Antares Autotune with bowed (arco) acoustic bass

[zop]

ProTools 11 with Antares Autotune 7
=======================
After scouring the web looking for help to get Antares Autotune to track and tune acoustic bass and failing to find help, including from Antares tech support, my engineer and I figured it out. I want to share it in case someone else has the same problem.

I needed to tune some arco (bowed) acoustic bass (upright bass, double bass) in Pro Tools but Antares Autotune wouldn't track the bowed bass notes well enough to be usable. For most of the notes, the red tracking line only encompassed about 50%-80% of a note's waveform, and the lowest notes had zero tracking (red line) or had numerous very short red lines with gaps between as if it chopped a low note into many pieces. The tracking was unusable.

What we tried that didn't help:

- unchecking "dynamic..." as Antares recommends on its site to improve tracking in general. BUT LEAVE THIS UNCHECKED; it's that just by itself it didn't help a bit.

- selecting Autotune's "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument" didn't help; horrible results

- selecting Autotune's "Saprano" worked well for notes detected but since Saprano doesn't span the low range, this is unusable (though interesting that it tracked way better than "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument")

What finally worked:

- selecting Autotune's "Low Male" AND reducing Autotune's "Tracking" to any number between 15-30 (we settled on 21 arbitrarily). Interestingly, this Tracking setting doesn't help "Bass Instrument" or "Instrument" at all.

It seems that a higher Tracking setting, e.g., 80 (or anything above 30 or 40) caused Autotune to detect a single low bowed bass note as a series of many little notes. And reducing Tracking to 15-30 caused Autotune to correctly track (with its red line) each bowed or plucked bass note (low or high). Thank goodness!

The tracking on the acoustic bass was so good with "Low Male" and Tracking at 21 that we even tried Autotune in its automatic mode for all 3 bass tracks for the entire take. It fixed sour notes without any artifacts or tone quality we could detect. So instead of just fixing some bits of sour bowed bass, we had Autotune auto tune all the bass. It worked so well we ran it on the bass on all the tracks!

Before discovering this, we robbed/copied notes that were more in tune and/or used Pro Tools Audio Suite's feature to raise or lower the 3 bass tracks in unison based on trial and error comparing the note to pitches on an electric piano. Tedious! By the way, Antares Autotune ran on all 3 bass tracks (2 mics and a DI) well without introducing phase problems.

Overall, this was a breakthrough. Instead of fixing just tiny sections of egregiously sour bass notes, we fixed all of the bass notes on all tracks -- and quickly!

Antares tech support's suggestion of trying "Bass Instrument" and "Instrument" flopped 100%!

Antares Autotune programmers need to polish/fix the apprarently bogus "Bass Instrumnet" and "Instrument" settings. I mean, come on, "Saprano" actually tracked many bass note fine but doesn't include the bottom range. Autotune's named source type setting is stupid.

Moral: before giving up on Antares Autotune with non-voice sound sources, try each of the 5 sound types even if you think some don't make sense for a track, AND try very low and very high Tracking numbers.

I hope this helps some poor souls struggling to fix sour acoustic bass notes. We spent way too much time (and some money) figuring this out.

[musicman691]

It would have been better to get the bass re-recorded with a better player (or have the player tune up the instrument). It's easy with an upright bass to not play in tune if the player is sloppy. Shouldn't have to 'fix in the mix' things like this.

[TOM@METRO]

As engineers we don't always have the final word as to who gets the job. But we are faced with fixing it regardless.

So... Thanks for the tips here, they may come in handy.

Of course, it's always preferable to get it right at the source when we can.

[Emcha_audio]

If you want to tune instruments, you're better off using Melodyne. In fact if you want a more transparent and natural tuning ability for anything, you're best to use Melodyne, if on the other hand you're after the Autotune effect, then even if you can do something similar in Melodyne, you're better off using Autotune. Depends on what you are after, but just putting out the option for the next time you might have something similar to do.

[nst7]

Autotune can be extremely natural sounding if you set it right. They've really improved it in the last couple of versions. That's part of the reason it has so much more inherent latency than it used to.

[Mark Dann]

I had given up on AT with version 6 (Evo). Too much latency, plus it had really started to sound like a parody of itself. However, I switched to Autotune Live, and it tracks FAR better than any version I have ever used (I started with AT in the late 90's). And only 1 sample of latency. I am a classically trained double-bassist, and it tracks my bass arco no problem. It also does a great job on fretless electric bass, using the bass setting. AT Live works great for certain things. I have been using Waves Tune on vocals for many years now, and that will not change. I HATE Autotune on vocals, lol. And I use Melodyne on some polyphony stuff, like violin/fiddle with double stops, slide guitar or dobro, etc. But AT Live on bass is pretty good.

[mesaone]

Not to hijack the thread, but this post got me thinking about a similar situation with Melodyne. Arco and falls are not handled the way they should be, and I'm hoping someone has some pointers to help avoid Melodyne's sometimes-clumsy interpretation of notes (splitting them inappropriately or having to rectify by an octave)

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by mesaone

Not to hijack the thread, but this post got me thinking about a similar situation with Melodyne. Arco and falls are not handled the way they should be, and I'm hoping someone has some pointers to help avoid Melodyne's sometimes-clumsy interpretation of notes (splitting them inappropriately or having to rectify by an octave)

Waves Tune.

[Bookerv12]

Originally Posted by musicman691

It would have been better to get the bass re-recorded with a better player (or have the player tune up the instrument). It's easy with an upright bass to not play in tune if the player is sloppy. Shouldn't have to 'fix in the mix' things like this.

That was a great post Zop.....

To the above poster,
In a perfect world, everyone would play in tune, and none of us would need to come here.
That would also be a very dull, boring world.

We work with some of the best players out there.
Occasionally, due to time constraints, bad days, whatever....
You get parts from great players that still need to be tweaked to fit the project.
The large stringed instruments typically require tweaking in a multi-track environment.
It's nice to have someone actually post success stories having to do with the tools.

[mesaone]

Tom, thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure it's a solution, since Waves Tune is a separate product.