Auto-Tune inventor Dr. Andy Hildebrand wins Grammy and celebrates with limited time promo price

[Antares Support]

AUTO-TUNE® INVENTOR DR. ANDY HILDEBRAND WINS GRAMMY® AND CELEBRATES WITH LIMITED TIME PROMO PRICE!

Congratulations Dr. Andy on changing the music industry forever!

Santa Cruz, CA - Antares Audio Technologies, creators of Auto-Tune®, the industry standard for vocal production software, congratulate Dr. Andy Hildebrand for his Technical GRAMMY Award® at the 65th Annual GRAMMY Awards®. “Dr. Andy,” as he’s known in the industry, is being honored for his achievement in creating Auto-Tune.

Dr. Andy Grammy.jpg

To celebrate this achievement, Antares is offering its flagship product Auto-Tune Pro X for the same price it was initially offered at upon its release in 1996—just $299 (regular price: $459)! Included with this special offer on Auto-Tune Pro X is a one-year subscription to Auto-Tune Unlimited, an additional value of $179. This limited-time offer ends on February 13th, 2023. https://www.antarestech.com/2023-grammys

The Technical GRAMMY® is awarded to individuals, companies, organizations, or institutions who have made contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. Previous winners have included such luminaries as Ray Dolby, Les Paul, and Dr. Robert Moog. This year, the Technical GRAMMY goes to Dr. Andy Hildebrand for his creation of Auto-Tune.

A brilliant engineer who saw a connection between his work in geophysics and his love of music, Dr. Andy Hildebrand pioneered algorithms that could map the earth’s surface by sending out sound waves and recording their reflections. In a break-through moment, Dr. Andy realized that when he applied those same algorithms to audio, they could detect pitch and Auto-Tune was born. In 1997, Dr. Andy debuted Auto-Tune at The NAMM Show and the music industry hasn’t been the same since.

Auto-Tune immediately revolutionized the music landscape. Its natural, undetectable pitch correction capabilities stunned producers and engineers and it quickly became a studio “secret weapon” to improve even the most trained and talented vocalists.

With the release of Cher’s 1998 hit “Believe”, Auto-Tune went from behind the scenes to center stage. Over the next decades, Auto-Tune shaped the sounds of audacious albums like Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak, Bon Iver’s Blood Bank, and Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III. Today, Auto-Tune is synonymous with the sound of modern music.

We are proud to carry on Dr. Andy’s legacy and visionary development in the audio and vocal production fields.

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[Zero dB]

A Grammy for ruining pop music forever.

Congrats.

God help us all.

[CrystalWizard]

"and the music industry hasn’t been the same since."

Yes, that is true.
This reads like an advertisement.
Personally, i'm more interested in his geophysics work (but i don't get paid to polish turds either).

[SeeingInMidi]

A Grammy for ruining the pop music forever.

Congrats.

God help us all.

What a bold and played out statement from the early 2000's. Especially surprising to see this sentiment on an audio production forum, of all things.

[jamcat]

Zero dB is right on several levels.

The most obvious one is what you're referring to, I think, which was (and is) the abuse of Auto-Tune for really artificial sounding vocals (see: Cher Effect.)

But also, more broadly, Auto-Tune has negatively impacted the public's trust in vocalists' abilities. It's assumed that every mainstream vocal performance has been polished and augmented, in the same way every cover model is airbrushed and defatted in Photoshop. It alienates the audience and holds them at arm's length from the performance, much like computer animation has done to film.

And finally, the perfection that is now expected by listeners has made older music with authentic performances sound sloppy by comparison, which has ruined the entirety of our recorded musical heritage, from a certain perspective.

[SeeingInMidi]

Zero dB is right on several levels.

The most obvious one is what you're referring to, I think, which was (and is) the abuse of Auto-Tune for really artificial sounding vocals (see: Cher Effect.)

But also, more broadly, Auto-Tune has negatively impacted the public's trust in vocalists' abilities. It's assumed that every mainstream vocal performance has been polished and augmented, in the same way every cover model is airbrushed and defatted in Photoshop. It alienates the audience and holds them at arm's length from the performance, much like computer animation has done to film.

And finally, the perfection that is now expected by listeners has made older music with authentic performances sound sloppy by comparison, which has ruined the entirety of our recorded musical heritage, from a certain perspective.

Auto-tune as a effect is subjective. That's like claiming the flanger and chorus pedal has ruined psychedelic rock. The general listener does not care about perfect pitch. Sure, auto-tune has set the barrier higher for vocal performances but the general listener does not truly care. And, no one is listening to a 70s motown record and thinking "damn, this needs pitch correction". If you believe auto-tune has ruined pop, you should also believe that compression has ruined pop.

[DCrown]

Autotune definetely has ruined music of 21st century, no doubt, there are too many examples.
And the dev even got a Grammy for Autotune hurting a lot of people 's ears, really?
Daws made it possible to almost everyone to produce music.
Autotune made people think and fake they could sing and made people sing, who better should not sing because of lack of talent and made it overuse as an effect, it's like every guitar of a song would have a wah added, it would get annoying.
No guitar player I know and I am sure most prof guitarists would not like their guitar solos to be corrected by a software, they usually know to play.
Today a lot of vocals are corrected by Autotune, why? No time for a second take? The answer is obvious, they don't know to sing, voices with no character and soul.
The award clearly shows how spoilt music business is today, well, music has become a mass product and mass products have a low value, good music can still be found and what is good is a matter of personal taste, especially harder to find without autotune and even harder among approximately 75.000 audio releases every day! I 'd be thoroughly ashamed if I had ever used autotune.

[JS_SEA]

hey
wow
I almost can't believe
Autotune was awarded
a Grammy
The last 15-20 years
it was used too many times
but can also be subtle

[fese]

Roger Linn has ruined the pop music in the 80s by inventing the modern drum machine. As well as Dave Smith and Kakehashi who ruined pop music by inventing MIDI. Before that, people needed to have real talent and play instruments, after that, anyone with a sequencer could make “music” by sticking patterns together and producing the same lifeless pop music that hurts our ears until today.
And don’t get me started on synthesizers. Whoever invented those was the devil!

To the OP: don’t know if you care, but it is considered rude to write in all caps in a forum, very bad style, it’s the equivalent of shouting loudly in public.

[DCrown]

One of the greatest artists of all time used Linn Drums. At the beginning drummers were afraid of loosing their jobs, that was the only thing. And a Linn drum was not overused like Autotune.
A wah sound on every guitar would not be cool, I guess, but Autotune is cool? I don't think so. Autotune is mainly used due to lack of talent and ideas and an embarrassing addiction to repetition.
@fese
Your comment is completely ot
To compare the variety of many different synths to Autotune, bravo !!!

[SeeingInMidi]

Funny thing is most of the people whining wouldn't be able to pick out transparent pitch correction without an A/B test. It's the equivalent of those who whine about aliasing ONLY AFTER analysing a plugin through plugindoctor.. All the sudden they magically hear the aliasing that's folding back at -40dB/17k hz.

[SeeingInMidi]

One of the greatest artists of all time used Linn Drums. At the beginning drummers were afraid of loosing their jobs, that was the only thing. And a Linn drum was not overused like Autotune.
A wah sound on every guitar would not be cool, I guess, but Autotune is cool? I don't think so. Autotune is mainly used due to lack of talent and ideas and an embarrassing addiction to repetition.
@fese
Your comment is completely ot
To compare the variety of many different synths to Autotune, bravo !!!

Have you ever recorded vocals before? Pitch correction will not save a bad performance... comping will, which is also a technique that was used during the days of tape. I guess every record that has spliced vocal takes on tape is fake, foney and bad.

I'm waiting for all these AI papers to finally release their speech to speech transfer and vocal re-performance AI programs so then you can understand what performance alteration will truly sound like.

[DCrown]

Funny thing is most of the people whining wouldn't be able to pick out transparent pitch correction without an A/B test. It's the equivalent of those who whine about aliasing ONLY AFTER analysing a plugin through plugindoctor.. All the sudden they magically hear the aliasing that's folding back at -40dB/17k hz.

You must be deaf not to hear autotune.
It's also a matter of pride and skills.
As I already mentioned a guitarist would rather play one more take and not be happy a software to correct their performance, because they know to play.
Autotune is used, because tgey don't know to sing, so they are no singers. What an embarrassing proof of being untalented!
And autotune as an effect, please, be some more creative

[SeeingInMidi]

Funny thing is most of the people whining wouldn't be able to pick out transparent pitch correction without an A/B test. It's the equivalent of those who whine about aliasing ONLY AFTER analysing a plugin through plugindoctor.. All the sudden they magically hear the aliasing that's folding back at -40dB/17k hz.

You must be deaf not to hear autotune.
It's also a matter of pride and skills.
As I already mentioned a guitarist would rather play one more take and not be happy a software to correct their performance, because they know to play.
Autotune is used, because tgey don't know to sing, so they are no singers. What an embarrassing proof of being untalented!
And autotune as an effect, please, be some more creative

Have you never used pitch correction before? There's nuance to it... Set your release and attack times for a more transparent, or even for a more aggressive and FX type sound.

..anyways, the industry has moved past the autotune discussion since 2010.

[fese]

One of the greatest artists of all time used Linn Drums. At the beginning drummers were afraid of loosing their jobs, that was the only thing. And a Linn drum was not overused like Autotune.
A wah sound on every guitar would not be cool, I guess, but Autotune is cool? I don't think so. Autotune is mainly used due to lack of talent and ideas and an embarrassing addiction to repetition.
@fese
Your comment is completely ot
To compare the variety of many different synths to Autotune, bravo !!!

Do you only recognize satire when it hits you on the head??
I was just poking a little fun at the luddite comments here. Technology has always been used and misused. Nothing new there, and it is definitely not appropriate to blame the inventor for it…

(And yeah, Linn drum has been severely overused. Ever heard of Stock Aitken Waterman? )