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Concept
Auto-Tune
Summary
Auto-Tune (or autotune) is an audio processor introduced in 1997 by the American company Antares Audio Technologies. It uses a proprietary device to measure and alter pitch in vocal and instrumental music recording and performances.
Auto-Tune was originally intended to disguise or correct off-key inaccuracies, allowing vocal tracks to be perfectly tuned. The 1998 Cher song "Believe" popularized the technique of using Auto-Tune to distort vocals. In 2018, the music critic Simon Reynolds observed that Auto-Tune had "revolutionized popular music", calling its use for effects "the fad that just wouldn't fade. Its use is now more entrenched than ever."
In its role distorting vocals, Auto-Tune operates on different principles from the vocoder or talk box and produces different results.
Auto-Tune is available as a plug-in for digital audio workstations used in a studio setting and as a stand-alone, rack-mounted unit for live performance processing. The processor slightly shifts pitches to the nearest true, correct semitone (to the exact pitch of the nearest note in traditional equal temperament). Auto-Tune can also be used as an effect to distort the human voice when pitch is raised or lowered significantly, such that the voice is heard to leap from note to note stepwise, like a synthesizer.
Auto-Tune has become standard equipment in professional recording studios. Instruments such as the Peavey AT-200 guitar seamlessly use Auto-Tune technology for real-time pitch correction.
Auto-Tune was developed by Andy Hildebrand, a Ph.D. research engineer who specialized in stochastic estimation theory and digital signal processing. Hildebrand conceived the vocal pitch correction technology on the suggestion of a colleague's wife, who had joked that she could benefit from a device to help her sing in tune.
Over several months in early 1996, he implemented the algorithm on a custom Macintosh computer and presented the result at the NAMM Show later that year, where "it was instantly a massive hit".
Official source
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