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Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music
Sounds Perfect
By Josh Tyrangiel
If you haven't been listening to pop radio in the past few months, you've missed the rise of two
seemingly opposing trends. In a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a
lot of pop vocals suddenly sound great. Better than great: note- and pitch-perfect, as if there's been
an unspoken tightening of standards at record labels or an evolutionary leap in the development of
vocal cords. At the other extreme are a few hip-hop singers who also hit their notes but with a
precision so exaggerated that on first listen, their songs sound comically artificial, like a chorus of '50s
robots singing Motown.
The force behind both trends is an ingenious plug-in called Auto-Tune, a downloadable studio trick
that can take a vocal and instantly nudge it onto the proper note or move it to the correct pitch. It's
like Photoshop for the human voice. Auto-Tune doesn't make it possible for just anyone to sing like a
pro, but used as its creator intended, it can transform a wavering performance into something
technically flawless. "Right now, if you listen to pop, everything is in perfect pitch, perfect time and
perfect tune," says producer Rick Rubin. "That's how ubiquitous Auto-Tune is." (Download TIME's
Auto-Tune Podcast from iTunes)
Auto-Tune's inventor is a man named Andy Hildebrand, who worked for years interpreting seismic
data for the oil industry. Using a mathematical formula called autocorrelation, Hildebrand would
send sound waves into the ground and record their reflections, providing an accurate map of
potential drill sites. It's a technique that saves oil companies lots of money and allowed Hildebrand
to retire at 40. He was debating the next chapter of his life at a dinner party when a guest challenged
him to invent a box that would allow her to sing in tune. After he tinkered with autocorrelation for a
few months, Auto-Tune was born in late 1996.
Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect -- Printout -- TIME 2/15/09 10:41 AM
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877372,00.html Page 2 of 4
Almost immediately, studio engineers adopted it as a trade secret to fix flubbed notes, saving them
the expense and hassle of having to redo sessions. The first time common ears heard Auto-Tune was
on the immensely irritating 1998 Cher hit "Believe." In the first verse, when Cher sings "I can't break
through" as though she's standing behind an electric fan, that's Auto-Tune--but it's not the way
Hildebrand meant it to be used. The program's retune speed, which adjusts the singer's voice, can be
set from zero to 400. "If you set it to 10, that means that the output pitch will get halfway to the
target pitch in 10 milliseconds," says Hildebrand. "But if you let that parameter go to zero, it finds
the nearest note and changes the output pitch instantaneously"--eliminating the natural transition
between notes and making the singer sound jumpy and automated. "I never figured anyone in their
right mind would want to do that," he says.
Like other trends spawned by Cher, the creative abuse of Auto-Tune quickly went out of fashion,
although it continued to be an indispensable, if inaudible, part of the engineer's toolbox. But in 2003,
T-Pain (Faheem Najm), a little-known rapper and singer, accidentally stumbled onto the Cher effect
while Auto-Tuning some of his vocals. "It just worked for my voice," says T-Pain in his natural
Tallahassee drawl. "And there wasn't anyone else doing it."
See the 100 best albums of all time.
See the 100 best TV shows of all time.
Since his 2005 debut album, T-Pain has sent a dozen slightly raunchy, mechanically cheery singles
into the Top 10. He contributed to four nominated songs at this year's Grammys on Feb. 8 (see page
51), and his influence is still spreading. When Kanye West was looking for an effect to match some
heartbroken lyrics, he flew T-Pain to Hawaii to see how many ways they could tweak Auto-Tune.
Diddy gave a percentage of his upcoming album's profits to T-Pain in exchange for some lessons.
Even Prince is rumored to be experimenting with Auto-Tune on his new record. "I know [Auto-Tune]
better than anyone," says T-Pain. "And even I'm just figuring out all the ways you can use it to
change the mood of a record." (See pictures of Diddy.)
Other sonic tricks have had their moment--notably Peter Frampton's "talk- box," a plastic tube that
made his guitar sound as if it were talking--but in skilled hands, Auto-Tune is the rare gimmick that
can lead to innovation. On T-Pain's latest album, Thr33 Ringz, tracks like "Karaoke" and "Chopped N
Skrewed" literally bounce between notes, giving the record a kids-on--Pop Rocks exuberance. Using
the same program, West's 808s & Heartbreak is the complete opposite--angsty, slow and brutally
introspective. West sings throughout, and while he couldn't have hit most of the notes without Auto-
Tune, he also couldn't have sounded as ghostly and cold, and it's that alienated tone that made 808s
one of the best albums of last year.
Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect -- Printout -- TIME 2/15/09 10:41 AM
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877372,00.html Page 3 of 4
one of the best albums of last year.
Plenty of critics raved about West's use of Auto-Tune, but T-Pain is often dismissed as a novelty act.
(Not that he minds: "I'd rather be known for something than unknown for nothing.") But unlike most
singers, he acknowledges the impact Auto-Tune has had on his career. Of the half a dozen engineers
and producers interviewed for this story, none could remember a pop recording session in the past
few years when Auto-Tune didn't make a cameo--and none could think of a singer who would want
that fact known. "There's no shame in fixing a note or two," says Jim Anderson, professor of the Clive
Davis department of recorded music at New York University and president of the Audio Engineering
Society. "But we've gone far beyond that."
Some Auto-Tuning is almost unavoidable. Most contemporary music is composed on Pro Tools, a
program that lets musicians and engineers record into a computer and map out songs on a visual
grid. You can cut at one point on the grid and paste at another, just as in word-processing, but
making sure the cuts match up requires the even pitch that Auto-Tune provides. "It usually ends up
just like plastic surgery," says a Grammy-winning recording engineer. "You haul out Auto-Tune to
make one thing better, but then it's very hard to resist the temptation to spruce up the whole vocal,
give everything a little nip-tuck." Like plastic surgery, he adds, more people have had it than you
think. "Let's just say I've had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything from Britney Spears to Bollywood
cast albums. And every singer now presumes that you'll just run their voice through the box."
See pictures of the Beatles' final performances.
See pictures of the punk life and death of Sid Vicious.
Rubin, who's produced artists as diverse as the Dixie Chicks and Metallica, worries that the safety net
of Auto-Tune is making singers lazy. "Sometimes a singer will do lots of takes when they're recording
a song, and you really can hear the emotional difference when someone does a great performance vs.
an average one," says Rubin. "If you're pitch-correcting, you might not bother to make the effort. You
might just get it done and put it through the machine so it's all in tune." Rubin has taken to having
an ethical conversation before each new recording session. "I encourage artists to embrace a natural
process," he says. (See pictures of Rick Rubin.)
With the exception of Milli Vanilli's, pop listeners have always been fairly indulgent about performers'
ethics. It's hits that matter, and the average person listening to just one pop song on the radio will
have a hard time hearing Auto-Tune's impact; it's effectively deceptive. But when track after track has
perfect pitch, the songs are harder to differentiate from one another--which explains why pop is in a
pretty serious lull at the moment. It also changes the way we hear unaffected voices. "The other day,
Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect -- Printout -- TIME 2/15/09 10:41 AM
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877372,00.html Page 4 of 4
Click to Print
pretty serious lull at the moment. It also changes the way we hear unaffected voices. "The other day,
someone was talking about how Aretha Franklin at the Inauguration was a bit pitchy," says
Anderson. "I said, 'Of course! She was singing!' And that was a musician talking. People are getting
used to hearing things dead on pitch, and it's changed their expectations."
Despite Randy Jackson's stock American Idol critique--"A little pitchy, dawg"--many beloved songs
are actually off-pitch or out of tune. There's Ringo Starr on "With a Little Help from My Friends," of
course, and just about every blues song slides into notes as opposed to hitting them dead on. Even
Norah Jones, the poster girl of pure vocals, isn't perfect. "There's some wonderful imperfections of
pitch on 'Don't Know Why' from Come Away with Me," says Anderson, "and most of the other tunes
on the album as well. But I wouldn't want to change a single note."
Let's hope that pop's fetish for uniform perfect pitch will fade, even if the spread of Auto-Tune shows
no signs of slowing. A $99 version for home musicians was released in November 2007, and T-Pain
and Auto-Tune's parent company are finishing work on an iPhone app. "It's gonna be real cool," says
T-Pain. "Basically, you can add Auto-Tune to your voice and send it to your friends and put it on the
Web. You'll be able to sound just like me." Asked if that might render him no longer unique, T-Pain
laughs: "I'm not too worried. I got lots of tricks you ain't seen yet. It's everybody else that needs to
step up their game."
Perfect Pitch? To hear Auto-Tune in action, go to time.com/autotune
See pictures of Motown's fifty years.
See pictures of Michael Jackson's fifty years.
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1877372,00.html
Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Privacy Policy | Add TIME Headlines to your Site | Contact Us | Customer Service
Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music
Sounds Perfect
By Josh Tyrangiel
If you haven't been listening to pop radio in the past few months, you've missed the rise of two
seemingly opposing trends. In a medium in which mediocre singing has never been a bar to entry, a
lot of pop vocals suddenly sound great. Better than great: note- and pitch-perfect, as if there's been
an unspoken tightening of standards at record labels or an evolutionary leap in the development of
vocal cords. At the other extreme are a few hip-hop singers who also hit their notes but with a
precision so exaggerated that on first listen, their songs sound comically artificial, like a chorus of '50s
robots singing Motown.
The force behind both trends is an ingenious plug-in called Auto-Tune, a downloadable studio trick
that can take a vocal and instantly nudge it onto the proper note or move it to the correct pitch. It's
like Photoshop for the human voice. Auto-Tune doesn't make it possible for just anyone to sing like a
pro, but used as its creator intended, it can transform a wavering performance into something
technically flawless. "Right now, if you listen to pop, everything is in perfect pitch, perfect time and
perfect tune," says producer Rick Rubin. "That's how ubiquitous Auto-Tune is." (Download TIME's
Auto-Tune Podcast from iTunes)
Auto-Tune's inventor is a man named Andy Hildebrand, who worked for years interpreting seismic
data for the oil industry. Using a mathematical formula called autocorrelation, Hildebrand would
send sound waves into the ground and record their reflections, providing an accurate map of
potential drill sites. It's a technique that saves oil companies lots of money and allowed Hildebrand
to retire at 40. He was debating the next chapter of his life at a dinner party when a guest challenged
him to invent a box that would allow her to sing in tune. After he tinkered with autocorrelation for a
few months, Auto-Tune was born in late 1996.
Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect -- Printout -- TIME 2/15/09 10:41 AM
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877372,00.html Page 2 of 4
Almost immediately, studio engineers adopted it as a trade secret to fix flubbed notes, saving them
the expense and hassle of having to redo sessions. The first time common ears heard Auto-Tune was
on the immensely irritating 1998 Cher hit "Believe." In the first verse, when Cher sings "I can't break
through" as though she's standing behind an electric fan, that's Auto-Tune--but it's not the way
Hildebrand meant it to be used. The program's retune speed, which adjusts the singer's voice, can be
set from zero to 400. "If you set it to 10, that means that the output pitch will get halfway to the
target pitch in 10 milliseconds," says Hildebrand. "But if you let that parameter go to zero, it finds
the nearest note and changes the output pitch instantaneously"--eliminating the natural transition
between notes and making the singer sound jumpy and automated. "I never figured anyone in their
right mind would want to do that," he says.
Like other trends spawned by Cher, the creative abuse of Auto-Tune quickly went out of fashion,
although it continued to be an indispensable, if inaudible, part of the engineer's toolbox. But in 2003,
T-Pain (Faheem Najm), a little-known rapper and singer, accidentally stumbled onto the Cher effect
while Auto-Tuning some of his vocals. "It just worked for my voice," says T-Pain in his natural
Tallahassee drawl. "And there wasn't anyone else doing it."
See the 100 best albums of all time.
See the 100 best TV shows of all time.
Since his 2005 debut album, T-Pain has sent a dozen slightly raunchy, mechanically cheery singles
into the Top 10. He contributed to four nominated songs at this year's Grammys on Feb. 8 (see page
51), and his influence is still spreading. When Kanye West was looking for an effect to match some
heartbroken lyrics, he flew T-Pain to Hawaii to see how many ways they could tweak Auto-Tune.
Diddy gave a percentage of his upcoming album's profits to T-Pain in exchange for some lessons.
Even Prince is rumored to be experimenting with Auto-Tune on his new record. "I know [Auto-Tune]
better than anyone," says T-Pain. "And even I'm just figuring out all the ways you can use it to
change the mood of a record." (See pictures of Diddy.)
Other sonic tricks have had their moment--notably Peter Frampton's "talk- box," a plastic tube that
made his guitar sound as if it were talking--but in skilled hands, Auto-Tune is the rare gimmick that
can lead to innovation. On T-Pain's latest album, Thr33 Ringz, tracks like "Karaoke" and "Chopped N
Skrewed" literally bounce between notes, giving the record a kids-on--Pop Rocks exuberance. Using
the same program, West's 808s & Heartbreak is the complete opposite--angsty, slow and brutally
introspective. West sings throughout, and while he couldn't have hit most of the notes without Auto-
Tune, he also couldn't have sounded as ghostly and cold, and it's that alienated tone that made 808s
one of the best albums of last year.
Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect -- Printout -- TIME 2/15/09 10:41 AM
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877372,00.html Page 3 of 4
one of the best albums of last year.
Plenty of critics raved about West's use of Auto-Tune, but T-Pain is often dismissed as a novelty act.
(Not that he minds: "I'd rather be known for something than unknown for nothing.") But unlike most
singers, he acknowledges the impact Auto-Tune has had on his career. Of the half a dozen engineers
and producers interviewed for this story, none could remember a pop recording session in the past
few years when Auto-Tune didn't make a cameo--and none could think of a singer who would want
that fact known. "There's no shame in fixing a note or two," says Jim Anderson, professor of the Clive
Davis department of recorded music at New York University and president of the Audio Engineering
Society. "But we've gone far beyond that."
Some Auto-Tuning is almost unavoidable. Most contemporary music is composed on Pro Tools, a
program that lets musicians and engineers record into a computer and map out songs on a visual
grid. You can cut at one point on the grid and paste at another, just as in word-processing, but
making sure the cuts match up requires the even pitch that Auto-Tune provides. "It usually ends up
just like plastic surgery," says a Grammy-winning recording engineer. "You haul out Auto-Tune to
make one thing better, but then it's very hard to resist the temptation to spruce up the whole vocal,
give everything a little nip-tuck." Like plastic surgery, he adds, more people have had it than you
think. "Let's just say I've had Auto-Tune save vocals on everything from Britney Spears to Bollywood
cast albums. And every singer now presumes that you'll just run their voice through the box."
See pictures of the Beatles' final performances.
See pictures of the punk life and death of Sid Vicious.
Rubin, who's produced artists as diverse as the Dixie Chicks and Metallica, worries that the safety net
of Auto-Tune is making singers lazy. "Sometimes a singer will do lots of takes when they're recording
a song, and you really can hear the emotional difference when someone does a great performance vs.
an average one," says Rubin. "If you're pitch-correcting, you might not bother to make the effort. You
might just get it done and put it through the machine so it's all in tune." Rubin has taken to having
an ethical conversation before each new recording session. "I encourage artists to embrace a natural
process," he says. (See pictures of Rick Rubin.)
With the exception of Milli Vanilli's, pop listeners have always been fairly indulgent about performers'
ethics. It's hits that matter, and the average person listening to just one pop song on the radio will
have a hard time hearing Auto-Tune's impact; it's effectively deceptive. But when track after track has
perfect pitch, the songs are harder to differentiate from one another--which explains why pop is in a
pretty serious lull at the moment. It also changes the way we hear unaffected voices. "The other day,
Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect -- Printout -- TIME 2/15/09 10:41 AM
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1877372,00.html Page 4 of 4
Click to Print
pretty serious lull at the moment. It also changes the way we hear unaffected voices. "The other day,
someone was talking about how Aretha Franklin at the Inauguration was a bit pitchy," says
Anderson. "I said, 'Of course! She was singing!' And that was a musician talking. People are getting
used to hearing things dead on pitch, and it's changed their expectations."
Despite Randy Jackson's stock American Idol critique--"A little pitchy, dawg"--many beloved songs
are actually off-pitch or out of tune. There's Ringo Starr on "With a Little Help from My Friends," of
course, and just about every blues song slides into notes as opposed to hitting them dead on. Even
Norah Jones, the poster girl of pure vocals, isn't perfect. "There's some wonderful imperfections of
pitch on 'Don't Know Why' from Come Away with Me," says Anderson, "and most of the other tunes
on the album as well. But I wouldn't want to change a single note."
Let's hope that pop's fetish for uniform perfect pitch will fade, even if the spread of Auto-Tune shows
no signs of slowing. A $99 version for home musicians was released in November 2007, and T-Pain
and Auto-Tune's parent company are finishing work on an iPhone app. "It's gonna be real cool," says
T-Pain. "Basically, you can add Auto-Tune to your voice and send it to your friends and put it on the
Web. You'll be able to sound just like me." Asked if that might render him no longer unique, T-Pain
laughs: "I'm not too worried. I got lots of tricks you ain't seen yet. It's everybody else that needs to
step up their game."
Perfect Pitch? To hear Auto-Tune in action, go to time.com/autotune
See pictures of Motown's fifty years.
See pictures of Michael Jackson's fifty years.
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1877372,00.html
Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Privacy Policy | Add TIME Headlines to your Site | Contact Us | Customer Service
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