You still have not given anything to support your broad generalizations that still seem based on your dislike of today's popular music.  I pointed out long ago that Britney Spears is an awful exampled because Britney Spear's popularity is not in any way based on her singing ability. It's not like she is some critically acclaimed vocalist.  her "talent" was her looks and image.  She is not the first subpar singer to be a superstar and won't be the last.  Madonna and many others pulled the same trick long before auto-tune.   

There are so many holes in your rant..and yes it is simply a rant because you have done nothing but repeat unsupported rantings of people who are like minded.  If i fell for every attempt at an appeal to authority i would believe that there are pills that make your penis double in size and that I can make millions by simply forwarding emails.    

An appeal to authority is absolutely useless to anyone without actual supporting facts.  your rant is no different than watching ideologues at political rallies claim how right they are basing it on quoting people who happen to be of the same affiliation.  Just about everyone has expressed very clearly that autotune could not turn them from bad singer into good singer no matter how much time they spent with it and audiosnap could not do the equivalent with drums, yet you imply that somehow all of our anecdotal blah blah is less than your anecdotal blah blah.   That's why anecdotes mean nothing to me.  They are too easy to counter and typically are not accompanies by anything else but echos of the same unsupported rant.

In any case, the appeal to authority here doesn't even support the point. Lord-Alge says that auto-tune gets used a lot, but he doesn't get anywhere near suggesting it's a moral problem, nor suggesting its used to make totally wretched performances great, or any of the things droddey is saying.

As for autotune I do think it is used a fair bit but I also think that it is like any novelty thing...people use it a lot and after awhile things settle down.

IIRC there were several acts that tried to capitalize on the Beatles by copying their studio tricks way back when as well...and we did not hear of people saying that there was a huge moral issue then...so why is it different now?


Anent to the above a certain band I was in in the early 1970's didst use the vocoder trick a few times in it...my voice still sucked....

I suppose the thing about studio trickery is whether you take a puritan view, a "this far but no further view" or a "let's see what this enables us to achieve" view. I definitely take the third. Droddey seems to take a mixture of the first two. Which as we've discussed, does throw up some internal contradictions.

There is also the strange suggestion that this is somehow new. You know who used to *always* use sped up vocals, in order to get higher notes and sound younger? Chuck Berry. A trick also employed by Robert Plant on The Song Remains the Same (when you know this, it's almost comically obvious, take a listen).

Remember the Chipmunks? Poor Alvin.....

In my very humble personal opinion, I don't see an abitrary, universal, absolute standard of what is or is not a legitimate process for making music.  There are things I would view as "cheating" for me that someone else might view as legit and vice versa.  Some things may be commonly viewed as cheating (lip syncing in live gigs, for example), but there are no rules.  In the end, it comes down to a matter of taste, which is very personal.

It's fine for one musician to decide that they will not use pitch correction or timing correction in their recordings.  I don't think anyone would argue with their right to do so.  I think many people would object if that musician were to attempt to apply their value judgement to other artists.  That's what I think we see here. 

Is pitch correction a bad thing?  I don't like it.  If someone else wants to use it, that's fine with me.  How about Audiosnap?  I'd rather not go there, but it doesn't bother me if someone else uses it.  What about quantitizing MIDI data?  Depending on the track, I've done it.  That's not cheating in my eyes.  How about using sampled guitar sounds instead of a real guitar?  If it works for the track, I've got no problem with it.  Loops?  I don't use them, but others are welcome to do so.  Playing live with triggered MIDI sequences?  It feels like a cheat to me, but some are fine with it.  Playing live with pre-recorded background vocal tracks?  Seems quite "cheaty" to me, but I understand why some do it.  Rap over someone else's song and claim it as your own?  That seems like a huge cheat to me, but it's the origin of all rap music.

The bottom line is that none of us are in a position to lay down the law and say that certain techniques or tools are or are not legitimate.  We are in a position to state our opinions about such things.  If we can contain this discussion to our opinions, we can have an interesting dialog.

 While I don't think that using some of this recording technology is cheating, no more than makeup makes a woman look better or photoshopping models makes them look prettier than they really are. I think that it can be potentially subtractive to a creative pursuit. It can become a crutch. Learning to sing well is better than hitting the Melodyne and playing a real guitar is more consistant with personal growth than a pile of samples.

  I'm not in the inquisition to eliminate any of it. It can a have a valid place IMO. Awhile back I asked if using Band-In-The Box was considered cheating.  There is no such thing as cheating if you can make your own rules and play your own game. If I don't want to play that game I'll go play my own game and let you to your own rules in music and production. Most music execs. likely could care less how the result is achieved. A means to an end is the only objective. The means is whatever it takes and the end is money.

 Somewhere in the mountains sitting on a porch is a bonified musician  picking away who is making music and uncaring about who hears it or how or if he will record. Probably not far away is another person sitting at a DAW who never picked up a stringed instrument and who does everything inside that little box he sits in front of. They are both making music.

 

Again, to the "these terrible modern cheats" point... Playing live to pre-recorded and / or sequenced material: part of all Pink Floyd and The Who gigs since the early 70s. That's just off the top of my head.

Nash the Slash did that as well..late 1970's and up....