Auto Pitch Correction Software

I recommend Akai Pitchright.

Kind regards

Dave Rich.

I've always had great results with Anteres Autotune.

Regards

Antares Autotune = Pace copy protection. BEWARE.

Antares Autotune = Pace copy protection. BEWARE.

I really don't like the Pace copy protection method however, it's what I've got. I've been evaluating other options lately to get rid of the pace copy protection.

Regards

...just take your time, punch in the vocals word by word if you have to, and record the vocals without Otto Toone!! Come on, I know you can do it yourself, just try... please, don't give in to the dark side of the force.

Mr. Moon is right. The best pitch correction is retracking. Practice is the key. the more you sing, the more you will hit the notes right, and maybe more importantly, the more you will recognize how to hit the notes right...

IMO, anyone that sings flat through an *entire* song should probably take a few lessons in studio singing.

Couldn't agree more! I've worked with too many Karaoke singers who have been greatly discouraged after hearing themselves recorded.

Regards

I would have to respectfully completely disagree with you. I think technology has gotten to the point that musicians have become so lazy that they aren't willing to work to attain perfection themselves, and are leaving it up to technology to take care of it for them. AutoTune is a shortcut, plain and simple. I would also (respectfully) disagree with your definition of a "killer" performance. To me, a killer performance, be it vocals or instrument, is one that has all the elements as you want them; the emotional, artistic, technical, and performance ...one that does not need to be altered in any way whatsoever. And I'm not talking about one that is technically perfect in the sense of every note being there, but a perfromance that captures the human experience contained within the context of the song. Part of what I love about (older) Black Sabbath is that they left in all the burps and hiccups Iommi made with his guitar between phrases in the songs!

In your example, I would have the vocalist do some more takes (of the enitre vocal phrase surrounding the part that needs fixing, not just the single note that went out) until he/she nails that one note where they were flat/sharp, and then comp it in. To me, this is OK as it still retains an actual performance and not a technology-altered/corrected version of the performance; in other words, the singer actually hit the note while performing, not the technology.

Again, I respect your opinions regarding this issue, but I just respectfully disagree with them.

Take care!

-mr moon

well put.

Edit: VERY well put.

hey... speaking of Autotune... is there a way to tell it not to trigger pitch correction when a vocalist uses natural Vibrato while they sing?

ORIGINAL: ed_mcg

not to trigger pitch correction when a vocalist uses natural Vibrato

First, mr moon, cover your ears. <g>

Yes, depending on the software. For example Melodyne Cre will allow you to adjust the tonal center without changing the gliss or vibrato. On other tools, you need to adjust the tolerance and speed values.

<fingers in ears, humming to self...>



-mr moon

ORIGINAL: fulcrum

Then there are those of us who are eerily consistently going sharp or flat at the same point in each take, no matter how many times they track the part.

There are some vocalists who are always flat on a certain note, too, even when the notes are well within their range. Some weird genetic inability to hear B or whatever. And there are some who just suck, but who expect to be recorded anyway, and who have paid for a certain amount of time and no more.

Some bass players cannot keep anything remotely resembling consistent dynamics, so you compress to make up for inadequacies in the performance.

Some singers can't get a perfect track, even with comping, within the practical constraints of the real-world recording scenario, so you autotune it.

I also think there is something to be said for marv's "killer performance but with a flat note" scenario. There are some singers who are so nervous in front of the mic, and who have such poor mic technique, and who don't know what to do unless they're half-drunk in a smoky nightclub bellowing over horrible acoustics, that it can be extremely time-consuming to even get a passable delivery out of them that doesn't sound uncomfortable and forced. They can track thirty bland but accurate takes and then nail that one soulful, passionate, heart-aching performance (but with a flat note) and that's it. In these situations, comping in a bland but in-tune word or phrase can do more damage to the naturalness and musicality of the performance than Autotuning the one bad syllable.

Autotune is a crutch, and it is grossly overused, and just slapping it over the vocal track will suck the life and nuance out of your recordings faster than putting a pillow over the mic will. In a perfect world, autotune would serve no purpose. But in the real and very imperfect world of record-making, it can be a useful tool.

If you autotune, autotune only those bits that audibly need it, do not simply put it on every track just to be safe. Use the graphical mode, not the automatic mode, and draw in the change you want it to make. Then listen and use your ears to adjust the pitch correction, not the "graph." Used carefully, autotune can be made to sound extremely transparent. But being transparent doesn't make it good.

Real musicians aren't perfect. Perfection isn't desireable. Just play a hard-quantized MIDI file with all the velocities set to a perfect diminuendo-- that's perfect. Doesn't sound so hot, even if you turn up the "swing" setting. Imagine if some clever engineer came up with a way to "fix" Jimi Hendrix's guitar playing so that you only heard the "right" notes, or if they "corrected" Otis Redding's voice. This would not be an improvement. Good performers do not stay in perfect time, they push and pull the beat, they drag out some notes and jump through others, and neither do they stay perfectly in pitch. They often strain the melody for deliberate effect, trying to drag it down or push it up. they employ melisma and vibrato, sometimes with a vague pitch center. The infamous "blue note" that exists in the ambiguity between the major and minor thirds is the harmonic shorthand for soulfulness.

Between the twelve notes, there are an infinite variety of expressive sounds, and autotune will be happy to get rid of all of them for you, and do a fine job of it. Resist the siren song of computerized perfection. Use machines to assist you in your human endeavors, when necessary, not to turn all your recordings into Stepford Wives.

Cheers.

ORIGINAL: mr. moon

ORIGINAL: marv
...but if they're giving a killer performance and they go flat/sharp on one note in a take, I'd rather use artificial means to correct that one note than to spend the next hour trying to recapture the emotion of an otherwise great take.

I would have to respectfully completely disagree with you. I think technology has gotten to the point that musicians have become so lazy that they aren't willing to work to attain perfection themselves, and are leaving it up to technology to take care of it for them. AutoTune is a shortcut, plain and simple. I would also (respectfully) disagree with your definition of a "killer" performance. To me, a killer performance, be it vocals or instrument, is one that has all the elements as you want them; the emotional, artistic, technical, and performance ...one that does not need to be altered in any way whatsoever. And I'm not talking about one that is technically perfect in the sense of every note being there, but a perfromance that captures the human experience contained within the context of the song. Part of what I love about (older) Black Sabbath is that they left in all the burps and hiccups Iommi made with his guitar between phrases in the songs!

In your example, I would have the vocalist do some more takes (of the enitre vocal phrase surrounding the part that needs fixing, not just the single note that went out) until he/she nails that one note where they were flat/sharp, and then comp it in. To me, this is OK as it still retains an actual performance and not a technology-altered/corrected version of the performance; in other words, the singer actually hit the note while performing, not the technology.

I think this a bit extreme. Playing guitar through an electromagnetic pick-up is a technology-altered version of the performance (to use one of potentially thousands of other examples).

I agree that Autotune is overused, but it is still a useful tool. Use it only when needed and try to avoid it when you can.

ORIGINAL: mr. moon


I respectfully disagree. If you remove the pickup from my guitar, the performance is still there exactly as it was performed, but at a much lower volume, probably low enough not to be heard, but the realtime action of me hitting the exact notes remains. If you remove autotune from a vocal track which required the use of autotune to "correct" it, the performance that remains (without autotune) is not the same as the "corrected" performance, the notes are different.

Simply stated:
Me playing with/without pickup = same notes played, just not as loud without pickup
vocal track requiring autotune correction = different notes than original performance

See the difference?

-mr moon

Ok. How about reverb added to a track after a performance? The singer doesn’t actually have a Lexicon PCM91 in their larynx. So their performance was altered and enhanced electronically.

ORIGINAL: CapnSpanky

ORIGINAL: mr. moon


I respectfully disagree. If you remove the pickup from my guitar, the performance is still there exactly as it was performed, but at a much lower volume, probably low enough not to be heard, but the realtime action of me hitting the exact notes remains. If you remove autotune from a vocal track which required the use of autotune to "correct" it, the performance that remains (without autotune) is not the same as the "corrected" performance, the notes are different.

Simply stated:
Me playing with/without pickup = same notes played, just not as loud without pickup
vocal track requiring autotune correction = different notes than original performance

See the difference?

-mr moon

Ok. How about reverb added to a track after a performance? The singer doesn’t actually have a Lexicon PCM91 in their larynx. So their performance was altered and enhanced electronically.

With respect to all parties involved, autotune is, I think, qualitatively different from ordinary electronic amplification and effects processors. Reverb, distortion, equalization, and other such things are typically used as "sweeteners," to improve or correct the efforts of the engineer, not to alter the music or the performance itself.

Badly-used autotune sounds, well, bad. It sounds fake and warbly and leaves unnatural artifacts, but so does badly-used reverb or compression or eq or whatever. But I don't think that's really the "big deal." Well-used autotune does not sound bad, in that sense. The big objection is more philosophical, I think.

Autotune moves a step closer to removing musicianship from the music-making process. This is not true of reverb or electric guitars. Autotune's ideal purpose is to do the music-making part of the job for singers who cannot actually sing the part. It's like all you have to do is find a looker with "star appeal" and never mind the musical talent or ability-- the computer will take care of that. This is not really true, obviously, but pop music has certainly been moving in that direction.

Also, autotune makes for lazy performers and lazy producers. "Fixing it in the mix" virtually never achieves results as good as actually capturing a great recording of a great performance. In this sense, it could be compared with mutitracking, reverb, punch-ins, etc. But using reverb to create the illusion that the singer was in a cathedral seems like a different thing from using autotune to create the illusion that the singer was singing in key. But maybe that's just me.

Finally, as I said above, I think that there are sometimes worse things than imperfect or "expressive" intonation. Using autotune to correct an obvious gaffe is a quick-and-easy cheat to fix something that's clearly broken. But using autotune to harmonically quantize any expressiveness or "imperfect" pitch gestures out of an entire performance is actually changing the substance of the musical content, I think.

ORIGINAL: yep

With respect to all parties involved, autotune is, I think, qualitatively different from ordinary electronic amplification and effects processors. Reverb, distortion, equalization, and other such things are typically used as "sweeteners," to improve or correct the efforts of the engineer, not to alter the music or the performance itself.

You make excellent points (as usual). I basically agree with you. I think that some of the Autotune bashing comes from the fact that people think it is "cheating" and they don't like it. Maybe it is cheating. The same could be said for using midi or other tools that allow you to edit and correct music.

Speaking only for myself here... my objective is to make a piece of music that I am happy with. I don't care if that means using midi, Beat Quantizer, Autotune, Melodyne, Vocal Align, Vocaloid, etc. I'll use the tools I need to get the job done.

Now, if using and/or abusing Autotune degrades the music, then that's another issue. But don't dismss it automatically because it is a useful tool, used appropriately.

ORIGINAL: ohhey
"What would you think if I sang out of tune, Would you stand up and walk out on me ?"

LOL!

ORIGINAL: ohhey

Yeah.. come to think of it, it's all cheating. How many classic rock recordings had backward cymbal crashes and lead breaks. It didn't sound the same when you saw them in concert. It was cheating. It made the band sound better then anything they could do live but my life would be poorer without those recordings. Sir George Martin is one of the biggest cheaters ever in the history of music but his productions took music to places it had never been before and thrilled us all.

"What would you think if I sang out of tune, Would you stand up and walk out on me ?"

IMHO, what you are addressing with effects like reversing tracks and such is artistic expression. You are merely adding effects to the original performance of the instrument/voice. Those tracks used for the cymbal hits and guitars were performed and not pitch corrected to be "correct" and in key. The original performances are preserved, but just colored or sweetened. Autotune (when used to "fix" a recorded voice or instrument that is flat or sharp) is used to modify the original notes and change them into something that the artist was not able to do themselves. THAT is cheating, to me anyways.

Anywho, I respect that some folks use Autotune for whatever they wish, so be it, I personally choose not to. Whatever works for you...

-mr moon