Melodyne Video Tutorials

Celemony sent me an email linking a new video tutorial on timing edits. It was quite good. I normally use AudioSnap for this, but next time I'll try it in Melodyne and see if it's as quick and easy as A/S. I've used Melodyne to tighten up double-tracked parts and harmonies, but only to move whole notes, not for changing inflection within a note.

So I spent a while watching the other videos there, some of which I'd not seen before. Although they're introductory-level and aimed new users, I picked up a couple techniques I either didn't know about or had forgotten about.

I find AudioSnap overly obtuse and quirky for its intended purpose and rarely use it the way they show you in the videos. However, one thing it does do very conveniently is let you manually line up vocal tracks for double-tracking and harmonies.

Say I've got a lead vocal that I've double-tracked. I enable A/S on both tracks but usually don't actually edit the main part, just the double. Having the transients displayed adjacent to the double makes it easy to see where the two aren't in agreement. Then it's just a matter of dragging the transient markers in the double to line up with the main track. 

Most of the time, all you really need to line up are the start of a phrase and the consonants. Variations in the vowels just add richness. 

AudioSnap is easier to use in this capacity than Melodyne, which does not make transients and "S"s as easy to identify. OTOH, Melodyne does so much more that it would be nice to do it all with one tool in one go.

And that's really the extent to which I edit vocals for timing. If a word drags out too long, or there are three harmonies all ending at different times, I can usually fix that with volume envelopes. Beyond that, I actually prefer to hear a little slop. After all, we're humans! Why we aspire to be robots beats the heck outa me.

I have not used audio snap in sonar,,,, however, I have used the audio stretch, shrink, and more in Melodyne. 

I had a sax note at the end of a song that was too short.....it needed stretching on a hold.... it worked excellent. 

I have also used the move a note where perhaps I was early or late to the note..... melodyne let me drag it right where it needed to be.  

You can also use it to edit out notes, breath noises, etc.....

I have also used it to separate the notes, also change the pitch curve in the note, and more.... it is a very useful tool. removing the pitch variations is one of the most useful things that I have found....since I tend to overuse vibrato and ME allows me to take it out to where it sounds decent.

As was pointed out in one of the videos, it will sometimes connect 2 different notes into one. It's easy to split it out and move each where it should be....editing the internal parameters of the note to keep the result totally natural sounding. 

I love that thing.

I've found AudioSnap to be flakey and prone to giving me weird artifacts.  Melodyne is better, but still not perfect IME.  For me, the only thing that works well for correcting timing is manually cutting up clips and moving them around, slip editing, crossfading, etc.  Time consuming but worth it. 
 
I may have to experiment more with Melodyne's timing tools, but of course its pitch correction is brilliant.
 
Cheers,
Eddie