AUTO-TUNE, SIMULATION AND REALITY Considerable effort can go into recording the voice which most explicitly expresses

a performers personality, and singers have employed a variety of techniques in the past[] (Negus, 1992, pp90) As technology has evolved through the ages, through industrial revolutions and inventions, it has now reached a point where technology is accessible, easy, fast and everywhere. In music, musicians, sound engineers, and now producers have each experimented and found new, easier and cheaper ways of solving problems that in the past were unsolvable. One of the biggest tools for this problem solving in the popular-music industry has come to be a small but, significant application called the Auto-Tune. Andy Hildebrand, a Ph. D. in electrical engineering who also is a fluteist, invented in 1996 a piece of software he called Auto-Tune. His background was originally in the seismic industry, where he was using a mathematical formula called autocorrelation to look for potential drill sites by sending sound waves into the earth and recording their reflections on surfaces. By using the same mathematical formula, he made this tool, whose basic principle is pitch correction. By setting the programs retune speed to a number between zero and four hundred, one can control how the transition between the pitches is going to sound. By setting it to zero, the transitions are sudden, an action which in effect eliminates the natural transition between the notes, making the singer sound jumpy and automated. (Josh Tyrangiel, 2009, Time Magazine). In an interview with Seattle Times, Andy Hildebrand states that one of the reasons for its creation has to do with economics: Before Auto-Tune, sound studios would spend a lot of time with singers, getting them on pitch and getting a good emotional performance. Now they just do the emotional performance, they don't worry about the pitch, the singer goes home, and they fix it in the mix. (Matson, 2009, Seattle Times)

In this way, sending the singer home and spending less time and money on recording, the costs of the studio are reduced. In the same interview, the creator of Auto Tune defends the application by saying that whenever something happens, part of the population likes it and part of the population doesnt like it [] Someone asked me at one point in time if I thought that Auto-Tune was evil. I said, Well, my wife wears make-up. Is that evil? And yeah, in some circles that is evil. But in most circles, it's not. (Matson, 2009, Seattle Times) In the pop song Believe by pop singer Cher, the retune speed of the program is set to zero as to create an automated, inhuman sound. That is only the more extreme use of the Auto-Tune. The discreet use of it has become so common, that artists expect it to be used, brushing up their singing skills. Some argue that singers have become lazy, others that it is a work of genius. Either way, it is a fact that the discreet use of Auto-Tune is mostly inaudible. From these facts, one question emerges: How does one separate the reality and the simulation, if one can not be aware of its presence? Philosophers such as Plato, Deleuze, Baudrillard and Nietzsche have addressed and discussed the concept of simulacrum, but in this case, the focus will be on Jean Baudrillard and Gilles Deleuze. The exact definition of this concept can be difficult to grasp, but in its basis it is the simulation of an object that becomes the simulacrum. In Simulacra and Simulation, Baudrillard talks about the hyperreal, a state in which the real comes from no origin or reality. In the hyperreal, there is no longer a difference between the two, the simulated and the real, there is no more mirror of being and appearances, of the real and its concept.(Baudrillard, 1981) In fact, he states than when something becomes more real than the real, that is how the real is abolished. (Baudrillard, 1981) As Auto-Tune in some aspects is a simulation of an artists voice, one can also suggest that it can be a simulacrum, especially as the voice is first recorded as a copy and then slightly or heavily altered. According to Baudrillard, simulation in effect becomes a simulacrum, and so his theories can apply to the use of the Auto-Tune. Keith Negus says that the rise of technology in popular music has led to alienating the musician from their creation as well as the audience (Negus, 1992, pp28). He also claims that the way technology and its use has evolved in popular music leads to abstracting

the artist from his/hers performance. (Negus, 1992, pp26) Nevertheless, what Baudrillard points at is the fact that when that individual, the artist per say, is itself in the state of the hyperreal, it can not distinct itself from the real, which leads to the conclusion that alienation and abstraction no longer exists; It is a question of substituting the signs of the real for the real, that is to say of an operation of deterring every real process via its operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine that offers all the signs of the real and shortcircuits all its vicissitudes. Never again will the real have the chance to produce itself (Baudrillard, 1981) Deleuze approaches the matter differently. In his opinion, the simulacrum becomes its own object, separated from the real, the original. He states that even if the differences are slight, even if there is almost no distinction between the two, it is enough that the constituting disparity be judged in and of itself, not prejudged on the basis of any previous identity, and that it have dispars as its unit of measure and communication. (Deleuze, 1983, pp.52) As opposed to Baudrillards theories of the simulacrum and the hyperreal, theories that one can approach as being cynical, Deleuze seems to point in a completely opposite direction, embracing the concept of reproduction: The simulacrum is not a degraded copy, rather it contains a positive power which negates both original and copy, both model and reproduction. (Deleuze, 1983, pp53) The differences between a recorded vocal track, that is slightly auto tuned, and one that is hugely processed then become obsolete. With this mindset, one can approach a song by the pop artist/rapper T-Pain (where the retuning speed is set to zero, creating abrupt transitions) or a song in the American musical-series Glee (where all the vocals are discreetly brushed up on) as a singular object, separating it from its original; the form of a vocal track before its recording. Coming back to the original question of how one separates the reality and the simulation, if one can not be aware of its presence, it seems is of no interest. The question one can ask now is, how much it matters to distinguish between the two. If one should consider Baudrillards theory of the hyperreal; the claim that one can no

longer find a distinctive difference between the real and the fake, the original and the simulation, it surely must become impossible to tell the difference. So when Hildebrand, as mentioned earlier, compares Auto-Tune to make-up, the question he poses is not if people notice when someone wears make-up, but if it, in effect, really makes any difference? The answer might be that when the audience becomes alienated, as Keith Negus claims, they are not alienated by the new technology in music, or the Auto-Tune per say, but they already exist in a hyperreality, a reality of alienation, and the Auto-Tune may well be a version of the truth that audiences dont mind hearing. The reality in pop music is abolished and Auto-Tune takes its place. For Deleuze, Auto-Tune could possibly become the renewal of Pop-Art of our time. If Pop-Art was a simulacrum of objects that already existed as originals in a slightly different form, then the slight difference of the human voice, can surely be a revolution in art; The artificial and the simulacrum are not the same thing. They are even opposed. The factitious is always a copy of a copy, which must be pushed to the point where it changes its nature and turns into simulacrum (the moment of pop art) (Deleuze, 1983, pp56). The audience will have to make its choice. Either it will confine to Baudrillards reality the nonexistence of it, or they will embrace Deleuzes will to give these simulacra a positive connotation. The artists/performers role comes into play here as well. Whether they will look upon the technological revolution in music as something they will want to use as a tool against it, or stay in its comfort zone. The market for popular music will still be there, but whichever choice is made will affect the outcome and expectations to it.

REFERENCES
Baudrillard, J. (1981) Simulacra and Simulation, [Internet], http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/baudrillardsimulacra_and_simulation.pdf [Accessed 15th August 2012] Deleuze, G. (1983) Plato and the Simulacrum, October, issue 27, MIT Press Matson, A. (2009). Inventor of Autotune: Im innocent!. Seattle Times, [Internet] Avaiable at: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/matsononmusic/2009389530_post.html [Accessed 14th August 2012] Negus, K. (1992) Producing POP culture and conflict in the popular music industry, Edward Arnold, a division of Odder & Stoughton, London-New YorkMelbourne-Auckland Tyrangiel, J. (2009) , Auto-Tune: Why Pop Music Sounds Perfect Time Magazine, [Internet]. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1877372-2,00.html [Accessed 14th August 2012].