Friday, October 16, 2009

Auto-tune

It is a documented fact that I enjoy singing along to music on my way to and from work.  When I'm singing along, I usually try to mimic the way that the original artist is singing it, copying each soulful inflection, semierotic grunt, and tremor.  When the artist screams, I scream too—though that sort of mocking whisper-scream where you pretend to be screaming but really aren't making much noise at all.  I do this without even really thinking about it most of the time.  I know that I don't really even think about it that much because it wasn't until halfway through Kanye West's Love Lockdown today that I realized that I even mimic the distortions in his voice produced by a vocoder.  I found myself unaware that I was, in fact, singing in a robot voice.

2 comments:

Mahmoud Hashemi said...

Kanye West doesn't use auto-tune, you take that back.

Really though, it's been a long-time wish of mine to have a speaker embedded in parallel with my traditional voice facilities, so I can render instrumentals without embarrassing myself. Hopefully science pulls through.

Travis said...

I hear the next iteration of the iPod Nano can be embedded within the skin and controlled through your body's natural impulses, which is great, because it doesn't have any buttons.