The Rise of Auto-Tune & It' Controversial Role In Music
The history & semi-controversial surge of auto-tune in the music industry.

Looking at current pillars of the hip-hop scene like Travis or Kanye or Drake, even J Cole, they all have one thing in common, they all use autotune.

Now what is autotune? Clearly something used by so many artists and prominent artists should be complex and grandiose right? Wrong. Autotuning is done with a piece of computer software that enables the correction of an out-of-tune vocal performance. This is used by singers to compensate for a lacking voice, or by rappers to sound like robots. This autotuning has caused many controversies and career launches over the years with rappers starting to use autotune more and more with time to degrees that get simply unbearable.

In this article, I will explain to my best degrees where autotune originated from, who uses it, it's big successes and the even bigger criticism and controversies, adding on the negatives and positives of having autotune in your music.

Where did autotune come from?

Autotune before it got where it is now was just a complex computer algorithm used in oil mines where Dr. Andy Hildebrand, working for Exxon, created a complex set of algorithms to interpret sonar-generated data and locate oil deposits far underground. This algorithm was then acquired by two who were inspired by the algorithm and used it to correct the pitch of their sound.

Now that origin wasn't exactly what made autotune what it was as just some people who used it for fun. The origin for the popularization of autotune came from the “Goddess of Pop�, Cher. With her huge comeback in 1998 with her release “Believe� featuring autotuned vocals. Cher later on said on the New York Times that her label wanted her to remove the autotune but she refused as it was revolutionary, we can even say that this was the beginning of what became the current advanced autotune.

Link to “Believe�: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXRV4MezEw

The popularization of autotune

With time, music evolved and autotune started getting used more bit by bit until Kanye West dropped an album that shaped the entire future of autotune, “808s and Heartbreak�. At that time, whatever Kanye did, other artists would follow, he talks about racism, they follow, and this time it was the use of autotune. With songs like his iconic song “Heartless� he sang his heart out and used a huge amount of autotune making his voice borderline robotic.

Following that was an artist that based his entire career on autotune, T-Pain. T-Pain also sang his heart out using a mad amount of autotune but that was all along his career and he got popular off of it. He used the uprise of autotune to his advantage and made a career even though his voice was beautiful. After that many huge artists started to use autotune frequently created monsters in the music industry that I will mention next.

Who uses autotune now?

Well, everyone. No exceptions. It only really depends on the degree of autotune and the nature of the autotune the artist is applying. Some people use it lightly like singers would to sound better while still sounding human, like The Weeknd. Another type is the type that uses autotune so much that it masks the person's voice, like Kanye or Travis who use autotune so much when you hear them talk it sounds like a different voice altogether. There is also the type that completely changes the voice like J Cole in “The Cut Off�

But obviously not only big artists use autotune, small ones as well like indie artists or up and coming artists who are trying to copy big artists use autotune in a way that their inspiration uses it. This usually causes the artist to lose originality ultimately leading to the artist's own failure.

Controversies around autotune

With something as revolutionary as autotune it is obvious that there will be many controversies around it. These controversies are both on a small scale and a big scale as so many people were using it, it was natural that many huge artists would go against it.

One of the most popular controversies was around Jay-Z's song “Death to autotune� where he denounces the use of autotune by rappers and musicians for the song to get swept under the rug with time with no one major addressing it nowadays. However, one of his closest friends, Kanye West, opposed the song and made a full album using an excessive amount of autotune and a lot of people clowned Jay-Z for seeming like an old head that is hating on the new generation of artists.

Other than that, many artists like T-Pain got excessive amount of hate from the industry and from their fellow peers for using autotune and seeming like they were ruining their voice.

A general negative that also caused a lot of controversy in autotune was the singing. A lot of artists get discredited when they sing without autotune because they believe it doesn't take ability at all to sing and have a robot give the solution even if it isn't entirely true. Artists like The Weeknd, or Drake use autotune while singing and many older music listeners believe that they don't have a good voice and only sign because they have the aid of autotune.

Positives and negatives of having autotune

Well starting off with the positives, autotune can help you with your signing as it can help with your voice. Other than that, maybe finding your sound includes using autotune to change your voice or your rapping or singing. And the final positive is that autotune can still be considered on the rise where you could make a song with autotune and people would still see it as a new thing if you know how to use it.

However, as few as the positives were, the negatives are more hard-hitting. The first negative is of course the backlash, you should expect as an artist to lose respect from others because they will think that you don't have a good enough voice to let out. Another negative is that there is a huge risk of using autotune wrong, messing up the entire song and making it sound like an amateur trying to sing like a robot. Also, finding success with autotune isn't as easy as people think it is as one mistake can lead to a much lower quality in music.

Conclusion

To conclude this article, autotune had a rocky upbringing with Cher and an even rockier popularization with Kanye. There were a lot of controversies around it like Jay-Z expressing his hate towards autotune or the general public disrespecting artists who use autotune for assistance.

There are also a lot of negatives for autotune including the backlash, the difficulty of using it and using it right with few positives like using autotune fitting your sound.

Sources:

https://www.clearlakerecordingstudios.com/2019/11/19/the-history-of-auto-tune/

https://pitchfork.com/features/article/how-auto-tune-revolutionized-the-sound-of-popular-music/

https://www.soundoflife.com/blogs/mixtape/the-resurrection-of-auto-tune-has-it-destroyed-modern-music