Pitch Correction Software - Opinions

[Straatocastoer]

Ok ... I am not a singer (and some 'vocalists' aren't either), so I am considering a pitch correction & tc/e tool -- but I don't know which one to pursue since my exposure and experience with these plugs is ZERO.

My concerns in order of priority:
#1> Ease of use - user friendly interface, intuitive pitch/key control, informative manual
#2> Musical Sounding - changing pitch broadly with retention of vibrato, slides, etc. without sounding too 'processed'
#3> Broad usage - effective on vocals, piano, guitar, harmonica, harpsichord, thumb piano, kazoo, etc.
#4> Price - c'mon guys (and ladies), let's not go nuts with some $1,000+ solution!

My initial inclination is to go with Melodyne cre8 because of its interface, although my decision is not made concretely. Looks very easy to use with the midi-styled keyboard, and the examples on the website sound nice -- that is if those examples are truly indicitive of the results one can reasonably expect with this product. I have seen some negativity toward Melodyne on these pages. Plus the fact it isn't RTAS (rather, it is ReWire capable) makes me flounder a bit.

Ok ... what do you think?

[Bazzle]

Antares Auto Tune 3 RTAS, relatively inexpensive,and appears to meet all your requirements

[Jonah]

Hi Straatocastoer
In my experience, these kind of tools should only be used ( if at all! )to tweak slight performance defects and definately not to patch up a bad vocal track. Say you've recorded a track that's got all the right feeling, mood, energy etc but one little bit the singer may have got a bit excited and sharped a note or two. Fine I reckon to keep the performance and tweak the mistake. But no pitch corrector in the world is going to make a poor performance sound like one that hasn't been processed to death. You hear them in the charts all day long and you can hear the processor knows more about singing than the performer. If you ain't no singer, spend your money on some singing lessons. You'll be amazed how much your voice can improve with a little coaching. If that still doesn't work for you, either keep practising or give it up. If you ain't gonna be a singer, don't waste time in trying to be one. Get some one else to do it. I ain't no violin player so I get people in.

But to answer your points in order ...
1. 'Intuitive pitch control' doesn't realy come into the picture as this suggests using a pitch corrector who's auto mode actually works. Again, in my experience auto mode is by definition non-intuitive, ie, it doesn't work over an entire track so you have to manualy tune each section of a bad vocal track, sometimes line by line. That takes ease of use out of the picture too coz if the whole track's bad, this is gonna take hours of painstaking work where you have to record a line back into the pitch corrector, grab bits of it and move them to a pitch graph, then re-record line by line into another track ( certainly in the case of Autotune anyway ).

2. They can sound reasonably musical if you mix a slightly faulty track in with a processed track but if you're singing really badly, you're gonna have to move sections so far in the pitch scale that you'll find it hard not to sound like Cher.

3. Why would you want to pitch correct instruments? They'll be in tune anyway, won't they?

My advice? Improve your own technique or get someone in.Otherwise you'll be spending money on something that's just gonna disappoint you.

Hope this is useful.

[Bazzle]

Jonah my friend.. while I agree that a good vocalist is the answer.I disagree that Auto Tune is hours of painstaking work,or that it gives everything the Cher effect.I use it all the time with great results.Of course you can over correct and end up sounding processed, but with a little tweaking of the Retune and Tracking settings it is virtually invisible IMO.And selecting the region and processing in Audio Suite takes seconds and can be undone as quickly if the results aren't satisfactory. .................No amount of pitch correction will make a bad vocalist better.But there is nothing wrong IMHO with fixing an otherwise good track that may or not be redone better.

[AxiomSSL]

I would have to agree with Jonah, just sing in tune. As well, money is better spent on vocal training than a plug-in.

Unless you have a great ass and nice breasts, sing in tune. I tune my bass!!!

[Straatocastoer]

Hey Jonah --- thanks for your input!

While I definately DO agree that these tools will not make a bad track good, it will help tune my tone deficient voice for my own projects. I am not a singer, but the music I write has vocals -- so I need to lay down reasonable vocal tracks for representation. Although it would be nice to spend the money on singing lessons, I have neither the time to spend at lessons nor the voice to become a vocalist. Actually, I don't WANT to be a vocalist -- just give me something with strings and let me play. But, I work by myself, and need to put vocals to some of my work.

Some of the music I record is in live situations where there is a lot of improvising going on. While this provides incredibly inspired music, it does also produce the occasional off note -- both in vocals and instrument playing. There are no retakes that can occur for some of these sessions, so I'd like to be able to offer up a good project where some of the misses can be reduced to slight intonational discrepencies

I am not looking for a machine that is going to make me into the greatest rock singer. I merely want something that can help improve what I am attempting to accomplish. You may not choose to believe this, but I consider myself somewhat of a purist when it comes to recording techniques -- I use very little (if any) synthesized sounds in my productions, I rely on accurate mic placement over processing a recorded track, I prefer to use very limited eq'ing, I use only enough dynamics processing to sweeten the mix but not squash it -- approaches such as these. I love the sound of the natural voice of people, strings, and skins and what happens when the right moment weaves a song out of mid-air.

My other consideration is for artists who want to use my facilities for demo production. They may not have the chops of a professional, but have music they want to produce -- or have the talent but not the money to spend an afternoon retaking vocal miscues. Anyway, I do know this is a service in which some potential clients will be interested.

[Bazzle]

Hi Straatocastoer....You should download the 15 day trial version of Auto Tune and make your own informed decision here

[Rail Jon Rogut]

AutoTune doesn't work really well for vocals recorded in a live situation... Usually the extraneous sound affects its pitch tracking.

Rail

[Jonah]

Hi Straatocastoer
I wasn't sure if you meant you were completely tone deaf and thought something like autotune might help! It's fine for tweaking etc as my per my last post and Bazzle doesn't find it as painstaking to use as I do so get yourelf a demo version and have fun! You can email me if you need any help in using it.
Sam

[Straatocastoer]

AutoTune doesn't work really well for vocals recorded in a live situation... Usually the extraneous sound affects its pitch tracking.

Do you have a recommendation of software that could work better than AutoTune when the tracks are cut live and perfect separation is a near impossibility? I have seen in past posts that you seem to be a big proponent of the Serato product. Is this perhaps more powerful when tracks have some bleeding going on? I assume that I can try to clean up tracks a bit if I need to use pitch correction, but again, I am completely new at using these tools.