Auto Tune Track Pitch Not Working
Auto-Tune Pro also includes Classic Mode, for the celebrated “Auto-Tune 5 sound,” Flex-Tune and Humanize for more transparent and natural-sounding tuning, Throat Modeling for subtle or extreme vocal transformations, and Transpose for real-time pitch-shifting with automatic Formant Correction. In modern music Auto-Tune is really used with two different intentions. The first is to use it as a tool in a transparent manner, to correct someone's pitch. In this situation, the artist doesn't want to hear the effect work, they just want to hit the right notes.
This article is going to be about Auto-Tune. Go grab your pitchforks … I’ll wait.
For many of you, this is going to be a great article about the creative and practical uses of Auto-Tune in modern music. For another significant portion of you, this will be a great opportunity to make not-so-clever jokes like “the best technique with Auto-Tune is hiring a better singer!”
Love it or hate it, Auto-Tune is a thing. And there are things about this thing worth knowing. So here are a few modern techniques for Auto-Tune.
The Two Categories of Use
In my mind Auto-Tune (or pitch correction in general) is used in one of two modes:
Mode A: A tool for locking in a few stray notes that missed the mark in spite of an otherwise rockin’ performance.
Mode B: An effect used to create a tone, much like a phaser or flanger or reverb or distortion.
Mode A is pretty straightforward — if a dirty note slides on by, hit it with just enough tuning to lock it back in. Generally, using a graphical mode from Auto-Tune, Waves Tune, Melodyne, etc. is the best way to do this. Or simply using an automatic mode and automating the Bypass works as well, unless some serious shifting is required.
Mode B is more fun. Within the world of being effect-y, there are a couple of ways to go. Auto-Tune can be used as a post effect — that is applying it after the initial recording, or the vocalist can sing into the plugin and manipulate it. I’m a fan of the latter. A very good vocalist can control their pitch and delivery enough to play off of how the tuning mechanism reacts and get a number of fun effects from it. Controlled slides and ‘distunes’ (I’m making that a word) can make the happy accident of tuning distortion into a creative tool.
Auto Tone
In today’s music, I often think of Auto-Tune as a tonal device (hence my horrible pun). Most of the time I’m trying to get a bit (or a lot) of sparkly, phase-y distortion. This creation of synthesized harmonics makes a voice sound a bit synth-y, or robotic depending on the approach. For the most part, people just tend to slap Auto-Tune on there and find a retune speed they like and roll with it. I’m a bit more neurotic and like a more refined approach. I’m pretty decisive about whether I’m abusing Melodyne, modern Auto-Tune or the classic ol’ school Auto-Tune. They all have different tones and sometimes one is more fitting than the others.
Melodyne generally has the most transparent tone. It can thin the low-mid of a vocal a little, but sometimes that can actually be a good thing. When abused, it has a specific color but it’s a very evenly distributed harmonic thing that happens — hard to put into words but it feels very “consistent”.
The current version of Auto-Tune is also pretty transparent but does do the quintessential Auto-Tune sound. The classic Auto-Tune, version 5.1 most notably, is really the one that we think of when we think T-Pain — because the formant shifting is the least accurate.
Then there’s the question of how much abuse I want. Just a touch of glitter, or full-on Robotron.
If I want just a touch, one really easy technique is to use two instances of Auto-Tune, both set to very slow retune speeds. The reprocessing of the tuned vocal generates harmonics on top of harmonics allowing for a subtle yet ever-present flavor. Because I’m using slow tuning speeds it also means that the tuning effect is fairly homogenous.
Melodyne Into Auto-Tune
However, sometimes I want a much more printed effect that still stays on the vocal in a consistent way. I find that by coupling Melodyne with Auto-Tune I can get a very even, yet very effected sound.
A great example of this is the vocal tracking for “Comentale” by Ozuna and Akon.
The chain for both vocals was Melodyne first in graphical mode just getting the notes a bit closer to center, and then Auto-Tune with a pretty fast retune speed to create the effected tone. The only place the Auto-Tune really ever varies tonally is when Akon does his faster note runs. When he does this I prefer to let the Auto-Tune glitch up a little because I like the texture it creates. Kon is very smart about where he places these glitches in his delivery — which I’m going to touch on again in a moment. As a side note, both Ozuna and Akon sang into Auto-Tune Pro during the recording in order to make the sound very deliberate — with Ozuna set to the regular mode and Akon set to the “classic” mode. The whole process is a lot more calculated than simply slapping Auto-Tune on there.
That said, sometimes you can just slap Auto-Tune on there.
Automating Auto-Tune
Sometimes I don’t want Auto-Tune to act evenly on everything. As I mentioned before, Akon is very particular about how he blends his voice with Auto-Tune. He will go out of his way to glitch it on purpose in order to create captivating moments. When he does this I take that as a cue to automate the settings on Auto-Tune to emphasize the effect.
Basically, I’m just picking up what he’s putting down. A lot of people associate Kon with heavy Auto-Tune, but when I think of his style I really think of someone with a masterful delivery above all else. He shapes his vocal tone and personality very carefully. For an artist who does this, I actually don’t like the Auto-Tune to be overly heavy. My default here is “classic” Auto-Tune (that 5.1 algorithm sound) with a retune speed of 12ms (maybe less for a more serious song, maybe more for a more club-oriented song). Admittedly this is pretty fast because I do want that distinct tone. But it’s not the T-Pain 0 millisecond sound. On certain runs or moments, I’ll automate the retune speed either very fast to bring out the glitches, or slow it down to keep things a little more subtle.
Manual Formant Shifting
Formant shifting is an underutilized effect. When we speak, our vowel sounds are determined by the shape of our mouths. These harmonic signatures, determined by mouth shape, are called formants. In order to preserve the sound of a voice during pitch correction, the formants have to be adjusted accordingly.
Pitch correction software generally does this automatically — but sometimes it’s not 100% spot-on. So most pitch software will allow us to manually adjust formants when needed to compensate. Higher formants refer to brassier tones like “a”, “ah” and “e” sounds, while lower formants refer to rounder tones like “oo”, “oh”, and “uh”. Sometimes it’s fun to abuse this formant shifting to create a variety of textures. We can do this on background vocals to make them sound less like the lead and more like different voices. Or, we can do this on a lead to make it sound like a singing chipmunk or Frankenstein’s monster.
Getting Creative
What’s the fun in writing an article if we can’t be a little creative? Here’s some next level stuff that my weirdo brain likes to get into.
The first thing that tickles my fancy is the relationship between pitch correction and reverb. You may notice that if you’ve ever printed or committed Auto-Tune it will not null against the original track. That means that the same track printed through Auto-Tune is not technically the same thing as the track with active Auto-Tune on it.
Ok … so what?
Auto Tune Track Pitch Not Working Back
Well, the discrepancy between the two comes down to phase rotation. The micro-timing of the track changes, which changes the phase of the signal. Phase is an extremely important aspect of determining spatiality. Because I often use outboard reverb I found that if I print the reverb back in, and subsequently commit my Auto-Tune settings after the reverb print, the vocal will actually feel a bit more forward and disconnected from the reverb and have a stronger front to back image. Weird little quirk.
We can also do a doubler effect by making three instances of our source track and pitch correcting a left pan version up a few cents higher, and the right pan version a few cents lower, keeping the main version right in the center. This works very similarly to a classic doubler but because there’s movement in the pitch we get a bit of a phaser quality as well as an image that actually expands and contracts a bit. It’s a bit more movement-driven, which can be good or bad depending on what we want.
Lastly, I really like delays into Auto-Tune. We can get the glitchiest sound in the world and it sounds very futuristic and cool as a delay. Great for something we want to have a hint of sci-fi sound to it.
Conclusion
Auto-Tune is part of our musical landscape. Personally, I prefer to look for ways to expand the use of the tool rather than try to fight the cultural wave.
How do you find yourself using Auto-Tune? Have any of your experiments gone right?
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Before we begin, I just have to be completely honest and say I’m not an expert in the use of pitch correction or auto-tune, because I rarely use them, however, I recently had to, so I figured I’d share what I learned.
In today’s tutorial, I’m going to show you how I recently used pitch correction in the manner consistent (at least in sound) with Travis Scott and other hip-hop artists of the day.
Pitch-correction is almost always used in the recording process, and every artist uses it, from metal bands, rock bands, pop singers, and so on and so forth.
Similar to ghost-writers and professional producers/writers working on your favorite artist’s latest record, it’s just a part of the business and it’s a part of how the game is played at a high level.
Without further ado… Half time free download vst.
How To Use Auto-Tune (Pitch Correction) In Garageband.
First things first.
You need to know the key signature of the music. This should be the first step you make.
If you want to know the key signature of the song, I just find the tonal center of the music, and then I play the notes of that scale.
For instance, when I jammed along to Dave East’s “Type Of Time” recently, I knew it was in the key of C Minor (relative major: Eb Major).
I figured it out, just by searching around on my guitar for the note on which the entire song is built, and then I played the natural minor scale up from the root note, carefully listening for each note to hear any dissonances.
If you don’t know anything about major or minor scales, I suggest checking out MusicTheory.net, as they have great tutorials for beginners to music theory. Also, Mark Sarnecki’s book, which I wrote about here.
You can also use the tool, TuneBat.com.
TuneBat is a pretty good resource for quickly finding the key signature of a song. They have quite a bit in there.
Personally, I like figuring it out for myself that way I don’t have to depend on the software, however, if you’re only a music producer rather than a musician, sight-reading or improvising skills really aren’t that important.
Also, u
1) Open a new project/already existing project.
2) Hit (Command + Option + A) to bring up an Audio track.
3) You’ll see down in the Smart Controls the way the Audio looks in wave format, in addition to a few different settings including, “Limit to Key,” and “Enable Flex.”
4) From here, what you want to do is hit the “Enable Flex” and “Limit Key” check-boxes to ensure that when you record some vocals or other music, the pitch correction tool will come in keep everything in the key.
5) At this point, I’m sure you’re already familiar with the key signature option at the top center of the DAW, but for the sake of clarification, I’ll speak of it anyway.
Just go up to the top-center where it displays the beats per minute, measure, time signature, and the tempo. You can adjust the key signature from there.
6) Now, if you want to make auto-tune work in the style of, say, for example, T-Pain, you’re going to need to know the key signature of the track in which to sing.
7) Depending on how much auto-tune you want to use, you can adjust the pitch correction on a 1-100 scale within the Smart Controls.
If you put it all the way to 100, that’s obviously the most amount of pitch-correction you can use.
8) The next step is to begin recording your vocals, and then listen to how the pitch correction tool has changed the way your vocals sound.
In the Instagram post below, you can see what it sounds like without pitch correction and with the pitch-correction all the way up to 100.
The first thing that you hear is the out-of-key version of “Stargazing” from Travis Scott.
You’ll notice when I say the word, “Stargazing,” it sounds out of key. But then after I adjust the pitch the correction to 100 it starts to sound good.
In conclusion, the steps I laid out above is how you pitch-correct a vocal track. However, if you want to use auto-tune as a creative tool in the style of Travis Scott, then there are additional details.
It’s worth mentioning that between 65 and 75 is the best range for the pitch correction tool if you’re just trying to correct those imperfections.
Also, it’s best to give the best singing performance possible, because the pitch correction tool works at its most optimal when the notes are only slightly off.
If you just sing wildly out of tune, the benefit of using the pitch correction software is lost. You can try it for yourself some time to see what I mean.
How To Use Auto-Tune Like Travis Scott
Auto Tune Track Pitch Not Working Lyrics
For this, it’s pretty much the same thing as the steps listed above, but we have to add a few more effects, including delay, reverb, and a bit of compression as well, actually, probably a lot.
For the sake of clarity, I’ll run through these steps once again.
1) Bring up your audio track using the (Command + Option + A) function.
2) Click on the Audio Region.
3) Click on Track.
4) Check both boxes, “Limit to Key,” as well as “Enable Flex.”
5) Hit Record on your Audio Track, and then record yourself singing whatever it is that you want to sing.
If I were you, I would make sure that you have the “Feedback Protection” box clicked, just in case.
Also, if you’re going to use your computer’s built-in microphone, you’ll have to plug headphones in due to the fact the microphone and built-in speakers are too close to each other.
If you plan on actually making legitimate vocals, obviously, it’d be a much better option to use a good microphone. From what I understand, Shure is kind of like the industry standard.
Moving on…
6) Turn the pitch-correction all the way up to 100 that way it’s working as much as possible.
7) Go into your Plug-ins, and select the options, Compressor, Platinum Verb within the Reverb options, the Stereo Delay, as well as the Channel EQ
8) First, go into your EQ, and EQ the audio track so it looks like the image I’ve laid out below.
You can see that the Lows have been boosted considerably, as well as the highs, and then the mids are cut out almost completely.
9) Then, go into your Compressor and set it at the settings you can see below in the image.
10) For the Platinum Verb, I just keep it at the default setting.
11) Now that you have your final track, you can see that it kind of has that Washed out with Reverb/Robot style which is Travis Scott’s style. I don’t mean that derisively, those are just the mannerisms that come to mind.
12) For the next step, you want to copy and paste your audio track into two new duplicate tracks, however, you’ll pan the one to the left and one to the right using the pan buttons that look like this.
13) After this, make sure you turn off the Delay off the two duplicate tracks because otherwise, there will be too much of it.
Effects like Reverb and Delay kind of add up on top of each other, so make sure to not over-use these features.
How To Use Auto-Tune (Pitch Correction) In iOS
Setting up pitch correction and auto-tune in iOS isn’t much different from how you’d do it on the Mac.
Without further ado.
1) The first thing you want to do, is hit the option, “+” on the top right-hand side of the screen when you first open up Garageband iOS.
2) Select the option, “Audio Recorder.” 2
3) Now, you’ll come to a little dial in the center of the screen that kind of looks like a children’s toy. Choose the Golden Microphone option titled, “Extreme Tuning.”
4) From there, go into the drop-down menu on the top-left hand of the screen and click on the “Extreme Tuning” icon.
5) Then, click on the setting that says, “Vocals.”
6) Choose the option “Lead Vocals” from there.
7) We now have five dials from which to choose, Tone, Pitch Control, Compressor, Drive, and Vocal Hall.
6) Hit the dials (that looks like a Gear) of the top-right hand side of the screen, and then click on “Track Controls,” which
7) Add a little bit of Reverb and then Delay.
8) You can adjust the compressor up or down, depending on how much you want to equalize the sound.
9) From here, as I mentioned in the tutorial above, you need to figure out the key signature of your song. Considering the fact it’s the song you’ve likely written, you’ll know what the key is.
10) If you need to adjust the Key Signature, click on the icon that looks a gear, then choose “Song Settings.” From there, you can see where it gives Tempo and Key Signature options.
If you’re using someone else’s song, try TuneBat.com.
***Having the proper key signature set up is an important detail because it gives the pitch correction software a standard by which to measure and adjust.
If you have the wrong Key Signature, auto-tune won’t work properly because the tool will adjust the wrong notes to the wrong pitch.
***There’s also an Application that you can download called, “Voloco,” which acts as a harmonizer and pitch correction tool. I don’t think it’s that necessary frankly, but you can try that out.
You can refer to the Instagram post above if you want to hear the final product.
As I’ve mentioned before, probably the most important things to remember when using auto-tune and pitch correction are as follows:
- Adjust the amount of correction from 0 to 100
- Use Delay and Reverb
- Sing on key to really maximize the utility of pitch correction software.
And that’s pretty much it.
Anyway, I hope this helped you out. Make sure to share it on your social media if you enjoyed it.
Until next time.