Auto-Tune

This is one of the stranger official product demos we’ve seen in a while. And strange is good.

First, the beautiful tattooed underground superlegend Kendra demos the Electro-Harmonix V246 Vocoder by doing her best T-Pain.

After a little technical background and some gender-bending discussion, Rick sings the Electro-Harmonix V246 Vocoder song.

Later, Rick demos the Metal Muff.

Want proof that the world is going to end in 2012?

If that video isn’t enough, consider this: Auto-Tune has been named one of America’s Hottest Brands by AdAge.

Here are their reasons why:

Auto-Tune was, for a long time, a product that barely spoke its own name. Popular singers wanted fans to think they were getting the real deal, making Auto-Tune practically a secret. So Antares Audio Technology, the company behind it, just established and held brand position among the few people who cared — music-production professionals and hobbyists — with regular advertising in trade publications and online ads.”We were not the only pitch-correction software out there,” said Marco Alpert, VP-marketing at Antares. “We worked for 10 years to establish the Auto-Tune brand as synonymous with pitch correction. There had been a concerted effort to establish a brand position. So when the whole idea of this effect came out into the popular music world, immediately we’re who people come to.”

The result is record revenue for Antares this year, according to Mr. Alpert, and a lot of profit, too. “We’re having our best year in history,” he said.

So you can see and hear more of T-Pain and Auto-Tune until 2012.

Symphony of Science – We Are All Connected (ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye)

We Are All Connected was made from sampling Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, The History Channel’s Universe series, Richard Feynman’s 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye’s Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from The Elegant Universe (NOVA), Stephen Hawking’s Universe, Cosmos and the Powers of 10.

MP3 available at http://www.symphonyofscience.com. Read more…

Carl Sagan – A Glorious Dawn ft Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)

This video remixes footage from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. Read more…

Antares’ Auto-Tune is hated by many, but it’s, arguably, the most influential audio effect of our time.

With D.O.A., Jay-Z writes the obituary for Auto-Tune, saying “you rappers singing too much, get back to rap, you T-Paining too much.”

When Jay-Z’s rapping about an audio effect plug-in, you know it’s gone mainstream.

D.O.A. is free of the usual trappings of modern hip-hop – drum machine beats, samples and Auto-Tuned vocals – and it sounds pretty fresh, as a result.

What do you think? Is Auto-Tune D.O.A? Read more…