To me, auto tune is an editing tool, it’s not really an effect. You can certainly use it as an effect, but it was created as an editing tool to sharpen up intonation problems with the performance. That’s really what it was meant for.

Now that’s not to say there weren’t innovative uses for it. When Cher did “Believe,” no one had ever heard that and the closest thing we had to it was a vocoder. So that was pretty cool and definitely I still love it when I hear it.

Then it kinda cooled off and you didn’t hear it used that much. Then T-Pain came out and started really hyping use of it and then it became this weird go-to effect, a sauce that someone would throw over something. And now it’s everywhere.

To me, what an effect does really well is it creates a mood and enhances a human voice. Whereas auto tune — and this is my personal preference, I have a lot of musician friends that agree wholeheartedly — it really takes away from the human voice. It kind of marginalizes it and makes it sound mediocre. It kinda sounds like Siri or Alexa singing so you get this weird, “I entered these notes and Siri can almost sing OK.” It just sounds cheap.