AutoTune: That is behind the term

Autotune has been loved and hated in the music world since its inception in the 1990s. You can find out exactly what autotune is and how the "Cher effect" has changed the vocal world in this practical tip.

This is autotune

Autotune is an audio effect used in recording studios to manipulate pitches.

• The Autotune effect was introduced by Antares in 1996 and distributed as a VST plug-in.
• In music production, it is mainly used to straighten out sung sounds.
• In classic autotune, the pitch is manipulated in such a way that it matches the key of the piece of music, ie it is "in tune".
• Autotune has controls that adjust what pitches are desired, how much the pitch actually sung is corrected in the direction of these notes, and how sluggishly the effect reacts to frequency modulations in the voice.
• When used subtly, the effect can hardly be heard. With extreme settings, however, it colors the voice to an autotune-typical sound that reminds a little of a robot voice.
• The song "Believe", released by Cher in 1998, was the first pop hit to use autotune with extreme settings, giving Cher's voice the typical autotune character, or autotune the nickname "Cher Effect".
• The younger generation knows the sound from the songs of T-Pain, Lil Wane or Kanye West.
• In addition to Antares Original, there are now many other auto-tune applications that manipulate the pitch as well as the timing and timbre of the sound, such as Melodyne, AnalogX and WaveLab.
• Like Sample-Rate Converter, Autotune mostly works with granular synthesis.

Criticism of the audio effect

The extreme settings of Autotune have their very own charm, which is known worldwide and is very controversial:

• In the transition between two pitches, people do not sing clearly separated notes, as with the piano, but rather fade the notes into each other a little.
• This phenomenon is called "glissando" and is typical of the human voice.
• It is also typical that the voice has vibrato, i.e. slight frequency modulations.
• In addition, even very good singers do not always hit the desired pitch immediately, but correct it within a split second.
• Rigorously set Autotune prevents any glissando, wrong pitches and modulations.
• The voice sounds fake, but typical autotune.
• Critics claim that the subtle use could make even bad singers shine as MP3, but sound miserable live.
• In addition, all singers sound the same through autotune, especially artificial in extreme settings.
• Autotune fans find the sound funny. They like this very own aesthetic and so there are hip-hop and reggaeton subgenres that practically cannot do without.
• The Autotune phenomenon is comparable to the emergence of Acid House, in which the actually passive filters of the Roland TB-303 synthesizer were turned up so much that they vibrated actively and produced their very own sound, the "Acid Sound".
• The Cher effect is an autotune that is too high, and Acid is an incorrectly set equalizer.

To test the Cher effect yourself, you can use Audacity to record, edit and test the Gsnap autotune effect.