IZOTOPE T-PAIN BUNDLE | *£59.95/*$99

*Be mindful that iZotope's European distributor Time+Space is offering this £59.95 money-saving deal on The T-Pain Bundle until a time that is yet to come (as about as accurate as can be had for now), while iZotope's US website has it at $99, a saving of $59 on the US SRP.

REVIEW
When a singer has a bad throat and there’s still a job to do, he or she may reach for a potion enriched by dextromethorphan, eg Robitussin. Interestingly, if you take a butt-load you enter an anaesthetised, dissociative state called robo-tripping. But what if the singer can’t sing anyway? Not through malady or overdosing on meds, but because they're tone deaf. Well, for the young, good-looking, pneumatic type who’s sectionable enough to want to give up every last shred of credibility in the pursuit of X-list celebrity, there’s good news. And yes, I am addressing those attention-craving nut-jobs who aspire to be assembled in facilities like The X Factory.

Singers who can’t sing have long been able to bluff their way, in live performance or on TV, by miming. However, trouble arises in pressure situations, such as facing a microphone in a recording studio and having no control over the pitch of what’s coming out of one’s gob. It’s a bad idea to use a real singer, as Milli Vanilli discovered, but there is a work-around: Robo-singing. And no, it doesn't involve DXM, ketamine or PCP, although you may need such stuff when the tabloid press has finished with your private life. Prior to that, we've a technological solution called autotune, by which the voice is cranked forcibly into pitch.

One artist taking autotune to the extreme is vocal-tech-toting radical T-Pain, a man inclined to mix it up with urban, or RnB, or something - well, he talks a lot, so let's call it rap with frilly bits. And his take on the genre has lately been given an extra shove by that most rad of software developers, iZotope. So, leaving a polemic on autotune in modern pop production until later, let's take a butcher's at iZ's The T-Pain Bundle.

HOW TO DEVELOP THE MINDSET OF A MUSIC ENTREPRENEUR: 5 TIPS ON POSITIVITY

Guest contrib Astrid Baumgardner says
you've power to change your perceptions

CAREER MOVES
In 2012, which at the time of writing is next year unless something goes really screwy at CERN over Xmas, MuzoBlog will be broadening its blogging horizons to include comment on career development in music. It's a move driven by technological change. Society is changing, the way we express ourselves artistically is changing, as is the nature of our relationship with the audience. However, such traditional qualities as talent, dedication, attitude and self-belief will still get you far. The road is long with many a wind-up, but it need not be heavy going. In scoping out a broader blogscape, MuzoBlog LinkedIn with lecturer in careers in music at the Yale School of Music, Astrid Baumgardner. She's a certified professional coach with an unenviable speciality: Getting musicians to get their acts together.

Here, she offers some muzo-mindset modifiers which provide an ideal preface to MuzoBlog's forthcoming career-moves coverage. If you're the type for whom the word 'business' in the context of music brings on an attack of the vapours, relax. It doesn't have to be that way. If you're using 'career' as a verb of motion, instead of a n or adj, in reference to your own professional development, put down the bottle. Just absorb Astrid's wisdom and prepare to become a power conduit...