Himesh Reshammiya has pushed back on one of Hindi film music’s most persistent shorthand judgments: that visible pitch correction means a singer cannot hold a note. In a conversation with trade analyst Komal Nahta on the podcast Game Changers: The Music Series, the composer-singer said he leaves Auto-Tune off roughly “90 per cent of the time” in his own songs—while arguing that the technology has become a practical response to the industry’s shrinking recording clock.
The real constraint is time
Reshammiya’s claim is useful because it separates the tool from the voice. He said contemporary singers who perform modern music “sing well,” and that a more patient, part-by-part recording approach could reduce the need for pitch correction. His target is not a particular artist but a workflow: songs are now sent to collaborators quickly, recorded at a distance, and refined through digital revisions rather than long studio sittings.
He recalled that composers once spent “five to eight hours” teaching a song and recording it. Today, he said, instructions move over WhatsApp and video calls, edits are made remotely, and revisions keep going back and forth.
Auto-Tune as a production clock
For Bollywood Chronicle readers, the interesting part is the reframe. If Auto-Tune is understood as a scheduling tool as much as a creative effect, the standard critique—that heavy pitch correction exposes a weak singer—misses a layer of the business. A tighter deadline changes what counts as a sensible production choice.
- The 90 per cent figure is self-reported; it tells us about Reshammiya’s practice, not every session in the industry.
- The change he describes is structural: remote collaboration compresses the hours available for takes and revisions.
- In Hindi film music, release calendars often dictate how much patience a song can receive.
Reshammiya acknowledged that some newcomers are still learning but argued that the main variable is the number of hours available for a song. The public’s perception of Auto-Tune, he added, “is not entirely fair.”
What listeners can take away
None of this says pitch correction is neutral. It does suggest that a finished track should be judged by its context: how much time was available, how the collaboration happened, and whether the melody, lyrics and vocal character survived the process. For an audience that cares about Hindi cinema history, that is a useful correction to a lazy assumption. The conversation arrives at a time when older recording practices are becoming part of Bollywood’s oral history.
The episode featuring Reshammiya is available on the Game Changers: The Music Series YouTube channel, part of a season of conversations with singers, composers and music personalities about how Hindi film music is made now.
Source: bollywoodHungama.com
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