As much as I learnt a lot from your response then, the incredible amount of autotune I hear every time I have to sit through that show is painful. It doesn't make sense since they appear to be relatively talented in their own rights. Easy way out?
I was wondering the same thing. Maybe they didn't make it big. Maybe they never got a record deal. No idea. I just assumed they were pretty big since their videos on YouTube are fairly popular.
I would think it's just pop-cultures obsession with Autotune and not the singers. Everything I hear on the radio is Autotune. But whatever. (most of) The Glee cast can sing.
For the majority of the songs, autotune is used as everyone on the cast has a dominant voice. That is, all their voices are strong enough that, in an ensemble, it just sounds weird. Imagine if Alicia Keys, Frank Sinatra, Chester Bennington, and Adele all had to sing harmony to each other on the same track. Sure, they all have amazing voices. But have them try to harmonize and make it sound good? It doesn't work. Their voices would clash, and that's something that is a pretty big issue with such a talented cast. EDIT: And to answer the question about Meg & Dia, they WERE on Warner but got dropped. The Voice never said anything about having past musical experience or a past record deal. Javier for example used to be in The Derek Trucks Band, which is a much bigger deal than Meg & Dia, especially considering Trucks is the best slide guitarist alive today.
T-Pain is the best singer on the planet. Lil Wayne 2nd. Autotune is more revolutionary than the electric guitar.
Good use of autotune: [video=youtube;s_wZGe5JcuY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_wZGe5JcuY[/video] Bad use of autotune: [video=youtube;tZYVJlhnqxQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZYVJlhnqxQ[/video] LOLZ
Fuck autotune in rap. And Bon Iver's use of autotune is fucking genius. He arranged a whole song with autotuned vocals. An autotune acapella track, if you will.
Autotune is bad... unless a super cool "indie" songwriter is using it! Seriously though, what is "genius" about a dude writing an acapella, and then making the decision to perform it using a program for pitch correcting? It's like writing a song for guitar and playing it on piano. Anyway, this hasn't been posted yet sooooo... [youtube]FGBhQbmPwH8[/youtube]
From a composer and creative point of view, it's actually quite a marvel to do. I've actually thought about how autotune would work for textures before, and figure it could be pretty cool to use it for percussive melodic purposes. And you're taking for granted how hard it can be sometimes to write a song for one instrument and play it on another instrument. There are a lot of intricacies that can be played on the guitar that are ridiculously difficult on the piano, and vice versa. Hell, the same can be said for instruments that are by all means very similar, like violin and cello.