The Auto-Tune Revolution
R&B crooners made Auto-Tune into a major modern musical phenomenon over the past few years. It is now an almost ubiquitous feature for a successful pop hit, but what exactly is it and where did it come from? First, it is important to understand that Auto-Tune is a product made by a company called Antares. Antares developed Auto-Tune as a proprietary vocoder that could be used in studios and in live applications to correct the pitch of vocalists and instruments.
This is a short and simple explanation of how it works as a pitch-correction tool. Let’s say you are an engineer or a producer and a client comes to do a vocal record in any genre. The problem is that your client sings a little bit sharp or flat in some places. As long as you capture a relatively good signal at proper levels, you can correct the errors with relative ease. Auto-Tune is a plugin that is excels at just that. You determine the key that the song is in, or the key(s) that your singer should be in, select the notes that they should be hitting, and Auto-Tune will force the pitches into place. It is almost undetecteable in situations where the performer is a few (or more than a few) hertz off. Even more drastic errors can be corrected with ease.