From the Inside: Auto-tune and Voice Manipulation

T-Pain does it. In fact, almost every mainstream act you listen to does it. Auto-Tune. For those of you who aren't exactly familiar with the practice, Auto-Tune is exactly what it sounds like, a correctional program that makes a recorded or live vocal performance sound in tune. Is this okay? Are WE, as listeners, okay with listening to post-produced vocals, okay with attending concerts that monetize on lip syncing and dance moves, okay with being told a little white lie over and over again? There is a line that is being crossed with Auto-Tune... In small doses, the practice is acceptable. If you do a pretty close to perfect take in studio that could be made even better with a little touching up, that's okay. But acts like Ke$ha and T-Pain and Lil Wayne have built their entire vocal sound around the software. Is this the future of music?

If it is, we're losing touch with our roots. There were times when we were okay with rugged vocals, raspy vocals, whispery, floaty, airy, gruff, vocals. There were days when vocal texture was important to music, like the days of Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan... even the days of Damien Rice, and Radiohead... these days are fading for some. For others, they're still quite real. However, the majority of our population loves to hear the slick, clean, metallic production accented with drum machine beats and synth.... anything they can dance to. And that has its place. But imagine a whole musical world like that. I couldn't live there.

Artists with clout, in my opinion, like Imogen Heap and Mat Kearney, have used the Vocoder, a mic that multiplies and manipulates your voice, on stage and in live performance. This is different. This is an art form. It's a beautiful cacophony. Another respectable artist,Bon Iver, has utilized Auto-Tune on one or two tracks to create an entire futuristic choir of himself, echoing and melisma-ing circles around each other. Again, this is art. T-Pain Auto-Tuning about the reverse cowgirl is not. Even Jay-Z, another respectable, successful artist, made an attack on young rappers, claiming they were "T-Paining" too much. Auto-Tune should be used tastefully. When we start building an entire empire around a correctional tool, we're confusing money with music. We're telling lies with a medium that in the past has always been used to tell the truth. We need to get back to music.