Karaoke night is fun because everyone is welcome to belt out a tune, no matter their singing abilities. But even at the best karaoke events, you’ll probably notice: the music is never as perfect as a song you hear on the radio.
In the past, singers repeatedly recorded their vocals in a studio. The studio engineers would take the recordings and stitch the best vocals together. The process created a song where every note was flawless, but it took a lot of work.
Then, in the 1990s, an inventor named Andy Hildebrand created Auto-Tune. Today, autotune is known worldwide as software that tunes your voice—automatically. So how does it work?
Let’s go back to that karaoke night. Your friend stands up to croon out a melody, but you notice that they sing off key. They almost hit the right notes, but they’re always just a little flat or sharp. If your friend had autotune, the software would notice the mistakes and play back the nearest correct notes.
This takes several steps. First, the sound engineer tells autotune the song’s musical key. The key serves as a reference for the notes that the singer is trying to hit. Then, the engineer tells autotune to listen for a human voice, and whether that voice is, say, soprano or alto. Finally, the engineer chooses a retune speed, or how quickly autotune adjusts a wrong note. A high retune speed makes a voice sound robotic, while a slower speed sounds more natural.
Most songs recorded today use autotune. But as any karaoke fan knows—imperfection can also be a lot of fun.
