had seven-minute songs, and five minutes were just straight instrumental. ... I got a lot of influence from [the '60s era]. I thought I might as well turn my voice into a saxophone." Following in T-Pain's footsteps, Lil Wayne experimented with AutoTune between his albums Tha Carter II and Tha Carter III. At the time, he was heavily addicted to promethazine codeine, and some critics see AutoTune as a musical expression of Wayne's loneliness and depression. Mark Anthony Neal wrote that Lil Wayne's vocal uniqueness, his "slurs, blurs, bleeps and blushes of his vocals, index some variety of trauma." And Kevin Driscoll asks, "Is AutoTune not the wah pedal of today's black pop? Before he transformed himself into T-Wayne on "Lollipop", Wayne's pop presence was limited to guest verses and unauthorized freestyles. In the same way that Miles equipped Hendrix to stay pop-relevant, Wayne's flirtation with the VST plugin du jour brought him updial from JAMN 94.5 to KISS 108." Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak was generally well received by critics, and it similarly used AutoTune to represent a fragmented soul, following his mother's death. The album marks a departure from his previous album, Graduation. Describing the album as a breakup album, Rolling Stone music critic Jody Rosen wrote, "Kanye can't really sing in the classic sense, but he's not trying to. T-Pain taught the world that AutoTune doesn't just sharpen flat notes: It's a painterly device for enhancing vocal expressiveness and upping the pathos ... Kanye's digitized vocals are the sound of a man so stupefied by grief, he's become less than human." YouTuber Conor Maynard, who received criticism for his use of AutoTune, defended it in an interview on the Zach Sang Show in 2019, stating: "It doesn't mean you can't sing ... AutoTune can't make anyone who can't sing sound like they can sing ... It just tightens it up slightly because we're human and not perfect, whereas [AutoTune] is literally digitally perfect." Negative At the 51st Grammy Awards in 2009, the band Death Cab for Cutie made an appearance wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of AutoTune. Later that year, Jay-Z titled the lead single of his album The Blueprint 3 as "D.O.A. (Death of AutoTune)". Jay-Z said he wrote the song because of personal beliefs that the trend had become a gimmick that had become too widely used. Christina Aguilera appeared in public in Los Angeles on August 10, 2009, wearing a T-shirt that read "Auto Tune is for Pussies". When interviewed by Sirius/XM, she said AutoTune could be used "in a creative way" and noted her song "Elastic Love" from Bionic uses it. Opponents have argued that AutoTune has a negative effect on society's perception and consumption of music. In 2004, the Daily Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick called AutoTune a "particularly sinister invention that has been putting an extra shine on pop vocals since the 1990s" by taking "a poorly sung note and transpos[ing] it, placing it dead centre of where it was meant to be". In 2006, the singer-songwriter Neko Case said a studio employee once told her that she and Nelly Furtado were the only singers who had never used it in his studio. Case said "it's cool that she has some integrity". In 2009, Time quoted an unnamed Grammy-winning recording engineer as saying, "Let's just say I've had AutoTune 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". According to Tom Lord-Alge, AutoTune is used on nearly every record these days. In 2010, the reality TV show The X Factor admitted to using AutoTune to improve the voices of contestants. Also in 2010, Time included AutoTune in their list of "The 50 Worst Inventions". Heavily used by stars like Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne and Britney Spears, AutoTune has been criticized as indicative of an inability to sing on key. Trey Parker used AutoTune on the South Park song "Gay Fish", and found that he had to sing off-key in order to sound distorted; he said, "You had to be a bad singer in order for that thing to actually sound the way it does. If you use it and sing into it correctly, it doesn't do anything to your voice." The singer Kesha has used AutoTune in her songs extensively, putting her vocal talent under scrutiny. In 2009, the producer Rick Rubin wrote that "Right now, if you listen to pop, everything is in perfect pitch, perfect time and perfect tune. That's how ubiquitous AutoTune is." The Time journalist Josh Tyrangiel called Auto-Tune "Photoshop for the human voice". Ellie Goulding and Ed Sheeran have called for honesty in live shows by joining the "Live Means Live" campaign. "Live Means Live" was launched by songwriter/composer David Mindel. When a band displays the "Live Means Live" logo, the audience knows, "there's no AutoTune, nothing that isn't 100 percent live" in the show, and there are no backing tracks. In 2023, multiple creators on the social media platform TikTok were accused of using AutoTune in post-production to correct the pitch of singing videos presented to appear as live, casual performances. == Impact and parodies ==

The US TV comedy series Saturday Night Live parodied AutoTune using the fictional white rapper Blizzard Man, who sang in a sketch: "Robot voice, robot voice! All the kids love the robot voice!" Satirist "Weird Al" Yankovic poked fun at the overuse of AutoTune, while commenting that it seemed here to stay, in a YouTube video commented on by various publications such as Wired. Starting in 2009, the use of AutoTune to create melodies from the audio in video newscasts was popularized by Brooklyn musician Michael Gregory, and later by the band the Gregory Brothers in their series Songify the News. The Gregory Brothers digitally manipulated the recorded voices of politicians, news anchors, and political pundits to conform to a melody, making the figures appear to sing. The group achieved mainstream success with their "Bed Intruder Song" video, which became the most-watched YouTube video of 2010. The Simpsons season 12 episode 14, "New Kids on the Blecch", satirizes the use of AutoTune. In 2014, during season 18 of the animated show South Park, the character Randy Marsh uses AutoTune software to make the singing voice of Lorde. In episode 3, "The Cissy", Randy shows his son Stan how he does it on his computer. In Thor: Ragnarok, Hulk's autotune voice was blended by Mark Ruffalo’s vocal performance and Hulk's signature Growling. In Adventure Time, the character Finn the Human was noted to have swallowed a tiny computer earlier in his life, allowing him to replicate the AutoTune effect in several episodes. == Acquisition & Ownership Transition ==

After nearly two decades of independent operation under Hildebrand, Antares Audio Technologies was acquired on October 18, 2016, by Broadstream Capital Partners, a merchant bank based in Calabasas, California, in partnership with Corbel Capital Partners. On April 26, 2019, Corbel Capital Partners realized its investment when Antares was acquired by a prominent New York-based family office. == See also ==