Earliest use of autotune on a record

[SirSlim]

Was playing the gorgeous "doremifa girl" by Snooze, out last Friday night after a long time of not listening to it and was struck by the use of autotune on it (I'd never heard of it back in 2001).

Which got me pondering what was the first/early examples of tunes that used autotune.

your nominations please!

[Agnes_Guano]

I think Believe by Cher was the first commercial release that used it.

[Xann]

Cher used it aggressively like a sort of vocoder.

It was around for a little while before that, either relatively undetectable or on things like boy/girl band recordings that were so heavily processed you'd be hard pressed to distinguish what was doing what.

[SirSlim]

I think Believe by Cher was the first commercial release that used it.

Cher used it aggressively like a sort of vocoder.

thanks chaps - that Cher track is from 1998 - I obviously wasn't paying attention at the time

Anything less mainstream that used it early on?

[babycart]

Cheba Djenet is the "Algerian Cher". She gives it some proper stick. This video's from 2000 apparently, and weirdly shows Lebanese pop queen Haifa Wehbe, not Djenet.

Imagine that, after the Cher single, every karaoke disco and wedding band in the western world had invested in faulty autotune software that only worked at high distortion levels, and that´s basically North Africa.

[Slim Jim]

Cher used it aggressively like a sort of vocoder.

It was around for a little while before that, either relatively undetectable or on things like boy/girl band recordings that were so heavily processed you'd be hard pressed to distinguish what was doing what.

Not really -the Cher track is from 1998. Autotune was made commercially available in 1997 unless someone got their mitts on a prototype or cobbled together their own version independently of Antares.... maybe you're confusing it with the vocoder which has been around for decades?

[amidar]

And here is how they did it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02hj0kd

[Xann]

Not really -the Cher track is from 1998. Autotune was made commercially available in 1997 unless someone got their mitts on a prototype or cobbled together their own version indeoendently of Antares.... maybe you're confusing it with the vocoder which has been around for decades?

Nope - I worked in a studio that had them when they were the latest thing.

[giantchicken]

Autotune was made commercially available in 1997

Shortly before the invention of Michael Buble...

[SirSlim]

Cheba Djenet is the "Algerian Cher". She gives it some proper stick. This video's from 2000 apparently, and weirdly shows Lebanese pop queen Haifa Wehbe, not Djenet.

Imagine that, after the Cher single, every karaoke disco and wedding band in the western world had invested in faulty autotune software that only worked at high distortion levels, and that´s basically North Africa.

Fantastic! Knocks Cher into a cocked hat.

I wonder what Lee Perry would have done with an autotune.

[medlar]

Flavor Flav's the one:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=...731370A9A8659E

[babycart]

Morocco´s Got Talent!

It fascinates me that there´s such a backlash against autotune in Europe and the US, while south of the Mediterranean they seem to have completely embraced it. I bet there are "real music" purists in Algeria and Morocco, too, but they probably haven´t heard Ed Sheeran.

[bradx]

Preceding Cher by a few months and from 1998 is the song Fragments Of Life by Roy Vedas.
This has the autotune wound up to 11 and the Cher songwriters must've been aware of it because some of the melody is similar to say the least.

[Xann]

Hadn't heard that

The chat behind the Wiki article is quite interesting.

It caused a stir when it was released - Everyone wanted to check it out.

I don't know how many Dreamhire, FX and co had, but it must have been a few.
It was commonly hired with an Otari Radar system, which was the first HD recorder that muscled its way into pro studios.

Vocals became much easier. One near miss pass could be knocked into time and tune, then cut and pasted into Chorus 2 and 3.

If you were paying £400 - £1400 a day just for the studio, there's certainly one argument to use one.
Another was not having to listen to 3+ singers of dubious quality trying, for take after take, to hold their vocal harmonies together

Pop production got quicker generally. Tracks using the correcting power of the AT were on albums that Christmas to address SJ's doubts.

Then Pro Tools' tentacles got everywhere. That was that for the majority of big studios.