My fascination with Auto-Tune has reached the point where I’m hyper aware of any mention of it. Seems like it’s everywhere lately, and I can’t stop jammin’ “Blame It” (Side note: how genius is the new iTunes pricing system? Like I’m not going to pay $1.29 to have the song immediately?).

Yesterday evevning I was planning a blog post about Auto-Tune, and this morning I see that our friends at The Post-Rockist have a new podcast feature up about auto-tune and “Blame It.” It’s everywhere.

Anyway, I’ll get to my point. I read a really good piece about auto-tune yesterday here.

A choice quote:

“Rather than novelty or some warped mimetic response to computers, Auto-Tune is a contemporary strategy for intimacy with the digital. As such, it becomes quite humanizing. Auto-Tune operates as a duet between the electronics and the personal.”

But there’s more crazy interesting stuff in the piece. Specifically, how T-Pain and Lil Wayne record with Auto-Tune using live-input processing. Meaning, the tracks aren’t “auto-tuned” during the mixing process. This speaks of the awesomeness of technology and improved computing POWER. This also explains how some singers will use it in live performance. T-Pain knows what vocal runs are going to sound great with Auto-Tune, because he sings them through the effect as he records. In my experience with the plugin, vocal runs that sound “good” without Auto-Tune sound “bad” when the effect is placed on the track. You have to adopt a different style of singing. The Frieze Magazine piece also mentions this:

“Vocal runs that would sound bizarre without Auto-Tune have become necessary to create somenow-common effects.”

Check out Jamie Foxx live on Jimmy Kimmel’s show recently. That’s live-input working it’s magic:

Those chord changes that the band makes at the start of the second verse are THE BEST

Another thing I learned about Auto-Tune in that essay is the omnipresence of the effect in contemporary Rai and Raggada music of the Arab world. Sure enough, a cursory search on YouTube reveals a shit-ton of awesomeness:

Also, check out the Rai section of musicmaroc.com, the playlist is fucking awesome. Lamine’s “Mon Bled” is a monster.