Oh dear oh dear oh dear!
It seems the boys with more money than sense running the X-Factor show have had a slip up, which is great for the press to leap on, but is what they are doing right or wrong?
Here is a bit of info from a site which explains the situation:
"X-Factor and American Idol are the number one and number two things wrong with the music industry today. And the number three thing wrong with the industry is auto-tune. Combine these things together and you get a truly distasteful happening in pop culture. Music is supposed to be real. Real emotion, real feelings, real people, and real talent. Especially if people are getting rewarded for talent. Why should people get rewarded for artificial talent?
The new series of X-Factor started this past weekend here in the UK. The season premier had over 10 million viewers, more than any X-Factor season premier before. Since then, everyone has been abuzz about it, but not for the right reasons. The public (and media for that matter) finally picked up on part of what is wrong with the show. They cheat. This time, they were caught using auto-tune on some of the contestants. So a show that is supposed to find the most talented singers in the UK is actually falsifying the contestants voices. So they aren't really looking for the most talented singers are they? They are looking for the person who can be the most marketable singer, with the help of auto-tune.
The show released a statement claiming that they only used auto-tune to correct the sound due to poor live sound in the venues, so that the viewers at home could hear a sound that was more like that of what the "judges" heard. This was the first round of the competition, where everyone is competing against each other, hoping to make it to the next round. And by auto-tuning certain performers wouldn't that give certain people an unfair advantage? How can you justify an honest competition that puts singers who are being auto-tuned against singers that are singing with a natural voice?"
read full article
With all things like this its probably never going to be clear what 'actually' happened but one thing is certain - they screwed up! Autotune can be compared to a spell checker in text documents or to photoshop for pictures - we use the software to make things correct, easier on the eye, or in this case the ears.
Is it wrong?
This surely is subjective and from my experience many good singers refuse to have it used (or simply don't need it) but less talented ones welcome it - it helps - just like good EQ, correct use of compression or FX like reverb, chorus and delay.
Like any plug-in or FX they can be used well or badly and it seems (rightly or wrongly) the programme editors have messed up - perhaps from rushing.
So what can we do?
Well I'm in discussion with Mark Powlett at BBC Coventry & Warwickshire Radio (94.8 / 104 / 103.7FM). Mark has offered to sing and let us sort him out to show how Autotune works - very brave!!
You can hear this next week - just tune in to his show on Thursday (Sept 2nd) where I shall be talking about it with him and demonstrating how the software works.