anyone ever tried autotune or melodyne

j2u

hi like to be able to sing so im looking at pitch correction softwares such as autotune and melodyne,i have read good reviews about both especially autotune 4.0 so although people say it can provide bast improvements i want to know it would help me someone who doesnt hav a good singing voice at all or could such a software only make minor improvements to an already decent singing voice,so has anyone tried something like this before?thanx

Anima

Its not some miracle program buddy. It only fixes small inaccuracies, bits that are slightly out of tune etc. You'll need to be able to sing at least half decently to begin with.

If you ever made it big, you'd have to sing live anyway

eddyc

For the price of autotune you could get a fair few singin lessons

sturgo

There's far more to singing than just pitch. If you can't sing forget about it. Or else learn to sing properly. The programs you mentioned don't work miracles.

jtsuited

j2u wrote:

hi like to be able to sing so im looking at pitch correction softwares

Maybe becoming a good singer is a better way of being able to sing!!!

sei046

well actually they do work miracles but not in the way you want. I use autotune 4 occasionally on vocals but its to just get it perfect (for country). It will pitch in prety much any note but when it has to really stretch it you can hear it. I would advise just learning to sing

BossArky

I have used Autotune with Cubase SX. My singing style often causes me to perhaps unconsciously flatten or sharpen beginnings or endings of phrases.... I noticed this with Autotune.

It will polish your singing a bit... but could mess it up too if you set it to fine tune too quickly..i.e. go to a certain pitch within 1 milli-second, as opposed to 150.

Give it a try and see if it works for you.

Px

If you want to create that Cher/R&B robot sound, Autotune would be fine. For making you sound like an accomplished singer, it just aint gonna crack it.

Write songs that suit your voice. Some of the best artists out there can't sing conventionally.

Eoin Madsen

If you're getting into (professional) digital mixing, you really have to have pitch correction software available and the experience of using it, irrespective of your personal feelings about it. It's as simple as that. If you're doing it for yourself, you just need to put in some serious time with the software before you're getting the best out of it.

If you have a singer with a good timbre but poor pitch control, having the ability to autotune can really help a lot in terms of capturing a performance. You can never gaurantee that it will work without being audible, so the simple rule is to never settle for a take that you wouldn't use anyway. Most of the time, having the ability to tighten up the pitch just adds a mixing advantage. In saying that, I've corrected some fairly dramatic pitch errors in my time. To make it work, you have to get good at using the software and understanding how it does what it does. Less is more etc.

The Cher/RnB sound that people associate with autotuning is just what you get when it's been done badly (and the Cher thing was a vocoder anyway). Probably 80-90% of the commercial records you listened to that were released in the last three or four years will have vocals touched up with pitch correction - you just don't notice because the singers are reasonably good to begin with, and the editing guys are even better.

jtsuited

Eoin Madsen wrote:

Probably 80-90% of the commercial records you listened to that were released in the last three or four years will have vocals touched up with pitch correction

controversial estimate Eoin.
doubt it's that high a percentage.

Eoin Madsen

jtsuited wrote:

controversial estimate Eoin.
doubt it's that high a percentage.

Okay, perhaps that would be more applicable to the top 30 albums. But even for the kind of music most of us here would listen to, you know it's still well over 50 percent.

Just listen to the number of rock albums that are quantized in Protools these days. I think it's pretty fair to assume that almost all of those were also autotuned - not even because they need it. Just because it can be done.

jtsuited

Eoin Madsen wrote:

Just listen to the number of rock albums that are quantized in Protools these days. I think it's pretty fair to assume that almost all of those were also autotuned - not even because they need it. Just because it can be done.

gonna have to disagree strongly with this. Most artists (presumably) view singing as a very different thing than instrumentation.
On my (newly completed!) album, everything was quantised (almost) but the thought of using any of that pitch correction malarky would have me feel severely nauseous.

But then again, I'm a great singer;)

Eoin Madsen

Bear in mind that most of the time it's the producer making the decision, not the ego.

jtsuited

seems strange considering people like John Leckie, Nigel Godrich, and Stephen Street have been quite vocal in their dislike of Antares evil piece of poo that is Autotune.

Although i'm sure looking at the charts at the moment, there is a hefty amount of this jiggery pokery going on.

sei046

i support Eoin. for once lol. 80 or 90 percent is not outlandish in any way at all. You have to realise what it should be used for. I like music for its sound ok? I dont care about anything else but the sound. Dont care about principles or egos. I often like to hear a perfect note being sang or a fairly tight harmony etc. If antares will allow that then it should happen. Who cares about anything else? its a tool to manipulate sound the same as a chorus pedal is.

sei046

I would def say that 90% of albums in last 5 years have autotune somewhere

jtsuited

sei046 wrote:

I would def say that 90% of albums in last 5 years have autotune somewhere

now that's just plain ridiculous!!!

sei046

i think you have the wrong idea of what autotune is. Its not a "lets tune most of his notes up a semitone" type thing. It might only be used in one word of an album just because they felt it needed it in mixing stages.

jtsuited

i think that i have used autotune probably a lot more than you have. Because even when you use the slightest correction, it's clearly audible. Well to me anyway.

A good example of awful 'subtle' use of autotune is on some of Ben Folds' solo stuff.

sei046

I think you may want to look into how to get decent results so. And i dont mean that in a condescending sort of way and i am not trying to be smart. If your having problems in "touching up" a word and gettin autotune to work with your own manualpitch shifting or compressors i would just keep at it with trial and error.

jtsuited

or you could get the singer to sing that word again using a little known technique called 'dropping in'. oh hold on, that's not a little known technique.

I understand the point that if there's a limited tracking time things can be fixed in the mixing stage. But that is not a particularly good way of working, when mixing time could be spent a lot better than fixin sh!t notes that shouldn't be there in the first place.

sei046

your misunderstanding me again. You should spend more time working with vocals. If you did you wouldne be referring to "Sh!t notes". Vocals arent black and white. You will begin to realise that not everything is done in the tracking stages and even though the notes may not be......"shi!t"....... They may sometimes need a little push, sometimes sharper or flatter or obiously to the desired note. You still have this idea that autotune is a program people just put on their vocals and let it away with it.

I would do your research and listen to a few more albums with a more critical ear. I would say a lot of your favourites are just that helped by a little autotune

jtsuited

I really don't think you could sound any more patronising. I'm not going to continue this debate.

sei046

Well thats your choice i suppose. I think everyone else here loves these sort of debates because it can only make you a better engineer. I dont know why you made this all personal. You prob could have learned something if you looked at it from an engineers point of view and left the ego elsewhere

nohshow

Before I'd even heard of Autotune I was using Cool Edit to fix some of my bummer notes and there is definitely a range outside of which its use was clearly detectable. I've just dl'd the fully functioning demo version of the current Autowhatever and expect to be impressed.

People are incredibly critical these days, so that even demos have to be near as damn it bang-on. I know I have a voice that doesn't appeal to everyone, but it's the only one I have to sing my songs with. I have experimented with different styles, different techniques in singing and I have made some headway in terms of timbre, but I'll never be Sinatra. If people stop listening to the song because they don't like my vocals, then in my view they are judging the wrong bit. I will try anything that removes an obstacle from audiences' or musical professionals' appreciation of the important parts of (my) recordings.

Autotuning is available, I've recently discovered, in (according to my sources) every professional studio. Sometimes I'll bet even the artist doesn't know it's been used. What if that take was pure perfection, bar one miniscule pitching error??? Personally, I'd have no hesitation fixing the odd anomaly here or there. I'd even use it to fix a bum lead guitar note if everything else was up to my exacting standards.

Let's not be technosnobs. The world's so messed up anyway, what does it matter what you use to make it seem a little better for a while (but say No to drugs, kids).:rolleyes:

nohshow

jtsuited wrote:

or you could get the singer to sing that word again using a little known technique called 'dropping in'. oh hold on, that's not a little known technique.

I've just read this. Oh, how it made me laugh. Drop in a word! Hee-hee!:D

sei046

well dropping in is an alright solution in a perfect situation. Problem is recording rarely gives you a perfect situation