Despite the common perception that Auto-Tune is an insidious font of evil, born in blackest night by the dreaded Audiomages of Sauron the Great, it can OCCASIONALLY be used to produce some pretty nifty stuff, I GUESS. I'm sure everyone has already encountered the "Symphony of Science" and it's (pretty fun, actually) Auto-tuned Carl Sagan (and others) videos.
But do you know whence Auto-Tune actually sprang? Andy Hildebrand is the name of the inventor, and he worked for Exxon as an engineer, specializing in seimsic data processing. He's also one of the founders of Landmark Graphics, which is all geophysicsy too. Apparently, Dr. Hildebrand recognized that his digital signal processing mojo could also be employed to detect, analyze, and "correct" pitch, undoubtedly saving the careers of many-a-terrible pop singer today (thanks?). Here's the wiki page for Auto-Tune, and here's a Nova Science Now Q&A with Dr. Hildebrand himself.
And it's all thanks to geophysics!
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