Kanye wasn’t focused on preserving the technical integrity of the software, but on using it to amplify his emotional state through the soundwaves. Soon after, West would deliver his own ode to Auto-Tune in 808s & Heartbreaks.
In the same DJ Vlad interview I referenced earlier, T-Pain discussed how Kanye, another member of the Auto-Tune pantheon, gave him credit for his work on Rappa Ternt Sanga. I had the privilege of seeing T-Pain use Auto-Tune live for the first time and can testify that nothing is sweeter than getting to the source of a movement. Clean isn’t always the aesthetic goal and, as we’ll see, other artists successfully use vocal manipulation in ways diametrically opposed to T-Pain. It’s evident in the final product, as T-Pain has the cleanest-sounding Auto-Tune to date. That’s the opposite of how T-Pain assumed his role and we need to add “Auto-Tune Scholar” to his resume.Īccording to an interview conducted several years ago (please disregard the sensationalist title), Teddy sought out Hildebrand to teach him the inner workings of the technology and spent two years studying Auto-Tune before he first used it.
‘King’ usually implies a position of power that was simply inherited, not earned. There’s little dispute in calling him the King of Auto-Tune, but that doesn’t fully capture his relationship to the technology. That album marked the transition for rap into the era of “Auto-Tune saturation” and T-Pain was there to lead the charge. When it’s pushed to the extreme though, it produces the mechanically-tinged effect we recognize.Īny work that involves listening to Rappa Ternt Sanga is worthwhile. Originally, it was meant to be undetectable and a cheat code for artists. After his tenure with Exxon, he reappropriated sonar technology used to detect oil pockets and made it do the same thing with voice pitch. Andy Hildebrand, a former engineer in the oil industry. The original program “Auto-Tune” was created in 1996 by Dr. What “Believe” marked was the transition from hardware to software as a means for altering vocals. Though Cher’s 2000 hit “Believe” was the new age spark to the Auto-Tune wildfire (believe it), its clear artists had been seeking a similar effect for years. This concept led me to think more broadly about the history of Auto-Tune-used here as a blanket term for vocal manipulation writ large, including vocoders, talkboxes, etc.-and the ways in which it has been used. From what I can gauge, the litmus test for proper use of Auto-Tune is a reliance on it-an artist must be able to hold their own independent of software.
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