1. How Does Auto Tune Know What The Right Pitch Video
2. How Does Auto Tune Know What The Right Pitch Game
3. How Does Auto Tune Know What The Right Pitch Lyrics

Program Description

Sep 17, 2018  Perhaps because of Cher’s involvement in Auto-Tune’s debut on the world pop stage, critics have often connected pitch-correction and cosmetic surgery, comparing the effect to Botox, face peels, collagen injections, and the rest. In the video for “Believe,” Cher. Mar 28, 2019  People ask if I’m going to stop using Auto-Tune, but Auto-Tune made me who I am. I’m not going to stop doing something I started. Q: A lot of people have been encouraging you to do an old.

(Program not available for streaming.) NOVA scienceNOW talks to the engineers behind Auto-Tune, the pitch-correction software that turns sour notes into sweet ones. Professional musicians from Madonna to Snoop Dogg use Auto-Tune, but can the software turn host Neil deGrasse Tyson into a singing star?

Transcript

Auto-Tune

PBS Airdate: June 30, 2009

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: 'Ourlove was like a supernova,'

Yeah,I sing.

'In the nebula of my soul.'

Okay,I'm not great.

'But now I find her heart is like a bigblack hole.'

Allright, I'm terrible. But here's what I'm wondering: if, digitally, you canremove red-eye, smooth over wrinkles, make people look thinner, then why don'twe have the technology to make me sing better?

ANDYHILDEBRAND (Antares Audio Technologies): We can fix Neil.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: This guy invented away to do it.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: We can fix Neil's pitch. He'sstill going to sound like Neil, though.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Electrical engineerand inventor Andy Hildebrand designs pitch-correction software. He calls itAuto-Tune.

'Pitchcorrection?' Is that a euphemism for 'fixing bad singers?'

ANDYHILDEBRAND: Yes, we fix bad singers.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: I visited Andy atAntares Audio Technologies in Scotts Valley California, where he and engineerJustin Malo..

JUSTINMALO: Hey,Neil.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: ..showed me how itworks.

Hummmmmmmmmm.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: Great. There you go. You didthat.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: That wavy line representsthe exact frequency of my voice. This line shows where a perfect A should be,so, not too bad.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: He's right dead nuts on in tune.Look at that.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: So how does acomputer know that?

ANDYHILDEBRAND: When you hear A, you'rehearing 440 vibrations per second.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: So somebody at thebeginning of time said 440 vibrations per second is an A?

ANDYHILDEBRAND: A.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: So, if you sing orplay a pitch at 440 cycles per second, the computer calls it an A and it restson this line. B-flat would go on the line above it, G-sharp below, and so on.

'Butnow I find her heart..'

Whenyou're out of tune, the notes don't fall so neatly onto the lines of the grid.

'..big..'

That'sawful.

'..blackhole.'

ANDYHILDEBRAND: Well, it's creative, it'screative. Okay.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: '..supernova..'

Thoselines are me singing the word 'super.'

'supernova..'

Mypitch is all over the place. If anything, it's closest to this note, here.

JUSTINMALO: Neil,you sang an F, which normally is okay, if you're in the key of F. And we're not,so we moved your F to an E.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: 'Supernova..'

SoJustin gently nudges it down to where an E would be.

'Supernova..'

You'rechanging the frequency of the sound that came out of my vocal cords.

JUSTINMALO: Actually,yes.

ALVINAND THE CHIPMUNKS (Audio recording):'Christmas, Christmas..'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON:Changingpitch isn't new. You can change someone's voice by fast forwarding on a taperecorder, but you'd sound like..

ALVINAND THE CHIPMUNKS (Audio recording):'Christmas, Christmas time ishere.'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: ..well, achipmunk.

Pitchcorrection software lets you change the pitch..

'Supernova..'

..whilekeeping the essential tone of a voice the same.

Andso, although few engineers are willing to admit it, pitch correction software,like Auto-Tune, has become an indispensable tool in most recording studios.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: It's been used by a lot ofpeople: Madonna..

MADONNA (Film clip): 'Music makes the bourgeoisie..'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: ..Celine Dion..

CELINEDION (Film clip): 'You got one heart you are following..'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Reba McEntire usesit live?

REBAMcENTIRE (Film clip): 'Starting over again..'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: You're telling me asinger can sing into a microphone a bad note, and out the speakers comes a goodnote?

ANDYHILDEBRAND: Yes.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Now, that's evil.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: To modify something isn'tnecessarily evil. My wife wears makeup. Is that evil?

Isthat okay, honey?

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Evil or not, therecording industry kept Auto-Tune on the down-low.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: The secret popped out of thebag when Cher did 'Believe.'

CHER(Film clip): 'Do you believe in lifeafter love?'

ANDYHILDEBRAND: I couldn't believe it.

CHER(Film clip): '..aside and I can't breakthrough..'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Rather thangradually and naturally reaching up to each note..

CHER(Film clip): 'I can feel somethinginside me say..'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: ..like this,Cher's producer forced Auto-Tune to jump suddenly from one pitch to the next.

CHER(Film clip): 'I feel something inside mesay..'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Is this some knobthat you turn?

ANDYHILDEBRAND: Yes.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: All right.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: And we can turn this knob tozero, which means 'move instantaneously to the new pitch.' And so, if we dothat, your voice would sound like this.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: 'But nowI find her heart..'

Didyou plan for people to use it that way?

ANDYHILDEBRAND: No. I didn't think anybody intheir right mind would ever use it that way.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Well a lot ofartists do.

T-PAIN(Film clip): 'She got me doing the dishes

Anything she want for some kisses'

OJO(Film clip): 'I wasyoung and in love..'

SNOOPDOG (Film clip): 'She might be with him but she's thinkin' boutme, me, me.'

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: But it's mostlyused to tweak out-of-tune performances—a kind of cosmetic surgery.

'..bigblack hole.'

Inmy case though, more like triple-bypass.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: Try to change this to the keyof C.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: Moving the tracesof my voice up in pitch or down..

'..supernova..'

..Justincoaxes me into tune.

'Supernova

ofmy soul..'

Ittook several hours.

'..ofmy soul..'

Howwell did it work? You be the judge.

'Ourlove was like a supernova

Inthe nebula of my soul, but now I find

herheart is like a big black hole..'

JUSTINMALO: It'sa lot more pleasing.

NEILDeGRASSE TYSON: I thought the firstone sounded pretty good myself, I don't know.

Kiddingaside, there's no substitute for training or talent.

ANDYHILDEBRAND: If the singer doesn't have agood tonality to their voice, we're not going to make that better.

Dous a favor. Don't go on American Idol.

Broadcast Credits

Auto-Tune

Produced and Edited by

Vincent Liota

NOVA scienceNOW

Executive Producer

Samuel Fine

Executive Editor

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Senior Series Producer

Vincent Liota

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Stephen Sweigart
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Graphic Design

Brian Edgerton

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Rob Morsberger

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Assistant to Neil deGrasse Tyson

Elizabeth Stachow

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Sound Recordists

John Cameron
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Chris Strollo

Animation and Graphics

Anthony Kraus
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Special Thanks

Jason Bannan, FBI microbiologist
Carnegie Mellon University
Dave and Busters
Gemological Institute of America
Justin Goger Malo
George Gray, Gray Jewelers
Susan Hrishenko
Northern Arizona University
David Rasko
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University of Maryland School of Medicine

Neil deGrasse Tyson

is director of the Hayden Planetarium in theRose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History.

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yU + co.

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Walter Werzowa
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This material is based upon worksupported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0638931. Anyopinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in thismaterial are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views ofthe National Science Foundation.

NOVA scienceNOW is a trademark of the WGBH Educational Foundation

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(Neil deGrasse Tyson singing) Courtesy T. Robin Hirsh

Participants

• By David Levin
• Posted 04.01.09
• NOVA scienceNOW

Learning to sing like Aretha Franklin isn't something you can do overnight. But over the past decade, recording studios have been fudging things a bit with software called Auto-Tune, which enables them to change the pitch of sour notes. In this interactive, find out how it works and see if it can make even hopeless singers, like some on the NOVA staff, sound tolerable.

Learn what pitch is, then listen in as Auto-Tune corrects the bad pitch of several NOVA staffers.

Transcript

Pitch Perfect

(SECTION 1: THE BASICS)

DAVID LEVIN: Before we start, let's take a step back to the basics. To understand what Auto-Tune software can do for, well, untrained singers, you need to understand how the sound of a musical note is made.

It all starts with something vibrating – It could be the metal of a bell,

[bell rings]

or the skin of a drum,

[drum sound]

or a string on a guitar.

[guitar sound]

ANDY HILDEBRAND: With the human voice, it's the vocal cords vibrating over and over.

DAVID LEVIN: That's Andy Hildebrand – He invented the Auto-tune software.

ANDY HILDEBRAND: When you hear an 'A', you're hearing 440 vibrations per second.

[Singer singing A440]

DAVID LEVIN: A 'B' is about 492 vibrations per second,

[singer singing B492]

DAVID LEVIN: And a 'C' is around 587.

[Singer singing C587]

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ANDY HILDEBRAND: That's about right.

DAVID LEVIN: So the faster the vibration, the higher the pitch. Simple enough. But pitch isn't the only thing that determines the way a musical note sounds. The shape of an instrument plays a role, too. That's why a bass…

[acoustic bass note]

…sounds different from a banjo,

[banjo note]

…even when they're playing the exact same note.

[acoustic bass and banjo together]

In humans, the size and contours of the spaces inside our heads and throats color the way our voices sound.

ANDY HILDEBRAND: The human voice resonates based on the shape of the throat, the nasal passages, and the speaker's mouth.

DAVID LEVIN: So no matter what note someone is singing, their voice is still unique and recognizable. Jonathan here…

JONATHAN: Hello.

DAVID LEVIN: …will always sound like Jonathan, and Cass…

CASS: Hey there.

DAVID LEVIN: …will always sound like Cass. Even if they sing at the same time.

[Jonathan and Cass singing together]

DAVID LEVIN: But what if they want to improve their singing voices? What can Auto-Tune do for them?

(SECTION 2: AUTO-TUNE AT WORK)

('DETECTING PITCH' BUTTON:)

DAVID LEVIN: The first thing that Auto-Tune does is figure out the pitch of a note that is sung or played into the computer. It's recorded as a red line on this grid.

An 'A', for example, would fall on this line. A B-flat would fall on the line above it, and a G-sharp would be on the line below. But singing those exact notes is hard, especially if you don't have any training.

('TWEAKING NOTES' BUTTON:)

DAVID LEVIN: So let's say you're trying to hit an 'A', and you're a little off.

[bad singer with warbly voice]

Okay, a lot off. Your pitch—that's the red line—wavers back and forth around the right note. Auto-tune can tell which parts of the sound are higher or lower than they should be, and it's able to nudge them back into tune.

[singer's voice corrected in Auto-Tune]

It can even help out if you sing the wrong note entirely. For example, if you hit an 'A' when you should have been singing a 'high G'—Auto-Tune can bump your voice up to the right note.

Here's a slightly better singer. Those red lines are the original pitch of her notes. The blue blocks show where it's been corrected.

[singer's voice in Auto-Tune]

It takes some serious mathematical processing for Auto-tune to make these corrections sound natural, though. If it only altered the pitch of someone's voice, it might sound like this:

[chipmunk voice]

ANDY HILDEBRAND: You get a chipmunk effect. It's not their voice anymore.

DAVID LEVIN: So Andy Hildebrand designed Auto-tune to avoid this problem. Rather than just shifting a singer's pitch, the software also models the shape of the singer's mouth and throat.

ANDY HILDEBRAND: So we, like, cut their neck off, listen to their vocal cords, change the pitch, and then glue their head back on. (Laughs) And we do that mathematically in real time. And that's how we can change the pitch of a singer without creating the chipmunk effect.

How Does Auto Tune Know What The Right Pitch Video

DAVID LEVIN: Auto-Tune can't make dramatic changes in pitch—say, going from 'middle C' to a 'high A' without sounding mechanical and robotic. But some musicians and record producers actually seek out these effects. They're using Auto-Tune to make new sounds.

('TO THE EXTREME' BUTTON:)

DAVID LEVIN: Auto-Tune creates an unnatural, robotic effect when its settings are pushed to the extremes. But that can sometimes be a creative tool. Musicians from Cher to T-Pain are using it on top-40 albums.

By shifting a note too high in Auto-Tune, you can give it a thin, ghostly effect:

[singer's voice processed into high, ghostly sound]

DAVID LEVIN: And by making rapid adjustments in a singer's pitch, you can make the voice sound robotic. You might recognize this one.

[Singer's voice processed into robotic sound]

DAVID LEVIN: Andy Hildebrand never meant for Auto-Tune to be used this way. But right now, Auto-Tunes signature effects are all over the radio.

AH: This effect is found in every music genre from Dollywood, to Reggae, to Country, Pop, Hip-Hop… everywhere.

DAVID LEVIN: That's great for top-40. But what about the NOVA staff? Can Auto-Tune help our amateur vocalists sound like the pros?

(SECTION 3: THE GRAND FINALE)

('ARETHA FRANKLIN' BUTTON:)

[Aretha Franklin singing My Country 'Tis Of Thee' at inauguration of President Obama]

('NOVA STAFF' BUTTON:)

[NOVA staff singing 'My Country 'Tis Of Thee' out of tune]

'NOVA STAFF AUTO-TUNED' BUTTON

[NOVA staff singing 'My Country 'Tis Of Thee'; Auto-Tuned version]

('THE FINAL VERDICT' BUTTON:)

ANDY HILDEBRAND: Generally, a bad-sounding singer using Auto-tune is going to sound like a bad-sounding singer who happens to be in tune. We can't fix that. If they've got a poor tone quality, or a poor style, or don't support their diaphragm and get an even volume, we can't fix those things. (laughs)

How Does Auto Tune Know What The Right Pitch Game

Credits

How Does Auto Tune Know What The Right Pitch Lyrics