An engineer by training, Andy Hildebrand has a clever look when he recounts, in video, how, during a dinner, he was challenged to invent software that would allow anyone to sing in tune. He thus created Auto-Tune at the end of 1996, without imagining that he had just started a revolution in the music industry.
The first professional to use it was singer Cher in Believe (1998). She can thus hold the note in “Do you beliiiieve in life after love?” (“Do you believe in life after love?”). Some call it genius, others a scam… Still just as divisive two decades later, Auto-Tune has nevertheless been adopted by all recording studios.
“The first time, we used it on Johnny Hallyday,” recalls Caroline Molko, former president of Warner Chappell Music France. The delightful miniseries that Arte.tv offers, just as clever as its creator, however chooses to focus on the influence of Auto-Tune in the world of rap, the first music in France.
Teki Latex et PNL
From The Origins, the first episode, doubt is in order. Strolling through the streets, rapper Teki Latex explains that he was the first user of Auto-Tune in France, in 2002. But Mehdi Maïzi, in charge of hip-hop content at Apple Music France, puts forward another hypothesis: Liquid Helium , track from the album Cadavre exquis, by the group L’Armée des 12, released the same year… Similarly, if PNL ensured the development of the software, Booba would have popularized it with 0.9 in 2008.
Among the funny sequences, the demonstration, by the producer Tez, a pipe in the mouth, of the operation of the talkbox, which once made it possible to obtain a metallic sound. Before the episode Le Débat, which puts users and opponents face to face – including the very upset journalist Philippe Manoeuvre, but also a number of rappers, for whom rap must remain spoken and virile, and not sung and melodious.
“I have a purist fanbase. Even in a banger track, if they heard an Auto-Tune sound, I would get a kick! “, laughs thus, with hindsight, Medina. When Youssoupha is more direct: “Masculinity? I don’t give a shit. The scene does not deceive. The series does not expand on the subject. Only Philippe Manoeuvre dares: “I saw Roméo Elvis on the big stage at the Francofolies de La Rochelle (…). Artistic level: zero points. »
So we are mainly witnessing recording sessions here: that of K-Reen, to evoke the virtual disappearance of female R’n’B singers, who provided the melodies on rap tracks before the rappers interpret themselves; that of Uzi, in the fourth episode, while Mehdi Maïzi deciphers the use of the “topline”: “You arrive with your instrumental and you sing “in yogurt” [what Uzi does]. That’s new. ” Certainly…
“Auto-Tune is heaven!” “, jokes the singer Jacques in the last opus. Add to it the capabilities of smartphones, type beats (free downloadable instrumentals) and social networks, and any amateur can record and broadcast their tracks for free, and without having studied singing or music. This offers artists undeniable independence and unprecedented freedom. Worrying unanimity? “Auto-Tune, we’ve been through it. It’s almost corny,” warns rapper Lujipeka.
