Melodyne, Baby!

[cardell]

Y'all really ought to hear this; I'll see if there's a way to temporarily post an excerpt from a rehearsal or a bonus track.

I'd be interested in hearing before and after.

Stuart

[mojobone]

Here's an unfinished track from 2006; first version vocal is tuned with Melodyne, second version has only light compression and reverb. You'll notice that the bass and drums are different performances, but the piano and vocal are exactly the same, though the first version has tempo-related edits that didn't involve Melodyne. (and not all of them successful, as this track is unfinished and not slated for release at this time-basically, it's a worktape) All bass and drums were added after the fact, and for purposes of rhythmic and harmonic comparison. I deliberately chose a trainwreck to demonstrate Melodyne's possibilities, credit the fearless Ms. Julia Burns for her kind permission.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... tent=music

[cardell]

Thanks Mojo.

You've "over-sharpened" some of the blue notes and now they sound worse than the original, IMHO.
Sorry Mojo, I'm not being critical of you...just discussing the issue.

For example:
the word lie in the phrase...further from a lie...
and the word all in the phrase...when it all...

I've been tuning vocals [digitally] since before Auto-tune and Melodyne existed...in the manual days when you had to make the adjustments by ear. And, I've noticed that these auto type programs (at least in auto-mode) have trouble dealing with blue notes (which are obviously very prominent in The Blues and Jazz).

Stuart

[Len911]

Yeah, the wife and I had a discussion about whether to tell the clients.....

I'd just have them listen to all the tracks, tell them you've been editing them, applying different effects and such, and ask them which ones they preferred. It's not like you inserted someone else's voice. Of course morally, it might be a different story, I remember when I realized that the man who does the Alvin and the chipmunk's songs was actually just speeding up the tape and not actually singing like that,lol!! Oh well, that was years ago, and I've long since lost my "chipmunk" voice, thank goodness!

[mojobone]

Thanks Mojo.

You've "over-sharpened" some of the blue notes and now they sound worse than the original, IMHO.
Sorry Mojo, I'm not being critical of you...just discussing the issue.

For example:
the word lie in the phrase...further from a lie...
and the word all in the phrase...when it all...

I've been tuning vocals [digitally] since before Auto-tune and Melodyne existed...in the manual days when you had to make the adjustments by ear. And, I've noticed that these auto type programs (at least in auto-mode) have trouble dealing with blue notes (which are obviously very prominent in The Blues and Jazz).

Stuart

No harm, no foul; I'm interested in opinions, or I wouldn't post. I tuned all the notes (the ones I moved, that is) in context and almost none of the notes are corrected 100% to center; this because there's an awful lot of pitch drift that I mostly didn't mess with, no more than 40%, at most. (also because this singer, like Stevie Nicks, sings slightly flat almost all the time) I think there were one or two notes that I did 100% pitch center and 100% drift correct-and one was "lie", good ear!

You raise a very good point about blue notes; one of the most effective techniques in blues is bending a note almost_up_to_pitch, it creates tension and anticipation. I may have gone a little overboard, cuz I was havin' fun, heh. Next time I may just tune only the sharp ones....

The melisma makes it a bit difficult to know where and how far to move some things, I'm sure I'll get better at this, with practice. I haven't even delved into the manual mode much, as of yet.

Nearly every note was close enough to the intended pitch to be recognized as such in Melodyne; I moved only a couple of notes by a half-step or more, but I don't think they're obvious, what do you think?

[billg1]

hey mojo, I listened to them both a few times. I like the 1st opening verse of the 2nd much better, more "soul" to my ears but it may be due more to the general vocal treatment and not the lack of tuning, it's hard for me to tell. After the opening verse the performance falls apart quite a bit & there are still issues in the treated one that are pretty tough to get around. I know this was just posted as an example so what I'm about to say really isn't relative, but this just sounds to me like a perfect instance of when a better vocal performance/take is in order & i'm not sure that tuning would get the vocal where it needs to be . . . I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have a hard time separating the tuning issues from performance issues. Judging from how cool her voice sounds & how soulful the good parts sound my bet would be that she could deliver a better performance.

As far as tuning w/out the clients knowledge . . .

Other than if it were bg vox for someone else's project or a collab I would never want someone to alter my vocal performance without my knowledge so I wouldn't do it. I'm sure I'm in the minority but I would feel like it was dishonest. Whenever I work with someone else producing (whether playing bass or singing) I've always figured it was their job to get the best performance from me and I appreciate and respect the "let's take the 2nd verse again, you can do it better" kind of input . . . even if it means 10 takes (and it has!).

but I'm an old dog.

[feaker66]

I agree on both sides of the table. Yup cheating. Just a crutch, like midi to non players?

I tweek mine cause I can't get enough good ones in a row, and when I try again, I must not hold the mic in the same spot because it just sounds different? Be glad that you are young:)

My grandaughter of five years old was a little mic shy, but I talked her into singing a couple songs.

This was done without any start-up chord or direction for any key.

I could hear a few notes off and was going to just leave it alone.

Then I thought how much better it would sound if I added an acoustic guitar.( how am I going to do this)

I looked up the pattern in melodye and the closest I could see is that she was at least near the key of "E"

I tweaked all of the notes (sometimes a full note or more) to get to that key.

She did have a little cold, so don't associate the rasp in her vox on pitch correction.

I want you to see if you can hear anything fake here. I can't?

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_so ... D=10372344

Sincerely

Paul

[John Dunigan]

I love melodyne!

I had to move just one note in a slide guitar solo on a song, and so very easily moved it up about 37 cents to the right pitch without the sound getting distorted. The rest of the solo was good enough for me, so I didn't want to record a whole new take. That works for me even if it is cheating!

John

[shanegrla]

+1 for Melodyne here too! I've had the full version (Studio) for about 3 years now, and I also find it an absolute godsend. One thing, though: I pretty much never use the auto-correct feature. It almost always screws it up worse than the original, IMO. Even when I set the sensitivity down to around 80%. So I end up doing everything manually. Tedious, but I've always gotten better results that way personally.

An interesting thing I've noticed about it is that I often find myself initially thinking "Ok I'll just clean up one or two bad notes here and there and be done with it." But then, after getting into it, as I'm going along I always end up finding more and more bad notes! It's like the more I correct, the more fine-tuned my ear gets and I realize more needs to be corrected.

So be warned. It's awesome, but it can be dangerous!

But in a good way.

[mojobone]

Kind of points up the fact that singers and string players don't have equal temperament. (I mean that in both senses of the word, heh) Does the full version have just intonation/ variable temperament? I may want to upgrade, if so.