Welcome to the 220th insertion of DEMUR®, an analytical series highlighting the intricacies of the artistic world and the minutiae lying within. In this episode, we reveal the hidden origin of Autotune, explaining how oil mining and a colleague’s joke would eternally change the music industry.
Autotune has been a controversial topic since its release nearly three decades ago. Unfairly tagged as the kingpin of “real music’s” downfall, today the pitch-correcting software is heard in most billboard hits, hidden under mountains of compression and reverb. Withstanding hate from critics like the Telegraph’s Neil McCormick, plaguing the tool as a “particularly sinister invention”, to diss tracks like Jay-Z’s lead single on The Blue Print 3 titled ‘D.O.A’ (Death of Autotune), the program has irreversibly altered music, for better or worse.
What’s lesser known about the effect, however, is its unexpected beginnings in the $4.3 trillion oil industry - and it all starts with a man named Dr. Andy Hildebrand. Back in 1997, Hildebrand was employed by an oil company named Exxon, working as a scientist to develop new technology for “seismic data analysis”. This tool is used to find valuable resources underground by projecting seismic (sound) waves to the Earth’s crust and collecting statistics based on their reflective properties.
Providing great advancements for the oil and gas sector, one day a colleague would make a joke requesting that Hildebrand create a machine to correct his off-key singing. Fostering curiosity in the 50-year-old scientist, he’d realize that the manipulative properties in his algorithm could be adapted across all forms of sound. Proving to be successful in the transfer, Hildebrand founded Antares Audio Technologies that same year, creating a pitch-manipulating program to alter vocal recordings.
Alas, Autotune would debut in 1998, first heard in Cher’s hit single ‘Believe’. Gaining notoriety, the application would receive polarizing reception as many claimed it killed music, but twenty-five years later, would influence the sounds of T-Pain, Kanye West, Katy Perry as one of the most revolutionary discoveries in music history.
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