May 26, 2015  The singer's 1998 comeback track marked the first prominent use of a technology called 'Auto-Tune', a pitch correcting software that has since changed the music industry. 'Before Auto-Tune, studios would do pitch correction by having the singer repeat a phrase over and over and over. Jun 02, 2009  The device makes everyone sound good, which isn’t so good. The prevalence of Auto-Tune comes from two longstanding pop music traditions — the. Auto-Tune Evo (Windows). 14 Things Every Music Producer/Artist Should Have in Place. Bass House Track From Scratch in Ableton. Leave a Reply Cancel reply.

'D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)' is a song written by American rapper Jay-Z. It was produced by No I.D. The song was released as a digital download on June 23, 2009, and as the first single from Jay-Z's 11th studio album, The Blueprint 3. The song made its world premiere on the New York radio station Hot 97 on June 5.^[1] Its lyrics address the overusage of Auto-Tune in the music industry. The song samples 'In the Space' by French composer Janko Nilović.^[2] The bridge is inspired by Steam's 'Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye' and interpolates lyrics from Kanye West's 'Big Brother', and 'You're Nobody (Till Somebody Kills You)' by The Notorious B.I.G.. The song won Jay-Z his eighth Grammy Award, and his second for Best Rap Solo Performance.

Writing and inspiration[edit]

Before making 'D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)', Kanye West and Jay-Z had recorded an Auto-Tune song. However, Kanye heard the instrumental by No I.D. and thought about making an anti-Auto-Tune song. They then removed all the songs that contained Auto-Tune from The Blueprint 3 to further their point.^[3] Jay-Z himself stated that the point of the song was to 'draw a line in the sand', saying that while he appreciated the use of the Auto-Tune by artists with an ear for melody like T-Pain and Kanye West, far too many people had jumped onto the technology and were using it as a crutch.^[1] One of the partial inspirations for Jay-Z to write the song was hearing Auto-Tune being used in an advertisement for Wendy's fast-food chain. It made him feel that what was once a trend had become a gimmick.^[4] The title is also a reference to the medical term 'D.O.A.' or 'Dead on Arrival'. The song makes a reference to The Notorious B.I.G. song 'You're Nobody ('Till Somebody Kills You)'. Jay-Z sampled a portion of The Notorious B.I.G.'s freestyle 'Wake Up Show Freestyle'.^[5]

Music video[edit]

On June 27, 2009, a trailer for the video was released.^[6] The music video (directed by Anthony Mandler) was shot and aired immediately after the 2009 BET Awards on June 28.^{[citation needed]}The video shows Jay in scenes such as a deserted factory building, a bar with a band, and playing card games in a kitchen. Actor Harvey Keitel cameos in the video as a card player in the kitchen of New York's exclusive restaurant, Rao's. Basketball player LeBron James also makes a cameo appearance.^{[citation needed]}

The video was nominated for Best Male Video and Best Hip-Hop Video at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. It did not win either of the categories, losing to T.I.'s 'Live Your Life' and Eminem's 'We Made You' respectively.

The video ranked at #17 on BET's Notarized: Top 100 Videos of 2009 countdown.

Responses[edit]

On June 9, R&B artist Trey Songz released an unofficial remix of the song on his blog. Renamed 'Death of Autotune Kellz', it was directed at artist R. Kelly for using the effect on a previous mixtape.^[7] Rappers AZ and Jay Rock have also both recorded remixes. Royce da 5'9' has released two remixes of it, one by himself and one with fellow Slaughterhouse members Joe Budden, Crooked I, and Joell Ortiz. Singer Avery Storm has also made a remix using the songs instrumental supporting the death of auto-tune. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have also made a remix to the song featuring all five members. Rapper The Game released a diss track in response to the song entitled 'I'm So Wavy (Death of Hov)', going at Jay-Z for what Game perceives as him being behind the times in the hip-hop industry, and his stance that Jay-Z being 39 years old means he's too old to stay in the music scene, evidenced with lyrics such as 'D.O.A.? No. T-Pain stays, old nigga goes.' DJ Webstar was also critical of Jay-Z for the track in an interview with RealTalkNY, saying:

In an October interview with Tim Westwood, Lil Wayne also criticized the track, throwing support toward T-Pain as a known user of it:

On August 31, 2009, the music group, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony recorded a remix of the song. It was released officially on their MySpace page. The song includes the 5 united members singing separate verses along with Jay-Z singing the original chorus. The song has also been remixed by rappers such as Lil Wayne and Asher Roth.

The song was ranked best song of the year 2009 by MTV.^[10]

Time magazine ranked it number 8 on their list of the best songs of 2009.^[11]

Live performances[edit]

Two days after the song premiered on Hot 97, Jay-Z made an appearance at the annual Summer Jam concert at Giants Stadium and performed the song live for the first time.^[12] Towards the end of his set, he was surprised by the appearance of T-Pain who joined him onstage. He later performed 'D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)' during the 2009 BET Awards.

Charts[edit]

The song made a 'Hot Shot Debut' at #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 based on downloads. It has also reached the top 50 of the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, peaking at #43.

- * No official release; charted due to downloads only

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abSchwartz, Barry (2009-06-06). 'Jay-Z Premieres New Song, 'D.O.A.': 'Death Of Auto-Tune''. MTV. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
2. ^Hart, Ronald (2009-06-10). 'D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)'. Billboard. Nielsen Business Media, Inc. Archived from the original on June 24, 2009. Retrieved 2009-06-10.
3. ^Reid, Shaheem (2009-06-30). 'Kanye West Promises Jay-Z's 'Anti-Auto-Tune' Blueprint 3 Will Be 'Amazing''. MTV. Retrieved 2009-07-17.
4. ^Shaheem, Reid (October 2009). 'Jay-Z Blames Wendy's Commercial -- Partially -- For His 'Death Of Auto-Tune''. MTV. MTV Networks. Retrieved 2009-06-10.
5. ^'Jay-Z Caught Stealing Biggie Ryhmes...Again!!!'. YouTube. 2009-09-17. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
6. ^'Jay-Z 'D.O.A.' Trailer'. Youngandthefly.com. Archived from the original on 2012-02-24. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
7. ^Death Of Autotune Kellz My Response Accessed 2009-06-09.
8. ^'DJ Webstar, Ron Browz & No ID Discuss Jay-Z's, 'Death Of Auto-tune''. RealTalkNY. Archived from the original on 2009-09-23. Retrieved 2009-08-28.
9. ^'Lil Wayne on Jay-Z's 'D.O.A.' Track: 'Auto-Tune Ain't Dead … T-Pain Is My Dude''.
10. ^'The Best Songs Of 2009, In Bigger Than The Sound - Music, Celebrity, Artist News'. MTV. 2009-12-09. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
11. ^'The Top 10 Everything Of 2009'. Time. 2009-12-08.
12. ^Shaheem, Reid (2009-06-08). 'Jay-Z Makes Surprise Appearance At Summer Jam'. MTV. MTV Networks. Retrieved 2009-06-09.
13. ^[1]Archived March 14, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
14. ^'Top 100 Music Hits, Top 100 Music Charts, Top 100 Songs & The Hot 100'. Billboard.com. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
15. ^'D.O.A. (Death Of Auto-Tune)' (Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart), Billboard, June 21, 2009.
16. ^[2]^{[dead link]}

External links[edit]

• 'D.O.A (Death of Auto-Tune)' Official Video FINAL CUT on YouTube
• Bone Thugs-n-Harmony – D.O.A. Remix on YouTube

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The following sentence might come as a huge shock to teens and Millennials, so stop tweeting for a second, kids, and get prepared for a totally outlandish statement. Here it is: Once upon a time, pop singers were actual singers.

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1. 1. Autistic ballerina dances her way into hearts

      In a popular YouTube video, the beaming little ballerina dances an entire four-minute routine seemingly perfectly, matchin...

Yes, I know. That’s hard to comprehend since the pop charts are now dominated by artists who use Auto-Tune, the software plug-in that corrects the pitch of those who can’t really cut it in the vocal department and turns their vocals into robo-voices. While everyone under 30 recovers from that revelation, here’s what I mean by “actual singers.”

Back in the day, pop artists like Frank Sinatra and the Beatles used to be able to record albums in just a few days. Country musicians like Patsy Cline and George Jones trudged through grueling tours in out-of-the-way rural locales yet still missed nary a note. R&B musicians like the Supremes and the Four Tops navigated their way through complex choreography but still belted out songs out like their lives depended on it.

And while today, we still have singers with massively impressive pipes, a whole lotta them could never have rocked it for real like the Motown gang. These days, artists are able to get by on looks, publicity and aid from Auto-Tune.

You can hear the robotic, processed sound of the plug-in on recent hit records like “Blame It” by Jamie Foxx and T-Pain, “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga and “Right Now (Na Na Na)” by Akon. It’s also heard on tracks by Kanye West, Britney Spears and Lil Wayne. When West attempted to sing “Love Lockdown” without the plug-in on “Saturday Night Live,” the results were none too impressive and got ridiculed online. You can hear 10 examples of “Auto-Tune Abuse in Pop Music” on Hometracked, a blog geared toward home recording enthusiasts.

Paula Abdul also uses Auto-Tune on her new song, “Here for the Music,” which she performed (i.e. lip-synched) on “American Idol” May 6. It was evident just how artificial Abdul’s vocals were when she was followed by Gwen Stefani, who gave a warts-and-all live vocal on No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.”

Country and rock singers are said to use Auto-Tune to protect themselves from hitting bum notes in concert. Pop singers use it when they have a hard time singing while executing complicated dance moves (raising the question as to why they’re letting their dancing take precedence over their music). Auto-Tune has become so ubiquitous that indie rockers Death Cab for Cutie wore blue ribbons at this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony to protest its overuse.

Building the ‘perfect’ beast
The prevalence of Auto-Tune comes from two longstanding pop music traditions — the desire to alter the human voice and the quest for perfection at the expense of real talent and emotion.

The first of these can lead to inspiring moments, as the New Yorker’s Sasha Frere-Jones noted in an essay last year. Pioneering voice tweakers include producer Quincy Jones, who punched up Lesley Gore’s vocals with double tracking on “It’s My Party,” and George Martin, who gave us a childlike sped-up John Lennon on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Later on, Peter Frampton wowed audiences with his talk box guitar effect and a decade later, vocals were being put through harmonizers to get jarring outer space effects.

Of course, to pull off any of those effects, you had still had to be able to sing. With Auto-Tune you don’t.

Then there’s the quest for perfection. By the 1970s, producers were able to edit or splice together vocal takes from various tracks and eventually they started to use hardware that corrected vocal pitch to create “perfect” performances. When the sound editing program Pro Tools became the industry norm in the 1990s, kludged-together vocal tracks became the norm.

But too much meticulousness in pop music strips away passion. And the very reason we listen to music, noted the late rock critic Lester Bangs, is to hear “passion expressed.” Auto-Tune makes people sound like robots. And if there’s no feeling, why listen at all?

Some people apparently aren’t listening anymore. Sales of major label CDs are down. But more authentic sounding music still has fans. Paste magazine recently reported that indie music is selling more, and the one area of commercial music that’s remained popular is “American Idol,” where you can’t fake it (unless you’re Paula Abdul).

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The producers speak
A lot of producers like to use Auto-Tune because it saves time, says producer Craig Street, who has worked with Norah Jones, k. d. lang and Cassandra Wilson. “If you have a smaller budget what you’re doing is trying to cram a lot of work into a small period of time,” Street says. “So you may not have as much time to do a vocal.”

Craig Anderton, a producer and music writer, observes that Auto-Tune “gets no respect because when it’s done correctly, you can’t hear that it’s working.

“If someone uses it tastefully just to correct a few notes here and there, you don’t even know that it’s been used so it doesn’t get any props for doing a good job,” Anderton notes. “But if someone misuses it, it’s very obvious — the sound quality of the voice changes and people say ‘Oh, it’s that Auto-Tune — it’s a terrible thing that’s contributing to the decline and fall of Western music as we know it.”

One producer who dislikes Auto-Tune is Jon Tiven, who cut his musical teeth in the punk rock era with his band the Yankees, and went on to produce soul singers Wilson Pickett and Don Covey as well as Pixies founder Frank Black. Tiven thinks Auto-Tune has led to the destruction of great singing.

“I don’t know how many levels you want to drop the bar for what it takes to become a successful musical person,” Tiven says. “You could sacrifice on some levels, but it would seem to me one of the first things you would really be hard pressed to sacrifice is if the person could sing in tune or not.”

Street says the like or dislike of Auto-Tune largely comes down to aesthetics, and likens people’s feelings about listening to unnatural sounds with the way some people feel about unnatural body modifications, such as breast implants.

Auto Tune Killed Musical

And that makes sense. After all, today we have models and actors whose faces and bodies were never intended by nature, reality TV that’s not real, and sports “heroes” whose strength comes from pills not practice. It’s totally understandable that the commercial pop world would embrace an unnatural aesthetic. Whether audiences will someday want pop singers who are first and foremost singers remains to be seen.

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