Everyone's a singer baby, that's the truth!

The Verge recently had a must read story on Auto-Tunes, a software which literally everybody and their mother in the music industry is nowadays using to enhance the voices of more or less talented singers ... well, everyone except from Steve Albini of course who is the white knight of the music biz anyway:

Seduced by 'perfect pitch': How Auto-Time conquered pop-music (CAUTION! The cover picture might cause nightmares in sensitive persons!):

However, this groundbreaking youtube video reveals that tools like Auto-Tune haven't removed the heavy burden of studio work. They just moved it from the singers to the sound engineers:

To be fair the Verge's article also names artistic reasons for using Auto-Tunes and the like, but still one easily gets the impression that a morally run down music biz wants to save tons of money and studio time as only one take of each voice is needed anymore: if the singer sings out of tune the track will simply be "autocorrected" further down the road. The same can be done with instrumental tracks of course though this seems to happen less often. 

I personally have no doubt that the main reason for the extensive use of Auto-Tunes is not to broaden the artistic spectrum by new technical means, but to economize on studio costs ... and to push the career of one or the other not too gifted singer. I'm sure Frank Farian, the creator of Milli Vanilli and Boney M., would turn over in his grave from envy if he were already dead: in the good ol' days he had to cast, manage and pay real singers and their respective impersonators alike - this meant double trouble. Nowadays you only have to take care of the impersonator.

However, the Verge's article also cites Auto-Tune's creator Andy Hildebrand. When asked whether his software was evil he usually responds: “My wife wears makeup, does that make her evil?” This quote  somehow changed my mind on the use of Auto-Tunes, because, well, there's something inherently strange about taunting artists for "artificially" treating and enhancing their voices. Actually, it's the nature of art to be artificial.

Even yours truly Westerwaves tinkered with their recordings and tweaked their tracks - though not using Auto-Tunes or the likes - to guarantee their  record had the best sound possible. And, actually, what shall one do with a track that is perfect, except for this one annoying mistake? Do another ten, twenty or thirty takes until everything is perfect? Is this "more authentic" than to correct the mistake by cutting and pasting a bar on the computer? And is it sensible?

Software tools like Auto-Tunes render talent and virtuosity less important therefore devaluing billions and billions of music lessons taken and hours spent practising instruments. There's nothing wrong with that. I like the idea that everybody can be a great singer or a great musician just like everybody can blog on the internet and make his voice heard nowadays. And - like in blogging - most of these new musicians won't contribute anything significant, but a handful will create really great and new music. Sounds good to me.