posted by lee on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 6:55am
The new iPhone app, “I Am T-Pain,” allows wanna-be T-Pains and Kanyes to apply a heavy Auto-tune effect to their voice and sing along to a backing track. I was about to write an analysis of this curious new form of music making when I thought, why not just sing it Auto-Tune style using the app?
posted by lee on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 12:14pm
Les Paul, 1915-2009
As a guitar player, I was of course saddened by the death of the legendary music innovator Les Paul. I do want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to him, but I also want to take this opportunity to reflect on another music innovator, one that’s less well-known than Les Paul and is in fact reviled by some:
Harold "Dr. Andy" Hildebrand. Still alive.
No, I’m not referring to T-Pain (or Andy Samberg, for that matter). The musical innovator in this case is Harold “Dr. Andy” Hildebrand, the inventor of the infamous Auto-Tune pitch correcting/distorting software.
At first blush, the inventor of the electric guitar and multitrack recording and the inventor of Auto-Tune are worlds apart. One was a virtuoso guitarist and inventor; the other was a software engineer who based his pitch-correcting algorithm on seismic studies for oil companies. One’s innovation made rock ‘n’ roll possible, the other’s innovation made, um, this possible…
posted by sheely on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 8:10am
It has been a rough week for Kanye West. First, South Park eviscerated him by skewering his egocentrism (and excessive use of autotune), then he went and proved them right by emptying his soul on his blog about his hurt feelings and sincere desire to be a better person. Although I don’t usually like to kick a guy while he is down, the whole series of events reminded me of a lingering complaint that I have had ever since Kanye’s most recent album, 808s and Heartbreaks, dropped back in November: I am fairly certain that Kanye West has never ever seen any of the three RoboCop movies, even though one of the songs on the album is named after the film franchise’s titular character.
Lee: Hey Sheely, let’s Overthink Miley Cyrus’s hit single, “Party in the USA.”
