'you can only feel so bad for a robot': sasha frere-jones on autotune

sasha frere-jones writes about music for the new yorker. he can be annoying: the always-interesting nico muhly, talking about one of his articles, describes the effect thus:

Articles such as SFJ’s posit music as vehicles for His Personal Excitement – the listener as the despot, sitting in the throne, waiting to be amused. This article made me, in the middle of a busy music festival, never want to listen to music again, with its cynical attitude (”such-and-such is the only such-and-such kind of such-and-such that I play” – as if Musics gain credibility by finding their way onto SFJ’s turntable or CD player or whatever.

and one day i will write something dissecting why the article NM complains about shits me so much, but for today enough of my carping! he can be interesting and entertaining too, like today's article on autotune. here's an excerpt:

..there is nothing natural about recorded music. Whether the engineer merely tweaks a few bum notes or makes a singer tootle like Robby the Robot, recorded music is still a composite of sounds that may or may not have happened in real time. An effect is always achieved, and not necessarily the one intended. Aren’t some of the most entertaining and fruitful sounds in pop—distortion, whammy bars, scratching—the result of glorious abuse of the tools?

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