Crow Sister wrote: "...and indeed whether or not it will ever be used as a crutch for some performers in the folk genre too?"

It is used, albeit usually very lightly, all the time in recordings of folk artists already. There are hugely varying degrees to which electronic pitch correction can be used. In the case of most folk albums it's probably just employed very gently to round-off a slight pitch imperfection in one or two individual sung notes where it's thought that the overall emotional quality of the performance may be lost by attempting a repeat take. It isn't used as an across-the board method of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear (which inevitably results in the plastic, fake-airbrushed smile voices that Crow Sister describes).

Personally, I don't mind a bit of "imperfection" in a recording (eg I've always loved Phil Lesh's "wobbly" bass intro in "Friend Of The Devil" (which would surely be caught and re-done these days) and things like the Heron albums recorded in a field, and the sounds emanating now from Liam Watson's Toerag studios) but vocal glitches do stand out, and can quickly become very irritating to the listener. If this happens, the singer can either choose to repeat the entire perfomance until it is pitch-perfect, attempt to "drop-in" a better note from a different take (which may sound un-natural) or use the studio technology to correct a few (very slight) pitch discrepancies. The idea of using pitch-correction during live performance is an abomination IMO! So go get 'em, Christina...

If you attend any informal folk (or old-time, bluegrass, whatever) session, almost every guitar, banjo, madolin, bouzouki etc player will have a little electronic tuner that they can pop on the headstock of their instrument, whereas in the past they would all have had to tune by ear to either a tuning fork or to a note from a fixed-pitch instrument such as a piano or accordion. I suppose that these devices can be viewed as either a "crutch" or a "boon" too!

Interesting discussion topic - thanks.