You can now download the free Flutter app for Mac or Windows and be able to control playback of your iTunes library with just a hand gesture. Really. And it's not just iTunes you can control - you can also play and pause Spotify, VLC, Quicktime and there will surely be more on the way. 

When I first read about this I thought it all sounded a bit gimmicky and geeky, but it's actually not. As the Flutter website suggests, there are times when being able to play and pause your music via a hand gesture is handy. e.g. when you have many windows open. With just a wave of the hand in the air you can pause or start playback, regardless of what you're working with on-screen at the time. Truly handier in practise than it may sound. 

Before checking the app out myself I wanted to read more about it or see a quick demo on YouTube. Then I realised the app is free and very quick to download. Within a minute I was using it and posting this!

One thing I'm sure will be on the developers' minds already - it brings a "touchscreen" like experience to controlling your audio and you naturally want to be able to swipe your hand left or right to skip tracks, maybe even shake your hand to shuffle tracks. Perhaps in future you could just throw up a maloik and immediate hear a metal track... the sky's the limit with this one. 

I'm enjoying it and look forward to seeing it developed further. Hope you enjoy too. 

I recently posted the article "Auto-Tune: So Right, It's Wrong", a summary of points I found especially quotable from this article on the topic of Auto-Tune.

As is often the case, some of the most interesting and valuable feedback I received to the article was posted in LinkedIn groups, not readily accessible or directly attributable to the article. As an addition to my original post, following are some of the comments received on other sites - hope you take interest as much as I did, and thanks to all contributors.

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I had a phone call from the late Terry Howard just after he sent me a copy of Genius Loves Company. I was blown away by the Gladys Knight Vocals !!!

I also felt on THAT Particular Track that Ray's Vocal sounded anemic and distant. Turns out they were the same Exact Mic (Name withheld to prevent spam issues).

What's going on? I asked. They'd Pitch Corrected Ray's Vocal!!

My takeaway - if the TUNE is Perfect and the TONE Sucks, what use is it? (So people can vote for the best dancer on American Idol without distraction?)

I'm for Tools if Properly Used. If the end result is sonically better, great. If the end result has more artifacts and sonic-density issues, not so great...
 - Lawrence Villella

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Yes, but try turning an untuned vocal to the Disney Channel for one of their pop songs and see how far you get. As much as it hurts to say it, it's part of the style. Also, there could be other factors at play. Maybe Ray just wasn't in good voice that day. Tuning him wouldn't be my first choice, but sometimes there isn't another. Wasn't that record released after his passing?
- Steve Shepherd

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In the old daze they just substituted a session singer for the Disney "star." It was and still is all about extra income for TV stars. This shouldn't be confused with actual musical artists.

Way too many musician-producers get carried away with tuning and completely screw up the timing and believability of vocals. The test is to sing along with the vocal and feel what it does to your breath.

As an Ex-Motown engineer, I can't believe how many songs today choke you up instead of liberating your soul while you sing along with them. This is simple physiology and not fashion. It's just another reason people aren't interested in buying records. The idea of a record is to play it over and over singing and moving to it. Why would you buy a recording you only wanted to listen to passively a few times or use as a "hip" background ambiance?
- Bob Olhsson

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I agree that Auto-Tune and Melodyne suck the life out of a performance most of the time it is used. However, there are engineers that understand how music "breathes" and don't put Auto-Tune on the whole track - they only correct individual words or syllables that can't be replaced by editing from another take. Used this way, Auto-Tune is no worse or lifeless than EQ or compression, and you may only end up using it for two or three words per song.

I agree that a "professional" singer should be able to sing every single lyric to a song correctly, but sometimes time runs out in a session, and you can't do those last punch-ins you need. Isn't it more pleasant to just fix the few offensive words?

If used very sparingly, Auto-Tune style plug-ins can be an irreplaceable tool that can improve a comped vocal take's listenability without compromising a natural tone. I know there other engineers using it in this minimalistic way, but I admit they are probably a small minority.

Now could someone explain to me the correlation between Auto-Tune and seismic data analysis software? It is fascinating that Auto-Tune was born from something so different.
- Tony Porter

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You are 100% correct in your assessment. However, until the majority of engineer/producers realize that, they are just going to insert the plugin and continue on their merry way. The other problem is the one Steve Shepherd mentioned; try submitting a pop song that hasn't been autotuned to Disney or any label for that matter and see how far that gets you. Unfortunately these "musical geniuses" expect to hear that effect in todays music.
- Philip Chiore

Love it, hate it, or couldn't care less - Auto-Tune seems here to stay. I've written on the topic of Auto-Tune many times in the past (Please Wait While Your Vocalist Is Loading, Let Your Music Have Life - Keep it Human, and Now You Too Can "Sing" Like Antoine Dodson).

However I just read a great new article worthy of sharing. Following are a few key points I found especially quotable:

"The fact that one can or cannot sing no longer has much bearing on whether one will or will not sing".

"Auto-Tune defies the myth of the creative gift".

"The microphone, in a sense, was the Auto-Tune of its day, doing for amplitude what Hildebrand’s invention has done for pitch".

"I can think of no sound quite as oppressive as the systematic execution of technical perfection
What matters most in music—what music is—is sound, and I can think of no sound quite as oppressive as the systematic execution of technical perfection. Auto-Tune, by making every song perfectly correct, makes every song wrong".

"To say that someone can sing can mean simply that the person can sing on key, and it is elementally important to hit the right notes. The trouble with Auto-Tune is that it applies too rigid a definition of rightness. It adjusts every tone with unyielding, unvarying precision, squarely in the mathematical center of the note. But no one sings that way—not even the world’s most esteemed opera singers. In every form of vocal music, the scale is a framework for expressive interpretation, not a system of regimentation. What it means above all to say that someone can sing is that the person can communicate the content of the words and music; and emotional expression, in vocal music, involves the deft, intelligent manipulation of pitch. A skilled singer knows how to shade a moment in a song by, say, hovering near the bottom of a note—within the note, in tune, but just below the center of the tone. A great blues singer may use three chords, but find countless possibilities for tonal variation in a single note. The music, the art, is contained in those variations. Bessie Smith, processed through Auto-Tune, would have all the soul of Siri".

View the full article "Imperfect Pitch" by David Hajdu.

For further feedback to this article see the post "Auto-Tune: Further Discussion".