Auto Tune

Love it or hate it, you can't deny that Auto Tune technology has rapidly become the focus of a lot of the music industry. The charts are filled with it, and everyone seems to have an opinion on whether it is simply a progression of the industry technology, or whether it is destroying the entire concept of a musician generally needing singing technique to make a song.

Auto Tune uses something called a "phase vocoder" to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It was originally used in the industry as a quick fix for some of the more basic pitch errors, but now the technology has evolved into something much more than that. Perhaps the most evident example of Auto Tune usage comes from Kanye West in his song "Love Lockdown."

This is not a singer - this is an rapper hitting notes close to the ones he's aiming for, and letting the software do the hard work for him. It's a catchy song, but what does this mean? Can anyone be a perfectly-pitched singer? What use will any sort of talent factor go in an industry that can provide just that for anyone that signs on to a label?

Rapper Jay-Z has these same concerns. In one of his recent singles of "Blueprint 3," he goes on a four-minute tirade against the software in a song called "D.O.A," or "Death of Auto Tune."

"This is anti-Auto Tune/Death of the ringtone/This ain't for iTunes/This ain't for singalongs" raps Jay-Z, and waxes lyrical later on about some of his more prominent contemporaries, like T-Pain and Little Wayne, who use the software frequently on their tracks.

The media has taken a keen interest in the technology as well - this time as a comedy tool. One of the most popular YouTube subscriptions is to "Auto Tune the News," where the software is used on everything - from Palin's speeches to health care debates, and puts it to a beat and backing vocals. This is a classic example: