According to Tank
Wire, approximately 95% of Top 40 songs use auto-tune.
“What’s auto-tune?”
you ask? It’s that revolutionary invention that makes any word, phrase, rap,
belch, and laugh into…BAM…music!
You may recognize
the phrase “Hide your kids, hide your
wives,” lyrics from a viral, auto-tuned rendition of a once little-known
reporter interview. Or, you might
recognize the familiar “digitized” melodies of Ke$ha and Lady Gaga (pre-Lady
Gaga was much more eloquent with words, much more stylistically artistic with
voice, but lacked pitch every now and then).
Want to achieve
this ability? Now, you can auto-tune any phrase with the touch of a button!
iPhone has developed an application called “Songify,” which directly allows consumers
to change any word, phrase, rap, belch, and laugh into song.
But wait. Question
time: Isn’t music a thing of talent and art?
Society’s reply: Oops.
We went from
Mozart, to Etta James, to The Beatles to Led Zeppelin, to Britney Spears
(cough. Lipsync), to Nikki Minaj.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Money happened.
Statistics. Business. The Apprentice.
The revolution of
auto-tune has created the abilities to erase vocal mistakes and/or create
simple masterpieces, thus making production quicker and appealing to the
simple-minded mass of listeners whose’ ears are pining for perfectly pitched,
rhythmic beats of the auto-tune world. Here, the deduction of auto-tune,
through live music or pure recording, may create a feeling of genuine talent,
but tends to reach a limited audience, thus decreasing revenue. However, the
addition of auto-tune creates the ability to percolate throughout the
population, thus welcoming itself to the wallets of many.
In a sense, auto-tuning
has nulled and numbed the impact of musical passion, replacing it with
entrepreneurial desires.
The question now
becomes: When does music infinitely change from art to business? Or more so:
How far and how much is a musician willing to compromise for fame?
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