Do Re Fa Mi
November 23, 2004, 10:46 a.m. EST

Hailed as a "holy grail of recording" by Recording magazine, Auto-Tune is a multi-platform plug-in that corrects intonation problems in vocals or solo instruments, in real time, without distortion or artifacts, while preserving all of the expressive nuance of the original performance with audio quality so pristine that the only difference between what goes in and what comes out is the intonation.

The world is a harsh, illusionary place where there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, arthritis drugs give you heart attacks, and Shakira can't always hit a high C. Yes, the truth is that today's popular musicians often use digital technologies like Antares Auto-Tune to correct their off-key performances in recording sessions.1 And we are powerless—powerless!—to stop them.

The thing is, in the world of pop music (rock, hip-hop, etc.) I really don't see that performers are practicing any sort of unethical deception by digitally correcting their pitch.2 The ethical test for Auto-Tune has to be whether a reasonable person would expect an album to document an undoctored live performance. Frankly, anyone who would expect that must have missed out on the entirety of the last forty years of recorded popular music. At least since the Rolling Stones first overdubbed a guitar solo,3 Brian Wilson blended multiple instruments to sound like one, or the Beatles mixed backwards vocals into "Rain," technological manipulation has been the standard in recording. As such, a pop record offers no implicit guarantee that the music it contains was recorded live and unaltered. In fact, one could argue that the opposite is true: making a studio recording entails an artist manipulating technology to produce their specific vision.

In case said "reasonable person" is now claiming that all this is news to him or her and that he or she is none to pleased that it's going on either, let's roll back even further. The very act of recording involves using technology: playing or singing into a microphone which converts the sound into electric signals that can be captured onto a computer or magnetic tape. Simply changing the microphone used or its placement in the studio changes the sound of the music recorded. Yet, one could hardly consider it unethical for a record producer to select a microphone which most favorably reproduces an instrument's sound, or to place that microphone where it returns the best tone.

I was going to end this essay right here,4 but I thought some more and realized that things aren't so simple when we expand the discussion beyond pop music. In classical music, jazz, and other genres, both live and recorded performance is much more about the virtuosity of the performer. One doesn't expect studio wizardry. A reasonable person, when buying a recording of Yo-Yo Ma performing Bach's Cantata No. 75, expects that they'll hear each and every note sounding as it did coming off Mr. Ma's strings.

But does that make using Auto-Tune to correct a note or two in classical performance entirely unethical? One could argue that, if Mr. Ma turns in the greatest performance of his career during a recording session, with the exception of one missed note, that the engineer is actually doing a service to correct that note to allow the listener to hear the historic performance flawlessly. That might be well-intended, but the ethical thing to do in that situation would be to mention somewhere in the recording's liner notes that Mr. Ma's performance had been corrected,5 rather than to passively or actively deceive the listener into thinking all the notes are Mr. Ma's.6

For the reader who is still a little shaky and disillusioned to learn that their favorite performer might use technology to improve their records, let me offer you a drink of water and send you off to bed by saying that, without fail, artists who rely too heavily on digital assistance in the studio will be outed in live performance. Case in point: I'll never forget watching a certain AAA band (which will remain nameless) make their debut on the Late Show with David Letterman eleven years ago, and, flush with the success of their hit single, deliver a performance so shockingly inept that it appeared the band had met for the first time backstage. The wages of Auto-Tune is death, before a live audience.7


1 Many readers may have first learned of this fact when they were violently awoken by the cacophonous warbling of NPR's Morning Edition host Renée Montagne, who demonstrated Auto-Tune's capabilities by unpleasantly slogging through the already fairly unpleasant "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers. Back

2 I'd go as far as to say that, in the case of the new Lindsay Lohan album, it would be unethical to allow the world to hear the uncorrected version. Back

3 I'm probably working against my argument by explaining the word "overdub," but it means to record two different sounds at different times, then mix them together. So, in this case, the Stones might record an entire song "live" with all the instruments, then go unseal Keith Richards' cryogenic preservation cocoon and roll him in to record a guitar solo, which is mixed over the rest of the song. Overdubbing in music recording is as common as adding salt in cooking. Back

4 And post it yesterday, sorry. Back

5 Such a caveat could even specify the exact note or notes that were altered. Back

6 I would argue that the best thing to do is to leave the otherwise brilliant performance to stand uncorrected, and I'm inclined to believe that Mr. Ma would agree. Also, with the hope that no one will actually read this footnote, I'll take this opportunity to mention that I get a juvenile kick out of the phrase "Mr. Ma." Back

7 It was Counting Crows. Back

Respond to this essay | Printable version