The Truth About Auto-Tune by BringMoreLegos

While the term "auto-tune" is typically used generically for any vocal pitch alteration effect, like Kleenex and Band-Aid it is a registered trade name. The official Auto-Tune software was developed and originally released in what decade?

The underlying algorithms of Auto-Tune (and a host of other audio processing effects) rely on the principle that any periodic waveform can be represented as a sum of simple trigonometric functions, a transformation famously associated with what mathematician?

Andy Hildebrand, the developer of Auto-Tune, designed a set of complex algorithms for Exxon Oil before realizing their novel application to music production and adapting them to analyze sound waves. The original software helped his employer locate underground oil deposits by analyzing what?

Auto-Tune was originally intended to be something of a trade secret, discreetly used to "fix" vocal performances. But producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling really didn't think it was strong enough, so they cranked the Auto-Tune up to 11 (actually, the Retune Speed down to 0), introducing the now-ubiquitous "robotic" Auto-Tune effect on what 1998 mega-hit?

While initially associated with the artist from Q4, the extreme Auto-Tune sound would eventually become synonymous with what Rappa Ternt Sanga, who even lent his name to an iPhone app simulating the effect?

The vocal processing technique heard here (on Alan Parsons Project's "The Raven") is not Auto-Tune, though they are often confused. This effect, originally developed to encode vocal data efficiently, modulates musical pitches from a synthesizer with spectral information from human speech, and is known by what portmanteau?

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Prior to the availability of automated pitch correction, audio engineers would either need to re-record or, from the late 1970s, painstakingly edit vocal tracks using a manual pitch-shifter such as the Eventide H910, which was punnily named after what rooftop-ready Beatles song?

Auto-Tune is most commonly utilized as a software plugin compatible with numerous recording studio interfaces. But you can also get it as a physical unit. Which of the pictured devices is an Auto-Tune module? (Give the corresponding letter.)

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Auto-Tune's main competitor in the studio vocal pitch correction space is what product sold by Celemony, whose distinctive graphic interface is seen here?

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Not all artists have embraced Auto-Tune, with Jay-Z titling a Grammy-winning 2009 single with what bold (and ultimately not very prophetic) pronouncement about the technology?

Who is the television paterfamilias heard here (and not his alias), with the help of Auto-Tune and copious other music production tricks?

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The use of pitch correction remains a controversial subject in the music industry, with some considering it a valuable tool and others rejecting it as disingenuous. Rather than hasten to judgment, I tend to agree with what rock trio, who offered this advice on their 1980 anthem "The Spirit of Radio"?

"All this machinery making modern music
Can still be open-hearted,
Not so coldly charted;
It's really just a question of your honesty,
Yeah, your honesty."