I think the growing global popularity of more overt uses of Auto-Tune in music production is actually a good thing, at least to a point, in that it isn't using the computerized pitch correction to create a perfect but still "real" version of a pop performance (as real as the women on the covers of glossy magazines); instead, it's embracing the artificiality of the process to create something new. A few years back, I heard a great song by a British musician, whose name escapes me alas, who had trained his voice to mimic the Auto-Tune effect naturally. And why not? It sounded cool.

re: computers, cyborgs, music, technology and change, voice

Nate:

Vocal runs that would sound bizarre without Auto-Tune have become necessary to create some now-common effects. The plug-in facilitates something analogous to a human-machine duet. Raskin has recorded with countless major vocalists, including best-selling rapper Lil Wayne. He says that, ‘99 per cent of all pop music has corrective Auto-Tuning.’ But when artists flamboyantly foreground its use, they sing and simultaneously listen to themselves being processed. Lil Wayne records with Auto-Tune on – no untreated vocal version exists. In an era of powerful computers that allow one to audition all manner of effects on vocals after the recording session, recording direct with Auto-Tune means full commitment. There is no longer an original ‘naked’ version. This is a cyborg embrace. In Cyborg Manifesto (1991), Donna Haraway notes that ‘the relation between organism and machine has been a border war.’ Auto-Tune’s creative deployment is fully compatible with her ‘argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction.’