Who invented pitch correction

He clarifies what this entailed:. A subsurface map of one geologic strata, color coded by elevation, created on the Landmark Graphics workstation the white lines represent oil fields ; courtesy of Andy Hildebrand.

So, in , Hildebrand left Exxon, secured financing from a few prominent venture capitalists DLJ Financial; Sevin Rosen , and, with a small team of partners, founded Landmark Graphics. At the time, the geophysical industry had limited data to work off of. Landmark was a huge success.

An engineer by trade, Hildebrand had always been a musician at heart. His undergraduate engineering degree had been funded by music scholarships and teaching flute lessons. Naturally, after leaving Landmark and the oil industry, Hildebrand decided to return to school to study composition more intensively. But he encountered a problem: when he attempted to make his own flute samples, he found the quality of the sounds to be ugly and unnatural.

First, he created a processing algorithm that greatly condensed the audio data, allowing for a smoother, more natural-sounding sustain and timbre. Then, he packaged this algorithm into a piece of software called Infinity , and handed it out to composers. A glimpse at Infinity's interface from an old handbook; courtesy of Andy Hildebrand. Coincident similar technologies include correlation statics determination , linear predictive coding deconvolution , synthesis forward modeling , formant analysis spectral enhancement , and processing integrity to minimize artifacts.

All of these technologies are shared amongst music and geophysical applications. At the time, no other pitch correction software existed. The major roadblock was that analyzing and correcting pitch in real-time required processing a very large amount of sound wave data. He realized that it could also be applied to music:. With autocorrelation, you have a clearly identifiable event that tells you what the period of repetition for repeated peak values is.

When we asked him to provide a simple explanation of what happens, computationally, when a voice signal enters his software, he opened his desk and pulled out thick stacks of folders, each stuffed with hundreds of pages of mathematical equations.

Hildebrand realized he was limited by the technology, and instead of giving up, he found a way to work within it using math. It was a trick — a mathematical trick. Hildebrand built the Auto-Tune program over the course of a few months in early , on a specially-equipped Macintosh computer.

This time, it was received a bit differently. At the time, recording pitch-perfect vocal tracks was incredibly time-consuming for both music producers and artists. The standard practice was to do dozens, if not hundreds, of takes in a studio, then spend a few days splicing together the best bits from each take to a create a uniformly in-tune track.

When Auto-Tune was released, says Hildebrand, the product practically sold itself. With the help of a small sales team, Hildebrand sold Auto-Tune which also came in hardware form, as a rack effect to every major studio in Los Angeles.

The studios that adopted Auto-Tune thrived: they were able to get work done more quickly doing just one vocal take, through the program, as opposed to dozens — and as a result, took in more clients and lowered costs. Soon, studios had to integrate Auto-Tune just to compete and survive. Images from Auto-Tune's patent. I put him out of business overnight. It was used subtly and unobtrusively to correct notes that were just slightly off-key, and producers were wary to reveal its use to the public.

It sounded perfect to my ears. For me, staying in pitch when singing solo was not a huge deal. Even two part harmony is not super difficult. But it takes real talent to layer three, four, or more harmony parts and make it sound professional. My hat is off to anyone to anyone who did it without Autotune. Unfortunately, it's becoming a lost art. It was much less common than today but in the old days they would copy the vocal to a 2 track and varispeed the offending note while punching it back.

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Code by Port Forward. Hosted by Nimbus Hosting. Connect with Facebook. Hildebrand commented that " So-called cheating in the old days used endless retakes to get a final result. It's easier now with Auto-Tune. Is the actor who plays Batman "cheating" because he can't really fly? Auto-Tune uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. From through , Andy Hildebrand was a research scientist in the geophysical industry, working for Exxon Production Research and Landmark Graphics, a company he co-founded to create the world's first stand-alone seismic data interpretation workstation.

In layman's terms, sound waves were used to find oil below the earth's surface. As an inventor, Hildebrand set out to improve the process of digital sampling in music. He used the then cutting-edge digital signal processing DSP technology that he brought over from the geophysical industry and invented a new looping technique for digital samples.

He formed Jupiter Systems in to market his first software product called Infinity for music. Jupiter Systems was later renamed Antares Audio Technologies.

Antares Audio Technologies incorporated in May , and in January acquired Cameo International, their former distributor.

In , Antares invented an innovative plug-in, the Antares Microphone Modeler that allowed one microphone to imitate the sound of a wide variety of other microphones.

A hardware version of the Modeler, the AMM-1 was released a year later. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile.

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