Autotune

The three videos above employ auto-tune for various purposes - comedic remix of an infomercial; humorous political commentary and product promotion; and a moving appeal on behalf of the wonder of science. What is it that makes autotune so amusing?

As Jimmy Kimmel says in the third video, auto-tune is a technology that can turn any voice into music. In other words, it takes prerecorded audio and matches it to a given musical pitch or scale. I often get autotune confused with vocoding, which mixes a vocal audio track and synthesizer to make a newly combined synthesizer, which can sound like it's talking. The difference is explained here: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/audio-effects-vocoder-auto-tune.html

These days, autotune is all the rage in popular music, from Justin Beiber to Lil' Wayne. You can hear it in almost every hit hip-hop song in the past two or three years, and these videos demonstrate its wide appeal among viral video remixers. Why do people love autotune so much?

*JARGON ALERT*In Discources in Place, the authors define modality as "As Kress and van Leeuwen use the term...the truth value or cedibility of...statements about the world." (This definition is derived from linguistics. The term has a different use in semiotics.)The components of modality include color saturation, color differentiation, color modulation, contextualization, reprentation, depth, illumination, and brightness. *END JARGON ALERT*

In other words, like autotune, effects can be applied to photos or visual images. And these effects have a bearing on how "real" or "true" the image appears to us. These images were taken from someone's blogpost on the subject:







Each effect gives the image a different feeling, adding a layer of meaning to the original image. Similarly, autotune can add a layer of meaning, a sort of hue, to the human voice. The question is which is more "true," the original or the effected copy? And which is more powerful, effective, and meaningful? In the example of the photos, the original image would be said to be more representative of the "true" baseball player being represented. And in the case of autotune, the original speech or music would be the "natural" version heard in the real world. However, in both cases the effected image or sound is more interesting, captivating more attention than the original. Would I watch an infomercial or a compilation of news clips or popular science videos if they were presented in their original form? Maybe. But I would be willing to bet that the Slapchop sales went through the roof by the time DJ Steve Porter's remix video of the infomercial reached over a million hits on youtube.

This is a great example of remix culture. Is it infringement or artistic recreation? In any case, we can see here how the remixed copy adds value to the original and doesn't diminish it. Forging a new creation with various sources (i.e. infomercial, Breakin' (1984), and some synthesized guitar lines/beats/bass) makes something which may not convey the same information as the original, but generates a more emotional response. In fact, I would argue that as autotune becomes normalized through pop music and remix culture, it becomes more "real" in some respects than unadulterated audio, the orignal copy.

Whether this trend has positive or negative consequences is a subject of fervent debate. People rail against autotune in digital discourse, bemoaning the destruction of "real" talent in the music industry. For my part, I really like autotune and vocoder effects. I find them really amusing and naturally interesting, for reasons outlined above. What I find more troubling is our collective inability to concentrate on simple or natural phenomena that don't have a layer of digitized meaning. Despite this concern, I try to welcome the thriving new digital culture based on the saying "it's turtles all the way down." It's all part of evolution. Before viral videos we had music videos. And before music videos, we had radio. And before radio we had newspapers. And before newspapers, we had the printing press. And before the printing press, we had quills and paper. And before the advent of writing, we had spoken language. The list goes on and on to infinity until we reach the dawn of life. And if we think about it, life is another form of cosmic technology.

Forgive the philosohpical rambling, but if you've read this far, you must be interested, so send me your favorite example of autotune. :)