Melodyne ... Can it Replicate Live Vocal

Two things. However good Melodine is, you WILL get artefacts. Humans are so used to hearing real voices, the slightest artefact breaks the magic.

Harmonies created from a melody line will match too perfectly. Again, it sounds false simply because it is too perfect.


The trick to faking harmonies is to not do it... What I mean is, have a loose go at singing close to what you want, then use Melodine to tune it to the harmony you intended. You gain all the timing errors that differentiates between the voices, and you're minimising the tuning artefacts to help hide the fact that it is false.

Over processed digitally altered sound of any kind become unnatural to human listeners because it's not what we are used to hearing in the real world. The sound will always be wrong because of the way our brains work.
Hit a bell and everyone will envision a bell. Record the bell and change the pitch a little bit and most will still say  that's a bell. Change the pitch to much and people will go WTF is that?
 So you need to fool peoples ears into thinking they are hearing what your intending them to hear by applying just the right amount and never too much. If you push the limits then other acoustical treatments like reverb might mask it, but even that will fail eventually. 
Here in lies the danger of pitching tools like melodyne. They will work fine for small amounts of pitch change but things become strange beyond a certain point. 
I find you can use digital harmony if it's back in the mix and a little more reverb than I would like. For in your face dry vocals nobody and no software can fool the human ear.  
 
So what I sometimes do is try my best to sing that higher part as close as I can and then turd polish it with pitch correction. If I make a pitch mistake on a lead vocal, I re sing it,,, faster and much better results. I only use pitch correction on harmony and the odd client who keeps hittin the same wrong note. 

  

Karyn
The trick to faking harmonies is to not do it... What I mean is, have a loose go at singing close to what you want, then use Melodine to tune it to the harmony you intended. You gain all the timing errors that differentiates between the voices, and you're minimising the tuning artefacts to help hide the fact that it is false.
 

Anderton
All the harmonies in these songs were generated by Melodyne...judge for yourself if they’re convincing. If you think they are, I’ll tell you what I did to make them so. If not, I really don’t have anything else I can offer...I think they’re pretty convincing, though.
 

Thanks you Karyn and Craig.  
 
 
Karyn
I have in fact "faked" harmonies as you suggest, using Melodyne simply to tweak the pitch structure into the desired result. Sometimes I even record a harmony two or three half-steps lower (to get within my vocal range) make Melodyne adjustments,  then transpose back up to the proper key after which I adjust formant.  Seems to work OK.  
Craig,
I find the harmonies convincing as they exist with the rest of the voicing an instrumentation.  I really hear little artificiality.  Then again my 73 year old ears may not offer me the best judgement. I am curious how the harmonies sound when listened to as solo.  Of course that helps bring out the "robotic" nature  if is exists at all. I again watched the Berklee demo (gosh was that way back in March?) I think I am doing  things pretty much the way you demonstrated in that segment of the tutorial.
 
Please don't burden yourself but I would certainly appreciate any advise you are willing to share that makes the harmonies sound more convincing.  I sing in the 2nd bass to baritone range and sometimes find myself wanting to create Tenor Alto and Soprano  harmonies. Consequently  it may be that my chief issue lies in my trying  (using Melodyne) to move pitch as too  far up the scale ... an octave or maybe more.  
 
I've found some success in using Process:Transpose   to move the tune,  for example, to the nest higher octave. From there it at least seems somewhat more convincing to dial-in a female sounding vocal by using the formant tool. Does that make sense?    

All female harmonies are Melodyne generated.  Christian contemporary....as a *heads up*  These vocals are fairly exposed as well...iow you can really hear them...they're not heavily buried in the mix. I purposely didn't mess much with the format tool, as I was liking the difference from the main vocal.  Pretty much a learning curve for me on this tune as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gJXOAEVFPA

Oh, and one more thing...humans don't gravitate to even-tempered pitch but to just intonation. If you don't believe me, run an analysis on string ensembles and barbershop quartets, neither of which is constrained to even-tempered tuning. Often after creating a quantized harmony, I'll open it, turn off pitch grid, and make some slight adjustments to create what "sounds" right. 

Anderton
Oh, and one more thing...humans don't gravitate to even-tempered pitch but to just intonation. If you don't believe me, run an analysis on string ensembles and barbershop quartets, neither of which is constrained to even-tempered tuning. Often after creating a quantized harmony, I'll open it, turn off pitch grid, and make some slight adjustments to create what "sounds" right. 

I'm not terribly familiar with  what you are suggesting but I have found myself un-checking the Pitch Grid Chromatic Snap and making manual pitch adjustments.  

Craig's advice is on the money with attack and intonation. There are a lot of interesting tricks that can be played to keep focus on the melody (where it should remain) and the harmonies be supportive.
 
I honestly have not stress-tested this in great detail yet, but I do have a keen interest in this topic, as I have projects I want to give full choruses to similar to how done by Queen and Def Leppard... but the method used by them was actually recording the same phrase multiple times (in many cases over 200). The "Let him go" that hangs in Bohemian Rhapsody is actually Roger Taylor's falsetto (not pitch-shifted... that is truly him).
 
If you are open to such, post an unprocessed melody line (doesn't need to be long), and shoot me a PM on what you are looking for with the harmony and link to the file. This is something I would like to understand in better detail as well.

mettelus
If you are open to such, post an unprocessed melody line (doesn't need to be long), and shoot me a PM on what you are looking for with the harmony and link to the file. This is something I would like to understand in better detail as well.

I can probably figure out how to PM you or find an email address! I'l try and send you something tomorrow.    It'll part of an challenge to fix the awful True Love  tune I posted in the style of Elton John and Kiki Dee.  There is a part  I'll try to do (without FX etc) where each vocalist belts out  some blusey type stuff ...  in falsetto most likely.  I tried electronically  up'ping my voice and ocatve to get it to sound good but it (among many other less than good things in the piece I did)  it came out poorly.   I'll also send the version by Elton and Kiki  so you get the feeling as to what I would like to accomplish!    
 
By the way  several years ago I heard Bohemian Rhapsody done acapella live at the King Center in Melbourne Florida by the Ten Tenors of Australia.  I always thought the piece was extremely  intricate and very well composed but until it was introduced by the Ten Tenors I didn't know Queen  from white whale manure.  It is now one of my favorite pieces.