Pitchy Vocals? Try This

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If you encounter a pitchy singer in your studio, do you know how to fix it? There are three things you can do to help improve the singer's pitch, and I lay them out for you in this video.
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[@HomeStudioCorner]

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[@PerryNunley]

Embarrassing Story: Singing live with a band I never played with before. It's a good thing they were so good at improv because I opened with my tune and suddenly drew a complete blank on the lyric. Not just a little bit... I mean a total loss. Absolutely NO recollection of even the first phrase. The band was graceful and just grooved along in the key and tempo I started in for about 3 or four minutes until I finally gave up and moved on to a different tune. And just to double down on the embarrassment factor, it was my own stoopid song I spaced the lyric on. -- Thanks Joe !!

[@jeffbrannon3605]

One technique I discovered years ago which really helps with my own pitchy vocals, is to get an early practice take, pitch correct it with melodyne, then turn this pitched corrected version quite quiet in the mix. Then sing a proper take, which strangely is much less pitchy. Then delete the original pitch corrected vocal take.

[@karlhenriksvensson]

I do a version of this where I lay down all backing vocals and doubles first including a scrap take off the lead. Then pull all of them further back before laying the real lead vocal takes.

[@jeffbrannon3605]

@@karlhenriksvensson I’ll try that with my next track. Cheers.

[@marcbrault]

"Simply take one ear off"... I use in-ear and recently, experience taught me that if I unplug one side (right works best for me) my pitch is much better and there's no bleed since that side is unplugged. Works a treat in my case.

[@CLKSWD]

DUDE A FREAKING GOAT, sending love from Cali 🌴. This dude is literally a clutch demon this video came out perfect timing.

[@Detroitdogg]

I played in my first band when I was fourteen. The first time we played live I broke the high E string on my guitar . Instead of continuing the set playing "Keith Richard's style" (which I didn't learn about until years later), I stopped playing and tried to get the rest of the band to stop the song because "I couldn't play with a broken spring!" It never dawned on me that this might happen, so I never carried new strings with me. Luckily, we were playing in a Battle of the Bands, so a friend from another band loaned me his guitar. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it was woefully out of tune so we sounded terrible for the rest of our set. Learned a couple of valuable lessons that night about playing live. No matter what happens (1) NEVER STOP PLAYING UNTIL THE SONG IS OVER and (2) ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP PLAN.

[@BradWiebe]

HAD to pause right after your invitation to share an embarrassing moment! My first paid recording gig was to record a choir concert on location. I’d done a few choirs, but didn’t have as strong a command of my software as I should have. The daw I was using let you set a wide variety of sample rates for recording. I’d accidentally set it at 8Khz. I didn’t realize until I went to edit at home that recording was trash. I occasionally see one of the members of that choir and I can never look him in the eye. 😊

[@cuadroplastico4047]

Joe, you ate great and funny, too. Clear as a bell. I have learned so much thanks to your videos and fantastic explanations. I do not think there is anyone else on the Web teaching this stuff this crystal clear. BTW, the same thing happened to me in school with my singing. Thanks a million, man!

[@br1an_b]

10:13 Oftentimes when I’m doing this as a vocalist, I like to have a happy medium by just having the ear cup be slightly off my ear-just enough to be able to hear myself in the room, but not enough to completely lose the mix in that ear. That way, it’s less jarring to my ears and glues everything together, plus you reduce the possible risk of capturing any bleed from the headphones. When I do this, it puts the mix at roughly 75% of its normal level so that I can hear my voice acoustically and maintain more of the L/R balance. Some in-ears even have pass-through microphones that let you hear your surroundings, much like how AirPods Pro and other Bluetooth earbuds let you enable Transparency Mode while you’re listening to stuff. This can be helpful as well (sort of a digital substitute for open back headphones).

[@TheRuben_music]

Thanks! I really need to learn this! As a singer and self-recorder it is SO hard to choose my own "best takes".

[@lozreeve2780]

Couldn't agree more.... no matter how much I practice, the recording never sounds as good as rehearsal!! I'm used to rehearsing with amplification but when it comes to recording the vocals are very dry and I sound (and sing) different.

[@julianmejia7833]

I've found that the phase of the mic in relation of what we hear in our heads tends to be inverted. If you flip it, you'll generally gain bass.

[@JoeMama410]

I was recording two songs in a studio. My pitch is somewhere barely north of passable already, and I had a cold, so we used Auto-tune. After a good take on the second song the engineer played it back and I sounded like Peter Brady in Time to Change. I nearly imploded in shame before we realized the engineer had Auto-tune set for the key of the first song.

[@TimE_5150]

Great stuff Joe as usual! Thank you. Embarrassing story for me was my band and I were playing a show and during one of the songs, may have been the first or first out of a break, someone was off and as we were playing I was looking around to the rest of the band giving the stink eye to the guitarist and thinking he was out of tune. Turns out it was my keyboard transposed by three semitones! Oops

[@PoeticDissentMusic]

One more thing that I'm personally going to try here in a few. The recent stuff I've been writing I have a lead guitar line in the chorus WITH the vocal melody. Now, some songs are like this so my suggestion is to actually mute that other melody line altogether while recording the vocals so I don't get confused. Just focus on the simple foundation instruments instead. I'm going to give this a try today. Thanks for the ideas man!

[@majahanson311]

All good ideas. If you have a recording setup that lets you add reverb in real time to their headphones without recording it (much like was mentioned in the video with regards to compression), that too can help the singer get better pitch feedback

[@improvewitherror]

I use open back headphones and it helps a lot.

[@gregtapevideo1464]

Thanks joe. Those are some good things to think about. My girlfriend is a singer songwriter. I always record her stuff. She sounds great on stage but is the queen of pitchy in the studio.

[@danielj_music]

Interestinggg. Does it work better in the studio if she plays guitar and sings at the same time?

[@arthurzatarain8062]

A rarely discussed issue regarding headphone recording is called double hearing, or “diplacusis dysharmonica.” The primary symptom is hearing a slightly different pitch in each ear. For example, a 440hz tone seems slightly higher in one ear as compared to the other ear. My problem is likely the result of a severe head injury I suffered about 25 years ago. I don’t notice the problem when listening to speakers because my brain averages the tones. But with earphones or buds I can notice it, and it can make it more difficult to sing properly. I’ve tried recording with the mix in mono, and using only one earphone, which sorta helps. I’d be interested in the experiences from other players who have similar problems.

[@The_Doc_Rocks]

One other factor that you didn't mention, but which I have had crop up on more than a few occasions over the last 3 or 4 decades, is to make sure the vocalist's headphone mix has a PITCHED instrument prominent in the mix. What I mean by that is that some songs are, say, very drum and percussion heavy, or very heavy on the bass and maybe a bottom string guitar riff, but it is very hard to pitch off those frequencies. But put some of the rhythm guitar, or keyboards (eg synth) that contains chordal pitch way up in the mix, and problem solved in most cases. Even just the piano or acoustic guitar demo that was used before any tracks were laid down can sometimes help - have it in the headphone mix, even if it isn't going to be in the final actual mix. But singers need those reference points of pitch, chords, and harmony in their ears to sing to.

[@DadRockAndGuitars]

God video! I always take one side of the headphones off when recording my own vocals. It just do so much better for me.

[@danielj_music]

For me, hearing myself too little leads to me singing too hard, which leads to straining which leads to bad pitch. Equally, I've found that having my headphones or IEMs too loud messes with my perception of pitch, and listening after the fact you can hear that my vocals are off pitch (even though when I was singing I felt I was spot on). Also, having my ear canals plugged with IEMs (or earplugs, with a roaring band and a loud stage monitor) seems to mess with my perception of pitch. Less so with the IEMs, but with the earplugs I have to rely more on hearing myself internally which definitely messes with my perception of pitch (and also lends to using poor singing technique due to not hearing the "breath" properly. A roaring band also robs you of a lot of the physical sensations of singing. Recording at home, I have headphones with one ear off, and that seems to work the best for me in that situation. For live it seems it's just practicing, recording and listening back and adjusting, to get used to compensating appropriately and not relying solely on what you hear but being able to do it "mechanically" how it's supposed to be. An embarassing story. Not singing, but guitar. Doing the sound ourselves. Soundcheck was ok, but then when live of course people dig in more. Got going and realize I can't hear my guitar, and had to rely on muscle memory for the entire show. Midway through this rumbly Motorhead song, the whole band just stops and looks at me. I had gone into the next verse too soon, the rest of the band was still on the chorus. EDIT: Also, having too much reverb in my ears really messes with my pitch perception. Preferably I want my vocals dry in my ears.

[@tonyloco42]

Great advice Joe. For me too much bottom-end can also be an issue. Could be just me and not an issue for most, but I've found all my life that too much mud in the low frequency, be it live or recording can really throw my pitch off. When recording vocals i sometimes switch off bass guitar at least, or just reduce reduce overall bottom-end for the duration of recording the vocal. That doesnt help in a live situation of course, but thats also why most live monitor mixers don't put too much low-end in wedges. After recrding, I find that even listening back to a vocal take still sounds fine in headphones, but as soon as I listen back on monitors i hear the pitchiness straight away.

[@mikewaldron4492]

I use the open-back headphones choice for my own vocals. You do get bleed, obviously, but a few quick edits (or a decent gate) gets it sorted. And, yes, 'swimmingly' is a thing, here in the UK... 🤣

[@Willpaxtonmusic]

Embarrassing story: For the first , I don’t know, entire time I’ve been recording - up until about 2 weeks ago - I have been trying to get the perfect headphone mix by jacking my vocals up and turning everything else down. And I’ve gotten decent performances here and there , for sure. But I always find that when I just sing out in the open air, I can do so more confidently. It’s like as soon as the headphones go on a compressor with no makeup gain attaches to my vocal cords… but when I finally just said “hey, why not try to take one phone off” - I ended up with a much stronger performance. Lesson learned! I’ll be using that technique from here on out.

[@gfaris666]

awesome as always. embarrassing story? does my entire existence count?

[@jlo7855]

Dear Joe, thank you very much for this once again great video. It is always a challenge for me: the headphone mix. I find endless videos on how to set it, but I was always disappointed. My voice was always too quiet when recording, because I had always set the mix like the master mix. I still hit the right tones but I always lack the modulation, the feeling and the timbre in the voice. As I said, I've never seen a video addressing this problem, thank you for your support

[@AndiPicker]

12:20: If I could hear you on my shoulder I'd just give you a lyric sheet and solve all my pitch problems for the session!

[@jenrayn5040]

You are a good man to share all of this. I say that on every video of yours that I watch. Thank you!

[@dvnbrat]

Great tips, Joe. I am a one headphone side singer in the studio as well. I learned about it while tracking & having pitch issues. I have adapted my approach by using an earplug in the other ear so that I can also hear my voice in my head

[@bf4lvr]

I needed this!

[@northernengland]

I was in a Rush Tribute band playing in London, my voice was bouncing off the back wall I couldn't sing, a guy came up to me at the bar and suggested I just play bass and get a new singer.

[@kedar3265]

U r awesome ❤

[@brandonjosephhoward]

Thanks Joe! I struggle with this a lot and all of this makes perfect sense. I’m going to give it a try.🎉

[@mattwatsonthesecrethelicopters]

"Swimmingly" Yeah thats a Brit thing! ;) How about singing in front of the studio monitors? I've seen Peter Gabriel used to do this.

[@michaeltablet8577]

Thank you for all your videos and thank you for song "Amen" When I get discouraged by the world i listen to it often and it brings me peace!

[@GladeSwope]

IMHO there is a reverse-effort paradox involved, especially if one only goes out of tune in the studio. To paraphrase Mr. Miyagi: Not mouth, whole body.

[@LadyPeter]

Wow, what an authentic story… and the bravery to admit it. Do you think you can teach me how to address pitchy singers on stage at church? There is one that drives me nuts yet she brags about all kinds of popularity in her younger years of performing professionally. (I have no such experience.) It’s really distracting when you are flowing in the Spirit and then she starts up. It’s like nails down a chalk board but I just don’t want to hurt her feelings. I also don’t want to step on the sound crew’s toes. Part of me thinks I should just suck it up and learn to worship without the distraction, but I just cannot get past the thought that she is hindering others from entering into the Presence. How do you be kind and yet tell the truth?

[@lozreeve2780]

How about recording her performance and playing it back to her? If you can find a valid reason to do that without it being obvious why.....

[@LadyPeter]

@@lozreeve2780 Great idea but I don’t want to step on the sound crew’s toes and they would know I’m recording her if I held my phone up to do so. They would also know if I went up close to the stage since I’m always hanging out in the back of the room. It would draw attention to myself that would cause questions. I’m just going to have to leave it in God’s hands for her and me. Maybe He will heal her ear or give me more skill to ignore it.

Good advices. Question : do the compression on the monitoring trick work if one uses direct monitoring ?

[@JoeStuffzAlt]

Easy. I did some streaming for a while where I sang. The backing tracks sounded like crap. They were professionally-made. The issue? OBS was set to record that channel in mono. I was hearing myself in stereo. I found out by listening to a recording that I did to the hard drive

[@GladeSwope]

A good trick is going trinaural: one close mic, and a stereo mic 6 feet away.

[@trippsmithmusic]

Great tip with compression!

[@TheMaverickTaylorBand]

Always, Always, Always warm up first. Scales/Exercises...

[@Its_Frank_Franchini]

Definitely till May 2023 I wasn't getting the takes, it was so pitchy, any change In vowels or in air compression it was a hot mess (I re recorded the same album four times)

[@creeksiderockmusic]

I use ear pods. No bleed. Then I use construction sound proof headsets to make 100% chance of no bleed. Then I turn the volumes down. My vocal up. There is a fine line but definitely music lower. Whala!!

[@timinglismusic6707]

Embarrassing singing story incoming. The first time I sang a lead vocal I was about 20. It was a variety show at youth group with an audience of about 400 and I sang "The River Will Flow," by Whiteheart. I had practiced the song until I knew I couldn't get it wrong and I had an A3 sheet on the floor with the first couple of words from each line as prompts, just to make sure. Rehearsals went off without a hitch because I knew the song inside out, upside down, and backwards. So, on the night, the band starts playing and the first line disappears out of my head like it was sucked out by a vacuum. I then look down at my prompt sheet and I'm suddenly dyslexic. I don't mean to offend anyone who may actually have dyslexia by exaggerating, but the words literally jumbled up in front of my eyes. The piano player was trained at the Conservatory of Music in Sydney and an amazing musician and singer and when he saw me struggling, jumped in and sang the first line. That was enough of a prompt for me to get the second line, but when it came to the third line, everything went out of my head again and the same thing happened with the prompt sheet. I ended up singing about 5 lines of the verses and bridge, although I managed the chorus okay. When the song finished, I walked over to the side of the stage, sat on the stairs, and recited the song in my head, word for word. I sang backing vocals after that, but I wouldn't sing lead on anything for another 20 years, when I was asked to sing as part of the Worship team at church. What's more, I turned 54 last week and later this year I'll be releasing my second solo album called, "The Heart and the Melody," an album of songs written for my kids and granddaughter. The reason I say this is because I want to encourage people to push past the embarrassing incidents and follow their dreams. Don't wait 20 years to get back on the horse!

[@siansoneashenanigans]

I've never been able to record my vocal while hearing what I'm singing in my headphones. I've never been able to work out how to eliminate the lag between my voice and having it reach the headphones. I don't really have a proper studio setup though, just a laptop, a USB Yeti mic, and earbuds, but every time I try to use the input monitoring function (I work in Adobe Audition, I know that's not legit, lol) there is a pronounced lag. So I just turn the music way down and sing over it, usually I can hear myself well enough. Luckily I have a loud voice, lol. Most embarrassing singing story? Probably the time I was at karaoke and we were picking each other's songs, and my friends picked "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" for me to sing. I realized quickly that I had never actually learned the tune to the full song, after the first line, I was like "welp, I guess I'm improvising". 😆 I did subsequently learn the song, and even did a Wheel of Time parody of it for my channel (Somewhere Over Tanchico).

[@onoesmurlocs]

you want to reduce the buffer size ( google how to do it for adobe audition) as small as you system can handle the bigger the buffer size the more lag when recording vocals but turn it up higher again when mixing or done recording etc.

[@siansoneashenanigans]

@@onoesmurlocs I'll try that, thanks!

[@onoesmurlocs]

@@siansoneashenanigans No problem, did it help?

[@lozreeve2780]

Buy yourself a USB interface. They're not expensive. You plug it into your laptop. You plug your microphone and headphones into the USB interface and it'll remove the lag.

[@lar57jsy]

Embarrassed...Played our opening song on bass a full tone too low all the way to the bridge. Ouch! About vocals... the last year or two I think I hear my vocal pitch flatten (or sharpen?) when I sing loudly. This can cause me to falsely adjust my voice to be slightly off pitch! Is that weird? I don't recall this to be an issue in the past. (ie. The ends of loud records seem to rise in pitch as they fade off)

[@heartshinemusic]

If the singer takes off one (headphone) ear, see if you can pan the headphone mix to one side, to avoid spilling audio (i.e. click track etc.)

[@MattLeFaitMusic]

Embarrassing story. Years ago I was supposed to lead a song for church. The song was originally in E and it was already almost too high. Rehearsal went great but when the actual time came to sing it for the service the keyboard player accidentally left his transpose button on and the song started in G. It was WAAYYY too high, after a few lines of sounding like a girl I just started “dancing in the spirit”. Good thing it was a fast song 😂

[@llRoBoBinHoll]

Interesting video. But aren’t there problems associated with the latency caused by software monitoring? Or isn’t this a big deal with vocals?

[@andrewhockton4581]

Ah yes, when our producer was going through who was to sing which parts, when he got to me it was "You just concentrate on playing bass". Harsh but honest!

[@creeksiderockmusic]

Make sure the balance is to one side. Cant have track bleed.

[@Push-Pull]

Compression on monitor vocals is a huge no-no for me. Great way to blow your voice. Better idea is to compress the overall band track and sing on top of that

[@jerryhuseby6766]

Hey, man. What would you do if your vocalist was blending in with the music to the point where you can't hardly hear them Over top of the music?

[@HomeStudioCorner]

I answered in the video. Turn the music down. 😊

[@HomeStudioCorner]

I answered in the video. Turn the music down. 😊

[@mlwsf]

Every time that I see you in the hat I can't help but think that you don't look very hardcore as that is the design of many Hardcore scene logos ever. The N(ew Y(ork) H(ard) C(ore) in the X being the most famous.

[@michaeltablet8577]

Embarrassing story. Many years ago backstage of the Grand Ole Opry I accidentally tripped Ricky Skaggs while he was heading to the stage to perform. He did a nose dive and i watched his antique Martin guitar skid 20 feet facedown on the hardwood floor.

[@Kunibert_Knatter]

I suspect, that adding a plugin into a channel while recording may bear the problem of increasing latency. One have to take that into account. However, when I sing, this does not matter at all. Because my singing sounds even worse than Tom Waits.

[@lsquaredmusic]

Anaheim House of Blues, started singing in the wrong key. The rest of the band played the correct key. But that’s ok cause MTV was there capturing it for the whole world…😂😂😂

[@darwinsaye]

Never understood the term “pitchy”. It’s like describing the weather as “temperaturey”.

[@marc_leblanc]

I usually fix my pitchy vocals by getting someone who can actually sing. Haha. Seriously though, I find that with less experienced singers, often times they'll be pitchy because they don't have the right chord. Shifting the pitch half a step down or up depending on whether they sharp or flat will often fix the problem.

[@waliddeui6725]

1:52 i see

[@matthewjohnson0627]

So I’m a wild card. I don’t have any of my own voice in my live performance mix in my IEMs. I lean on the other vocal parts, instruments etc. to stay in tune.

[@HomeStudioCorner]

That's really interesting. This would lead me to guess that your live vocals are quite off-pitch, since you have no reference point, but obviously I could be wrong.

[@69sidewinder]

​@@HomeStudioCorner I am pretty tone deaf. It's about feel for me. I play acoustic guitar at the same time I sing and I imagine myself integrating myself with the guitar as I feel the back of it rubbing against my body. It's quite effective...I think. The audience response changed dramatically once I understood this key to my ability to perform

[@nomoresaul]

Going to watch this just to find out what “a little pitchy” even means. “You can’t fix tone deaf” Thaaaaaaaat’s actually not true. Sam Totman is tone deaf yet able to play guitar masterfully. Almost all the best guitar parts in DragonForce songs, the parts that are catchy and not JUST impressively fast, are his guitar. It’s also possible to teach a completely deaf person to sing. So tone deaf can absolutely be fixed. This doesn’t detract from your point at all, because why would a tone deaf person want to bother doing the extra effort of learning how to get on key despite not actually hearing it themselves, but even so. Speaking of DragonForce, your embarrassing story about the in-ear monitors was also the reason DragonForce’s live performances in the 2006 era were so remarkably terrible. They could all play incredibly, but they weren’t in sync because of either in-ear monitors not working or straight up not even having them at all.

[@officialWWM]

I disagree. I believe I can teach almost anyone to sing in tune! Actual tone deafness is in fact, very rare.

[@AlecBridges]

Embarrassing story - as a teenager, I went to a guitar camp. On the last day, everyone had to perform a song. I was waiting on the side of stage for the band before us to finish. I felt a tickle on my arm, looked down and saw a spider run up my arm and into my shirt. I am a bit of an arachnophobe so I went bananas, flailing and hitting myself. The audience could see, but obviously had no idea why I suddenly went nuts for no apparent reason.

[@audioglenngineer]

I once did this in the restroom at work - washing my hands I saw the giant demon on my shoulder in the mirror, proceeded to violently swat it off and stomp on it repeatedly on the floor. When the battle finally subsided, in the blood and the dirt, there it was: a giant ball of black string from my shirt.

[@AlecBridges]

@@audioglenngineerHahaha! Cotton Widows can be terrifying

[@SaulDeAnda]

Another tip for IEMs specifically, would be to cut out a good amount of the low-end from the vocals since they’re already hearing their own skull’s resonance and that’s what the biggest issue is for singers and IEMs. helps turn the vocal up a bit extra and feel more balanced for them. Maybe throw in a little room reverb for a less claustrophobic feel.