The Banning of Auto tunes
I remember at the age of at eight years old, instantly falling in love listening to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” song for the first time. This song is about a girl who claimed that Jackson was the father of her child and who also used to stalk him. The beat to the song was epic and had a great tune to it that will make you jump out of the seat, and the combinations with his vocal skills made the song amazing. I loved every second of the song and at that moment is when I became a big Michael Jackson fan. Now, the reason why I adored the song so much was because of Michael Jackson’s voice and his ability to hit every single note in his song naturally. Because of his natural ability, Michael Jackson lead to be the most influential artists in the world and also becoming the “King of Pop”. Now in our present day, music is mostly made by auto tunes, a device that measures and alters pitch in vocals for music recording, which I hold a great distaste for. It gives a lot of artists a chance in becoming famous and making a great deal of money, but not all artists are talented, so in result of that they usually end dying away in the music industry. It’s a complete headache to see a bunch of unknown artists show up with a good song using auto tunes, and then evidently ending their careers as artists for the lack of good material, not being able to sing naturally, and also hit their vocal notes in their song without the use of auto tunes. All music industries should start the process of banning auto tunes in music production to enforce producers in finding real natural singers.
Calling all musicians, DJs, rappers and music lovers; progresses in digital recording have afforded some people amazing flawless and audio production. On the other hand, it has contributed much in creating an over-used scourge which is to a great extent homogenized. This has resulted to foisting robot vocals and swallowing individuality in all facets of media. Arguably, my biggest beef with auto tunes ‘studio magic’ is that persons who a while ago could not carry a single tune in a basket are today's pop stars simply because they are physically appealing. I certainly do not have anything against eye candy; my point is that I like music to have joy, despair, pain, and all human quality of the musician evident in their voice, foreboding, imparting wisdom and triumph. The main reason of listening to music is to get the emotion of whatever kind. Many music fans say that, since the introduction of auto-tune, the music industry has been destroyed. These days most music is auto-tuned and it is quite disgusting listening to the radio (Vernallis 115).
In the U.S for instance, we have adopted a culture of over processing everything from sewage to the exterior of Heidi Montag who is today nowhere in the limelight, it is therefore not surprising that continue with this trend and process music as well. Originally, an Auto-Tune was developed to fix tone and pitch problems in the singers’ voices. Subsequently, its use has taken over the music industry virtually spanning all types of genre from hip-hop to rock to country. This does not stop at that, Auto-Tune has gone to an extent of dipping its synthesized hooks into Interviews and TV shows as well. Auto-Tune has become so omnipresent that nothing looks original anymore (Efe 78). Though Auto- Tune changes transforms talentless wannabes into million dollar celebrities, it has spoon fed artists so much they entirely rely on it. It is so unfortunate that Auto-Tune shows up everywhere in popular music. For instance, the song ‘lollipop’ by Lil Wayne and ‘Heartbreak’ by Kanye West are a few examples of this new trend, ‘horrible sound’. To these artists, it is more of an addiction than a helping tool, most of them cannot perform without it, can’t live without it, and definitely can’t sell records without it. Entirely, their lives depend Auto-Tune or else they fade away.
I trust that I am not alone wondering where these new artists would be without Auto-Tune. An interview done in 2009 by Time Magazine, one Grammy-winning recording engineer asserted that Auto-tune helps artists run their voices through the box. In short, these artists are looking nothing else but undeserved fame. With this attitude we will soon accept “talent” from our current crop. It has been the easiest way out for many artists and to please their fans. In concerts for instance, the majority of these artists desire to sound way good for their real fans, so the only option for them is to use the Auto-Tune machine in the live performances. In the real sense, these singers should come to their senses and just be themselves; Auto-Tune is really nurturing a sick crop (Westhoff 215).
Who said artists must sound perfect? Something somewhere is critically wrong. The voices of singers such as Bob Dylan and Neil Young are simply awesome. These legends have through thick and thin had their way out through struggle, practicing and by exercising their talents over and over again. These are self made legends who never use Auto-Tune., they have a passion for music, desire and conviction to be great. I totally believe that Auto-Tune is completely to blame for all this mess. It has at one time ranked among the 50 worst interventions. For the obvious reasons, it should have no single space in the music or entertainment industry that entertains thousands of fans across the globe. Music is not all about machine working stuff for you. It is all about putting you, your talent and performance.
The predominant implication of Auto-Tune is the emphasis turned away from how good an instrument player or a musician was to how effective and good you are at navigating a computer or a musical gadget. A while ago, many labels were teeming towards R7B, hip-hop and modern pop music while steadily dropping many musicians and loyal bands out of the streets and shaping them to icons. Today, shows such as X-Factor have been found using Auto-Tune especially for contestants all through until sometime when a co-ordinator was much pressured by fans into dropping it out of the show. People are observant and keen enough to dictate what is right and what should be done, which is one of the reasons that Auto-Tune was sooner than latter dropped out of a famous TV-show (Otmazgin 454).
Surely, Auto-Tune has mauled modern music and tore it into apart. The list of pop artists using Auto-Tune is endless and quite extensive. However, this list can pretty much be generalized into a vast bulk of teeny-bopper and pop culture loving artists. Arguably, unoriginality of tracks is what defines a mistreated use of Auto-Tune. It can be unacceptably headache list to overly pitch-corrected tunes that are labelled ‘the biggest thing’. Everyone has a song they love listening to even in reeks of Auto-Tune; conversely, these songs all sound the same because some excellent correction has been made using technology to mold them into appealing sounds. The biggest problem out there is the rampant abuse of Auto-Tune. Initially, Auto-Tune was developed to enable produces touch up imperfect notes and rectify vocals after recording. All this has changed since then; today's pop artists completely rely on Auto-Tune to sound perfect and to please their fans. Everything in pop music is in perfect pitch and this has changed people’s expectations of various artists since they expect to list to perfect vocals when their favorite artists perform live. Normally, such perfect vocals are usually not the case; it is use of software that alters key, pitch and vocals. Several bands have dropped from record labels because they have not accepted the use of Auto-Tune and as a result, talentless artists have taken their places and been signed because they consent and to the agreement and are willing to use voice altering software. This is just a glimpse of what it is in the music industry (Yano 89).
Auto-Tune is being overused which should not be the case. Its goal is to correct a few mistakes but not to alter an artist’s vocal. It shouldn’t be used to alter an artist’s voice to an extent of making them feel confident enough in their ability to sing. Secondly, it shouldn’t be used in live performances. I totally believe that Auto-Tune is completely to blame for all this mess. It has at one time ranked among the 50 worst interventions (Reynolds 410). For obvious reasons, it should have no single space in the music or entertainment industry that entertains thousands of fans across the globe. Initially, Auto-Tune was developed to enable produces touch up imperfect notes and rectify vocals after recording. All this has changed since then; today's pop artists completely rely on Auto-Tune to sound perfect and to please their fans. Music is not all about machine working stuff for you. It is all about putting you, your talent and performance. There ought to be a distinction between Auto-Tune for instant success without real talent and Auto-Tune for minor pitch corrections. Auto-Tune is slowly transforming artists into machines while talent is fading away day by day.
Works Cited
Cloonan, Martin. "Researching live music: some thoughts on policy implications." International Journal of Cultural Policy 17.4 (2011): 405-420.
Efe, Diler Özer. "Music, Politics and Freedom: Barriers to Musical Expression in Turkey." British Journal of Arts & Social Sciences 13.1 (2013).
Frith, Simon, et al. "" Analysing Live Music in the UK" Findings One Year into a Three- Year Research Project doi: 10.5429/2079-3871 (2010) v1i1. 3en." IASPM@ Journal 1.1 (2010): 1-30.
Neal, Jason R. "There’s got to be some kind of way out of here: Music, information, categorization, and commodification." (2013).
Otmazgin, Nissim Kadosh. "Commodifying Asian-ness: entrepreneurship and the making of East Asian popular culture." Media, Culture & Society 33.2 (2011): 259-274.
Reynolds, Simon. Energy flash: A journey through rave music and dance culture. Soft Skull Press, 2012.
Tune, Cydney A., and Mark M. Bekheit. "Growing Pains: Webcasters Face Uncertainty and Higher Music Royalty Rates." Ent. & Sports Law. 25 (2007): 3.
Vernallis, Carol, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media. , 2013. Print.
Westhoff, Ben. Dirty South: Outkast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2011. Internet resource.
Yano, Christine, and Shuhei Hosokawa. "Popular music in modern Japan." The Ashigate research companion to Japanese music (2008): 345-362.
