It can't really help with a live performance and a for a good singer, recording multiple takes is going to be faster/more economical, punching in/out is so easy and with modern digital DAW's like ProTools (which does this by default) it keeps all your takes for you anyway - no need to waste another track on your 24 track tape or tape over the previous one.
Here's another viewpoint:
https://www.quora.com/Do-all-most-singers-use-pitch-correcti...
Fantastic vocal performances were captured all throughout the last century without the parachute of pitch correction/autotune. I'd rather listen to an imperfect take with flaws than to a machine assisted correction any day. Each to their own I guess.
Known Knowns - done for the clear effect, which is audible by everyone (as popularised, but not invented by Cher, T-Pain, etc).
Known Unknowns - ones where most people wouldn't notice, but if you've listened to autotune a lot you'd swear it's been done (sustained notes with vibrato added seem to be clear contenders here to me, such as one in 'Angels' by Robbie Williams
Unknown Unknowns - There are lots of recordings I've worked on for people (mixing, mostly) where the vocal sounds perfect, and it's actually been autotuned/processed. Subtly, but still processed. I only know this because the person who's done it has confirmed it. In the context of a mix there's little evidence, if any at all. And if you listen to backing vocals of the last decade versus BVs from say 30 years ago, you really hear the difference - not because modern ones necessarily sound like they've been worked on, but because the old ones sound just a little bit out of tune in comparison.
I've done work on singers' recordings where I've fixed the pitch and they haven't even noticed it on their own voice, in isolation (which really is the sound everyone knows best). If done well (and appropriately), it doesn't turn it into awful processed rubbish, it can tweak an otherwise brilliant performance and make it near-perfect. I say this as a recording engineer who loves the sound of a band playing together, and would always sacrifice separation / absolute recording quality for the communication and feel that you get with a live band playing together how they normally do - I wouldn't sacrifice personality for pitch, but I think you can improve on nearly everyone's performance in some places.
Having said that, the flip side of this is that people think 'they can fix that in the mix' when they've not given a great performance... and that's never the case!
That's what I'm getting at - "perfect" is something that the human voice does so infrequently on its own so when we hear the "perfect" performance, we know it's been doctored.
As a point of reference, I look back at something like the Boswell sisters. Some of their early stuff was recorded in mono direct to wax disc but they were so skilled, well rehearsed and sung as a unit so closely bonded that the resulting sound is fantastic despite the primitive technology. The three individual voices aren't even recorded to seperate tracks since multitracking wasn't invented then.
Granted you can't really draw a direct comparison between that and Robbie Williams, Cher or T-Pain, but I know which I'd rather listen to any day. There are a lot of singers I've seen live and talked to over the years who wouldn't be caught dead touching up their stuff, or letting an engineer/producer do it behind their back - even if it meant missing out on a commercial recording contract.
I do appreciate where you're coming from though. I'm a little old fashioned I guess in that sometimes the mistakes that made it through improve the performance in my mind. It reminds you that the performers are human.
Autotune is orthogonal to creating that perfection. If someone has it Autotune won't take it away, no matter how obviously it's used.
If someone doesn't have it, Autotune won't give it to them.
Modern production tools have mostly eliminated the need to work with a band. I can create music that I want to create with complete artistic freedom. Auto-tune is just another step in that direction.
I guess I'd rather listen back to my crappy vocals and think hard about what I didn't like about them though, and work on improving that rather than try to make it something it's not with pitch correction. But everyone has a different way of working that works for them I suppose, which is why I ended my original comment with "each to their own".
Of course musicians have been able to splice their parts together since multitrack came into wide usage, eg. the guitar solo in Stairway to Heaven. But I kind of feel like use of digital correction is a bit overdone right now.
I appreciate I'm stepping into mostly subjective territory here though. It's like if somebody said to Hendrix, "hey Jimi, tune your guitar man". Or told Knopfler to stop playing dead notes, or Slash to stop missing notes altogether while not jumping off a drum riser. They could do those things but then to me it wouldn't feel like them.
I don't think I'm the only person who feels this way, but it's definitely personal & subjective.
I definitely understand your point about Hendrix, Knopfler and Slash. There's something beautiful about virtuoso playing that still sounds "raw", you know what I mean? I grew up obsessed with shred guitar, and there was a lot of that in the 80s/90s. There are younger guitar players on youtube these days who are miles ahead in terms of technical proficiency and production/effects but some of that authenticity is lost.
I recently saw a video of Ritchie Blackmore talking about Satriani's playing and how it's almost too technically perfect and loses some of the soul. I tend to agree. I have great respect for both of them though.
