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Is this a vocal language robot, or is it still human? This question arises, which is of interest to the pop music of today in particular and for hip – hop in particular. Whether the singer Bushido, the Latin-Darling Alvaro Soler or Lo & Leduc in the hit "079": In the top ten of the current Swiss hit-parade is not a single song that does not rely on the l? effect that makes the sound of the voice, as if it came to us from a tinny robot instead of a human body. The effect is called auto-tuning and has recently been voted by Time magazine as one of the worst inventions of the twentieth century – not just next to awful things like the Agent Orange chemical weapon or the vibration belt to reduce the waistline.
Andy Hildebrand only the best intentions. The man worked as a research engineer in the oil industry and developed a kind of seismological signal analysis technique that could be used to create detailed underground maps to find potential wells. So rich, he asked during a lunch break in 1995 in a relaxed round of colleagues, which in their opinion should be invented next. "A machine that makes me a decent singer," said a friend who answered
The Automatic Height Correction System
C is so that the passionate musician undertook to develop a … somewhat simplified – the seismic waves produced by a bad singer are corrected so that the notes are shaken to the right levels of scale. He used a method similar to the one he used for the first time in the oil profession. After only one month, Auto-Tune was born, in English: the automatic height correction system.
When Antares offered the spring 1997 effect as a plug-in for professional recording software, it was like a revolution in music production. comparable to the invention of Photoshop for image editing. Auto-Tune has managed to make each singer a great singer. But aside from the sound engineers in the recording studios, almost nobody gets anything for the moment. Although almost everyone used auto-tuning, no musician wanted to expose himself to the need to provide technical assistance for editing his songs. If we discreetly adjust the effect, it only marginally changes the color of the voice. So, there is nothing to notice except that the twisted sounds suddenly sound right.
The big taboo hit was produced in August 1998 in a studio in Surrey, England. In pure despair. The actress and singer Cher has been battling with her producer Mark Taylor during the recording of the song "Believe". He thought that Cher's song was inappropriate, and after repeated chants, he decided that he should go to hell. If he does not like it, he should look for another singer.
Dear "Belive": The first hit of the world with auto-tune. Video: Youtube
After leaving the studio in protest, Mark Taylor began to tinker. He turned the controls of the Auto Tune effect on the vocal track to the limit (you can adjust the speed and intensity of the sound correction), which robbed the voice of Cher so much robotics that & # 039; She was almost unrecognizable. The inventor Andy Hildebrand had programmed his effect to make possible this kind of tonal correction, but he was convinced that no one would be crazy enough to use it as he explained later in an interview. However, Cher liked the result so much that she said at questionable etiquette that she was only allowed to eliminate the robotic effect on her voice via her corpse. "Believe" has become the world's first hit with the use of forced auto-tuning.
However, the imitators – with the exception of the Italian disco foot light Gigi D'Agostino – no longer existed in western pop music. The Rai singers of North Africa soon discovered the effect for themselves, but today there is hardly any modern Maghreb production in which it is not not used excessively. From a pop-historical point of view, hip-hoppers are more likely to be latecomers. In 2005, rapper T-Pain's first moving album "I'm Jump" appeared in the US charts, whose most striking feature was the extravagant self-tuning effect used. Because T-Pain then built his entire career on this and was surprisingly rich, the Lord quickly found prominent epigones – including the rapper as Snoop Dogg or Kanye West. The latter put a memorial to the effect with his 2008 release "808s and Heartbreak."
Since then, all the dams have been broken. In a world of network music, where every trend is spreading in the blink of an eye in the most remote corners of the world, Auto-Tune has become a hot topic. In the most trendy of all hip-hop branches, in the trap, is already considered a hopeless leash, which does not use auto-tuner, and even the indie scene slowly approaches the artistically sensitive subject.
Auto-Tune, an effect that can be downloaded from illegal platforms anywhere for free.
Auto-Tune has long been established as a mere phenomenon of cultural phenomenon. Cultural scientists take the subject and stylize the thing up to a miracle that has what it takes to democratize the world of music. Anyone can become a singer with the Auto-Tune mask, regardless of the unfavorable timbre and emptiness of the vocal part. And ethnologists of music, who are trying to understand why Auto-Tune is so popular in the African rap scene, see the effect as a weapon against the tyranny of aesthetics. Their thesis: The Western music industry has set standards for decades, African musicians often did not have the financial and technical means to achieve it. Auto-Tune, an effect that can be downloaded for free from illegal platforms anywhere, now allows them to look like the best known representatives of the Western rap community with just a few mouse clicks.
But if it's really worth it is argued bitterly in the world of music. Self-tuning has almost the potential for conflict of interest: either you like it or you understand it as a symbol of cultural decline. The American philosopher Criss Jami summed up the following position: "Pop culture has become a place where compassion is described as compassion, flattery as love, propaganda as knowledge, tension as peace, gossip as news and autotuning as singing.
Jimi Hendrix and the Wah-Wah Effect
If we dig into the history of music, we find a multitude of similar phenomena. And since the invention of new instruments was a bit of a walk, it was always effects or products in the studio that marked the entire musical era. Consider the wah-wah effect of the electric guitar, which not only made Jimi Hendrix a futuristic sound alchemist, but from the late 1960s he intoxicated a whole generation of psychedelic followers. And what would happen to weak New Waves, if their voice in the eighties had not been covered with digital reverbs?
Nevertheless, we can assume that in a few years with a mixture of smugness and jerking of the head on the auto-melody Come back on the short period in which he was in the techno scene, to face the voices Schlumpf hochgedpitchten. Anyone who is involved in the trend may have trouble correcting their reputation as unfortunate fashion victims.
And the inventor himself? He is somewhat disturbed by the misappropriation of his idea, and now wants to do something really good for humanity: his technology will soon be used in pacemakers and will save one or the other life. (SonntagsZeitung)
Date created: 21.07.2018, 18:34
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