thesised 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-Tune's creater to release a version as an iPhone application.
Manipulating the voice is a great tool, T-Pain believes: "Now everyone wants to be a Transformer."
* Vicki Anderson is music editor at The Press.
- © Fairfax NZ News