Joe Biden breaking into hyper-melody. The health care debate set to a
funky-fresh beat. Congressmen warbling melodically about climate
change. No, you’re not having a fever dream. You’re watching “Auto-Tune
the News,” the YouTube sensation by Brooklyn-based musicians and
lifelong Mac users the Gregory Brothers.
Auto-Tune is a
pitch-correcting technology appearing with increasing frequency in
hip-hop tracks by artists like T-Pain and Akon. It was created to fix
the pitchiness of talent-deficient singers, but when set to super-high
levels of correction, it makes a singer (or rapper or talker) sound
vaguely robotic. The Gregorys take the “Auto-Tune the heck out of
everything” gimmick to a new level by creating Auto-Tuned songs from
the voices of politicians and wonks in news footage and even C-SPAN.
And it’s all done with a Mac.
