Sunday, March 20, 2011

Auto-Tune

I can’t sing. I learned this a long time ago, when folks used to turn around and stare at me during mass when I was trying to rock “Amazing Grace” or “Ave Maria.” My tone-deafness was driven home during high school. Whenever the spring musical rolled around, I was relegated to the chorus or the comic relief cameo—both decidedly non-singing roles—and asked to mouth along to the group numbers.


I had my “come to Jesus” moment about my vocal chords long ago. God blessed me with so many other talents that it’d just be greedy to wish for the voice of Aretha Franklin. And we all know that greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.


I accept my shortcomings. So too should singalings like Rebecca Black (who I think may be signaling the end of the world as she reaches new heights of insipidity), Kim Zolciak, and Ke$ha who can’t carry a tune. And shame on folks like Usher, Cher, and wil.i.am, who actually can sing. Back away from the audio processor or I might have to auto-turn my fist toward your voicebox.

4 comments:

Divalicious Deeds said...

Could not agree with you more. Thank goodness my kid has never asked to download anything done by Ke$ha and makes fun of autotune [Mom, they sound like those people who have to hold that thing against their throat to talk].

b said...

auto tuning is just not right in singing, hides the real talent. This the first time that I have heard the Friday song, now I know why it is being branded the worst song ever.

j. littlejohn said...

I like the idea of computers making music better, but autotune is too easy. They need manualtune, you can still use a computer but at least you'd have to work at it longer

lw said...

Autotune is the wave of the future. The media folks want their singers to be physically perfect; this has been coming ever since Milli Vanilli. It will improve so that you can't tell who can sing and who can't. And what sort of range they really have. But it makes me miss the sixties and my childhood, where beautiful but imperfect folks like Mama Cass and Aretha Franklin rocked us the old fashioned way.