You all remember the infamous “Charlie bit me” YouTube sensation, right? What about when Taylor Swift’s moment to shine was taken away by rapper Kanye West at the MTV Video Music Awards? And let’s not forget the so called “Balloon Boy”, who everyone thought was in the homemade flying saucer – later to find out that it was all a gimmick.
If you search on YouTube, you will find many different versions of these clips. Some are altered and made into song collaborations, a remix of some sort or even parodies.
The first above video is a collaborated auto-tuned remix of “Charlie bit me”, Taylor Swift’s interrupted speech, “Balloon Boy” and another popular video on YouTube of a boy trying to steal a banana. The Second video is Ellen Degeneres testing out the imbedded auto tuned microphone. Then she is joined by T-Pain himself!
So, what is Auto-Tune? I conducted research on the web to find some more information on this rising popular technology. According to D.A. King,
“Auto-Tune is tone correction technology. It allows for any vocal part that doesn’t quite meet it’s mark to simply be digitally corrected, and brought to it’s proper pitch. Whether a little flat or off the mark completely, Auto-Tune remedies the situation and delivers pitch-perfection.” (Associated Content- News, 2009)
The only difference today is that some rappers like T-Pain and Lil Wayne started to incorporate this Auto-Tune technology, but with a different outlook in mind. Sam Biddle describes auto-tune and its impact on artists saying “…artists began cranking up the settings to deliberately distort their voices as an artistic ‘misuse.’ The resulting effect is a cold, robotic crooning that has become near-requisite for a chart-topping single.” (PSFK ,2009)
T-Pain has been one of the most influential rappers to make Auto-Tune so popular. I could not believe that there was an application (a.k.a. “app”) for the iPhone called “I am T-Pain”. In this app you can “become” T-Pain, not literally, but by voice. This app allows people to sound just like the entertainer. I only just discovered the popularity around this Auto-Tune technology and it’s making its way not only through music, but in amateur videos online.
In relation to the text, Empire of Mind by Dr. Strangelove, these auto-tuned videos created mostly by amateurs who are “people who do something for the love of it” (as discussed in class) are all part of the audience that cannot be controlled. Dr. Strangelove discusses the matter of a “mash-up”, which is often seen on YouTube. Fan-made videos are created with different tools, data and elements to make one sole piece. We also discussed that YouTube leads to greater engagement in media and more involved which then brings us to the challenging notion of private property. The key aspect to look at is the fact that these viral videos cannot be removed off the internet once they are uploaded because as mentioned in class, the government and laws cannot permanently remove the content. It will always remain on the internet. People are free to create and upload these mash-up videos to be seem by thousands, sometimes millions.
Since the popularity of this Auto-Tune technology being used in online videos, it just shows that the audience has so much more control over what they choose to do with the media they receive. It’s really up to the rest of us to either like it or hate it.
