Rich, Tell us about Melodyne? I had been looking at something to tweak the very rare bum note in my singing🤣 Looking at the website it looks like it's €99. That's a lot for a plugin in my opinion so is it worth it?
Peter, thanks for your question, it might take a few posts to explain this, but Celemony Melodyne is a very effective piece of software that allows each note to processed in a few ways, not only the obvious pitch correction, but other ways too, such as length, position, harmonic content and a few others.
The thing to bear in mind with Melodyne is that it's got quite a big job to do, and as such requires quite a bit of processing power, this point is often overlooked, and understated by Celemony. If you are looking to correct, and move quite a few notes, then there are a few settings to take care of first.
The other un related point is that there is a reasonable upgrade path from elements to studio, in affordable steps..it took me 3 or 4 years to upgrade to Studio, but it's well worth it,, also the ;learning curve is very steep, and this matches the upgrade path.
This is an actual vocal stem from one of my productions with @andreaseholm
Melodyne detects the vocal, and creates a 'blob' for each note, the blob has a length, and a pitch, there is a scale on the left which tells you which note it is..
..and you can move these up or down, or reduce or widen them in length, or delete them altogether, very handy.
In this screenshot, I've moved a couple of the blobs about...The E flat is now E, and the B is now an A flat and I removed the D flat.
Tasty huh?
To me this is worth every penny of the 99 bucks, especially if you have a near perfect take, and there's not much chance of another, as happens very often with Collabs.
Oh btw, I didn't need to Melodyne Andreas's Vocals they were perfect.
Hope this helps, if you have any more questions on this one, just reply underneath.
@petersidaway Another fantastic feature in Melodyne is to copy a vocal line and paste it to a new track, then move the blobs to make a perfectly matched harmony, I use this technique when stems are thin on the ground
Ohh, this was nearly mind blowing.. I have looked at melodyne before but always thought it looked complicated, so I just use flex pitch in Logic Pro, which nearly looks like that, and there I can time allign guitar tracks, which I just recently found out, so that definitely was mind blowing 😅
@andreaseholm- Took a brief look, and it seems OK, only $4.90 on plugin boutique, so worth a punt.
It looks like it widens, adds depth, and grit,
if you're interested I can recommend these individual plugins, that I use.
Click the links
bx_stereomaker - just brilliant at what it does, I haven't found anything as good as this, iztope Imager is also good for being free, but not in the same league as this.
A grit maker...currently on offer and a bargain, you can use it on drums too, but don't be put off, if it sounds uncontrollable, a little goes a longggggg way.
I've downloaded the trial of Melodyne and it's good, I think I'll buy it. Must be better to fix a dodgy note than to keep re-singing lines especially as I wait for everyone to be out before belting out a vocal line!
But I now have more questions, what do you use it for (If that's not too obvious), do you use it on every track? Do you fix a whole song or just parts that are out?
I've watched a few videos and the 2 main things I've learnt are:
- Highlight the transferred track (or area if you aren't doing the whole track), set Pitch Centre to 100%, Pitch Drift to 50% and tick snap to chord scale. Then use the pitch modulation tool and drag it to around 90%. That fixes a lot of issues but leaves some things that need fixing and sometimes still leaves it a little obvious.
- Leave the track in tact and just highlight individual notes and work on those doing the above and/or then moving the note iof required.
@petersidaway - Try copying a short vocal phrase, stick melodyne on it, move the blobs to form a harmony, usually a 3rd, 4th or 5th sit back and wonder.
I always try my best to keep in pitch at the tracking stage, this saves a lot of faffing about in Melodyne.
There usually are a few common notes that need attention, for example I might not be hitting the notes above A, so I might just highlight the whole A line and apply the pitch control macro to them, then the next note, not all of the notes as they might be out by differing values.
Most of the time I fix the notes that are clearly out, and especially those that will be used in harmonies.
They say you can't polish a Richard, but you can...
But I now have more questions, what do you use it for (If that's not too obvious), do you use it on every track? Do you fix a whole song or just parts that are out?
Usually just the parts that are out...it'll save CPU..and why fix something that doesn't need it?
Have you seen Waves Tune Rich? Looks similar and is on sale for $29.99! Seen a few videos and read reviews and it looks like it has great functionality but the window is fixed size and the controls are a bit small. I might give it a try.
@petersidaway - I did look at it when I was looking at Melodyne, and I felt the features in Melodyne suited what I wanted, you can do not just Vocal tuning, but harmonies, corrections on acoustic guitars, audio to midi, and all sorts of tasty things, yes at 30 bucks it's a great price, but on everyplugin.com, Melodyne Essential is now at $87 if you sign up, (it's £89 on Plugin boutique) which is maybe £60, I'd go for that any day over Waves Tune, the upgrade path is good too.
I downloaded the trial version of Waves Tune but didn't fall in love with it in my extensive couple of hour test! So I've bought Melodyne Essential but I have one question. I generally have 4 vocal tracks. The main one, a reverb on laid way back behind it and a left and right with one of them shifted by about 10ms. How do I copy the amended vocal to those tracks? If I copy the audio it loses the changes. I can't do it again as I wouldn't get it the same result. I can duplicate the finished vocal track as that retains the changes but I'd have to build the rest of my effects chain each time. I could also export the audio that I am happy with and use that. All seems a bit tedious.
I'm not surprised that you didn't find the love for Waves Tune, it and many others are Melodyne-u-Likes.
Melodyne should be used before you add any fx, it needs a pure dry stem to work on, no fx at all, the accuracy and resultant fix will be as transparent as possible that way. Once the song has the correct notes, then you can freeze it, and apply the fx as usual.
Just so I understand Peter, you record 1 track and copy it 3 times, that is, you don't rack the same vocal line 4 times...which way is it?
With regard to the fx chain...There might be a way to store the fx as a group, and recall it, or for example in my DAW, I can just hold the Ctrl key down and drag the fx into a different track, and it retains all the settings.
I know I'll just set you off again Rich, but you can't do that in Garageband🤣
Having spend a few more days with it, I now get one vocal track exactly as I want it, then copy it 3 times to allow mo to treat them individually.
On the fx chain, I can save the fx and do that for things like guitar amp settings, syth settings and I do have a vocal one but as Melodyne effectively records the vocal into the plug in, when i load a saved fx chain, it doesn't have the audio of course.
Rich, Tell us about Melodyne? I had been looking at something to tweak the very rare bum note in my singing🤣 Looking at the website it looks like it's €99. That's a lot for a plugin in my opinion so is it worth it?
Peter, thanks for your question, it might take a few posts to explain this, but Celemony Melodyne is a very effective piece of software that allows each note to processed in a few ways, not only the obvious pitch correction, but other ways too, such as length, position, harmonic content and a few others.
The thing to bear in mind with Melodyne is that it's got quite a big job to do, and as such requires quite a bit of processing power, this point is often overlooked, and understated by Celemony. If you are looking to correct, and move quite a few notes, then there are a few settings to take care of first.
The other un related point is that there is a reasonable upgrade path from elements to studio, in affordable steps..it took me 3 or 4 years to upgrade to Studio, but it's well worth it,, also the ;learning curve is very steep, and this matches the upgrade path.
I'll return to the next bit later on...
OK, back again.. @petersidaway
This is an actual vocal stem from one of my productions with @andreaseholm
Melodyne detects the vocal, and creates a 'blob' for each note, the blob has a length, and a pitch, there is a scale on the left which tells you which note it is..
..and you can move these up or down, or reduce or widen them in length, or delete them altogether, very handy.
In this screenshot, I've moved a couple of the blobs about...The E flat is now E, and the B is now an A flat and I removed the D flat.
Tasty huh?
To me this is worth every penny of the 99 bucks, especially if you have a near perfect take, and there's not much chance of another, as happens very often with Collabs.
Oh btw, I didn't need to Melodyne Andreas's Vocals they were perfect.
Hope this helps, if you have any more questions on this one, just reply underneath.
@pompeyjazz - this might be of use to you as well
@petersidaway Another fantastic feature in Melodyne is to copy a vocal line and paste it to a new track, then move the blobs to make a perfectly matched harmony, I use this technique when stems are thin on the ground
Oh yes one more thing @petersidaway a few DAWs have this included, mine does Magix Samplitude pro x4 suite
Ohh, this was nearly mind blowing.. I have looked at melodyne before but always thought it looked complicated, so I just use flex pitch in Logic Pro, which nearly looks like that, and there I can time allign guitar tracks, which I just recently found out, so that definitely was mind blowing 😅
consider that you can copy a track and move the notes up or down, Vox harmonies are super tight..I used it on this one...
@andreaseholm glad you dig
Have you ever tried Vocalsplitter? Just got an add for it on my insta 😅
Nope, heard of it but it’s nothing that turned by head, melodyne is so good
@andreaseholm- Took a brief look, and it seems OK, only $4.90 on plugin boutique, so worth a punt.
It looks like it widens, adds depth, and grit,
if you're interested I can recommend these individual plugins, that I use.
Click the links
bx_stereomaker - just brilliant at what it does, I haven't found anything as good as this, iztope Imager is also good for being free, but not in the same league as this.
A grit maker...currently on offer and a bargain, you can use it on drums too, but don't be put off, if it sounds uncontrollable, a little goes a longggggg way.
Depth is usually a room verb.
Let me know what you go for.
Hope this helps
I've downloaded the trial of Melodyne and it's good, I think I'll buy it. Must be better to fix a dodgy note than to keep re-singing lines especially as I wait for everyone to be out before belting out a vocal line!
Good choice Peter, i advise that you play with it a lot , it does need a bit of practice, like anything worthwhile 😎🎵
But I now have more questions, what do you use it for (If that's not too obvious), do you use it on every track? Do you fix a whole song or just parts that are out?
I've watched a few videos and the 2 main things I've learnt are:
- Highlight the transferred track (or area if you aren't doing the whole track), set Pitch Centre to 100%, Pitch Drift to 50% and tick snap to chord scale. Then use the pitch modulation tool and drag it to around 90%. That fixes a lot of issues but leaves some things that need fixing and sometimes still leaves it a little obvious.
- Leave the track in tact and just highlight individual notes and work on those doing the above and/or then moving the note iof required.
That sound about right? Any other tips?
@petersidaway - Try copying a short vocal phrase, stick melodyne on it, move the blobs to form a harmony, usually a 3rd, 4th or 5th sit back and wonder.
Let me know how it goes.
Regarding how I use it:
I always try my best to keep in pitch at the tracking stage, this saves a lot of faffing about in Melodyne.
There usually are a few common notes that need attention, for example I might not be hitting the notes above A, so I might just highlight the whole A line and apply the pitch control macro to them, then the next note, not all of the notes as they might be out by differing values.
Most of the time I fix the notes that are clearly out, and especially those that will be used in harmonies.
They say you can't polish a Richard, but you can...
But I now have more questions, what do you use it for (If that's not too obvious), do you use it on every track? Do you fix a whole song or just parts that are out?
Usually just the parts that are out...it'll save CPU..and why fix something that doesn't need it?
Thanks Rich
Have you seen Waves Tune Rich? Looks similar and is on sale for $29.99! Seen a few videos and read reviews and it looks like it has great functionality but the window is fixed size and the controls are a bit small. I might give it a try.
@petersidaway - I did look at it when I was looking at Melodyne, and I felt the features in Melodyne suited what I wanted, you can do not just Vocal tuning, but harmonies, corrections on acoustic guitars, audio to midi, and all sorts of tasty things, yes at 30 bucks it's a great price, but on everyplugin.com, Melodyne Essential is now at $87 if you sign up, (it's £89 on Plugin boutique) which is maybe £60, I'd go for that any day over Waves Tune, the upgrade path is good too.
Let me know what you go for...Hope this helps
I downloaded the trial version of Waves Tune but didn't fall in love with it in my extensive couple of hour test! So I've bought Melodyne Essential but I have one question. I generally have 4 vocal tracks. The main one, a reverb on laid way back behind it and a left and right with one of them shifted by about 10ms. How do I copy the amended vocal to those tracks? If I copy the audio it loses the changes. I can't do it again as I wouldn't get it the same result. I can duplicate the finished vocal track as that retains the changes but I'd have to build the rest of my effects chain each time. I could also export the audio that I am happy with and use that. All seems a bit tedious.
Melodyne does take a while to get used to...but once you've sussed it...
I'm not surprised that you didn't find the love for Waves Tune, it and many others are Melodyne-u-Likes.
Melodyne should be used before you add any fx, it needs a pure dry stem to work on, no fx at all, the accuracy and resultant fix will be as transparent as possible that way. Once the song has the correct notes, then you can freeze it, and apply the fx as usual.
Just so I understand Peter, you record 1 track and copy it 3 times, that is, you don't rack the same vocal line 4 times...which way is it?
With regard to the fx chain...There might be a way to store the fx as a group, and recall it, or for example in my DAW, I can just hold the Ctrl key down and drag the fx into a different track, and it retains all the settings.
I know I'll just set you off again Rich, but you can't do that in Garageband🤣
Having spend a few more days with it, I now get one vocal track exactly as I want it, then copy it 3 times to allow mo to treat them individually.
On the fx chain, I can save the fx and do that for things like guitar amp settings, syth settings and I do have a vocal one but as Melodyne effectively records the vocal into the plug in, when i load a saved fx chain, it doesn't have the audio of course.
Great thread...I forgot about this Q&A lol
Thanks Andy, glad you came on by...Love your latest video by the way, the F word is a must...
Hmmm. Not sure I ever have.