<P> Auto - Tune was initially created by Andy Hildebrand, an electrical engineer . Hildebrand developed methods for interpreting seismic data and subsequently realized that the technology could be used to detect, analyze, and modify the pitch in audio files . </P> <P> The term Auto - Tune has become embedded in popular culture as a common description, or generic term, to describe audible pitch correction in music, whether the music was made using the original Antares Auto - Tune program or software from one of their competitors . </P> <P> The earliest commercial use of Auto - Tune as a vocal effect in a popular song was Roy Vedas' Fragments Of Life in August 17, 1998 and later in Cher's "Believe" and Eiffel 65's "Blue (Da Ba Dee)". The effect is not to be confused with a vocoder or the talk box, devices referenced by producers of these songs when they were new to hide their use of Auto - Tune from music audiences . For example, in an early interview, the producers of "Believe" claimed they had used a DigiTech Talker FX pedal, in what Sound on Sound's editors felt was an attempt to preserve a trade secret . After the success of "Believe" the technique became known as the "Cher Effect". Originally, Auto - Tune was designed to discreetly correct imprecise intonations, but Cher's producers used it to "exaggerate the artificiality of abrupt pitch correction ." This technique soon became a widespread technique used in live performances and in pop recordings throughout the first ten years of the 21st century . Modern day examples of artists known for using Auto - Tune are T - Pain, Lil' Wayne, Travis Scott, and Lil Uzi Vert . </P> <P> While working with Cher on the song "Believe" in 1998, producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling discovered that if they set Auto - Tune on its most aggressive setting, so that it corrected the pitch at the exact moment it received the signal, the result was an unsettlingly robotic tone . </P>

Who was the first singer to release a song using auto-tune