Glenn Reynolds, who aside from being a blogger, law professor, and bon vivant, is a part-time music producer, writes about "pitch correction", which "cleans up" off-key notes in vocal performances, and quantization, which does the same with the beat. (He links to a related story about a producer, R.S. Field, who has labeled his latest production as "pitch-shifting free".)

I have nothing to say about the rights or wrongs of electronically scrubbing audio, and of labeling it or not when you do. I'm no musician, and I'm frustratingly ignorant about audio technology.

Yet I have to wonder: has anyone ever tried applying pitch-shifting and quantization really aggressively to natural sounds? For instance, recording a flock of loud, chirpy birds, and then coercing their song into D Minor? Recording rainfall, and forcing the drops into 4/4 time? It might be interesting. It might not. But has anyone ever even tried it?