Automatic tuning always and forever

Popular music is always changing, but there has been one consistent element in virtually everything released over the past two decades: Auto-Tune is everywhere. What started in the 1990s as a basic audio processing tool has become a dominant force in music. Artists learn to sing using Auto-Tune; songs sound like Auto-Tune. Whether you like it or not, Auto-Tune is everywhere. And just to be clear, most people like it.

It’s been over twenty years since the Auto-Tune era, and Charlie says all the animosity and frustration surrounding Auto-Tune is both overrated and wrong. Maybe after all this time we should think of Auto-Tune not as a way to mask our shortcomings as musicians, but simply as another instrument to play. And as the music-making process becomes increasingly digital and refineable, Auto-Tune’s changes are going nowhere.

As we move closer to the “artificial intelligence era” in music, we also look to Auto-Tune’s history for clues to what’s next. We talk about the distinctive sound coming from tools like Suno and Udio, how artists will operate and abuse AI, and whether we should worry about what it all means. We haven’t found the “Believe” of the AI ​​music era yet, but it’s probably coming.

If you want to learn more about everything we cover in this episode, here are some links to get you started:

We also asked Charlie for his outside-the-box thoughts on the best Auto-Tune playlist and vocal processing. Here are some of his suggestions, first from the pre-Auto-Tune era:

And then some canonical Auto-Tune hits, in no particular order: