Smule, an iPhone app developing company that has brought us revolutionary apps such as the Ocarina, Leaf Trombone, and Sonic Vox, has done it yet again with their latest “I Am T-Pain” app. It uses Antares Audio Technologies notorious auto-tune technology, to allow you the opportunity to pitch-shift your voice to the sound of T-Pain or customize your voice to the scale of your choosing.
Auto-Tune originated as a plug-in that uses a phase vocoder to detect, analyze, and modify pitch in vocals and instruments. Its initial release in 1997 immediately put it on the world stage as a proprietary audio processor that would eventually find itself in nearly every professional recording studio. It has since drastically changed the music industry by allowing practically any talented or untalented singer alike capitalize off its ability to disguise their inaccuracies, and mistakes.
This has been fought at by many audio engineers and musicians due to its negative effects on the perception of music in contemporary times.
At the 51st Grammy Awards, the band Death Cab for Cutie made an appearance wearing blue ribbons to protest the use of Auto-Tune in the music industry. Furthermore, The lead single of Jay-Z’s 2009 album The Blueprint is titled “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)”.† Jay-Z elaborated that he wrote the song under the personal belief that far too many people had jumped on the auto-tune bandwagon and that the trend had become a gimmick.††
But setting the auto-tune feud aside, this time around Antares Audio Technologies took their auto-tune technology down a rather different road. With the help of Smule, they molded auto-tune into a creative road to self-fulfilling amusement at your fingertips.
I recorded a short sample so you guys can get a grasp at what this iPhone app has to offer. In the recording I’m in freestyle mode, so there’s no background music which allows you the freedom to overlay a beat, post-app if you wanted.
My Freestylin’ Self…
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The Tuning section is defaulted on T-Pain when you first download it, but once you switch it to custom the real power behind this app is revealed. As you can see to the right it has a scale drop-down list to pick your desired scale and choose whether its in Major or Minor. Once you’ve selected the scale of your choice you have four preset buttons that are programmable simply by holding them down.
The beats section provides you with five free downloadable T-Pain instrumental tracks that feature syncopated lyrics that are displayed on-screen for you to karaoke along with if you so desire. There are also three free downloadable beats that give you a little more freedom to just mess around with. And finally, Smule takes advantage of the iPhone’s new premium content system by offering three .99 cent downloadable songs by T-Pain, two of which you are singing a duet with T-Pain.
But above all the cleverest part of this application isn’t its auto-tuning powers but its easy ability to lay down a track and quickly share it with your friends; whether its via email, facebook, myspace, or smule.
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if a future hit came out of this app. And for a mere 3 dollars, who could resist? I couldn’t, and I can hardly stand hearing auto-tune in the music industry, but I can’t seem to put this app down… “I Am T-Pain” Karaoke night anyone?
Grab a copy of this ground-breaking app in the App Store here.
Check out the I Am T-Pain App at work in this music video collage of the song “Buy You A Drank”:
† “Death Cab for Cutie protests Auto-Tune“. Idiomag.com. 2009-02-12.
†† Schwartz, Barry (2009-06-06). “Jay-Z Premiers New Song, ‘D.O.A.’: ‘Death Of Auto-Tune’”. MTV. Shaheem, Reid (2009-10). “Jay-Z Blames Wendy’s Commercial — Partially — For His ‘Death Of Auto-Tune’“. MTV. MTV Networks.
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