How To Use Autotune
Introduction
It occurred precisely 36 seconds into the tune—a glimpse of the form of pop to come back, a feel of the fabric of the long run we now inhabit. The phrase “I can’t break through” turned crystalline just like the singer instantly disappeared behind frosted glass.
That sparkly special effect reappeared within the next verse, however this time a robotic warble wobbled, “So sa-a-a-ad that you’re leaving.”
The tune, in fact, was Cher’s “Believe,” a worldwide smash on its October 1998 release. And what we had been really “leaving” was the 20th century.
The pitch-correction expertise Auto-Tune had been on the market for about 12 months before “Believe” hit the charts, however, its previous appearances had been discreet, as its makers, Antares Audio Technologies, meant.
“Believe” was the primary record where the impact drew attention to itself: The glow-and-flutter of Cher’s voice at key factors within the tune introduced its personal technological artifice—a mix of posthuman perfection and angelic transcendence superb for the obscure religiosity of the refrain, “Do you believe in life after love?”
Autotune adjusts and manipulates the pitch of a vocal track and is known for its use in standard hip-hop music. Whereas it might create a robotic, high-pitched voice, it can also regulate conventional singing voices and make them pitch-perfect.
If you wish to use autotune to edit the sound of a track, you are able to do so pretty simply. Sure audio enhancing software program like GarageBand has their personal auto-tune, while others require a plugin that might be bought and downloaded online.
Three main points of how to use Autotune correctly
Whatever the intent, in order for Auto-Tune to sound its finest, there are three principal issues that must be set appropriately:
The proper key of the tune. That is an important part of the method and truthfully the place most individuals fail. Bedroom producers, and even some engineers at skilled studios who would possibly lack certain music concept fundamentals, have all fallen into the trap of setting Auto-Tune within the wrong key.
If a tune is in C major, it won’t work in D major, E major, and many others.—though it will work in C major’s relative minor, A minor. No different key will work appropriately. It helps to educate yourself a bit about music concepts, and the right way to discover the key of a tune.
The input type. You will have the choice to select from Bass Instrument, Instrument, Low Male, Alto/Tenor, and Soprano. Bass Instrument and Instrument are, in fact, for instruments, so ignore them if you’re going for a vocal effect.
Low Male can be chosen if the singer is singing in a really low octave (think Barry White). Alto/Tenor might be for the commonest vocal ranges, and soprano is for very high-pitched vocalists.
Setting the input type appropriately helps Auto-Tune narrow down which octaves it should give attention to—and you will get an extra accurate end result.
Retune speed. This knob, whereas vital, is actually all depending on the pitch of the input source. Generally speaking, the higher the knob, the quicker it should tune each note.
A slower pace can have the effect be a bit extra relaxed, letting some pure vibrato through without affecting a vocalist’s pitch as quickly. Some view it as an “amount of Auto-Tune knob,” which is not technically true.
The quantity of correction you hear is predicated on the unique pitch, however, you’ll hear extra effects of the Auto-Tune the quicker it is set.
Three Vocal Tuning Methods
Vocal Tuning Method #1 – Set and Forget (EDM Tracks)
“Nightmare” by Pyramind Alum The Ghostwriterz, a female vocalist sings in a delicate style of how she’s going to destroy her “ex”. The smooth vocals and the rage beneath are crazy, as the old adage says “hell hath no fury as a woman scorned”. If she had been my ex, I’d be having nightmares too.
Her performance is nice – strong and emotive – however not perfect. Since changing the singer OR getting her to make 1000 takes for enhancing isn’t at all times practical. So, the next-best factor is to “repair” the vocal.
Enter Auto tune Realtime Advanced.
Because the title suggests, this tool is designed to behave in real-time – you’ll be able to simply place this on any input channel of your audio interface console input type path and tune the vocals “to tape”! For our purposes, because the vocal is pre-recorded, we’ll simply repair it.
Within the default view, there are only four knobs. Actually – it doesn’t get a lot easier. Two of those knobs are going to cover about 80% of the job and the other 2 may not even get used.
The default also assumes you haven’t any idea about music theory, pitch, key, or something of the type. It defaults anticipating that any note can (and will) be corrected and that all notes are legitimate.
Vocal Tuning Method #2 – Time for Robots! (Trap|Dubstep Tracks)
“Bioshock” by Pyramind Alum DJPJ (Booty Drop Records), a male rapper drops bombs through the verse.
Since there’s no actual “singing” right here, the question needs to be asked – “why trouble with Autotune”? Because of Robots. That’s why.
So the concept struck me – what occurs if you happen to stack ATRA one after the other to actually mess with the pitch? Could you create robots?
While enjoyable, this effect didn’t give me fairly what I wished. Nevertheless, I might see the worth in doing it for pesky notes that wanted more than one “washing” with Autotune Realtime Advanced. But it surely didn’t give me robots so I went further.
Utilizing the identical pitch correction method, we see that the relative pitch of the rapping began on the note “E” and slowly moved up to “G”. So I chose a note in the center – “F” – and set the keyboard to ONLY permit that note through.
Vocal Tuning Method #3 – Singing! (RnB/Pop)
Listed here are some beginning factors you can use, however, please be aware that you will have to regulate them to taste for each vocal track. What’s needed will change every time!
For a purposefully over-dramatic use of the effect like Cher or T-Pain, set the retune speed and flex tune speeds to zero. This may snap the notes instantaneously to the pitches they need to be at. Set the humanize knob to the maximum and scale back pure vibrato as much as you possibly can.
This may trigger the vocals to sound like a synthesizer. You can also make it much more dramatic by purposefully singing off-pitch when recording. You have to be close however nowhere close to perfect in order to make the plugin actually put in the work to re-pitch every note.
For the current expectation for pop and country music, strive to set the retune speed around 5 ms to 15 ms, with barely any flex tune. Just a little bit is nice to maintain the track sounding reasonable.
What you may find yourself with is a pitch-perfect track but one that does not “snap” quickly to the notes so it nonetheless sounds like a human performance.
There are a number of tools to begin with right here and we’ll describe them briefly from left to right:
- The Line Tool is used to draw multi-segment lines on the pitch correction graph. It’s usually used while you need to maintain a straight pitch or bend evenly from one pitch to another.
- The Curve Tool is used while you wish to free-hand draw in pitch correction. We personally discover this one fairly tough to make use of.
- The Note Tool is used to draw notes. These are constrained to particular pitches and can’t differ from them. We have a tendency to make use of these more often than the line tool.
- The Arrow Tool is essentially the most commonly used tool, as it’s how you choose and edit present lines or notes.
- The Scissors tool is used to chop present lines or notes into separate items for individual enhancing. We usually use this when notes or lines have been generated robotically and must be separated.
- The Magnifying Glass is used for zooming. Merely click on and drag a field around what you wish to zoom into, and release to zoom.
- The I-Beam Tool is used to pick out a space of time for use edit within or generate information between. That is additionally a generally used tool.
- The Hand Tool is used to maneuver the display. Click on and hold on a space of the display screen, after which drag the screen to space you wish to see. We discover the scrolling features on apple mice work fairly nicely for this similar function, so this one doesn’t get used a lot.
This is why your Auto-Tune would not sound like the professional:
The pitch correction of the vocalist previous to Auto-Tune processing has to be close enough to a note within the scale of the key of the track for Auto-Tune to work at its finest. In different words, the singer needs to be at least close to the fitting note for it to sound pleasing to the ears.
Whether or not you are going for a pure correction or the T-Pain warble, this point nonetheless stands. If the note the singer initially sings is nowhere close to the proper note in the key, Auto-Tune will attempt to calculate as best it could actually and round up or down, relying on what note is closest. And that is when you get undesirable artifacts and listen to notes you were not anticipating listening to.
So in the event you put Auto-Tune on a voice and a few areas sound good, some sound too robotic and a bit off, these are the areas that the singer must work on. Typically it may be tough for non-singers to listen to slight sharp or flat notes, or notes that are not within the scale of the track, so Auto-Tune in lots of instances can really help level out the issue areas.
This is the reason major artists who use Auto-Tune sound actually good because chances are high they’ll sing fairly well before Auto-Tune is even utilized. The Weeknd is a good example of this—he’s clearly a really gifted singer that has no downside hitting notes—and yet his go-to mixer, Illangelo, has said before that he all the time makes use of at least a little bit of Auto-Tune on the vocals.
Conclusion on How to Use Pitch Correction Plugins
Hopefully, this is sufficient to get you begun in Auto-Tuning and has shed some light on the mysterious world of tuning. Truthfully, Auto-Tune has saved so many projects from bankruptcy, and allowed hundreds of productions to maintain superb performances, that previously would have been carried out over, and over, and over, and over once more, till lastly in key.
Did anybody occur to consider the feeling, or emotion, left in a recording that an artist just completed singing for the 150th time? Sure, it might lastly be completely in tune, however, is the emotion of the singer nonetheless represents the preliminary idea of the tune and convinces all of the listeners that this can be a happy tune.
We believe Elvis left the building about 145 takes back. My point is, if a take sounds and feels nice, but has somewhat pitch issues right here and there, it’s worth tuning vs. beating the life out of a part till it’s carried out technically correctly.
No matter if you will go for the corrective use of autotune to improve the quality or if you will go for the robotic outcome, this is the right tool to address those changes. There are a bunch of variations and other plugins that you can use and many of them will also have the job done perfectly.
At this point, that will be your personal preference regarding which plugin you will use. The important thing is that you need to learn how to use auto-tune plugins and not go around wondering if you did the job right or not.
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