 Appalachian graduate returns to campus to share experiences in the recording industry. Special to The Appalachian He became a YouTube sensation and eventually went viral.
Viral video master and creator of the “Auto Tune the News” series on YouTube, Michael L. Gregory, came back to visit his roots at Appalachian State University Wednesday.
Before he graduated in 2008 with a degree in recording and production, Gregory created his first video inspired by Appalachian campus’s Jimmy Smith Park. The result was an over-the-top, slaphappy video, complete with fake opera singing and dramatic acting that has generated thousands of hits.
 Gregory credits the skills he has now to what he learned in the studio on the fourth floor of the Broyhill Music Center, where he first learned how to auto-tune. However, he said he did not learn everything from being in a classroom.
“I learned lots from that, but also you just have to take the initiative,” he said. “You can’t learn it all in class. You’ve got to do some of it on your own.”
Gregory moved to New York City after graduation to intern at a recording studio and taught as a private tutor for the SATs on the side. After hours, he would work in the studio, experimenting with auto-tuning and speakers to create his own projects.
Auto-tuning is a process that involves correcting the pitch of a singer’s voice to disguise when they are off-key or make a mistake. The effect, when an artist turns up the auto-tune, sounds like a robot, Gregory said.
Almost all artists support the use of auto-tuning to perfect an album. However, several hip-hop and popular music artists such as T-Pain, Cher and Ke$ha have streamlined an extreme use of auto-tuning to change their sound completely.
When auto-tune software is applied to spoken word, it makes the person sound as if they are singing.
When he heard about a YouTube partner program, Gregory jumped on the bandwagon and created a video with his brothers called “VP Debate in Song and Dance,” which was posted to the Huffington Post’s main page.
The main idea was to auto-tune the voices of Sarah Palin and Joe Biden and make a spoof of the debates through song.
After the video grew in popularity, the Gregory brothers collaborated with Barely Political, an online video and entertainment Web site that produces comedic political satire.
From that point on, the “Auto-Tune the News” segments were born. To date, they have created 38 viral videos and 11 “Auto-Tune the News” episodes.
The videos appeal to older audiences interested in politics, as well as the younger demographic interested in John Stewart kind of comedy.
When it comes to the Internet, Gregory has his own views.
“I think the Internet is like the bathroom wall of the world because you can find the most epic of poetry and you can find the most offensive of homophobic and racial slurs all in one place,” he said.
Derek J. Stanovsky, an adjunct professor of interdisciplinary studies, is responsible for inviting Gregory to speak to Appalachian students.
“I was determined that we should definitely have him come back and talk about Internet studies because being a viral video star is a very new and interesting career,” Stanovsky said. “So to have one of our very own students to be successful at that is really a wonderful thing.”
Gregory and his brothers have been featured on the “Rachel Maddow Show,” “It’s on with Alexa Chung” and C-SPAN. They also collaborated with T-Pain to create a commercial for an auto-tune application for the iPhone.
The videos are created in Gregory’s home in Brooklyn, with amateur software, microphones and a green sheet as a “green screen.” They create all the music, lyrics and beats for the videos as well.
Gregory’s success at creating viral videos is an inspiration to students in Internet studies classes, like Rebecca M. Murison, a junior advertising major.
Hearing Gregory speak shows how the economy is evolving and how everything is now being placed on the internet instead of television, Murison said. Since advertising is now widely used on the Web, she hopes to learn more of how to use her degree for the internet.
Stanovsky sees YouTube as an interesting cultural phenomenon and expects to see people continue to explore it and find a way to make money from it.
In the end, Gregory claims their videos are a public service.
“We are making news the way it was always intended to be,” Gregory said. “And that is to set it to a booty-jam base line.”
Story: DEEANNA HANEY, Lifestyles Reporter |
