c?
Yes, yes and yup, American artist Vic Chesnutt told The Press before his death from an overdose of muscle relaxants last year.
He worked with Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse and director David Lynch, among many others. "There's nothing wrong with fixing the odd note, but it has gone too far for me. Potentially, it is more damaging to the industry than anything else. It's lazy and it's cheating.
"It's like Lance Armstrong using a motorbike in a [bicycle] race. The public is conned into thinking their Top 40 pop stars can actually sing in key, when it's all just a sham.
"Even on American Idol, when they're waffling on about pitch, the producers use it. They used it when judge Paula Abdul sang on the show, which is so hypocritical I can't even begin to talk about it. The industry is in enough trouble as it is, without deceiving the public."
Junior Marvin, an original member of Bob Marley's Wailers, argues that a vocal track treated heavily with Auto-Tune sounds synthetic and is merely electronically sanitised music, taking away from the musicality of the song.
"I lived in London when it was at the forefront of music with the Who, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix. It was all about live music being played. You couldn't use computers. You had to know how to play. It should be about good musicianship and skill," Marvin says.
"The other thing I really don't understand is when artists who are good singers use it. It's like pouring motor oil over a gourmet meal."
KIWI BANDS USE IT FOR 'EFFECT'
New Zealand artists are not averse to Auto-Tune, including Opshop and The Phoenix Foundation.
Opshop used Auto-Tool on the first single, Pins and Needles, on their upcoming album Until The End of Time (due out August 2).
"There's a bit of a T-Pain thing happening in there," says Opshop frontman Jason Kerrison, who did a production course at Berklee School of Music, Boston, in 2009.
"Obviously with this record we wanted to evolve sonically but it's fun to try new ideas. T-Pain and that whole pop culture embrace of that synthesised artefact [Auto-Tune] is very interesting to me and I had never heard that really taken into a pop-rock band context - taken by a band like us and used and abused like that. To integrate that timbre into what we were doing, it just sounds interesting."
Using Auto-Tune cost the group access to one Australian radio station. "One programmer over there refused to play it and said we'd have to remove the 'Auto-Tune s***' before he would. We decided to leave it in."
The Phoenix Foundation's Sam Flynn-Scott believes Auto-Tune is "one tool in a big toolkit". He says other independent artists with low recording budgets have saved albums with Auto-Tune, using it when recording under time constraints in expensive studios.
"We don't use it often but we have used it - more as an effect. It saves time. It's not that different to doing multiple takes and comping the best parts which 99 per cent of musicians do. It's technology that can be used with skill but it shouldn't be a replacement for the real thing. If it's used as correction on a natural voice, I hate it.
"Auto-Tune is like a bad toupee - you can always tell."
RIPE FOR PARODY
Much like scientists calling a new disease after its first fatality, using Auto-Tune is known as "doing a Cher". She is credited with being the first to use it - on Believe. It added a robotic, computer-style quality to the voice and was a huge hit.
Since, there's been a swag of songs criticising and paroding the technique. In 2000, The White Stripes made fun of the Auto-Tune effect on the B-side version of You're Pretty Good Looking (Trendy American Remix). It had absurd levels of Auto-Tune throughout the song.
New star Ke$ha clearly uses Auto- Tune, sparking one American comedy website to create a parody of her worldwide No 1 hit Tik Tok. In Sing Talk, a line under the video reads: Tho$e who can't $ing, talk.
Hip-hop godfather Jay-Z infamously launched an attack on the process in his song D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune), which ignited a feud with rival T-Pain, who has joined forces with Auto