Last Fm Auto Tune

Free autotune and pitch-shift VST. PitchWorx DX: This freeware pitch shifter is one of the rare free pitch shift effect available: it allows you to change the pitch of the sound without changing the speed. You have to use a DX-VST wrapper such as the VB-FFX4 wrapper. 182 rows  According to the D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune) Songfacts, in this song Jay-Z is taking aim at.

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1. Madonna - Living For Love (Life in Auto-Tune Remix) 904 views 4 years ago Life in Auto-Tune remix of Madonna's 'Living For Love' from the album 'Rebel Heart'.
2. Jan 29, 2009  Ever since I joined Last.fm back in 2005, my long-suffering coworkers have had to put up with endless grumbles about the state of the metadata on our music catalogue pages and how we desperately needed tools for putting things right.

If you switched on the radio in the summer of 1998, chances are you got a taste of Cher's 'Believe,' an up-tempo ode to bouncing back after a rough breakup. More than a quarter century after first rising to prominence as a 1960s folk artist, the 52-year-old Cher was once again climbing the charts. In malls, dance clubs and laser bowling alleys across the country, 'Believe' played frequently. By the time the dust had settled, the song had become Cher's bestselling recording ever -- and one of the bestselling singles of all time.

At the time, the most notable feature of the song was an electronic modification on the vocals. The effect first appears 35 seconds into the song, while Cher sings 'I can't break through.' On each of the last three words, Cher's voice undergoes a bizarre electronic glitch.

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The reason behind that glitch was Auto-Tune, a pitch-correcting software designed to smooth out any off-key notes in a singer's vocal track. Released only the year before 'Believe,' it was the recording industry's favorite dirty secret: With only a few clicks of a mouse, Auto-Tune could turn even the most cringe-worthy singer into a pop virtuoso. But most music studios kept it around simply to fix with the occasional wrong note.

During the recording sessions for 'Believe,' however, Cher's British producers had put the software into overdrive. Instead of lightly tuning the pitch of Cher's voice, they had adjusted the levels so sharply that it became an unmistakable part of the song. The effect was weird and robotic, but against a background of synthesizers and high-energy percussion, it worked like a charm. Opera singers have long been using vibrato, a technique of delivering a note in a constantly wavering pitch. As far as Cher and her producers were concerned, though, Auto-Tune was simply a computerized twist on the technique.

As 'Believe' hit the airwaves, the producers aimed to keep the lid on their new toy. So much so, that when interviewed about the technique by a sound engineering magazine, they lied and said it was due to a vocoder, a well-known voice modulation device used since the 1970s [source: Sillitoe].

But the truth eventually trickled out, and when it did, Auto-Tune's inventor, Harold 'Andy' Hildebrand, was shocked. Auto-Tune was supposed to be a behind-the-scenes trick for the recording studio. The New Yorker had compared it to blotting out the red-eye in a photograph, and Hildebrand himself compared it to wearing makeup [source: Frere-Jones, NOVA].

But now, Hildebrand's brainchild was making Cher sound like a robot. 'I never figured anyone in their right mind would want to do that,' Hildebrand told Time magazine [source: Tyrangiel] Whether he realized it at the time or not, Hildebrand's electronic creation was about to become one of the largest technological influences on popular music since Les Paul invented the modern electric guitar.

According to Antares, more than 90 percent of its Auto-Tune units are in the hands of hobbyists; amateur musicians and producers looking to smooth out their latest basement recording [source: Matson]. As hundreds of T-Pain copycats began permeating the airwaves, homemade Auto-Tune creations began exploding across the Internet.

One of the most prominent became 'Auto-Tune the News,' a YouTube series that uses Auto-Tune to turn news clips into pop songs. Produced by Brooklyn soul band the Gregory Brothers, the videos coaxed Auto-Tuned performances out of Barack Obama, Hugo Chavez and even Winston Churchill. Their biggest hit, however, was 2010's 'Bed Intruder Song.' The brothers took local news footage of Hunstville, Ala., resident Antoine Dodson delivering colorful warnings to a neighborhood intruder and Auto-Tuned it to create a catchy hit that reached No. 89 on the pop charts [source: Peters].

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Advertisers also threw their hat into the Auto-Tune ring. In 2009, Wendy's aired their 'Frosty Posse' commercial featuring a gang of office workers belting out Auto-Tuned rhymes while break dancing down the street to grab a cup of soft-serve ice cream. Watching the commercial from his Manhattan apartment, rapper Jay-Z suddenly realized that Auto-Tune had finally gone too far.

Enraged by the ad, the rapper soon penned 'D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune),' a vicious musical attack on the digital craze. 'I know we facin' a recession, but the music y'all makin' gonna make it the great depression … get back to rap, you T-Painin' too much.' In interviews, Jay-Z claimed Auto-Tune was becoming a musical crutch that was spoiling otherwise good tracks. 'I just think in hip-hop, when a trend becomes a gimmick, it's time to move on,' he told a Chicago radio station [source: Reid]. Other musicians chimed in with their own Auto-Tune displeasure, most notably Death Cab for Cutie, who showed up to the 2009 Grammys wearing anti-Auto-Tune blue ribbons [source: Cross].

Hildebrand has declared his innocence in the Auto-Tune fight, saying it's akin to blaming General Motors for inventing car crashes. But, in response to Jay-Z, his company did publish a cheeky press release with a picture of an Auto-Tune box declaring 'the reports of [its] death have been greatly exaggerated.' Despite all the hype, the Cher Effect has never made much money for Antares. Most of its Auto-Tune units continue to be purchased by studios and musicians looking to use the software for its intended purpose: smoothing out the vocals in music tracks.

Even if the Cher Effect disappears entirely from the music world, as long as singers are making mistakes, it looks like Auto-Tune is here to stay.

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Last Fm Auto Tune Ultra Slim Radio Ps 802

• Antares Audio Technologies. 'Auto-Tune Dead? Not So Much.' June 30, 2009. (Feb. 24, 2011)http://www.antarestech.com/email/doa/Antares_Auto-Tune-DOA.htm
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