Sonu Nigam had admitted that he has used auto-tune in some of his songs. While it was widely believed by fans that only less talented singers used auto-tune, Sonu Nigam’s confession has come as a surprise. Sonu explained that since music is now digitised, raw voices need to be pitch-perfect or else they will sound off in the final song.
Sonu recently appeared on the Game Changers podcast and said, “The era of auto-tune has certainly brought a lot of changes. People say a lot of bad things about it, but I say ‘Jo bhi hua hai aacha hua hai (Whatever has happened is for the good)’. In earlier days, you had to sing without auto-tune, and we are lucky to riyaaz (practise) without it, and now we don’t need it.”
He added, “But still, I would say I use auto-tune on certain songs of mine. Everything now is so 440; previously, everything was live. We had live sarangi; live strings, so somewhere our pitch didn’t have to be perfect. Everything now is digitised; everything is going in a straight line, and your voice will sound off if it’s raw. Previously, with live music, we used to adjust according to the live music, but now your song will stand out.”
However, he cautioned, “It’s our responsibility that we don’t use the resources to fix the voices of those who can’t sing. You give your 99% and bring it to 100% with auto-tune. Many actors use auto-tune for their songs, and it’s absolutely fine if they use it to enjoy their dreams. But they cannot replace singers.”
Meanwhile, on the work front, Sonu Nigam’s recent project includes Rajkumar Santoshi’s Batwara 1947. The film is backed by Aamir Khan Productions and stars Sunny Deol, Preity Zinta, Shabana Azmi, Karan Deol, Ali Fazal and Abhimanyu Singh, among others. Sonu has sung the song Tabassum, which is composed by AR Rahman and written by Javed Akhtar.
