

How Dr Andy Hildebrand invented AutoTune - johnc055
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/1202/1224308464745.html

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xradionut
From the article: "There were other consequences from the adoption of Auto-
Tune. Hildebrand tells the story of a music producer who jokes that once he
used to look for good singers, now . . . it’s pretty faces."

This is the reason that a lot of recent popular commercial music is crap to my
ears. A lot of the real talent is hidden by "cosmetic imperfections" and isn't
suited for the mass marketing machine that desires pretty faces. If you go
back before the modern era of digital manipulation, you'll be amazed at the
vocal talent that is represented.

~~~
InclinedPlane
There's still plenty of legitimate vocal talent out there, but if you spend
your time with your ears turned towards the noise machine of the big music
distributors you might miss it.

The world is changing. Technology is making it easier for talented artists to
make a living outside the traditional confines of the industry, even producing
and distributing music themselves. The industry has fallen back to relying on
the sorts of "media phenomenon" type artists (face, lifestyle, music, in that
order) who get the greatest boost from what the industry can provide and are
thus the most dependent on that industry.

Someone with solid pipes and solid musical skills will find it easier to DIY
their tours, albums, etc. and make a decent living while in complete control
of their music. Someone who's just a face and an approximation of a singing
voice who requires autotune, requires others to write their songs, requires a
backup band, etc. that person is going to be welded to their producers like
nobody's business. And their producers are going to use every tool at their
disposal to ride them for everything their worth (publicity blitz, etc.) It
doesn't help that modern broadcast radio is feckless and moribund.

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jleyank
Note than when surgeons were barbers, the Sorbonne was awarding PhD's....

Aside from the staggering memorization load in Med School, I would think the
typical STEM PhD involves more work, and more creative work, than the MD.
Certainly a lot more writing.

~~~
Cushman
My understanding is that it's common for PhDs to feel they worked harder to
get their degree than MDs, and MDs laugh at this.

Don't forget that earning the degree only gets you half way to being a
practicing doctor. It's a little like the difference between the police and
the military, maybe.

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pflats
While I don't mean to make light of the effort and prestige behind earning a
PhD, I can't be the only one who expected this article to be about how a
medical doctor originally invented the technology behind AutoTune, possibly to
help people who had trouble hearing certain types of audio.

Still an interesting background for the tech, mind you, but not what I was
expecting from Dr. Andy Hildebrand (rather than Hildebrand, PhD).

~~~
aiscott
That's interesting. I work with many PhDs and always refer to them as Dr so-
and-so in formal settings or introductions. Most of the doctors I know aren't
MDs.

I do see your point though. There are quite a few doctorate degrees, and even
in the professional field they aren't all referred to as Doctor (take a DDS
for instance, Doctor of Dental Surgery).

~~~
pflats
I do too, when I'm speaking aloud. In my experience, though, when writing, the
actual degree is listed(PhD, MD, EdD, JD, DDS, etc.), rather than the more
generic "doctor".

edit: Just checked; the AP and Reuters style guides both seem to recommond
only using Dr for Medical Doctors. That's probably where my memory comes from.

<http://www.sandiego.edu/web/pdf/brief_ap_style.pdf>
<http://handbook.reuters.com/index.php/D#doctor>

~~~
johnc055
My mistake, apologies. PhD would have made more sense.

I thought the guy's background was interesting. It shows the utility of
software/computing for solving such diverse problems as oil exploration and
poor pitch using similar techniques. I find that amazing.

~~~
Turing_Machine
The rule I was taught was that PhDs use the title Doctor in contexts related
to their professional expertise, but not in generic social situations. Going
by that rule, Doctor Hildebrand is perfectly correct in this instance.

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maeon3
I want an Android app that will autotune my voice as a microphone so I sing
quietly into it and midi out is sent autotuned realtime voice.

~~~
CWuestefeld
That's not how MIDI works. For the most part, it just carries Note On / Note
Off / Velocity messages. There's provision for system-defined data. But MIDI's
bandwidth, if I remember correctly, is only 31kbps, so it's not enough to
carry sampled audio with any fidelity.

~~~
maeon3
It would be ok for a 2 second delay. I want to sound like Darth vader.

~~~
trafficlight
MIDI doesn't pass audio streams at all. It's purely a message-passing
protocol. Per the Wiki article:

 _MIDI's primary functions include communicating event messages about musical
notation, pitch, velocity, control signals for parameters (such as volume,
vibrato, panning, cues, and clock signals (to set the tempo)) between two
devices in order to complete a signal chain and produce audible sound from a
sound source._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI>

