5 VOCAL TUNING MISTAKES (How to Use Melodyne)

[@celemony]

Great video, thanks a lot! One tip for the melisma note in bar 47: if you split the note into even more chunks, it is much easier to get the melisma under control and tune even the slightest bits. Keep up the good work!

[@joseenriquezdomingo1453]

Ko

[@BillGraper]

Yes!!! I was thinking the same thing. The one thing that's making the vocal sound a little messy it the part where it goes down, right before it goes up a half step. I was waiting for him to make another split & then straighten up the dip before it goes up to the F. That would make a world of difference in that part.

[@stephencarter8625]

Ditto - that blob needed splitting into three!

[@heavymetalmixer91]

Even if we wanted to pitch correct any vocal there's still a limit, and that limit is set by the performance, so the singer still needs to do his/her best and the end result will sound the best too (less mistakes to fix = better sound).

[@masteringcom]

Agreed!

[@Scott65J]

I'm a monster to work with....make the vocalist(s) do SO many takes lol

[@heavymetalmixer91]

They don't know what they're in for :v

[@pembertonsmithmusic1986]

There is so much to learn with Melodyne, never even heard the word melisma before. Thanks for the video

[@jjd9083]

Hi Rob - thanks for the vid. Very timely as I'm actually using Melodyne today to tweak a bunch of vocal harmonies that I've comped :) All good tips but I'd like to offer a different POV on the idea of using multiple takes - a different take , so to speak. I've taken this approach quite a bit in the past and of course it does get results. However, it has a few drawbacks, of which I'll mention two -1) You spend A LOT of time picking between the elements of multiple takes and 2) It happens from time to time that in one or more sections NONE of the vocal take cuts it. When this happens you may need to do some pretty radical surgery to make it work. That's not only time consuming, but quite an art to get it sounding natural. An alternative approach that I often prefer to use is as follows:- - Singer comes in all warmed up an ready to go (of course they do ;). - Get all you levels etc on the mic, good headphone mix levels for the singer and be aware that how the singer is placed in relation to the mic effects the tone. (How high the mic is set in relation to the singers face; distance singer is from mic; whether they are facing square to the mic or slightly offset to one side or the other - all of these things effect the tone and are details well worth paying attention to in relation to the qualities you want to capture in the singers voice in the particular context of the song you're working on) - Do two full takes (yes - only two!) - The singer comes out of the booth and together you do a quick rough comp. In sections where neither of the takes cuts it, leave a muted section as a place-holder. - send the singer back into the booth to do sections that didn't make the cut. Just keep on doing takes of each of the sections until you're basically happy with one. In this fashion go through the entire song filling in those sections with muted place-holders. You may also decide that a previously comped section can be done better and redo that too. - the end result is a roughly comped complete track, ready to do more detailed edits and auto-tuning. This process takes a little more of the singer's time but overall saves a lot of time because you don't spend hours pouring over the finer points of multiple takes doing the comping etc. Of course it depends on the person but I've found that most singers respond really well to getting this engaged with the process of making a good comp and as they go back and work on the sections become quite focussed on achieving the result they'd like to hear. I like to start with only two full takes because it makes doing that quick comp with the singer much easier and quicker. With some singers I might do three but, be warned, having more than two takes slows the process down! Another approach that I've been taken through (this time as a singer) was simply going through section by section until we had the section nailed. I still prefer starting with a couple of full takes because it gives you a sense of the song as a complete thing. When you go back and focus on the sections, you're doing the section in the context of the whole narrative. Anyway - hope that made sense; I've gotta get on with nuancing some vocal comps with Melodyne now. Ironically, since I'm moving house and between studios I took the four singers to another studio and, with my time being cheaper than the studio's, we just went in and did multiple takes! I've been paying for this by spending way much more time than I'd like compiling takes... Thanks Rob for always being so generous with your knowledge and experience. I learn heaps from you :)

[@josefb7449]

This is amazing advice! Thanks, will definitely try this for my next project :)

[@Jobobaboss]

Thank you man, i’ve baught melodyne a week ago because my trial has expired and the program just felt great and sweet to use and manipulate the vocals with. I have lots of ideas and am desperate for technical knowledge to put that on to my computer. I still need to learn a lot and this definitely helps me as a beginner to maybe get somewhere. Thank you and thank you Melodyne

[@eduardonelali]

Perfect! I work the same way! But Cubase's variaudio give's you more agility with the tools, more control, with almost any artefacts and you can use it quickly even before comp to help to choose the best take for that sillable. In fact you just helped me to continue using Cubase. Anyway, very good job! I'm happy to see I already work like you and by the way clients are very happy.

[@masteringcom]

Nice!

[@cbaldeon]

I used Melodyne before. But when I started using Cubase, I found that variaudio could handle tunning very well. Since then, I use variaudio heavily with great results.

[@francisbawasanta6310]

Same. I kind of wish we could sell our licenses as I spent a pretty penny on Melodyne a while back. I've been happier with VariAudio in Cubase.

[@eyeque7]

Variaudio sounds better than melodyne :( shame I don’t use cubase anymore, I miss it.

[@amkmu5ic]

Tips #3 and #4 Using a single take is tempting, but multing is the right way to do it. Agree 100%

[@IdleAcheiver]

Logic has its built in flex pitch feature. It’s pretty good

[@moneloxakshay1054]

But there are a lot of artifacts. Melodyne's more better

[@kgmessier]

14:34

[@DavidRosario69]

I'm a Studio One user, which comes bundled with a stripped down Melodyne. I upgraded to a more complete version of Melodyne but still find Cubase's built-in VariAudio to be more featureful, flexible, and convincing. I will literally sometimes export a project to Cubase just to edit the vocal and then continue in Studio One.

[@masteringcom]

Whatever works for you is the most important thing!

[@francisbawasanta6310]

Same. I've had melodyne since 2.8 and I never became comfortable with the process until I bought Cubase and they added VariAudio. I do like the tips in this video though as I recognize all those mistakes and I still do them =) It's still good to see other peoples process.

[@naldosrecords]

Love your saying "Create Regardless"..Think that needs to be a T-shirt

[@schoontube]

This is quite informative and interesting. Excellent job (as usual). That said, I wouldn't want to do this with home recording, due to the large effort in learning the software as well as the amount of time it takes to do such fine editing. Probably the Logic Pro automatic level is the most I would ever consider for home recording. I suppose if your ambition is to produce something that will be heard on the "radio", it's what you have to do... If you're going to use a professional studio, be sure to set expectations with the engineer up front, and if you decide to correct tuning, make sure the engineer really knows what they are doing and are quite facile with the software; otherwise, you could spend a lot of time/money on fine-tuning. Lastly, I think it's rather sad that our expectations for vocals have reached such a level of perfection. Maybe that's why all pop vocals essentially sound the same these days.

[@sabinajoh]

I got melodyne essential for free when I upgraded Acid pro and it’s been fun I’ve also noticed that it’s in general great for removing breathes and other background noice really seamlessly

[@DipTunes]

Very well explained . Thanks 👍

[@rogerweafer2179]

Johnny Cash said that he must have done 80 TAKES (probably half that but still) on "Folsum Prison" and they didn't have any of THIS available,so that was just to get THE one! Thanks ,I was beginning to think I was the only lazy vocalist.

[@the_jaydude]

FYI Logic Pro X has a manual pitch correction tool as well: Flex Pitch.

[@blaqtora6693]

That intro was beautifully mixed and mastered.

[@Iliour_Griften]

Thanks for this video... I' m new melodyne user and these tips opened my eyes! Thanks a lot!!!

[@masteringcom]

Awesome! Good luck!

[@ronylussari]

Thanks a lot for the tips man! Cheers from Brazil.

[@officialWWM]

Love yoooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

[@masteringcom]

You toooooooooooooooooooooooooo ❤️

[@officialWWM]

@@masteringcom 😂🤣

[@CommishsPlace]

What a godsend! Thanks for such a great tutorial!

[@ccuny1]

I wished I'd picked this video a year ago when it was posted. Thanks a lot for the concise and really helpful tutorial.

[@KaruveliRaSaMahendran]

Thank you for the tips.. Multi takes or recording at perfect pitch is most perfect way to start project.. Tools should be used for enhancement of performance.. :) Tools also saves many artist performance..

[@hov3rtronic686]

One correction. Pitch drift at zero percent is not normal, Pitch drift at 100% is corresponds to the original audio. Same applies for pitch modulation. See 4:57 if you dont know what I'm talking about

[@taruhmei]

Thank you so much🙏🙏🙏🙏, sir I really needed this tutorial.

[@RaymondPoston]

Another grerat video. I also use Melodyne. To me, it's the best software ever for vocal or even some instruments.

[@wesleyhendricks153]

Hey...thanks for the tips. I must agree with you that Melodine is very good software to use for pitch correction and to get that natural vocal sound.

[@McMillanScottish]

I learned all of these on my own, but it was good to get some confirmation… And yes, I use Melodyne.

[@BillGraper]

I love Melodyne! I have Editor, so it allows me to pitch correct my guitar as well. When I fret my strings, the notes go out of tune a lot. I use melodyne to put them exactly where they should be, which makes the guitar part sound so flawless. I even did that with heavy distortion. It somehow got most of the notation correct & I just made a subtle change. BTW, if you want to use the automated correction tool on the entire vocal or guitar, you don't have to highlight anything. If you don't highlight everything, it'll automatically correct the entire thing. I only highlight when I just want to correct one or a few notes.

[@masteringcom]

Nice one!

[@hlqa7938]

Thanx bro! Great content here =)

[@edmoss2020]

Thank you , great video

[@SimonTebbenhamMusic]

I find Waves Tune really nice to work with, or maybe it just feels nicer having spotted it on a Black Friday $29 deal ?!

[@SimonTebbenhamMusic]

Seriously though, j find the ability to draw where you want the tuning to go pretty good as well as the vibrato function. I haven't used Melodyne enough to know if it's easy to do that do but I don't think so

[@NateCooperino]

One mistake I used to make was copying and pasting every note 12x, one for each semitone and it just sounded horrendous

[@islandreamspro]

Excellent Job... Just a question... Why you don't want cut the waveform to follow the vibrato graph, cos the vocal is actually trying to sing a note but Melodyne transfer it to a straight line instead of following the vibrato graphs and then use the vibrato tool to curve the vocal slur pitch nicely and it still going to sound natural. Thank you.

[@TheLenbus]

Cool topic and nice video, but what you showed here, could have easily been crunched to less then half of the length 🤔

[@KISHORRAWATofficial]

Very good

[@miguelcolmenares3134]

If you could, it would be awesome if you did one on the Antares Auto-Tune too!

[@thimovijfschaft3271]

I can't stop laughing at the UUUUUuuuuuuuUuUUUUUUuuuuuuoooooooiiiiiOOOIIIIUUUUU when you are are adjusting the tuning

[@thimovijfschaft3271]

It sounds like a bloody mosquitto

[@quasima2nez]

Thanks, I just bought melodyne. One question... Would recording vocals at 96khz rather than 44.1khz give smoother edits in melodyne.?

[@MaferLabastida]

Hi, great video thanks for the advices! maybe you could help me with this problem I have. .. Well, when I finished editing vocals in "melodyne plug - in for logic" , I need to open the session again to do some final corrections, but I noticed that's when melodyne starts doubling the track on this final corrections..I mean, sounds like doubled vocals, I found some other people having this same problem.. Do you know what could be?

[@akashired]

Hello! Thanks for the video I have a question: I am using a stack of tracks, and I insert all the plugins directly to the buss, but now I want to use Melodyne only on one specific track (among this stack of tracks), so if I insert the Melodyne plugin on top of my track's plugin list, will it be considered by Logic as the first one ? Given that the plugins in the buss starts at the n°2 position

[@jerryricks8389]

I've used pitch tools in Cubase to create harmony vocals. But I would gouge my eyes out if I had to work that hard on a lead vocal. Easier to just make the vocalist do three takes and composite. They better get it right in three takes. Guitar solos, however, I take more pity on.

[@DJ-LEWINE]

My vocals are always very good, but i spend hours to do all aligning and tuning manually. For me this is the pro way.

[@AkshayKumar-sd1mx]

Thanks a lot

[@rhythmjones]

ReaTune does this as well.

[@rangerarmonika]

Many ,,musicians'' nowadays become famous when they make mistake #1. By the way, some DAWs have a possibility for nice manual tuning the vocal without using 3rd party plug-ins.

[@MCP1BEME]

Is there any advantage of using Stereo Chorus on the Vocal Track?? I noticed that you do not have a Video that involves any Chorus on the vocal track. I ask this because I have a Vocalist coming over that said that I need to a setup so he can us his Stereo Chorus pedal on his vocals. But I tried to tell him that I have the TC Helicon Harmony G XT Vocal processor that gives a great Doubling effect. Any remarks will be greatly appreciated.

[@TheGRider56]

Can Logic flex pitch do the same thing?

[@jefftravilla]

I really liked the idea of Flex Pitch when I first played with it. The manual controls over the drift seemed awesome, the UI was nice, and not having to bounce the tracks into Melodyne seemed like a big workflow improvement. But the damn crackles and pops. No matter what I did with my processor settings, they wouldn’t go away and rendered the tuned vocal completely unusable. So it was back to Melodyne for me. It can take a pretty hard beating before losing its musicality.

[@TheGRider56]

I have had many of the pops and crackles as well. Does anyone know what causes them in Flex pitch?

[@ShaktiChanchal]

I usually autotune on Headphones and when i hear it on Speakers it doesn't sound like i did tune it. what and why is that

[@sleepsmilemusic]

Just sing in tune

[@Gusrikh1]

Very interesting

[@Leenskes]

literally screaming at my screen "just cut it dude!" why didnt you at first? @ 4:36 you could have made 2 cuts at where the curve is at and then correct pitch automatically and it would probably have worked perfect all being on the same note.

[@yawns3004]

How did you get the track to play in melodyne at 7:50?

[@santimaspons]

The problem is not to cut the f note at 47

[@Mattargeetar]

Love youWHOOoooOoOoOooo

[@titovalasques]

. . ove youWHOOoooOoOoOooo

[@victorenock]

thaaankz

[@michasekua4642]

Hey guys please help :( i don't have "correct pitch macro" button... I have Melodyne 5 (.v5.0.1.00).. I mean button like in 2:48... Please help :(

[@princekingston1426]

Is Newtone from Fl studio good??

[@asdkpl]

Yea! im using newtone and its very good and you can do almost exact same things

[@CRASS2047]

That you, I feel should be 3 different notes.

[@scivirus3563]

Thats build in cubase

[@officialWWM]

I preferred the untuned sound :/

[@georgyj111111]

Still room for improvement.......

[@PetrisonRocha]

Comp away indeed, but Jesus, 20 takes is just too much.

[@danielfilipepro]

6:14 well... i quit :)

[@soulstalgiarecords77740]

Meaning? For me I don't hear a difference with that comparison, but that could just be me.

[@thimovijfschaft3271]

Best tip out there: Instead of correcting it, just record you vocals over and over again until it sounds perfect

[@jessepitcherband]

Thimo Vijfschaft that is a terrible “tip”. By the time you’ve got that pitch perfect take, fatigue will have drained the vocalist of any ability to emote and your performance will be utterly flat and lifeless. You can comp for performance and then correct pitch, but you can’t edit emotion into a dull performance because your vocalist was desperately focusing on just not singing a single bad note

[@ThongdeeTHOR]

Waste time

[@alexovich95]

you dont know how to use it already maaaaaaaaaaaaaan

[@DerEchteBold]

Any kind of pitch-correction crap for vocals is unacceptable, goodbye.

[@thirfytash7286]

If you listen to any music made in the last few years the singer you think is not autotuned has been autoruned sorry to burst your bubble.

[@DerEchteBold]

Uhm... did I say anything different? And how do you know what I think? Maybe you should think before you type, how's that?! Of course most of the producers do this and that's why all their crap sucks! Maybe it's possible to use it in such a subtle way that it would be unnoticeable but if that's the case, all these people really suck at what they're doing, cause I notice it in almost any recent stuff. The technology should get better, that's what technology does ...but somehow they manage to make vocal production worse and worse, maybe it's not just pitch-correction, they seem to use other things like compressor/limiter stuff and chorus, or whatever effects are used on vocals, in a way to make 'em just sound horribly artificial. Sometimes it's so insufferable, I have to turn it off, because it's close to causing me physical pain. But there are still people who would never use something like auto-tune ...not many probably but they're still here.

[@thirfytash7286]

It's used on every artist even the acoustic artists that people believe it's not being used on

[@thirfytash7286]

And also compression and limiters have been used on vocals for decades it's just become a loudness war nowadays so the dynamics are gone

[@IdleAcheiver]

DerEchteBold 90% of music made in the last 10 years or more is auto tuned. No matter the genre. Rock, pop, rap (singing in rap songs), or country. It’s all auto tuned, even if it doesn’t make it sound fake or obvious. It’s all for mixing purposes, and just general final touches. Anyone uses auto tune anymore me from Adell, to Tyler Joseph of Twenty One Pilots, to Lady Gaga, to AJR, to Brandon Urie of Panic! At the Disco. They all use auto tune even if it isn’t used to make them sound like they’re hitting the notes, or make them sound like they can sing when they actually can’t. Most times it’s just used to make it fit with the genre, mix, tones, and more. Auto tune is just a standard in production that doesn’t really make it sound bad, fake, or unrealistic. It just makes it fit better with many many factors of specific songs.

[@bjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbjbj]

Here a year later to point out you didn't set the key in the stock PitchCor plugin so it wasn't really a fair representation of the plug.