A Brief Audio History of Autotune

[Music] indeed hildebrand has just quit his job and it has nothing to do with his performance after all he did just save Exxon 500 million dollars only a couple years ago in 1976 he graduated with a PhD in electrical engineering he got a job at Exxon finding oil underground the general idea was to send sound waves into the earth and wait for them to come back it was Hildebrandt's job to decipher them and figure out what was down there he was only at Exxon for three years when they ran into a big problem they were nearing the end of a seven-year contract on an oil pipeline and if they didn't find any oil to put in it they'd lose their half a billion dollar tax write-off they brought in Hildebrand to find oil and find oil he did while this was a resounding success for Exxon Hildebrandt figured that if he could save them 500 million dollars he might be able to do something pretty successful himself so in 1979 he quit his job at Exxon Hildebrand rounded up three partners and some venture capital and together they started landmark graphics it was pretty much a continuation of what he had done at Exxon making software that could generate 3d seismic maps and find oil underground Hildebrandt's entrepreneurial intuition was right and Lamar graphics took off he stayed at the company for ten years seeing it through a public offering and a listing on NASDAQ Hildebrand retired ten years later in 1989 wealthy enough to never have to work again after two decades in the oil industry he was finally ready to sit back and relax the National Association of music merchants conference is a once-a-year event where insiders come and show off the latest in music technology Andy Hildebrand is at the 1995 gathering having lunch with some friends and seeing if they have any ideas for new music inventions after Hildebrand retired from oil in 1989 he decided to get back into music in high school Hildebrand had been something of a flute virtuoso his PhD had even been funded by flute lessons and a music scholarship so after retiring he went back to school to study music composition he began composing with the latest sampling synthesizers but was disappointed with the quality of the flute sound after all he would know what they should sound like he figured he could make a better sampling program one that actually sounded like the instruments and it didn't take long for him to release infinity Hildebrandt's new software did a great job of creating samples he'd even put the Los Angeles Philharmonic out of business for a while but it was self-defeating all you need is one sample and you can just use it over and over again Hildebrandt's program sold about five copies before it put itself out of business while Hildebrandt was now inside the music industry he didn't have a product he met some friends for lunch at the Music merchants conference to see if they had any ideas someone at the table joked that he should make a box that would let them sing in tune nobody seemed amused by the suggestion and Hildebrandt filed it away after six months of trying and failing other ideas he came back to this magic box it wasn't a revolutionary idea just one everyone thought was impossible the number of calculations it would take to analyze a person's voice and move it to a pitch required a supercomputer Hildebrandt looked back on his days in the oil industry and thought that there might be a better way to do these calculations the signals used to find oil underground were a lot like a human voice Hildebrandt used the similarity and a lot of math to turn millions of calculations into just for these new formulas made it possible for a computer to analyze a voice and put it on a pitch in a reasonable amount of time a year later Hildebrandt returned to the music merchants conference with a magic box that would let you sing in tune he called his new invention auto-tune and it practically sold itself to every studio in Los Angeles the program could fix wrong notes in a vocal performance a song that would have taken a hundred tries to get right could now be done in just one although auto-tune invaded studios in the late 90s the average listener would never know engineers did their best to keep it a secret but something as incredible as auto-tune wouldn't be able to stay hidden forever cher was gonna have to do something different if she wanted to make a musical comeback her last album it's a man's world released in 1995 and audiences weren't feeling the collection of rock ballads the UK president of Warner Music suggested that cher make a dance album but she wasn't interested in the genre they didn't make real songs the president went looking for songs that would convince cher to make a dance album and turn her back into a pop star walking down the hall he ran into a songwriter and asked him to submit a few songs for the new cher album a few days later the president got a tape and he really liked one of the songs believe it had a good chorus but the verses needed work and even after passing the song around no one could seem to get them right seven songwriters later believed now had two passable verses but they were still missing something in exacerbation the producers turned to a pitch correcting software on their computer auto-tune the program would usually change pitches somewhat slowly matching how a singer would sly between notes looking for something different the producers said it to change notes instantly turning Cher's voice into something more robot than human cher fell in love with the effect it was exactly what she was looking for believed went on to be a smash hit spending 7 weeks on top of the UK charts although everyone loved the song nobody knew what that one effect during the verse was the idea of using auto-tune on a vocal performance was such a taboo that the producer said the effect was done with a vocoder the public now had a taste of auto-tune even if they didn't know it and it would only be a matter of time before it was everywhere t-pain has just signed with convict music and has spent 2005 trying to make his debut album Akon saw his potential as a rapper but now t-pain wanted to branch out you wanted to become a singer in order to stand out from all the other singers t-pain needed a voice that was different he heard an effect that could do just that while listening to a Jennifer Lopez song it only lasted for a second and he had no way to figure out what it was t-pain spent a day trying every single vocal effect he could find until he heard auto-tune it was exactly what he was looking for when t-pain dropped the lead single I'm sprung audiences were amazed at what they heard his voice was perfectly in tune and it switched between notes instantly he didn't quite sound like any other singer while I'm sprung was popular peaking at number 8 on Billboard t-pain still didn't completely embrace the effect the next single I'm in love with a stripper was done almost entirely without auto-tune when t-pain finally dropped his debut album rapper turned singer its success convinced him to go all-in on his signature vocal effect t-pain exploded in popularity and became the go-to feature artist he brought auto-tune two songs with Chris Brown Flo Rida and Kanye by the time t-pain dropped his second album epiphany he had become the face of auto-tune while t-pain was using the vocal effect to great success not everyone liked the idea of a program that could turn anyone into a singer jay-z was not happy with the state of rap in 2009 the success of t-pain and Kanye West had convinced an entire wave of rappers to start using auto-tune the sound was becoming saturated and audiences were growing tired of the vocal effect it had become so much of a laughing stock that even Wendy's had made a commercial making fun of the program at the time jay-z was making the blueprint 3 he was working closely with Kanye and the two had even recorded an auto-tune song together but Kanye got a different idea after hearing an OID instrumental the beat from the classic hip-hop producer brought Kanye back to the origins of hip hop and he thought jay-z should make an anti auto-tune song jay-z liked the suggestion and even took all of the auto-tune off of his album jay-z recorded over the no ID instrumental and the song became DOA death of auto-tune it was released as the lead single for The Blueprint 3 and marked a significant point in the campaign against auto-tune other musicians had already shown their distaste for the effect Death Cab for Cutie performed at the 2009 Grammys wearing blue ribbons to protest the program by the early 2010's the public was staunchly against auto-tune Kanye was back to making rap music with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and t-pain was taking a break from music believing his sound to be saturated it seemed like the death of auto-tune was right around the corner future had a lot to prove at the end of 2014 the rapper's engagement to singer Ciara had just ended and he put all of that emotion onto his mixtape monster future leveraged the success of this mixtape onto his next album dirty sprite 2 which debuted at number one on Billboard listening to these projects one aspect of futures rapping stands out his use of auto-tune while public perception pushed the effect out of the spotlight it had never disappeared Auto Tunes ability to fix notes and turn a hundred takes into just one was way too good to pass up the effect remained in studios and was used in one way or another on pretty much every single major release as long as auto-tune remained in studios musicians would continue to experiment with it despite jay-z's warning rappers kept finding new ways to use the program and the sound of auto-tune eventually made a comeback with future migos Travis Scott and many others while the sound of auto-tune will continue to go in and out of style the program's ability to fix a vocal performance will keep it around until the day people stop making mistakes thanks for listening let me know what you think of auto-tune and your favorite song recorded with the effect you can find some selection on YouTube as a podcast on iTunes or on Instagram

Channel: Sound Selection

Views: 11,518

Keywords: roomieofficial, roomie, autotune, auto tune, auto-tune, singing, singer, voices, powerful, review, test, comedy, funny, pop songs, hilarious, songs, song, singing experiments, experiments, experiment, music, songwriting, songwriter, joel

Id: _BfpnCPHH7U

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 28 2019