Auto-tune is a technique for electronically correcting the impression given by a voice. It has the power to make an out of tune voice appear to the ear to be singing close to the correct note, but it is by no means a natural sound, as numerous amateur examples on the Internet demonstrate (Diamond). It has caused a great deal of comment and argument, with one current artist going so far as to record a song calling for the death of Auto-tune (N.A., Could Autotune Have Saved Michael Jackson’s Life?). This 1980s era technology has become exceedingly widespread, with one estimate suggesting that the Billboard chart’s top 5 slots were occupied by Auto-tuned pieces over the course of 2008-2009 (Diaz). Another author suggests that every recording session includes it to some degree (Frere-Jones). It clearly is a species of false advertising, since it masks the deficiencies of a singer’s ‘instrument’ or skills. However, it offers those who were not blessed with fine voices the chance of show-casing their talents for writing lyrics or melodies. Such opportunities are currently rather limited to an audience of tolerant family and friends. On the other hand, there is a risk that, as with the ubiquitous use of microphones, the use of Auto-tuning technology will cause the auditory appreciation capacity of the public to devolve further. There is a danger that the listeners will literally forget what a real, un-Auto-tuned voice sounds like, just as current young listeners have no clue what a truly trained and professional voice can do without massive amplification. The problem is more a matter of indifferent voices being promoted than the technology itself. The Auto-tune technology was created by Harold Hildebrand, a geophysicist for Exxon. The basic idea grew out of his work on the translation of subsurface sound wave reflections into useful data. He left the oil industry and applied this technology to music. The human voice input was the equivalent of subterranean dynamite charges, creating a sound which could be processed, and then, through the wizardry of electronics, “tuned” to a nearby pitch. Hildebrand subsequently founded Antares Audio Technologies, and his product was commercially available as of 1997. As Diaz points out, this tool was the successor to the voice box and the vocoder. However, unlike those, Auto-tuning retained more of the sound of a human voice (Diaz). It offered enormous convenience for artists who could not readily return to the recording studio to re-do a particular song or section of music (Frere-Jones). However, its use has expanded well beyond this application. More and more artists have acceded to the seductive temptation of having an entire song or album tweaked this way. Cher was one of the first in a 1998 recording titled “Believe”, described as sounding as though she is singing through the blades of an electric fan (Tyrangiel). The inventor is bemused by the use to which his brainchild has been put. There is a range of possible settings, representing the length of time in milliseconds for the sung note to be tuned to the correct pitch. If this is set to zero, as it often is now in the industry, there is no delay at all in the transitions between notes, and this sounds like an artificially generated voice. At any setting, the Auto-tune effect makes a voice sound affect